Venue

The Melbourne Polytechnic venue is located in West Heidelberg. This venue is also used to teach professional locksmiths and we have graciously been granted access to use the locksmithing and metalworking departments for our demonstrations and workshops. Please do not confuse the venue with the other campuses operated by Melbourne Polytechnic!

This, in conjunction with multiple classrooms and lecture theaters means we will be able to run multiple different activities simultaneously throughout the weekend.

The locksmithing and metalworking departments are located in building B, in the north-west of the campus.

For more on the campus venue, see the Melbourne Polytechnic Heidelberg campus page.

Announcement — April 4th

The call for papers and workshops have closed!

Thank you to everyone who has submitted this year. We have messaged all applications a response.

We’re finalising our schedule, which we will be releasing in the coming few days.

In the meantime please check out the amazing line up we have this year on the speakers and workshops pages.

We hope everyone is practicing hard for the competitions this year! Competition rules will be documented on the site later.

The ticket sales for this year are still up and selling fast.

Please get in quick to ensure you don’t miss out on a ticket. Sign up for training and workshops can also be purchased there.

Announcement — January 29th

The ticket sales for this year are now live and open to all: this includes ticket sales for training as well as the main conference event.

We are pleased to announce two professional training plans covering distinct disciplines:

Wayne Ronaldson will be running his renowned red team training once again this year, but with a significantly more in-depth syllabus. The training will span across 4 days, from 11th – 14th of June. Matt Smith (Huxleypig), well known for his work defeating high security disc detainer locks, will be teaching a day-long course on a variety of uncommon high security attacks, and various vulnerabilities in high security disc detainer locking systems, such as the Abloy Protec 1 and 2. This course will run on Friday the 14th June 2019.

In addition, the Lockpicking and Key Impressioning workshops will be running on 14th Friday.

These smaller workshops will be run by expert trainers and the small cost of attendance will be used to cover the cost of the consumables that are used each year. This separated cost is reflected in the reduced general conference ticket price.

As per the previous announcement, our call for papers and call for workshops is open closed . Please note that this year we are also looking for talks covering reverse engineering topics around embedded devices (commonly found in hardware used for security systems) as well as talks covering topics such as social engineering.

Our sponsor drive is also open and we’re hoping that you and your company can help us out by getting involved and making sure OzSecCon has another amazing year!

Announcement — January 4th

We are pleased to announce we are back for a third year running!

The call for papers and workshops is up closed .

Read on for more information!

We are super excited to be back at the same venue as last year, the Heidelberg campus of Melbourne Polytechnic. This amazing venue allows us access to all of their physical security training tools and displays and gives us access to a huge space to work with.

We have also decided to extend the con by one whole day, kind-of.

The conference will be running on the 14th, 15th and 16th of June 2019 in Melbourne, Australia. For the first time, this means that we will be running the conference over three days!

The additional day will be to allow for physical security training courses to take place focusing on beginner and intermediate skill levels.

All equipment used in the workshops will also be available during the weekend (15-16th) to practice on, however, no formal instructor will be stationed and some items may be used during the various competitions happening throughout the weekend. That being said, we are a friendly and helpful community so anyone can always ask questions and someone will always be willing to help if they are able.

Currently, the plan is as follows:

14th June - Workshops

15th June - Talks + Competitions + Demonstrations

16th June - Talks + Competitions + Demonstrations

In addition to these mini workshops, we are also running multi-day professional training courses. These courses will be announced once the ticket sales are up in the very near future! If you are interested in running relevant professional training please email us, we would love to hear from you!

And as in previous years, we need as much support from sponsors as we can manage. We’ve managed to get pretty close to breaking even the past two years and we’re hoping to make it happen this year. If you or your company might be interested in sponsoring OzSecCon for 2019, please let us know as soon as possible and drop us an email.

What we are about

Talks

The primary focus of the conference is to share experiences and knowledge of our expert presenters through detailed presentations covering the latest developments in physical security. We look at vulnerabilities and design choices across a wide spectrum of deployed solutions and cover technical topics like physical tool design as well as hardware and software reverse engineering. Previous talks focused on digital technologies have covered RFID attacks, red teaming, radio protocol reverse engineering while talks focusing on traditional physical security technologies such as safe entry, lock picking and high security lock vulnerabilities have been presented in the past.

Professional Training

OzSecCon offers attendees the ability to participate in in-depth and deeply technical courses covering a variety of topics. These practical courses are taught by industry and subject matter experts from all over the world with the aim being to encourage participants to look at physical security technologies in the same detail that digital networks are looked at.

Workshops

In addition to the professional training and talks, OzSecCon has also scheduled several smaller workshops focusing on learning specific skills such as lock picking and impressioning. These are run prior to the conference allowing attendees to learn in a hands on manner without having to miss the talks. Designed to be approachable for both beginners and experts in the subjects, it allows participants to brush up on their skills prior to competing in any of the subsequent competitions held over the weekend.

Competitions

Every year two competitions are run over the weekend, Lockpicking and Impressioning. A number of smaller competitions run by other groups also usually happen throughout the weekend but these are not directly organised by OzSecCon. Winners of Lockpicking will receive a flight, accommodation and entry to the Netherlands LockCon (up to the value of $2000 AUD) to represent the OzSecCon community and give them a chance to participate in the international open while they are there. Impressioning winners will also receive a prize to be determined at a later date. Rules for the competitions will be posted online in future.