Last year for HexArcana was filled with exciting challenges, valuable meetings, and crucial initiatives. We’ve developed our business, participated in prestige conferences, and what is the most important, conducted a series of intense courses. Take a walk with us through the summary of the most important moments of 2024 :)
hackArcana
Perhaps out of chronological order, but near the end of 2024 we started beta-testing of our educational platform—hackArcana!
Eventually we want to host all our educational content there—this includes articles, exercises, courses, webinars, and so on. We plan having there a lot of CTF-like exercises for you to enjoy. Feel free to check it out at hackArcana.com.
Key HexArcana courses
Files Through the Eyes of the Hacker – 21 August 2024
The webinar organized together with Sekurak attracted over 6700 participants, who had the opportunity to delve deeper into a seemingly simple issue – files in an operating system.
During the lecture, Gynvael Coldwind presented different perspectives on files, access paths, and pseudo files that can be encountered in the file system. Thanks to multiple practical examples, the participants saw how lack of attention during operations on files can lead to serious security errors. The course was met with a very positive reception – the average rating of the lecture was 4.96/5.00.
Introduction to Reverse Engineering and Assembler – 14 September 2024
Our cooperation with Sekurak was once again fruitful. In September, we conducted a three-part course (9 hours total) in reverse engineering and assembler – the lecturer was our managing director – Gynvael, who has over 20 years of experience in RE. During those three meetings, he showed the participants a short project from A to Z, showed the basics of assembler x86, and introduced the participants to the basics of binary analysis and code reversing. The interest was huge – over 400 participants took part in the full course and enthusiastically appreciated the practical approach to the subject and the possibility to obtain new skills. The post-course survey exceeded our expectations as always, the average rating was 4.99/5.00 pts :)
Mastering Binary Files and Protocols – 13 November 2024 – 15 January 2025
Together with Securitum, we undertook the organization of the second edition of our flagship series – Binary files and protocols. This edition covered 14 meetings between November and January – 49 hours of intense learning in total, not even counting the several additional exercises available to the participants. 500 people took part in the course (5 times as many as in the first edition!), and the enthusiasm in the feedback exceeded our expectations! The average rating of the entire course was 4.92/5.00 pts, and the feedback looked something like this: "The training series was excellent—it's a shame that it's already over. [...]"
By the way...
If you're curious about hexeditors, binary file formats, or deep packet analysis, we're running our flagship course on these topics between April and June: Mastering Binary Files and Protocols: The Complete Journey!
The first HexArcana webinar in English: CVEs of SSH – 21 November 2024
This was a breakthrough event for us – first HexArcana webinar in English, conducted by Dan Murray! The webinar gathered enthusiasts of cybersecurity interested in vulnerabilities in the SSH ecosystem – after all, one of the most popular protocols for, among others, managing servers. Expect more such webinars in 2025 :)
The most important conferences and lectures
Mega Sekurak Hacking Party – 30 September 2024, Kraków
One of the most anticipated industry events organized by Sekurak gathered over 1800 participants. The conference was opened by an almost hour-long lecture by Gynvael, entitled “Text data is hard…”, which touched upon the problems connected with processing of text data. It showed why text formats, although simple at first glance, can hide numerous pitfalls. Gynvael also showed many examples of the most common security errors resulting from parsing of text data. The lecture received a warm welcome, and the average rating was 4.92/5.00 pts. The attendance at MSHP was good as usual, and the organization by Sekurak – stellar. We are looking forward to the next edition!
The Hack Summit – 17 October 2024, Warszawa
Although we were not there in person, Gynvael was a member of the advisory board and took part in creating the Deep Dive pathway – he had an eye on the program and helped choose the best lectures :)
Black Alps Conference – 6-7 November 2024
Like in the case of The Hack Summit, Gynvael was also participating in creating the program of the Black Alps conference!
Sekurak Cyberstarter – 6 December 2024
The first edition of online Sekurak Cyberstarter conference in collaboration with mBank Polska attracted 4750 participants and was rated at 9.6/10. 47 lectures took place on that day, led by top cybersecurity specialists. Once more, Gynvael had the chance to share his knowledge with the participants – this time on “How to report vulnerabilities?”. Additionally, a few days earlier, a mini-event Sekurak Cyberstarter Intro took place, where Gynvael talked about ZIP encryption and why it shouldn’t be used. Sekurak Cyberstarter was extremely popular and engaged the participants – another online edition is already expected!
Other HexArcana initiatives
Paged Out! exceeded half a million downloads! – 9 October 2024
In 2024, the zin which we are helping – Paged Out! – crossed the milestone of 500 000 downloads! The new editions of the zine gained a lot of recognition among our community:
Those results confirm our belief that it’s worth developing and expanding the initiative. The next issue will be out soon #staytuned!
Summary
2024 brought HexArcana many successes – from courses made with passion through participation in key conferences, development of our online initiatives to many interesting consulting projects. Thanks to the enormous commitment of our community, we have managed to reach thousands of cybersecurity specialists and enthusiasts.
We are looking at 2025 with enthusiasm as it promises to be even more exciting. We plan to expand our services with more webinars, organize new courses, and be present at industry conferences. Thank you to everyone who was a part of our journey in 2024 – it is only the beginning!