GrrCon 2023: Stories from Grand Rapids

In their own words, GrrCon is an “information security and hacking conference that provides the Midwest InfoSec community with a fun atmosphere to come together and engage with like minded people.“

Last minute, I was lucky enough to convince my business partner mandolinsara to fly out from Los Angeles, California to my neck of the woods and attend the conference with me. I purchased tickets a day before GrrCon announced there were no more tickets left in stock, Sara booked her flight and our hotel room a month before the conference, and the stickers we were giving out barely came in on time. We were pretty unprepared, but everything seemingly fell into place and went off without a hitch. Let’s explore our fun moments at GrrCon!

Munchies at the Crib

Sara arrived at South Bend International Airport the day before the con commenced. I picked her up and drove up after an amazing dinner at a bar in my home town. We arrived later that evening at the Radisson. The room was really nice with a view of the river and an Indian restaurant in the lobby. Being the cranky old people we are, it was decided very quickly to hunker down for the rest of the evening. Sara is Jewish and brought several treats with her including several different flavors of Doritos, Egg Challah, Chocolate Rugelach, Black and White Cookies, and one pound of See’s Candies.

Talk about a sugar crash! After sampling a few of the treats we both knocked out pretty quickly. A combination of the time difference and the red eye flight wiped out Sara and the driving killed me. It was decided pretty quickly that night to skip the opening ceremonies and arrive at the con by mid morning.

Day One: Attending Talks

The schedule for GrrCon 2023 is located here. We attended the following presentations:

• How I learned to Stop Worrying & Love Structured File Formats, Kyle Eaton
• His palms are sweaty, C2s up, implants ready, Jonathan Fischer
• Advanced Persistent Teenagers: Learning from LAPSUS$, 0ktapus, and other groups, Matt Muller
• Break for Lunch
• Finding authentication and authorization security bugs in web application routes, Matt Schwagger
• Tales of AV/EDR Bypass: Ropping the Night Away, Gregory Hatcher & John Stigerwalt

From talking with other people, it seemed all of the above talks were very general. There were a few interesting points and demos in the presentation and was still very fun. It seemed most of the talks we wanted to see were on day two.

After the last talk, we went outside for what we thought was a quick smoke break and ran into @derp0ps and gumballheadkalamazoo. We had a great time talking about our homelabs and got a huge kick out of Gumball’s…”business card” he left on the patio (pictured above).

Sara and I decided to call it a day and grab some Indian food at the hotel. We could smell it cooking when we left and were craving it all day. We drove back and grabbed some dinner. Afterwards I noticed @StatePharmJ invited us to grab a drink at Z’s and meet up with some of his friends. I had a couple of old fashioneds and Sara had a kamikaze. It was really great meeting these members of my community.

Bizarre People at Z’s

After my first drink, Sara and I both went outside to get away from the hustle and bustle of the bar and smoke. Really bad habit, don’t start. A local homeless man smoking a joint seemed to agree with this statement. He was walking by, stopped and yelled “YOU’RE SMOKING!”. I thought he may have wanted one and asked. He Yelled back “I HAVE THE GOOD STUFF THAT’S BAD FOR YOU!”. I agreed with him. He walked up to me for a fist bump and after I raised my hand to reciprocate he yelled “JINX!” and ran away. I thought it was hilarious.

During this exchange, there was a lady standing behind us, clearly inebriated surrounded by her friends yelling at the top of her lungs “FUCK YOU, STEVE!” which we found absolutely hilarious. After the fifth or sixth time, someone from across the street yelled for her to shut up, which made her scream even louder and fight more with her friends.

After we went back inside, a big red-headed guy came up to us that was also attending GrrCon. He was friends with one of the other people at the table. I didn’t catch his name, but he wanted one of the people we were with to come and hotbox with him. This guy is absolutely trashed and everything was in slow motion for him – even when he blinked. He stated he spent $200 dollars at the dispensary and also claimed his weed was so good it would “give your mouth hemorrhoids” Which made everyone bust out laughing. I didn’t catch your name, man, but you were absolutely hilarious.

Day Two: Some Talks, mostly HallwayCon

Day two rolled around faster than expected. At breakfast, Sara commented that she didn’t own any branded tech swag and wanted to talk to the vendors.

We arrived at the con and made our round in the vendor area collecting stickers, t-shirts, pens, and pamphlets. We met a lot of great people and gave out stickers to representatives that told us they had free licenses and supported running their software in home environments. There are a few things I want to test out in the coming weeks to see if it’s worth running in my homelab.

Perhaps our greatest score is a miniature Pac-Man arcade cabinet from Proofpoint. It’s pretty sweet and we were not expecting to receive such an awesome gift! Thanks again!

While in the vendor area, Sara and I met up with @Knells and talked for a bit about technology, the con, and what we thought of the event so far.

With our swag bags full we decided to attend a few talks:

• Don’t let GitHub be your weakest security link, Nadav Noy
• MSP’s suck, but the world without them is worse, Jason Slagle and Matt Lee
• Break for lunch.
• PCI DSS v4.0 Is Here – Now What?, Kyle Hinterberg
• Recalling early Unix System development at AT&T Bell Labs, Richard Haight

While in the hallway, we ran into @Bandrel and we talked for a bit about the con and we both mentioned we are looking forward to DEFCON 2024. I am hoping to make it out to Las Vegas and meet up with him again.

TentacleCon: Meeting the Dark Lord Cthulhu

Between keynotes, I read on Twitter @Cthulhu_Answers was in attendance. I wanted to meet the mystery person behind calling out @jonathandata1‘s charlatan bullshit and score some of their awesome stickers. After a quick DM, they were up for the meeting! I got to hold the mighty 21.5″ tentacle. It was so massive they had to fold it to place it back in their backpack. They were a really cool person and even gave me my own miniature tentacle which is currently suctioned to my server rack, keeping a watchful eye over my network. Intrusion Detection? Pfff. I got Cthulhu. I happened to post the above image on Twitter and word got back to me the Rocky Linux developers saw it and got a…huge…kick out of it.

The Best Keynote at GrrCon 2023

Perhaps the best keynote of the entire con was Richard Haight’s stories from his early days at Bell Labs. His presentation found directly on his website, is definitely worth the read. It was a very sobering experience to hear from one of the original sysadmins and UNIX programmers. I very quickly realized much of my work is based on the foundation him and his colleagues laid back in the 1960’s and 70’s. After all, you’re connected to this site through a firewall running FreeBSD and a web server running Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the LAMP stack. I hope for the life of me, if he sees this article, he has a sense of humor. Rich’s presentation was so good he received a well deserved standing ovation from the audience.

Wrapping Up GrrCon: Post Con Shenanigans

After Richard’s presentation, Sara and I decided it would be best to head back to the hotel and order a pizza to the room. She was starting to get a migraine and I wanted to grab a drink and knock out.

On our way out the door, I was recognized by @JeromeF1nnegan. It was really nice meeting and talking with him! The sticker looks really nice on your laptop and I’m glad you hid it from your kids!

Once back, we grabbed her some Advil from the kiosk and I dropped my stuff off in the room. I wanted to give her some privacy while she showered and nursed her migraine so I headed to Quinn & Tuite’s Irish Pub, walked up to the bar and ordered my Old Fashioned.

I sat near the door, when a girl around the age of twelve walked in. She was selling candy to raise money for her school. I apologized to her because I did not have any cash on me and wished her good luck on her fundraiser. About five minutes later, I heard shouting and chairs sliding from the bar area. I poked my head around the corner. Apparently, a very inebriated patron told her “Fuck you, then” when she stated she only accepts cash for her fundraiser. Everyone in that bar was ready for a throw down. After she exited, everyone started cussing this guy out. Well deserved.

After I finished my drinks, I drove back to the hotel and was glad to see Sara feeling better. I ordered a pizza, bread sticks, and a two liter of cola. Both of us knocked out shortly after that.

AfterDark Con: The Day After

We decided to spend a day in Grand Rapids after the con to explore the area and relax before our trip back home. We woke up in time to have breakfast at the hotel and relax in the room until lunchtime. I took a look at Yelp and saw Turnstiles was very well rated and at the time, burgers sounded really good.

The burger, waffle fries, and drinks were absolutely amazing. The bartender behind the counter was also kind enough to stick one of my stickers to the fridge behind the bar. I wonder if it’s still up and what people think this website is. After we finished up at the restaurant, we wanted to do something relaxing and decided to go back to the room until 5 pm when the night life scene opened for business. We decided to go to Sahara Hookah Lounge and smoke a couple of bowls.

The bar was dimly lit and very relaxing. We grabbed some drinks, tortilla chips. and nacho cheese from the snack bar and ordered our session. Sara chose the skittles flavor with and orange rind bowl and I chose the mango flavor with a pineapple bowl and a frozen hose for smoother smoke and a menthol type flavor. We left the bar around midnight and crashed at the hotel for our final night.

Conclusion

I had a wonderful time at GrrCon 2023 and it is my goal to be there every year here in after. I didn’t realize I was so geographically close to such an amazing convention where I could meet people I know from around the internet and listen to others present their studies and experiences. It was great to finally meet mandolinsara in real life and hang out with her along with everyone I have listed above. I will make an effort to attend DEFCON 2024 and meet even more people there.

If you are interested in obtaining the sticker I was handing out at GrrCon, it will be available soon on my website. Keep an eye on my Twitter posts for more information.