Hacking at Scottish Summit

Last weekend (Oct 3rd 2026) I had the pleasure to speak at the Scottish Summit with a brand new talk called Think like a hacker in 5 steps

Think like a hacker in 5 steps

I wanted to warn people about some of the basics about hacking, so I wrote an abstract:

Everybody knows that you should not plug in a random USB stick, right? With some simple tricks your users might be convinced otherwise. Hacks, data breaches, ransomware. Protecting your company can be hard if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Security starts with just that and what better way to figure out than by attempting to hack yourself or your co-workers.

You might have guessed it already; this talk is about hacking in any way possible. We will explore how hackers operate and I’ll show you some of the tools. Is your application really safe, and what to look for in those applications.

Finally, we will touch upon the most painful “people” hacks, what happens when you’re a good talker? Can you convince users to do exactly those things they are instructed to never do. Can your helpdesk employees be persuaded to reset your password over the phone? Let someone enter your building because they “forgot” their badge.

Now that we are talking about badges, what about physical security. Have you ever seen someone clone a hotel keycard? One randomly selected audience member will get the chance to try just that with some cheap electronics.

And it got selected between all those other good talks. Twenty minutes is going to be tight, but what can I show in that short amount of time? I’ve glanced over these topics:

• USB drives
• Scammers that use urgency
• Broken authentication in applications
• Security of my front door
• Cloning hotel keycards

Slides

The redacted version of the slides, you had to be there 😉. Original slides available in the Scottish Summit app for attendees.

Feedback

I had a lightning talk, during lunch, so I was not expecting a big crowed. After skipping the session right before and getting myself some food, I went to the room and there were actually people there, that was a relief. I had setup my laptop and was ready to start, still had to turn off the background music myself, but I did not panic and just slid two levers down.

Doing such a broad topic in 20 minutes is tight, as shown in the feedback I’ve gotten. I’m very proud to have scored a 4.86 out of 5

Very interesting, would have preferred a longer session. Great speaker.

Excellent session even if it had to be shortened by the time slot given. Would happily attend a much longer session, speaker is very confident and engaging and presented very interesting points of view.

Excellent content, knowledgeable speaker and lots of scenarios/use cases. Would have been great if it was longer.

For a new session this is definitely a highlight, seeing all the attendees very happy with the content and all wanting a longer version of this.

Other highlights

As with any tech conference it is not just about the conference day itself, it is also about everything around it. Meeting all these awesome people, really feeling welcome with all of them. And making jokes most people would not understand.

And for the weather, it was mostly sunny in Scotland, which seems strange for the beginning of October.

Chocolate tasting

In Edinburgh they have The Chocolatarium where we had a chocolate tasting and were able to create our own chocolate bars.