Fourth OFFZONE conference on practical cybersecurity held in Moscow

In the two days of the event, 108 cybersecurity experts spoke to a crowd of over 2,500 people. The conference was supported by 50 partners, including 18 media outlets and 15 cybersecurity community groups

August 31, 2023

OFFZONE 2023, the 4th international conference on practical cybersecurity, unfolded in Moscow’s GOELRO on August 24–25, bringing together security professionals, developers, researchers, and members of the academia.

Fostering the cybersecurity community is one of the key objectives of BI.ZONE. It is essential to go beyond sharing experiences and build a network of all those who decided to devote their lives to the cybersecurity industry—engineers, students, CISOs, and specialists with all kinds of responsibilities and expertise. All exaggerations aside, together with our partners we have turned OFFZONE into one of the best professional networking and development platforms—and we do not intend on stopping there.

Evgeny Voloshin

Сhief Strategy Officer, BI.ZONE

The two‑day conference had seven tracks featuring 108 experts with a total of 89 presentations. Sber, Tinkoff, and Positive Technologies were the strategic partners of the event. It was also supported by VK, Digital Economy League, Kaspersky, and others.

Omar Ganiev, the founder of DeteAct, became the keynote speaker of OFFZONE 2023. In his address titled Let’s hack old‑timers!, he spoke about the evolution of the cybersecurity industry over the past 10 years. Omar also elaborated on the responsiveness of security mechanisms to changes, the impact of human errors, and the effectiveness of tried-and-true attack methods.

Other speakers covered cyber fraud in the finance industry, shared life hacks in mobile DevSecOps, and presented unusual attacks that leverage well‑known remote access programs. They also talked about vulnerabilities in the code generated by neural networks and addressed other hot topics.

In parallel to the presentation tracks, OFFZONE 2023 included breakaway sessions focused on the security of financial systems and banking infrastructure (AntiFraud.Zone), application development and security assessment (AppSec.Zone). The event also featured CTF.Zone dedicated to the well‑known capture-the-flag tournament in ethical hacking. The Community track hosted experts from DС and ЕС 1337, while visitors to Community.Zone had a chance to practice OSINT, GEOINT, and tackle tough hack quests.

This year’s OFFZONE included five workshops with practical assignments and analysis of real cases: AI capabilities in cybersecurity, Android pentesting practices, and the ways to secure CI/CD components.

The conference featured a panel devoted to the first anniversary of the BI.ZONE Bug Bounty platform. The panelists discussed the latest trends of the bug bounty market and shared the results for the year. Among the key achievements are 17 onboarded companies and 51 bug bounty programs. More than 15 million rubles have already been paid out for the detected vulnerabilities.

Apart from the educational content, OFFZONE 2023 offered some interactive entertainment. The attendees took part in a fun quest to solve the tasks and win offcoins—the event’s currency, which could be exchanged for OFFZONE merch. The participants engaged in uncovering the mystery of an otherworldly cube (CUB_3), testing their hacking skills in a 15‑minute challenge, and even getting a real tattoo at Tattoo.Zone. This time, 17 attendees got the OFFZONE tattoo logo, which entitles them to a free pass to all the future OFFZONE conferences and Speaker parties.