Well, nearly. And please forgive my uncharacteristic enthusiasm, but Virus Bulletin's annual conference is really one of the highlights of the year for the research community. Not only because of the quality of the event itself (which is very, very high!) but also because it's one of the few events that most of us manage to get to. Which is also why there will be quite a few meetings taking place on the periphery.

So many, in fact, that I'm not sure which I'm going to be able to get to this time round. But if you're there and you come across me (preferably not in any compromising positions involving handcuffs, flash photography, tar and feathers and so on), do say hello.

Here are some of the events that ESET (a platinum sponsor of the conference, by the way, which gives some indication of how highly we rate it) will have a hand in.

5th October

12.00-12-30: Pierre-Marc Bureau presents on Same botnet, same guys, new code.

14.30-15.00: AVG's Larry Bridwell and I present on Daze of whine and neuroses (but testing is FINE)

16.50-17.20: Robert Lipovsky and Juraj Malcho present on Security 2012: staying ahead of the game

6th October

9.00-10.30: It'll be easier than usual for me to choose where to go since I'm chairing some sessions in the corporate stream. :)

10.50-11.20: Eugene Rodionov and Aleksandr Matrosov present on Modern bootkit trends: bypassing kernel-mode signing policy

7th October

11.50-12.20: Robert Lipovsky, Daniel Novomesky, and Juraj Malcho present on Fake but free and worth every cent.

Hope to see you there. Well, not all of you: if everyone who reads this blog turned up, there'd be some very long queues outside the conference hotel. ;-)

David Harley CITP FBCS CISSP
ESET Senior Research Fellow