Who is Van Hauser? Now you can see him in person

26 August 2004

For those who haven't used open-source security and hacking tools, you may think Van Hauser is a movie star. He is a star, but a guiding star in cyberspace. He can point you to the right direction if you are lost or threatened in your IT or Infosecurity career.

VH or Van Hauser is one of Europe's Elite Hacker. He doesn't hack for profit or fame. He creates very useful and much-needed tools for security and network administrators.

He founded and heads the THC.Org, a group of ethical hackers (all members should have created useful tools or wrote original concepts/papers). The members of THC.Org are mostly Europeans but with one Asian member (Red Dragon from Vietnam). Most members carry handles (not their real names) to protect their identities and the companies they serve or service. They are currently looking for a Filipino member who follows the same ethical hacking concept as they do and who can write good code.

In 1994, a European IT techie selected the pseudonym "van Hauser" to enter the hacking and phreaking scene. He ran Europe's most successful HPA BBS (L.O.R.E. BBS), and founded the longest living hacking group which is still highly active today: The Hacker's Choice (www.thc.org). In his long history of grey hat activities, he created famous tools like THC-Scan, hydra (part of Nessus), amap, secure_delete, parasite and many more.

Van Hauser wrote research papers on "Placing Backdoors through Firewalls", "How to cover your tracks" and "Anonymizing Unix Systems". Additionally he speaks often on international security and hacking conferences. In his leisure time he loves to travel throughout Asia. He visited the Philippines several months ago and immediately fell in love with our people, place and culture. He has signified his intention to visit again and make our country his 2nd home.

VH will be conducting a special half-day session for a limited number of participants in his Elite Hacking Workshop on September 11, 2004 at the Hotel Intercontinental. This will be done immediately after the Manilacon@911 Conference which is schedule on September 9 -11. A separate fee of Php 4,000 will be charge for the 5-hour Saturday afternoon workshop. Early bird fee for the main Manilacon@911 conference is P3,911.

According to Francis Pineda, vice president of ISSSP, those attending the VH Elite Workshop should have an intermediate knowledge in Systems/Network/Security Administration and should bring their Laptop with WiFi (must) or 100mbps NIC to the workshop.

Attendees will receive a Certificate of Attendance signed by Van Hauser himself and the organizing body which is the Information Systems Security Society of the Philippines (ISSSP), a non-profit, non-stock association of information security professionals whose aim is to promote information security awareness in the country. The fee includes snacks and workshop materials.

The VH workshop and the Manilacon@911 conference is organized by ISSSP in cooperation with the National Computer Center and Microsoft. Other sponsors and exhibitors are: Computer Associates, PLDT/Continuum, Symantec, Business Software Alliance, Data Network Defense, Datacraft, Biz Imperative, Microdata, Sun Microsystems, CISCO, Stonesoft, netpoleon, ANTLabs, BitStop, Unison, Lexmark, MSI Digiland, MFL, Computerworld and Metropolitan Computer Times.

Those interested in this rare opportunity to see and hear from Europe’s renowned hacker and security expert or attend the ManilaCon@911 conference may call tel. 920-0101 loc. 112/194 or mobile 0920-2413954 to register or visit www.isssp.org.ph for more details.