Meet the Speakers of BSides Adelaide 2026

TALKS AND SPEAKERS

BSides Adelaide Talks

The conversations shaping the future of cyber security, engineering, AI, critical infrastructure and emerging technologies start here.

BSides Adelaide brings together an exceptional mix of practitioners, researchers, builders, defenders, innovators and first-time presenters to share ideas, challenge assumptions and explore the technologies that are transforming our world.

Expect practical lessons from the front lines, emerging research, technical deep dives, real-world case studies and thought-provoking discussions that you won't find at a typical commercial conference.

Our speakers represent the diversity and strength of the cyber and technology community from professionals, students and independent researchers through to Defence, government, critical infrastructure and industry experts.

BSides Adelaide 2026 Speakers

Sean Park

Sean breaks systems to make them stronger - combining reverse engineering expertise with cutting-edge AI security research.

💡 His talk, “Return-To-Tool (RTT)”, explores a powerful new prompt injection technique that can:
- Bypass AI security boundaries
- Exfiltrate sensitive data
- Turn trusted tools into attack vectors
- Even simulate ransomware-style attacks via agents

And yes - there will be live demos!
If you're working with AI agents, LLMs or secure system design, this is one you won’t want to miss.

Principal Threat Researcher @ TrendAI

Paul McCarty

Maintainer @ Open Source Malware

Head of Security Research & Trainer @SourceCodeRED

A serial startup founder and hacker OG, Paul is behind OpenSourceMalware.com, the world’s largest open platform for software supply chain threat intel and has spent years uncovering real-world attacks across NPM and PyPI.

💡 His talk dives into “Hey Australia, Pyongyang and Moscow Want Your Engineers!” and how nation-state actors are targeting developers as the ultimate entry point.

⚡ What you’ll see:

- Real attack patterns using recruiter scams and “take-home” malware

- How upstream injection hides inside everyday dev workflows

- Trojanised packages, stealthy execution, and resilient C2 in action

Hirusha Adikari 

Research Assistant @ Deakin University

Hirusha is a cybersecurity student at Deakin University, developer, and scambaiter who spends way too much time breaking things, doing OSINT, and responsibly reporting the stuff he probably shouldn't have found.

Senior Constable Max Allison 

Cybercrime Training & Prevention @ South Australia Police

I started with the Police in 2019 and spent 2 years in Port Augusta doing general duties policing. Learning a lot from this experience, I won a position in Adelaide as a Victim Contact Officer, which allowed me to help victims of crime and complete a Psychology Degree as I have a keen interest in mental health.

It was during my time here that I realised the damage cybercrime causes to victims, so I set my sights on the Cybercrime Training & Prevention Team where I could focus my attention in prevention to hopefully stop people becoming victims of cybercrime.

Having won the position in 2025, I am now responsible for increasing public awareness of cybercrimes and providing crime prevention advice to South Australian communities and businesses. I am also responsible for the organisational uplift in relation to SAPOL’s capability regarding cybercrime investigations. I am passionate about educating people about cybercrime and online safety to help protect themselves online and continue my work within mental health as a part-time Police Negotiator.

Ben Cambourne

Security Researcher

A seasoned security professional, Ben audits infrastructure, hacks networks and engineers resilient solutions. With over a decade of hands-on experience across financial, government, and telecommunications sectors, he’s worked both sides of the fence—offensive and defensive. Ben is also an active community contributor, having organised security meetups and presented original research across Australia and Singapore.

His talk dives into “Gatecrash: From Jupyter Enterprise Gateway to Kubernetes Cluster Compromise”—unpacking how misunderstood security models in AI and data-science platforms can open the door to full cluster takeover.

What you’ll see:

  • A real-world exploit chain from low-privileged notebook to cluster compromise

  • How permissive defaults and design choices create hidden risk

  • Live lab walkthrough of notebook isolation bypass and code execution

  • Practical detection strategies for notebook-origin attacks

  • Hardening techniques to reduce blast radius in Kubernetes environments

From notebook to cluster control—this is a deep technical look at how modern AI infrastructure can be turned against you.

Hard truths. Real attack paths. Actionable defence.

Sarah Young 

Security Researcher

Once described (unfairly!) as “technically challenged,” Sarah works in security at Microsoft and has been in the industry long before it was fashionable. A seasoned speaker who’s taken the stage at events like Black Hat, she’s also co-authored Microsoft Press books and co-hosts the Microsoft Azure Security Podcast. When she’s not doing security things, you’ll find her gaming, brunching, or spoiling her dogs.

Her talk dives into “The Layoff Nobody Threat‑Modelled”—a candid, deeply personal look at what happens when the “safe” cybersecurity career suddenly isn’t so predictable.

What you’ll see:

  • An honest account of navigating a layoff in the cyber industry

  • The emotional and professional impact—and how to rebuild confidence

  • Why layoffs are rarely about individual performance

  • How the cybersecurity landscape is shifting beneath us

  • Practical ways to stay grounded and move forward during uncertainty

No buzzwords. No hustle culture. Just a real conversation about resilience in an unpredictable industry.

Real talk. Real experience. Real resilience.

Bruce Large

Bruce is an Associate SANS instructor for ICS/SCADA Security Essentials (ICS410) and a Teaching Assistant for ICS Cybersecurity In-Depth (ICS612) and ICS/OT Security Penetration Testing & Assessments (ICS613).

Bruce is joining us to provide a Hands on OT communication protocols workshop over two hours. Please join Bruce for the workshop to introduce Operational Technology communication protocols. This workshop will start with an overview of common OT Assets and Protocols and where you’d expect to see the protocols in use. The workshop will then introduce Control Things, an OT Cyber Security Linux testing distribution, demonstrate its tools and included OT Packet Captures. The session will then have the first lab, which will be a hands on interactive workshop with OT packet captures data to learn how to use the tools and analyse real traffic. The final workshop will be a hands on lab with Modbus and will include interacting with a simulator and a walk through of interacting with a CLICK PLC student kit from the SANS ICS613 training."

"Bruce is an Associate SANS instructor for ICS/SCADA Security Essentials (ICS410) and a Teaching Assistant for ICS Cybersecurity In-Depth (ICS612) and ICS/OT Security Penetration Testing & Assessments (ICS613). Bruce has 20 years experience working with IT and Operational Technology in network, telecommunications and system engineering roles. Bruce has worked in the Electricity Generation & Transmission, Railway, Aviation, Emergency Services and Consulting industries. Bruce is the Founder and Principal Cyber Security Architect at BLARGE.

He is a Chartered Professional Engineer (CPEng), Registered Professional Engineer of Queensland (RPEQ), Foundation Chartered SABSA Architect (SCF), holds the Global Industrial Cyber Security Professional (GICSP), GIAC Response and Industrial Defense (GRID) certificate, GIAC Security Operations Manager (GSOM), GIAC Cyber Threat Intelligence (GCTI), an ISA/IEC 62443 Expert, and has attended Industrial Control Systems (ICS) Cyber Security training at QUT. Bruce graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering (Telecommunications) First Class Honors and a Master of Business (Applied Finance) with Distinction from QUT."

Armaan Sidana

From 150+ pentests to 7 CVEs, 70K+ students and building cutting-edge AI tooling, Armaan brings serious hands-on experience to the stage.

💡 His talk dives into AuGe, an AI-powered smart contract auditing systemn - and the real lessons from building it.

⚡ What you’ll see:
- How to eliminate false positives before using LLMs
- Why most AI security tools fail in practice
- A live demo of exploit code generated and validated against a real protocol

Honest insights. Real failures. Proven results.

Lead Consultant at @NexusSecurity

Chris Sheahan

Cyber Security Lead @ Australian Defence Industry

With 15+ years across Defence, government, and mission-critical systems, Chris brings frontline experience from environments where security isn’t theoretical — it’s operational and immediate.

💡 His talk dives into “Engineering Under Fire: Lessons in Secure System Design from Ukraine’s Frontline” — and what happens when systems are built knowing they will be captured, exploited, and adapted against you.

⚡ What you’ll hear:
- How security engineering evolves when compromise is constant
- Real-world lessons from frontline collaboration between operators and engineers
- Why traditional threat models fail against adaptive adversaries

No theory. No compliance theatre. Just real-world security under pressure.

Nick Route

Cyber Security Manager & Chief Security Officer @ SAGE Group

Nick grew up in the UK and called London home for the early part of his career before making the move to Australia back in 2010. With 22+ years in Cyber and IT, he's worked across public, Defence, and private sectors, with hands-on experience across cyber security, cloud, and networking.

Today he helps organisations cut through the noise by figuring out what they actually need from a cyber program and making it work in the real world. He collaborates with C-suite teams on cyber security strategy and has led some large-scale ICT projects, including at SAHMRI and the first NATO Locked Shields event at the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre.

Nick holds a BE (Hons) in Electronic Engineering from Imperial College London and an MBA from UNSW, and he's proud to be the first Australian Ambassador for the Global Cyber Alliance.

Maple Fox

Security Engineer

Maple Fox is a Melbourne-based security engineer focused on defensive security across cloud/platform security, identity, Zero Trust access, detection engineering and security automation.

They work across Microsoft Sentinel/KQL, Splunk ES, Entra ID, AWS, Azure, Terraform, Go and Python, with hands-on experience building identity baselines, SIEM/SOAR detections, incident-response runbooks and secure remote-access patterns.

Maple has also supported Australian energy and critical infrastructure work involving BESS/OT environments, SCADA evidence, communications paths, OEM/cloud remote access and SOCI/AEMO-aligned uplift planning. They are completing a Master of Cyber Security at Deakin University, researching machine-readable security intent, policy compilation and reachability verification.

Their BSides Adelaide talk explores how defenders can move beyond declared policy and test whether OT remote access can actually reach the plant.

Arijit Paul

Principal Cybersecurity Consultant

A Principal Cybersecurity Consultant at Microsoft, Arijit specialises in cloud security, threat hunting, and automation. With deep experience from both Microsoft and AWS, he brings a practitioner’s perspective to building real-world, AI-driven security operations. Arijit is also a familiar face in the community, having presented at BSides Sydney and BSides Gold Coast.

His talk dives into “AI Threat Intel Pipelines: What Works, What Breaks”—a candid, technical walkthrough of building AI-powered threat intelligence pipelines that actually hold up in production SOC environments.

What you’ll see:

  • End-to-end architecture connecting Logic Apps, GPT models, Sentinel, and Teams

  • Automated IOC/IOA extraction, enrichment, and real-time alerting

  • How to handle failures, edge cases, and messy real-world data

  • Where AI adds value—and where human judgement still wins

  • Lessons learned from what didn’t work (schema issues, connector failures, trust gaps)

No hype—just practical patterns, real challenges, and working solutions you can apply immediately.

Rue Maharaj

Cybersecurity Defence Management

A cybersecurity practitioner with over 25 years of experience and a unique background in psychology, Rue works in Cybersecurity Defence Management within the Victorian critical infrastructure sector.

He has led Cyber Incident Response Management initiatives at Melbourne Water and brings a rare perspective that blends human behaviour with technical resilience.

His talk “Silence Of The LANs” explores the growing threat of cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure and the human and organisational factors that shape both attack and response.

What you’ll see:

  • Inside critical infrastructure environments, including SCADA systems

  • Psychological profiles of different types of cyber attackers

  • Why critical infrastructure is a high-value and increasingly targeted sector

  • Practical approaches to reduce the risk of compromise

  • Strategies for effective incident response and recovery

  • Building resilient, fit-for-purpose cyber incident response programs

This talk connects the technical, human, and societal impacts of cyberattacks - highlighting what it takes to protect systems people rely on every day.

Human insight. Critical systems.

Real-world resilience.

Dr Joel Panther

Every Lookup Is a Leak: Disrupting Adversarial DNS Queries
Joel is a cybersecurity researcher, penetration tester, and educator, with over 15 years' experience in system administration, security, and consulting. His PhD produced a framework for designing dynamically generated penetration testing laboratories. His current research interests are centred on offensive security skills development.

Online advertising isn’t just annoying - it’s a security and privacy problem. Ads and trackers consume huge amounts of data, profile users, and are increasingly linked to malware delivery and cybercrime.

This talk follows the journey of building a whole-of-home ad- and threat-blocking system using a DNS blackhole. Starting from a simple setup, it quickly turns into an arms race against modern devices and operating systems that bypass local DNS controls using hard-coded resolvers, DNS over TLS, and DNS over HTTPS.

Learn how DNS filtering works, why it’s effective, and how encryption is changing both privacy and network security.

Chief Information Officer @ Symphony

Bob Smart

With over 20 years across critical infrastructure, government, financial services and enterprise consulting, Bob is a leading voice in operational resilience and supply chain risk.

💡 His talk dives into “Dependencies Are the Attack Surface: Mapping the Fragile Web Behind Cyber Risk” and why the things you rely on are often your biggest weakness.

⚡ What you’ll learn:
- How attackers exploit hidden dependencies (suppliers, people & tech)
- Why organisations struggle to understand their true risk exposure
- How to build actionable dependency maps using the SPLITer methodology

Practical insights. Real-world risk. A fresh way to think about cyber resilience.

Dylan Jones

Chief Security Architect @ Leidos

Dylan has a background in digital forensics, incident response and security engineering.

Dylan is a maker and breaker of all things open source where he contributes to projects covering threat hunting, threat intelligence and reverse engineering.

Sam Freeman

Principal Investigator, Digital Forensics & Incident Response @ CyberCX

Sam is a DFIR specialist and previous Systems Administrator, with over 10 years of experience in ICT across Government, Defence, and Private sectors.

He specialises in leading complex digital investigations across cloud and on-premises environments, delivering tailored remediation strategies and clear, actionable insights.

Sam is known for effectively communicating technical findings to a wide range of stakeholders including technical teams, executives, and legal counsel ensuring clarity and impact in high-pressure situations.

Shahadat Hossen

Relationship Associate - Business and Private Banking

Shah is a banking professional with over a decade of experience at one of Australia's major banks, now moving into cybersecurity with a focus on offensive security and penetration testing.

Bringing a real-world understanding of how financial organisations operate, Shah is currently preparing for the PNPT and OSCP certifications through hands-on lab work.

In this session, Shah joins Armaan to explore AuGe an AI-powered smart contract auditing system and the real lessons from building it.

Dame Christine Ferguson

Originally from the United Kingdom, Dame Christine brings a global perspective shaped by extensive travel, practical delivery, and organisational change. A passionate advocate, speaker, and trainer, she champions diversity, inclusion, and the meaningful recognition of neurodivergent talent—driving the conversation from awareness into real action.

Her talk dives into “Neurodiversity in IT and AI/ML: Designing for Safer, Smarter Systems”—exploring how human factors, not just technical controls, shape the resilience of modern systems.

What you’ll see:

  • How groupthink and blind spots create risk in AI and complex systems

  • The critical strengths neurodivergent professionals bring to security and AI/ML

  • Why pattern recognition, systems thinking, and ethical consistency matter more than ever

  • How inclusive design leads to safer, more trustworthy technology

  • Practical ways to move from inclusion to genuine impact in teams and organisations

This is a powerful reminder that resilience isn’t just engineered—it’s designed through people, perspectives, and culture.

Fresh perspective. Real impact. Smarter systems.

Inclusion Specialist Lead

Mike Vriesema

A Primary Technical Investigator on Accenture’s Global Cyber Response team, Mike leads end-to-end DFIR engagements across major cyber incidents worldwide. With deep expertise in incident response and threat intelligence—and certifications including CISSP, GCFA, and GX-FA—he brings front-line experience from some of the most challenging investigations in the field. His talk dives into “Venting Steam: Hunting C2 in Unexpected Places”—a blue team exploration of how attackers are hiding command-and-control channels in plain sight.

What you’ll see:

  • How malware like Lumma and Vidar abuse unconventional C2 channels

  • Real examples of command delivery via DNS, Pastebin, Steam, and more

  • Why trusted platforms and allowlisted traffic are becoming attacker favourites

  • Detection challenges when there are no obvious indicators or blocked destinations

  • Practical approaches to uncovering hidden C2 in legitimate services

When attackers blend into everyday traffic, detection gets harder and more critical than ever. Hidden channels.

Trusted platforms. Real detection challenges.

Technical Investigator @ Accenture
Full Team