Hallway

### Overview In this hallway-style conversation, Kevin Howard (known by the handle "Lean" or historically "Lean O'Malley") discusses his background, garage office setup, the origins and evolution of the SAINTCON conference, and pressing challenges regarding cybersecurity mentorship and community growth.

### Key Topics - **Home Office "Bubble" Setup**: Kevin details building an enclosed plastic workspace inside his third-car garage while renovating his basement, incorporating portable AC venting, smart temperature automation, boom microphones with hardware mute buttons, multiple monitors, and a dedicated meeting display. - **Origin of the Handle "Lean"**: Around age 12, feeling like the odd one out or an "anomaly," Kevin adapted the French phrase "l'anomalie" into "Lean O'Malley," which was later shortened to "Lean." - **History and Evolution of SAINTCON**: Originally started as the Utah Education Network Security Summit to help state education and agency IT personnel exchange threat intelligence, the conference was built through grassroots volunteer efforts. Kevin got involved in his early twenties, initially attending a summit at Richfield or Snow, then volunteering and eventually writing a 40-page Nmap workbook for training in 2010. The name evolved from SAINT (Security Advisory and Incident Network Team) into SAINTCON, growing from roughly 60 people to a capped attendance of around 1,500. - **Conference Challenges and Competitions**: Discussion touches on technical setup hurdles (such as VGA upscaling versus HDMI handshakes) and designing challenges like the Vault, Lockpicking, and Hackers Challenge. Kevin highlights the difficulty of creating challenges that push elite teams—such as a safe with a fingerprint scanner reverse-engineered over 36 hours—while keeping content approachable for beginners, especially as events pivot toward virtual formats. - **Mentorship and Industry Career Pipeline**: The speakers examine the rapid growth of the infosec sector, issues surrounding negative unemployment, junior staff being placed under senior-level pressure, imposter syndrome, and community fragmentation. Kevin advocates for localized mentorship programs and guiding newcomers who are willing to put in the effort to learn.

### Technical Details - **Early Attack Trends & Tools**: Mentions of early threat sharing covering SSH brute forcing, WEP cracking using Orinoco Gold PCMCIA cards, rainbow tables cracking 2,800 passwords, and early network pen testing leading to pre-lunch domain admin. - **Network Scanning**: Kevin reflects on authoring a 40-page Nmap training workbook covering command-line flags, Nmap Scripting Engine plugins, TCP flags (SYN, FIN, RST), and Xmas scans. - **Hardware & Environment**: References to Fortinet APs, VGA upscalers, HDMI handshake issues with disparate projector models and Mac laptops, and home automation using TP-Link switches and Nest thermostat sensors.

### Takeaways - Community-driven security conferences rely heavily on dedicated, unpaid volunteers to deliver high-quality, hands-on learning experiences. - As the cybersecurity field grows and fragments, hands-on mentorship and self-driven learning are critical to preparing the next generation of practitioners without setting them up for failure.