THOTCON is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 hacker conference that is organized by Nicholas J. Percoco

Nicholas J. Percoco

Nicholas J. Percoco is an ethical computer hacker and security researcher with the firm .In his role at Trustwave, he leads the global SpiderLabs team which is responsible for ethical hacking, incident investigations, and security research...

, Zack Fasel, Matt Jakubowski, Jonathan Tomek and several other OPERs (volunteers from the local DEF CON

DEF CON

DEF CON is one of the world's largest annual computer hacker conventions, held every year in Las Vegas, Nevada...

 312 chapter) . It is held in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

 USA at a somewhat different Top Secret

Top Secret

Top Secret generally refers to the highest acknowledged level of classified information.Top Secret may also refer to:- Film and television :* Top Secret , a British comedy directed by Mario Zampi...

 location each year.

The conference runs as a single track, held on a single day, and has between 10-12 talks on various information security

Information security

Information security means protecting information and information systems from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, perusal, inspection, recording or destruction....

 and hacking

Hacking

Hacking may refer to:* Computer hacking, including the following types of activity:** Hacker , activity within the computer programmer subculture** Hacker , to access computer networks, legally or otherwise...

 topics.

The name THOTCON is made of of the first letter in the words that represent the main Chicago Area Code (312); as in THree-One-Two.

History

• THOTCON 0x1 was held on April 23, 2010 at Joe's Bar.

The conference had approximately 235 attendees and 8 talks. It was also the very first hacker conference to be held in Chicago.

• THOTCON 0x2 was held on April 15, 2011 at Joe's Bar in Chicago, IL.

The conference had approximately 336 attendees and 12 talks.

• THOTCON 0x3 is scheduled to take place on April 27, 2012 at a TOP SECRET
  Top Secret
  Top Secret generally refers to the highest acknowledged level of classified information.Top Secret may also refer to:- Film and television :* Top Secret , a British comedy directed by Mario Zampi...
  
   location.

The conference will have approximately 500 attendees and between 10 and 20 talks depending on final venue configuration.

Past Speakers

Past speakers of THOTCON events have included:

• Jayson E. Street, author of "Dissecting the hack: The F0rb1dd3n Network"
• Rafal Los, author of the HP blog: "Following the White Rabbit"
• Ryan Jones
  Ryan Jones
  Ryan Paul Jones is a Welsh international rugby union player who plays at number eight for the Ospreys. He is able to cover blindside flanker and second row; he played second row in his younger days as he was kept out of his preferred number 8 role by Gareth Delve.-Early life:Jones played junior...
  
  , star of the TV show Tiger Team (TV series)
  Tiger Team (TV series)
  Tiger Team is the name of an American television show that airs on TruTV .The show follows a civilian tiger team composed of Chris Nickerson, Luke McOmie, and Ryan Jones, which is hired to infiltrate organizations with the objective of testing their weaknesses to electronic, psychological,...
  
  
• Dave Marcus, director of security research at McAfee
  McAfee
  McAfee, Inc. is a computer security company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, USA. It markets software and services to home users, businesses and the public sector. On August 19, 2010, electronics company Intel agreed to purchase McAfee for $7.68 billion...
  
  
• G. Mark Hardy, president of National Security Corporation

Music

THOTCON has become known for its live mixed hacker music between talks by Zack Fasel of brb.clubbing].

External links

• THOTCON - The official website of the THOTCON hacking conference.
• THOTCON Archives - Archives of the presentations from previous conferences.
• THOTCON Twitter Account - The official Twitter account for the THOTCON conference.