DEF CON Groups San Antonio

2026 First After Dark Talk: Our mission is to provide a platform for researchers to share their work, for angry hackers to rant about the issues in their industry, and for curious souls to probe interesting problems — all without the watchful eye of the rest of the world.

With a strict, well-enforced “no recording” policy, research that is still underway or critical of a vendor can be aired to your peers. You’re talking to other people in the information and computer underground, and very few topics are taboo.

We invite the best of the cybersecurity community: the best of the underground in all its forms. Esoterica is as welcome as 0-day here, and history, design, APTs (or as we used to call them, hackers who are better funded than you), and extruded intruders have all found a place on our stage.

• Privacy and Trust: Creating a private, trusted space among peers in the information and computer underground.
• Freedom of Speech: A place where researchers and “angry hackers” can frankly discuss critical or taboo topics, including zero-days or criticism of specific vendors, that might not be shareable in recorded forums.
• Enforcement: The policy is strictly enforced. Organizers and community members will ask attendees to delete non-consensual photos or videos immediately. Failure to comply can result in ejection and banishment from the event, stories from DEF CON even mention phone-smashing as part of the “theatre of entropy.” We may take a page from their book.

12 Talks Before Christmas is our end-of-year lightning talk night: twelve 5-minute talks, twelve speakers, and twelve unique topics covering all corners of cybersecurity, technology, and hacking.

• Each presenter gets exactly 5 minutes.
• Any topic touching security, tech, privacy, hardware, policy, or hacking culture is fair game.
• Beginner-friendly, community-driven, and a great way to try your first talk.

We’re closing out the year with a community movie night featuring the 30th Anniversary screening of “Hackers”, hosted in partnership with the NightHax Awards!

Bring your friends, celebrate hacker culture, and cheer on folks being recognized for building, breaking, teaching, and growing the local cybersecurity community.

• January: Jayson E. Street — “Just Security Things with Jayson”
• February: SciaticNerd — “Your Data, Different Cloud” (self-hosting, Raspberry Pis, leaving cloud providers)
• March: 2025 After Dark Talk
• April: Jonathan Gonzalez — Adversarial Use of AI (AI-driven misinformation, state-sponsored abuse, deepfakes)
• May: 1 Year Anniversary Party
• June: Nathan Reyes (Alamo City Locksport) — “The Cell Tower Talk: Evolution of Telecommunication Solutions”
• July: Jonathan Gonzalez — “Investigation Analysis 101” (SOC triage methodology for interns)
• August: PaPPY — “Clickfix: When CAPTCHA Solves You”
• September: Draggr — “A Look at the Gayfemboy Malware” (Mirai variant analysis)
• October: b00ey — “Assembly 101”