Amsterdam

If you're going to be judgemental, stop right away! Go back to facebook.

On Saturday, I began my first trip to Amsterdam. Fourteen international students and I went on a 4-hour long train trip in which we changed trains in Antwerp and Rotterdam. Our room was booked through AirBnB. For 2 people, we paid €115.

As an overview, I think that this city is the most liberal city I've been: same sex marriage, soft drugs, and hookers are allowed by law.

At McDonald's, I tried a milkshake.  We were in the so acclaimed coffee shops, where we can buy and smoke weed as long as we're eighteen and for a maximum of 5 grams. We were in a sex museum where every kind of fetish we're exposed. We were in a hemp museum where we could learn about the history of Marijuana, the products made with it and the history of the liberal laws. As you go to the red light district, you would be amazed how the sex business works.

There is also live porn shows and condom shops, but we haven't been there... There is more that I can tell about it, but it is better for you to go see for yourself.

Photos:

What happened?

"What happened?", everyone I've met in the past days have asked me.

"bicycle broke. Stering wheel and wheel went into different directions and fell on the ground", my answer.

And that's it.

Backstory: Friday I lost my ultrabook's charger. Didn't know where it was. Maybe in a classroom, maybe in another one. Maybe someone stole it, maybe someone took it. Either way, I had to had a charger to work on the weekend. Saturday morning went to Media Markt in a 5 km bicycle ride. After getting home, the charger I just bought didn't match my ultrabook needs. Time to go back to Media Markt to get a refund. Got the money back and got home. While thinking where I could buy a Samsung charger and talking with friends, I realized that FNAC might have a charger and it is open on saturday. Time to go to city center get my charger to work in the weekend!

On my way to city center, going under a tunnel, my bicycle broke. Stering wheel and wheel went into different directions and fell on the ground. After five minutes of pain and not knowing how bad I was, someone called the energency number, got in an ambulance and headed to the hospital. After two hours filling forms and taking x-rays on my right hand, a nurse took care of my wounds. One hour later, I was home. Outcome: Broken bicycle, broken glasses, lost money and didn't get my charger back.

When I checked my email account later that day, saw a message from a teacher saying that he has my charger. :)

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Some photos of this experience:

BruCON

Today I'll be talking about BruCON, a security conference hosted in Ghent for two days (October 8 and 9).

What do you expect in a security conference filled with professional hackers, security companies and students? Passwords being leaked live, hacking challenges, and an insecure feeling? Right! That's what really happened!

As an overview of BruCON, it was like this: free T-shirts, retro games (Duck hunt anyone?), hacking challenges (an IP address was all we knew), talks (some of them boring), workshops (learned a lot) and, last but not the least, Belgian beers.

On Thursday, I had planned to go to one workshop and all remaining talks. (In big events such as this, there's always different venues with different talks/workshops going at the same time; and you plan your own day.)

The first talk on Thursday was given by Chris Nickerson and it was called "Nightmares of a pentester", in another words, how to keep your systems secure. (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ufBtLw6QgY ) After a workshop on effective communication in a company, went for lunch where they were also having a DJ workshop with Count Ninjula and Keith Myers. (Amazing stuff!) For the evening, I was trying all talks on the main venue, but they weren't as good as I expected. So, I would go to a talk, left fifteen minutes later to have a chat with other students, teachers, companies and making sure I had some beer.

On Friday, after the not-so-interesting-talk-leave-the-room lesson, I choose to be in a 4-hour workshop named Hands-on Incident Response (with my Forensic Analysis teacher): we were given a compromised windows virtual machine. This was a set up pretending that we were playing the role of the information security guy in a company where one guy had been hacked. We only knew that one file was encrypted. Some time later, and after using different tools, we knew that this guy had a ransomware on his computer, he was surfing Russian porn website that downloaded the malware into his computer (Yes, just by accessing a website, you can get a virus on your computer!), we could read the Java code in which the malware was written and understand how this guy was infected. After three hours and a half, we were really close to solving the problem. In the end, no one other than my teacher was able to get the file decrypted. The feeling of accomplishment amused me. For the rest of the afternoon, I was talking, once again, with some security companies (got some business cards!), students and the Linux Security teacher.

Overall, the BruCON was a nice experience: No classes, all security students and teachers were there, and learned a lot about all different people I've met in the conference and the workshops.

The BruCON talks are online and can be found in here: https://www.youtube.com/user/brucontalks

Accomodation

In Porto, I used to have a big room for myself, a kitchen where I could cook, and 4 other people living with me. My internet connection was a commercial one and I could use my connection as I please. My commute time was about 15 minutes.

Now, in Bruges, I'm living in a dorm with about 25 other people (studying computer science, psychology and architecture), and we have a kitchen with no frying pan, pot or dishes. (Every student has to have their own.) This dorm is 2 minutes from the university by foot. My internet connection is university's internet and some services are unavailable, but has unlimited usage.

Quick overview of my place: I have a room for me, with a nice view for the sunset :) ; I have to use a shared bathroom with 25 other people; I can use the common kitchen but there are no pans and such to prepare my meals (I'm not being precise here. There is ONE pot that everyone uses, so, most of the time, I have to wait to get it clean.); we have an area with 6 nice sofas and a bunch of tables where we can socialize; There is a waste container and a place for the bikes just outside of the building.

I've been talking about how I don't really enjoy my place with other international students. I asked them what their rooms are like.

They have shared rooms (2 people per room), they have no sofas, and don't have a shared room where they can talk with other students. Their internet connection is limited to 50GB per month. Also, they don't have a waste container near their building but have a pickup system every Tuesday (if they fail to do it, or do it improperly they may get a 250€ fine).

What I mean with this post is that we shouldn't be so picky with the stuff we don't have. Be grateful and humble that you have a nice place.

Last but not the least, the accommodation costs €250 for both of these two examples.