Kernelcon 2026 Recap

For those of you that attended Kernelcon 2026, you’ll probably share some of the same emotions and joy that we experienced and will no doubt cherish the memories much the same from this year’s conference. First and foremost, it would be unfair if we didn’t communicate our bias for this conference. We’ve been a part of this conference since the beginning in one capacity or another and have matured our involvement into a corporate sponsor as of 2025 as an important part of our community investment strategies designed to invest in the local information security community and local hacker community. We’ve never been a part of the organizing committee but try to maintain professional relationships with those individuals and others in the DC-402 community. It has been nothing but exceptional to see how the conference itself has grown and matured over the years which is a testament to the passion and drive of the organizing committee members and their desire to keep Omaha, NE on the proverbial “map” of cities with exceptional technology-focused communities. This year’s speaker lineup, the depth and quality of presentations, the hands-on training offered, the villages, and all of the fellow corporate sponsors this year really hit the sweet spot for exceptional quality and useful knowledge sharing while simultaneously moderating the number of “AI” presentations allowed. Furthermore, the “AI” focused presentations cut through the current industry “hype” and demonstrated some exceptional projects currently underway from an “offensive” security perspective and from a university research perspective. That latter AI presentation was one of our favorites from the conference and we thoroughly enjoyed conversing with Dr. Christiana Chamon Garcia afterwards about additional environmental factors that could alter cognitive load measurements as part of her team’s research.

The diversity, in terms of industry focus, represented within each presentation topic covered a wide variety of aspects within information security from offensive, to defensive, and even far out research with real-world implications (we’re looking at you Jake Knowlton and Andrew Quill). Keynote presentations were provided by Casey Ellis and Phillip Wylie, both of whom are well-known among the information security and hacker communities. We had a chance to speak with Phillip Wylie at the end of day 2 and really appreciated his down-to-earth personality. He had nothing but great feedback about Kernelcon and we sincerely hope he continues to attend future conferences. It’s very rare to see such giants of our industry display such humility in conversation as Phillip Wylie did during his keynote address. It was also interesting to learn about his previous career prior to pivoting into information security. There were several similarities in his journey and ours into this industry and we related directly with his introduction during his keynote address.

For those that appreciate hacker challenges, whether delivered through a capture the flag competition or a conference badge, Kernelcon exceed expectations again this year. Again, we’re a bit biased because we volunteer our time to help develop some of the capture the flag challenges and attempt to outclass participants each year, and once again, like in previous conferences, we were pleasantly surprised how many teams crushed some of the more difficult challenges. Several teams employed AI tools for assistance according to the CTF organizing committee member, who also commented on how few teams solved some of the more difficult web and reverse engineering challenges we helped create. On to the badge. While we rarely ever participate in the badge challenge at each conference (due to the quality of speakers usually), we decided to use some of the break time on day 2 to work our way through the initial parts of the challenge. Wow, it was incredibly fun! The badge challenge this year sent participants on a digital scavenger hunt and hit the sweet spot for the conference’s theme “Off Grid.” Participants were required to put the badge together from the various pieces and parts provided in the conference swag bag (which was a duffel style bug out bag). Once constructed, participants were guided to the villages area of the conference where they needed to “charge” their badge using the winding handle which was connected to a charging motor device. Once charged, participants needed to place their badge into another device connected to a small thermal printer. Instructions for the next part of the scavenger hunt were printed upon successful insertion which discharged the virtual power meter on the badge. Upon moving to the next scavenger hunt location, participants needed to wind their badge to recharge the virtual power meter before inserting the badge into the next station. Successful charge and discharge at each station resulted in a printout of additional clues for the next part of the scavenger hunt. Having previously worked in another scientific career field, we really appreciated the weather data aspect of the badge (temperature, humidity, pressure). One of the stations on the scavenger hunt required participants to “forecast the weather” based on the weather data readings from the badge, which accurately sensed those details from the environment at the conference. Another part of the badge challenge involved successfully picking locks to access a key code for a safe in order to retrieve another clue for the scavenger hunt. According to OC members during the con closing, the digital safe to which these key codes went, apparently broke, so the team had to pivot in order for participants complete the remaining portions of the badge challenges. Furthermore, the conference team made USB hardware add-ons available for the badge so that participants could use the winding handle to charge electronic devices via USB. This tied into the “Off Grid” theme very well as such a device would be useful in a long-term power outage situation where charging small electronic devices (such as a flashlight for example) might be necessary. The badge challenges this year were very well done to say the least.

Another aspect of the conference we thoroughly enjoyed was just re-connecting with other local hackers and information security colleagues. We may have volunteered to speak at several local information security meetings this year so stay tuned! Regardless, it’s always good to get out of our desk chairs, touch grass, interact with other like-minded, and similarly skilled, individuals all for the betterment of this industry. Kernelcon really set the bar high this year as far as a complete conference experience goes. Everyone has something to enjoy, look forward to, and learn from at this conference and we look forward to continually partnering with the organizing committee as they consistently work to raise the bar on quality each year. If you’ve never been to Kernelcon, we can’t recommend this conference enough and highly suggest you do what you can to attend next year, or even speak next year. The audience is full of inexperienced and experienced professionals alike and all topics will certainly help someone learn something they didn’t know before.

Stay up to date on Kernelcon announcements at https://kernelcon.org as the 2027 conference details become available, the Kernelcon website will continually receive updates. We also recommend that you consider volunteering either as a speaker, as a capture the flag challenge creator, or to provide training to conference participants. If you’re a business reading this blog post, we highly recommend supporting Kernelcon as a corporate sponsor. This year, almost a thousand attendees walked the halls of the conference and interacted with us and fellow vendors and sponsors. We have found that it’s a great use of marketing and advertising budget that reaches a large group of individuals from various companies across several industry verticals while simultaneously helping to ensure the conference is sufficiently funded to continue to raise the bar on quality. It was an easy choice for us to support this conference and we invite you to consider doing the same.

Thank you for reading this post and we hope to see you at Kernelcon 2027! Hack responsibly!