2018 Hacker Halted Recap


“We’re sorry. All the user data on your hard drive has been encrypted.”

As you read the popup, you realize that the worm you acquired is busy moving from PC to PC and all SMB shares. Your whole datacenter is almost locked up. Shutting down your PC, you turn on your WiFi-connected, and soon to be hacked, phone only to find that the preventative for this hack has been available for over a year at the darkweb site, “qzbkwsabc5k2oj5d.onion” Of COURSE you should have known!

Maybe you might want to grab your towel and get out of there, because thinking the Internet is “mostly harmless” is what causes the most trouble for individuals and organizations worldwide.

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Letter from Our CEO

Dear Attendees of Hacker Halted USA 2018,

I would like to welcome you all to the 27th global edition of the Hacker Halted Conference!

We are very excited to welcome you once again to our Hacker Halted USA home, Atlanta, GA to continue the tradition of outstanding Hacker Halted events. EC-Council is thrilled to be partnering with our generous sponsors to bring you the best Hacker Halted in our long history. Our theme this year, “The Ethical Hacker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” was selected to highlight just how fundamental your efforts as infosec professionals are to the survival of not only to the companies you work for but to the world we all live in. The Hacker Halted speaker committee has combed through the dizzying stack of submissions to form the agenda for this year’s conference with a special focus on presentations that take the lessons from The Guide to heart and apply them to the cyberwars being fought every day across the world. The talks chosen resonate with the theme of the conference as well as current events in infosec and beyond.

We recognize that the pursuit of security is incredibly daunting but the details of getting it right are so important.

To that end, we are continuing our tradition of bringing our attendees a job fair to help you all continue to grow in your careers. We at EC-Council believe that one of the basic steps in unifying global cyber defense is ensuring the best professionals can grow their careers, their knowledge, and their networks within information security. By bringing companies who need to hire the best and the brightest to our conference, we know we will be successful in this goal.

We hope everyone has a great time while learning from your outstanding peers from all over the world, representing an entire network of professionals dedicated to security. EC-Council’s offerings now span the industry, from basic end-user training to highly technical deep dives to our executive program to graduate-level education – EC-Council is truly making a difference in the lives of information security practitioners around the world and the security of the world’s top organizations.

Thank you for being a part of our global initiative toward a more secure world. I wish you a warm welcome and a great stay in Atlanta!

Jay Bavisi
President of EC-Council

2018 Stats

All-Star Team of
Security Veterans

Showcase of Over
30 Exhibitors

Over 500 Career
Fair Attendees