Arrive, check in, and pick up your conference badge and materials. Once you’re through registration, head into the main hall, grab a seat, and make some new friends while the room fills in. It’s a relaxed window to get settled, meet other attendees, and start the day before the first talks begin.
Welcome to the first BSides Maine. We’ll kick off the conference with a brief introduction to the event, review the day’s schedule and logistics, highlight activities like the conference badge and community floor, and set expectations for the day. We’ll also introduce our speakers and the people who helped make the conference possible before transitioning into the first talks.
For more than fifteen years, Jayson E. Street has been demonstrating how easily systems, assumptions, and security theater can fail under real-world pressure. In this talk, he reflects on the countless stories, exploits, and lessons gathered from years of breaking things for a living, and the frustrating reality that many of the same problems still exist today.
Pending announcement
Presented by Chriss Hansen
Have you ever wondered how we secure our drinking water? Electricity? Maybe even nuclear? Let's dive into how some people keep the physical things we need to survive safe and secure!
Grab some lunch in 214-215 and take time to connect with other attendees. Lunch and dining will be available here, with additional seating and dining space throughout the 2nd level conference hall mezzanine. It’s a good opportunity to recharge, continue conversations from the morning sessions, and meet people from across the community before the afternoon talks begin.
Pending announcement
Presented by Matt Davis:
What happens when cheap IP cameras meet curious hackers? A journey from firmware extraction through secureboot bypasses, SoC transplants, and AI-assisted driver RE - plus why your doorbell or matress shouldn't need the cloud.
Your AI agent works great in the demo. Then you deploy it and it hallucinates a refund policy that costs you $10K, or exposes customer data, or just loops endlessly burning tokens. This session explores how to build AI agents you can trust in production using Amazon Bedrock AgentCore and the Strands Agents SDK.
Pending announcement
We’ll wrap up the day by thanking the volunteers, sponsors, speakers, and attendees who made the first BSides Maine possible. We’ll reflect briefly on what happened throughout the conference, highlight any notable moments from the day - including whether anyone managed to solve the badge - and share a few closing thoughts about the community that came together to build this event.
Before everyone heads out, we’ll also remind attendees about the afterparty and where to continue the conversations from the day.
The community floor is where the conversations happen. Located just outside the main track, this space brings together community groups, sponsors, and builders who are actively working on projects across the security and hacker ecosystem.
Stop by to meet the people behind local initiatives, see what others in the community are building, explore demos, and have real conversations with practitioners and organizations supporting the work.
It’s a place to recharge between talks, connect with others in the field, and discover ways to get involved in the community beyond the conference.
Looking for something hands-on between talks? This space is set aside for demos, experimentation, and hanging out with other builders. If you're working on the conference badge, this is the place to dig in, compare notes, and see what others are discovering.
TOOOL Maine will be here running lock picking and lock bypass demonstrations, giving attendees a chance to learn how physical access controls actually work - and how they fail.
You’ll also find demonstrations covering RFID badge cloning and reading (including attempts against RFID-blocking wallets), evil USB cables, and a variety of other hardware-focused security projects.
Bring your gear, bring your curiosity, and spend some time exploring the practical side of security with other attendees.
Need a break from the noise and activity? Step into our bright, quiet space to relax, recharge, or take a moment to focus. Whether you need a few minutes away from the crowd, a place to decompress between talks, or just somewhere calm to sit, this room is available throughout the day for anyone who needs it.