Next year the conference will be held May 14-16, 2027 !! Put it on your calendar now. We're looking forward to seeing you all.

Post conference blues are real and it's ok to feel a bit down this week. It helps to make a plan to hang out and do fun things again. Check out your local DefCon Group. Find the closest 2600, OWASP, Cloud Security Alliance, Lock pick group, or Security BSides. Tell us your plan!

Thank you so much for another incredible year!! We cannot thank all the villages, volunteers, speakers, and of course the community enough for this memorable weekend!

Don’t miss out on tonight’s Hacker Swan Party! Dress comfortably fancy and join us at the hotel bar starting at 10:30 PM EST. It's optional, it’s fun, and it’s the perfect excuse to wear that one elegant outfit you never get to use! #HackerSwan #CkC2026

Think you know weird hacker facts? Come out and prove it at Hacker Trivia later tonight! Come ready to learn, ready to play, and ready to have fun! #HackerTrivia #CkC2026

Good morning! Grab a cup and join the Crypto & Coffee meetup in the Upper Courtyard. Come chat, learn, buy, sell, or just hang out!

Looking for a fun way to wrap up your first night at cackalackycon? Starting at 10:35 PM tonight, we’re opening the main talk room for karaoke. Come hang out, sing something loud, cheer people on, and unwind after a full day of learning and community. #CkC2026

Interested in getting deeper into how the CkC badges work? Make sure to swing by Hack the Badge in the Courtyard during any of the sessions below! Bring a USB‑C cable and a laptop with a Unix‑like environment. Friday: 3:00-5:00 PM Saturday: 4:00–5:50 PM Sunday: 9:30–11:30 AM

North Carolina state law requires distributing any alcohol in the conference and public spaces to be served from the bar. Our staff and volunteers will be issuing reminders. Please keep this in mind and consider getting a hotel room if there's something specific you want to drink.

Get ready! CKC sidequests return soon with puzzles, physical challenges, and plenty of hacker shenanigans. Bring your curiosity, your problem‑solving brain, and have fun! Check out for more details: www.cackalackycon.org #Infosec #CKC26

Looking for a job, to hire someone, get resume feedback, or have a good conversation about your next move? The Career Village will be open on May 16th with community members ready to help. Make sure to bring your questions and your curiosity! #CareerVillage #ResumeReview #CkC2026

There's still a little time left to go through your bookshelf, closet, box of old cables, or sticker collection to find what you don't want to give to someone who wants it. We don't have vendors or sponsors handing out swag. Attendees will only get what other attendees bring to give away.

We are so excited to welcome you to the conference is this week! For everyone's best experience, please review our code of conduct. cackalackycon.org/co...

Less than one week before GreenHat Solutions is back and bringing a full 802.11 (WiFi) CTF to cackalackycon 2026. Don't miss out on your chance to practice wireless penetration testing against real targets in a safe, structured environment! #infosec #CTF #CkC2026

🍋‍🟩 HEAR YE! The Royal Quests and Chaos Tournament draws near! Riddles, bargains, Question Beasts, suspicious prizes, and glorious nonsense await the brave. Gather thy party and prepare for chaos… #quests-and-chaos #CKC26

Step into a retro-styled cyberpunk MUD built just for cackalackycon. Explore hidden systems, uncover secrets, and collaborate (or compete) with other attendees to piece together the fragments scattered throughout the network. Browser: ckcmud.hackerlabs.dev Telnet: 129.80.173.7 33333

Closing the #CkC2026 series with amazing sessions! p80n-sec: From CTFs to CVEs Dahvid Schloss: Nothing Exploited, Everything Compromised: When Legitimate Features Become Attack Infrastructure Kevin: Modernize context clues through Vectorize & Visualize cyberops data Threat Intel with Qdrant Vector

We're back with another set of amazing speakers coming to #CkC2026! Will Alexander: Turning Keys and Opening Doors: Leveraging AI Hype to Hack Everything Jesse Jenter: Bring Out Your Dead: The Art and Science of JavaScript Exploit

We’re only 10 days away from cackalackycon 2026. Villages are getting prepped, challenges are being finalized, and the weekend is shaping up to be packed with learning, hacking, and community. Make sure you grab your ticket: www.eventzilla.net/e... #infosec #conference #CkC2026

Whether its your first or your fifth cackalackycon, our CKC101 page has important information for you to get the most out of your time at the conference. It even has a helpful packing list of things that attendees usually need, but might forget. cackalackycon.org/ck...

Featuring 3 more speakers and their sessions for #CkC2026! eazydrifter: So, You Think You’re Ready for Incident Response? Danish Tariq, Hassan Khan Yusufzai: Zero to Owned

Check out more #CkC2026 sessions bringing fresh ideas and real‑world insight! James Berthoty: What is reachability anyways? zv@R: Tom Riddle's Password Diary Soldier of FORTRAN: Throwing the Mainframe out the window: DeFeNeStRaTe.C

Get excited, in just two weeks, EverSec will be back to run the CTF! Hack, solve, and collaborate, come solo and join a team, or bring friends. Get ready to jump in, learn, and capture flags all weekend! Remember to update your laptop now! #infosec #CTF #CkC2026

Today’s #CkC2026 speaker highlights features these awesome 3 sessions! Reece Meakings: Plugging AI into Skyrim and it's Consequences NeuralNotwerk (Garrett), Vince Ovando: Agent from Scratch-Hands-on Coding Brooks McMillin: Poisoning the Safety Net: Attacking AI-Powered Code Review Pipelines

Interested in OT, ICS, or embedded systems? Join the ID/IoT Community at #CkC2026 for hands-on demos all weekend, covering everything from Modbus to firmware extraction. Whether you're new or experienced, it's a great place to learn, experiment, and dive deeper into industrial security!

Spotlight on Xenia Mountrouidou, who is bringing 3 sessions to #CkC2026, all focused on making AI systems safer and more reliable in real‑world security work! - From LLM Apps to Agentic Workflows for Security: Evaluation is All You Need - AI Security Panel, Q&A - Build Your Own Security Agent

We believe the best experience is being present at the conference with your fellow hacker. Talks will not be streamed or recorded this year and attendees are not allowed to record. Specific speakers might choose to record and post their own talk later.

A 3rd workshop has appeared! Get ready for "Why Even Smart Security Leaders Miss the Biggest Risks" Be sure to register in advance for this great session on Friday May 15. It's included in your attendance.

Spotlighting 3 more #CkC2026 speakers! DataDancer: Responsible AI in Practice: Data Security and Hallucination Management Carl Hurd: Glass-Box Security: Operationalizing Mechanistic Interpretability for Defending AI Agents Brad Naylor: Vibe Check Failed: Agents, Access, and the Aftermath

As we go through our #CkC2026 speaker series, here are more amazing sessions to explore: Kasimir Schulz: The Prompter's Guide to the AI Guardrail Bypass Tim Schulz: Opening the Hood: Detecting Architectural Backdoors in AI Models

Ever wondered how locks actually work? Coming up soon, the Lockpick Village returns with Oak City Locksport running hands‑on picking all weekend. Whether you’re brand new or already picking advanced locks, stop by for challenges, contests, and the OCL store! #lockpicking #CkC2026

3 more talks joining the sessions at #CkC2026 this year! Aqeel Yaseen: How to talk more goodlier. (Or how to cultivate compassionate communication at work and at home) Carlota Sage: First, Fly the Plane: Leadership and Security Lessons from Youtube Commercial Pilots Jim Duncan: It's About Time!

Today’s #CkC2026 speaker series highlights feature 3 amazing talks! Spence: Lessons Learned Moving Between Enterprise Security and Product Security Jay Smith: Breaking In: Your First Steps into Penetration Testing Ken Smith: Home Labs: In a Basement...With a Box of Scraps!

For the first time outside DEF CON, PhreakMe is coming to cackalackycon 2026! Test your skills on a PBX system, explore telephony challenges, and yes there’s a real payphone onsite. #phreaking #CTF #CkC2026

Happy Earth Day! Here are some ways we run a greener conference: * Online programs save paper. * Water stations for reusable bottles. * The Freecycle Table keeps stuff out of landfills. * No sponsors bringing weird or use once swag. Resources for hacking the planet can be found at earthday.org

Here are 3 more sessions we’re excited to share as we count down to #CkC2026! Melodie Moorefield-WilsonL Bending the Matrix: How to Teach Yourself Anything in Security M4D6R33NHAT: From Green Beret to Greenhat Solutions Steven Walton: Life is a CTF: Figure, Play, and Exploit the Career Game

Another trio in the #CkC2026 lineup! Nicole Mendolera: Why Even Smart Security Leaders Miss the Biggest Risks Anthea GS: Hidden in Plain Sight: A Playful Look at Everyday Security Risks Professor Farnsworth: The Pack Animals of Fraud: Understanding the Risk Factors of Money Muling in the US

In addition to the schedule being on our fancy new website. We are also on Hacker Tracker! The app does not actually do any tracking, it's used for a lot of other great conferences and is just a way to track what talks and events you want to do. hackertracker.app/sc...

Continuing our #CkC2026 speaker highlights with 3 more awesome sessions! Diptendu Kar: npm should-i-install: Malicious npm packages Thomas Strömberg: Vibecoding the Apocalypse: From Payload to Pipeline Sodium: Playing the long con: cases of Wikipedia vandalism at scale

Curious about how AI models break or get misused? Look no further than the AI Village at #CKC2026! There will be hands‑on labs, demos, and real examples of AI security issues. Whether you’re new to machine learning or already deep in the weeds, come explore how these systems really work. #AISecurity

Here are 3 more #CkC2026 sessions bringing curiosity, insight, and hands-on learning! c4m0ufl4g3: Build-Your-Own-Adventure: Hardware Implants Joseph Parzel: Hack Your Guitar Tone II Gh057x: Ctrl+Alt+Del…ivery: Hacking Autonomous Mobile Robots

It’s official, we’re less than 1 month away from cackalackycon 2026! 3 days of talks, villages, challenges, and community are right around the corner. Make sure you’ve got your ticket and your travel plans locked in. Registration is open here: www.eventzilla.net/e... #cybersecurity #CkC2026

Today is the last day to order this year's shirt! There might be some shirts available at the conference, but they will not be the same as this one or guaranteed to be in your size or style.

Kicking off our #CkC2026 speaker highlights with 3 sessions to get excited about! Deral Heiland: Weaponization of Cellular Based IoT Technology Mauddib28: BLEEP D-Bus and Unix ALSA The Foe, Tim: I Know What You LoRa'd Last Summer: Introducing LoRecon

Looking for a fun side event to dive into at CkC? Make sure to check out API Sub Brawl by Edward Sabijon, a submarine‑hunting coding challenge where strategy, stealth, and smart automation keep you afloat. Come try it out and see how long you can survive! #API #CkC2026

We have two workshops coming to CkC on Friday, May 15 from 1–5 PM, both require that you register! Cyber Puzzles Under Pressure: Pass the exam. Register here: forms.gle/iXVUDXGbrK... Breaking the Air: Offensive Security for LoRaWAN & IoT Radio Systems. Register here: forms.gle/iXVUDXGbrK...\

Remember we don't have sponsors or vendors to bring swag. So we'll have a free swap table again this year where you can bring things for others to enjoy. You can drop stickers, zines, books, swag, gear, whatever you have that someone else might take and use.

Have you updated and tested your laptop to make sure it's ready for the conference? If you do check your laptop today or this weekend, you'll probably have time to make any fixes or updates.

The schedule is now live! Check it out our amazing line up of talks and side events to start planning for. Note that there are workshops that require additional signups to attend. cackalackycon.org/sc...

Only one week left to order your shirt for our 2026 fundraiser!