Midnight Sun 2025

In today's hyper-connected world, cybersecurity isn't just about firewalls and forensics—it's about strategy. Drawing from her experience with U.S. and international defense institutions, Dr. Mary Bell explores how cyber operations increasingly operate in the "gray zone"—the murky space between peace and declared conflict. Through historical parallels, like Stockholm's layered island defenses, and real-world cyber incidents, this talk challenges attendees to rethink cybersecurity through a strategic lens. Mary will introduce emerging models of cyber deterrence, highlight lessons from joint military education programs, and call for coalition-based, resilience-driven approaches to digital defense. Designed to provoke discussion, this session is ideal for policy makers, cyber professionals, industry leaders and educators preparing for the next frontier of conflict: the shadows.

This presentation explores Ukraine's experience as the first nation to endure full-scale cyberwarfare as part of an ongoing military invasion. It will examine how cyber operations have been integrated with kinetic warfare since 2014, culminating in a continuous hybrid campaign after the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. The talk will provide real-world examples of cyberattacks on national infrastructure, their strategic objectives, and the responses developed by Ukrainian cyber defenders. It will also highlight how Ukraine's experience reshapes the global understanding of war, demonstrating that cyberwar is not a separate phenomenon but a persistent and evolving front of modern conflict.

After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Western governments imposed waves of sanctions, export controls, and other restrictions on Russia, including to undermine its cyber capabilities and defense technology. But Russia's cyber industry—including companies that support the Russian state's offensive and defensive operations—has proven remarkably resilient in the face of sanctions, other restrictions, and shifts in technological isolation. Some Russian cyber firms made more money in 2024 than in their entire history. This talk will explore the role of private companies in the Russian cyber web, how major Russian cyber firms are adapting to the new geopolitical environment, and what it all means for Sweden and Europe—ranging from benign, cybersecurity-positive activities in Russia to private firms that use their capital, resources, and talent to make the Kremlin's cyber offense stronger.

Learn how SEB reinforces a good security culture with the help of Threat Intelligence. How they create a real-life relevant and common thread from Threat Actor TTP all the way to CIS Controls. Making the Threat Landscape tangible and directing decisions on security.

The world of cyber is complex - and it will be even more complex in the future. There are no borders and information can be distributed in the flip of the eye to anywhere. In this world, no authority nor company or entity can survive on its own. There is a high need for co-operation in all levels in order to identify the week parts and make them stronger.

Thanks to smartphones, war is everywhere, all the time. Anyone can view, analyse and comment on photos, videos or other warzone media, far from the frontlines. Where did this technology come from? And what does it mean for the future of war?

We are living in a new world. States, organisations and individuals that earlier where friends today are furious enemies, or question each other. The amount of trust that is needed is decreased to a level we have not seen for years. For the cyber arena that is like moving from Fontana di Trevi to the floor of Colosseum in Rome in the days lions where mixed with humans there. Have we been too naive? Can we trust each others? How to we plan for continuity? Mr Fältström will talk from his experience in the intersection between cyber defence and cyber security how to handle relationships between organisation in the new world.

In January, the Doomsday Clock moved one second closer to midnight - the closest it has ever been to catastrophe. The world which we believed we understood has changed. We have entered a new era of competition, confrontation and instability. The Rules Based International System is under threat and Europe's security is at stake. Our new reality requires new ways of thinking. What will be the effects on innovation, technical development, and international cooperation? Is there a silver lining?

Microcode is a fundamental building block for x86 CPUs – implementing everything from complex x86 instructions, to privilege transitions and virtualization. Beyond ring 0 and SMM lies the microcode privilege level, with maximum control over the x86 core and the internal buffers within. Accessing and tinkering with microcode is a hacker's dream, but cryptographic protections prevent all but Intel and AMD from doing so. Previous work has demonstrated methods to bypass microcode patch authentication on the Intel Atom and reverse engineer the microcode ISA enough to write sophisticated custom microcode patches (Intel Atom Goldmont and AMD K8/10). However, easily accessible arbitrary microcode execution was unavailable on modern high-performance CPUs until now. Get to know the full details about EntrySign, a cryptographic flaw in AMD's microcode patch verification logic, including how we discovered the bug and how you can extend our results. EntrySign lets you execute arbitrary microcode on all AMD CPUs from Zen 1 to Zen 5 and modify the behavior of x86 instructions. The talk contains details about the format of AMD microcode, how their patches are verified, how we were able to reverse engineer this process, and how we were able to access the key information required to defeat it.

Foundation models aren't just another software tool—they're poised to become the universal runtime for almost every digital interaction. Soon, most software won't be built; it will be prompted. Yet the cybersecurity playbook still targets traditional code, blind to AI-native threats like prompt injection, stealthy data poisoning, and autonomous agent hijacks. This talk highlights mechanistic interpretability (reverse-engineering neural circuitry) and adversarial robustness (withstanding targeted attacks) as essential, emerging frontiers in AI security, revealing why defending foundation models demands radically new thinking. Ignoring AI security won't stop LLMs from running your bank, doctor, and car—better catch up quick!

Our modern society benefits a lot from space systems like GPS, communications, weather or remote monitoring satellites. The satellite systems are very far away and hard to patch and update while at the same time being accessible from anyone on earth with the right equipment and competence. The satellites tend to have a lifespan of 3-10 years in low earth orbit (LEO) or even more than 15 years in geostationary orbit (GEO) so there are likely vulnerable systems on board. This talk highlights some aspects of attacking space systems, looking at known attacks on space, ground and customer assets and how we can defend space systems in orbit around earth and all the way to Mars where a Public Key Infrastructure has some limitations!

Despite the growing popularity of fuzzing in vulnerability research and software development, many attempts remain ineffective, often due to fundamental implementation errors that frequently go unnoticed. This talk aims to demystify the "art of fuzzing" and provide participants — hackers, researchers and developers — with practical insights into correctly implementing and evaluating fuzzing. I will address common misconceptions, present best practices, and demonstrate through examples how effective fuzzing can significantly enhance software security - or just find a lot of bugs. Prerequisites: Participants should have at least basic familiarity with fuzzing. Those already practicing fuzzing will benefit the most from this talk.

I didn't plan on building a top-3 global CTF team, I just thought "TheHackersCrew" sounded cool for a YouTube channel. One accidental click on CTFtime later, I never saw a normal weekend again. This talk is a player's-eye view of how CTFs shape people: how they teach you to think, fail, collaborate, lead, and obsess over the weirdest technical problems. We'll explore how CTFs surface raw skill, persistence, and collaboration under pressure and how companies can use them to build high-trust, high-performance security teams.