DIMVA 2024: Lausanne, Switzerland

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In this article I take you through my experience presenting a collaborated work on our newly discovered 0-day vulnerabilities in IoT firmware at DIMVA 2024 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Par for my usual narrative style, it contains connections to and small commentary on the infinite consciousness, encounters with objects of desire, and the difficulty in finding our path in life.

July 16th 2024

Today I head off to Lausanne, Switzerland through the Geneva airport. This time I embark with my colleague and best friend Anis. It is our second conference together since a year and we are a delight together. Neither of us have experienced much of the world and it always brings us great joy to trip together with our matching backpacks. Anis refused to bring a carry-on luggage and suffered a backpack that could barely close; even one of his clips popped off under the strain prior to entering the security check at YUL. I found this internally hilarious but one does not laugh at a struggling travel partner lest they find you unbearable; at least to start.

We sat together and recollected on the years of work together – the ups and downs of it all. A passenger asked us to pull down our window so her child could sleep undisturbed.

In the blackness of night at 37,000 feet, while most were asleep, we spoke of the disturbing concept of consciousness. For two hours the conversation went on where I explained how consciousness from the perspective of Advaita Vedanta is like a perceiver who opened a crack in the fabric of the universe in order to witness it, much like one who would peek their head through the curtains of a play to see the audience. [The scripture never uses the prior-mentioned example explicitly, but I do find it suiting] The witness does not create the perceived world (is not the cause of it, aka “Ajātivāda“), nor is it affected by it. Thus, the death of one body does not mark the death of one “witness consciousness” since consciousness is not encased in a body and is not divided; there is only one consciousness which (falsely) appears to be split and contained in the multitude bodies (Jiva). Thus there is no “consciousness one, consciousness two, …, consciousness N”. Gaudapada, one of the most notorious sages of Vedanta, explains that much like two physical pots seem to encase and contain two separate spaces within their “pot space”, the space itself is actually unaffected by the pots. If we move a pot to the left or right, the space it initially contained is unaffected, and it was never actually contained. Body is the pot, consciousness is the space; though a particular body appears to limit consciousness physically, in truth – according to Advaita – there is only one consciousness being perceived as limited by many bodies. Because of this, when a body dies, “a” consciousness does not go missing as there was never a second consciousness apart from the first, and this is why they define “Brahman” or consciousness as “one without a second”.

For the first time in a long time, my levels anxiety began to shoot up and I could feel tingles in my arm and fingers. Speaking on such a topic can cause deep levels of fright.

At the end of the flight, the passenger with the child asked, “Are you a professor?”, to which I responded, “No; but I do teach.” She said, “I overheard you talking, very well spoken and entertaining.”

Trips confuse me. They play with my mind, sprouting thoughts of what I should and shouldn’t do as a career, what I’m good at, what I could be better at, what should and shouldn’t I put my energy into; the very “how”, “what”, and “why” of it all. The experience with this woman and similar ones make me think I should speak or teach for a living, while my heart says perhaps music and spirituality are the most centric, and further society tells me cybersecurity is my path. What to do?

We landed and quickly passed through customs at the surprisingly quiet Geneva airport. We strolled around to the unreal beauty of a neighbourhood less than a kilometer away from the airport as we awaited our train. This is the moment I knew that Switzerland and its citizens maintain a high level of respect for their surroundings; foliage is of upmost import and the peace and serenity of the environment is supreme.

We caught our train and our passes were scanned by beauty in human form. Arriving at Gare Lausanne we walked to the metro and observed the delicious sight of the people of Lausanne. There is such an elegance and beauty to them; seemingly low levels of egotism and generally good natured.

The shapes and colors of buildings and the tram give a feeling of the future with a nod to the past; bridges and buildings are at heights and scale such that the territory feels to be inhabited by a form much more profound than mine.

We showered at our SwissTech Hotel then ate at a local shop Holy Cow (I like to think this is in reference to what one would utter when met with the astounding prices). We began to work on our presentation slides and were extremely behind on them; for many reasons and none of them include procrastination (seriously). We then slept as it was too early in the morning to continue.

July 17th 2024

This day we woke up and as Anis continued creating slides, I headed into the local Migros to fetch a quick breakfast. I handed a set of bananas to the cashier and she looked at me and said “You need to weigh these!” Thus I headed to the weighing machine and it asked for an item number; I entered the five digit banana number and machine informed it was invalid. I looked at the banana sign and it said “1”, so I entered “1” and that was valid – yet no tag emerged. I asked a man in French and he only spoke English. I spoke English and he sent me to a second machine, and that one printed the ticket. I returned with the bananas and apologized to the woman, saying in my crummy French “Jviens de Moreal”. She said “Quoi?”. Clearly this unsanitary Quebec French has no place in such a tame land.

As a side note, some Quebecers have a tendency to wish to preserve its language and culture; aggressively so (see our history). The folks of Switzerland are not so defensively linked to a particular language, nor do they panic at diversity in language. Most are well capable of speaking English and French (in the French regions of Switzerland), and do not huff and puff as do the preservers of all things French here in Quebec. The Swiss realize that language is not the foundation but simply a means of communication. What is really important is how comfortable and accepted one feels in their blessed land. We Quebecers should absorb this mindsight as it reduces stress in both the preserver and their perceived enemies.

We later headed to a guided tour with the conference participants where we met Mathias Payer, one of the lead organizers of DIMVA this year. We were split into groups of three and walked through various museums and a church with a beautiful organ. Organs are the most exciting perceivable object in such structures and unfortunately we rarely get a chance to hear their profound roar.

As we roamed, we were simply in awe of the serenity of the surroundings. I’ve never felt such an energy of clarity. When you consider that, in the end, all sensory inputs fundamentally are converted to electrical impulses in the brain, it makes absolute sense. Consider it. We all know that loud sounds can cause us physical pain, horrendous images can make us sweat in fear, and that wartime experience is traumatic, so why do we not think that sorted, organized, lush, vibrant, fresh and aesthetically pleasing environments do not cause pleasant interactions and reactions within us?

Experience a home full of dirty clothes, unwashed dishes, with food remnants about, then transport yourself to a beach with a bright sun and waves washing to and fro; clearly the experience of standing still in both environments are vastly different ones, and yet you are not doing a single thing but standing and observing in both; here, it is your mind’s interpretation of the sensory input of the scene converted to different electrical impulses that amount to your perception of disgust and bliss.

After the tour, we ended at a stunning outdoor bar The Great Escape. Here I met a few folk. First off was the surprise of Ricardo from DFRWS EU 2023 & 2024 in Bonn, then Zaragoza. I had spoken to him many times at those conferences and yet he remembered me not. We caught up and really began to enjoy each other’s company. I later met Vivin Paliath from Arizona State who was born in the same city where Adi Shankaracharya is allegedly from – one of the most renowned and profound teachers and commentators of Advaita Vedanta. What a coincidence. We dipped our conversational toe into this subject but quickly moved on to other things. An therapy dog roamed around and its owner was looking for it, so I tried to convince it to head towards her but it simply ran from me which caused her to panic slightly.

I had a moment of quietude, staring at the setting sun as the voices from locals and academics merged into a calming background noise. This serene bliss was interrupted by Onur, a prior PhD student of the Security Research Center at Concordia University who was here to present his final work.

We went back to the SwissTech and worked on slides in the hotel seating area until my body gave up around 1:30 AM. Anis stayed up to work. At 4 AM I creaked my eyes open and noticed Anis to still be gone. I worried he may have passed out or worse, as Anis has a tendency to cause himself tremendous undue suffering. Thus I rose and stumbled into the seating area to find him still working. He performed a firmware update on his laptop and needed to enter a Bitlocker password which took him hours to find; he needed to use his phone to read instructions but even that died. Such things only happen to Anis.

Once he came back to the room, his snoring could have taught a lion to roar.

July 18th 2024

We awoke roughly 2 hours later to prepare for the morning conference as Anis would be presenting a second paper (the other being our collaboration) that he co-authored with members of our lab. Being the first official presentation day, we began to make acquaintances and I sat near Ricardo for the morning. Presentations were decent, some quieter, some louder. Anis did well presenting the paper and nailed the questions.

Lunch was delicious and healthy, fresh water all-pervading as the best water comes from this part of the world; no need to buy bottled water, just find a faucet. At the end of the night we had a BBQ alongside a poster session. All events occurred at the BC Building (of the IC – Computer and Communication Sciences – faculty), and their view is a spectacular one.

I soon departed to rehearse. I spent an hour honing the slides but was so sleepy that I decided to simply head to bed and rehearse in the morning. I have tremendous confidence in my ability to speak and present, and thus I can exert my efforts closer to deadlines while still maintaining a large level of success.

July 19th 2024

This final morning Anis and I rehearsed for about 1.5 hours, missing the initial conference presentations. We tidied up the presentation, arrived for lunch, and immediately took the stage at 2:00 PM. Anis would be the physical clicker and I would perform the entire oral presentation. As usual, I took out my teaching stick and extended it; the stick is known as Clea. This is named after my ex-girlfriend who would enhance and brighten any room she was present in by virtue of her natural beauty of spirit. Similarly, the presence of the presentation stick enhances the presentation whenever it appears. Each time I reveal it and extend it, no matter the room, it always rouses laughter. The stick presented everything, I merely explain what it is already pointing to. It is one of the most effective tools to use and was inspired by Swami Chinmayananda in his recorded lectures of the Gita. I showed the stick to the audience and explained that I brought it all the way from Canada where security once flagged it as a possible weapon. Mathias – the organizer – jokingly asked “Can you use it to hit people?”, and I said “Would you like to try?”, he quipped, “No, later… In private.” It is nice to have such a light and humorous tone in a conference covering convoluted subject matter.

During our presentation, Anis would click forward and backwards through the slides and I would quip “Excuse me sir!” if he had went to the next slide before I desired it so. At some point he oscillated between two slides too many times, and I began to use my stick as if conducting him. We two have fun together up in-front of a crowd. Questions came and answers were given, claps were had.

During the subsequent break we received many compliments on the quality, hilarity and power of the teaching stick. Members of FKIE wanted to have us contribute to FACT somehow. Let us see how far such a desire goes, on both ends. I also had a short talk with a woman named Hanna Gleß (or something close to it) from Bonn but we did not have time for a fruitful discussion though I believe it would have been enlightening – I simply cannot find her contact information anywhere on the internet.

Presentations went on and later the conference ended and we all decided to meet up at the Lake Leman, which is about a 12 minute drive south of EPFL. Gorgeous blue waters and full of folks basking in the beauty. Conference attendees purchased a carriage of food and cooked for us on the public charcoal BBQs set up in the park. I made calls to loved ones back home and my friend in Germany. My plans for the UK were suddenly thwarted by a loved one’s family tragedy, and thus I am forced to reorganize myself in the next few weeks to work out what I will do alone. My guess is I will spend some time writing music in the quiet. Let’s see what happens.

I enjoyed spending some quiet moments alone on the lake shore, dipping my feet and observing the setting sun lend pink and purple glitter to the shimmering lake surface. Gabriele from Italy, Anis, Onur, and Emad the Iranian joined forces and headed to the city center after a final farewell to the group at the lake.

I spent some time getting to know Gabriele who deeply enjoys mountaineering, cycling, and climbing. Every person I meet adds new potential desires to my mind. Perhaps I can try this, or try that, and perhaps I should become this or that. But even these people who sprout desires in my mind may have borrowed (or not) their desires from a second person whom they met at some other time. In the end one must figure out one’s own path and grab onto its rails and be steady in it. Easier said than done. This world is profuse with urges and some have said that in life others project their desires onto us, or that our interpretation of others is through the generation of desires; either the desire to be/not be them, to have/not have them, to have/not to have what they do, and so on. It is life’s goal to move beyond all of these and sit in one’s consciousness, dodging these bullets of desire as they are flung towards us at the speed of perception.

We headed to Bar Giraf for a pitcher around a barrel painted in a pattern of yellow and black cowhide. The group discussed as I took my sandals off and sat back on a concrete railing. I contemplated the strangeness of being here, of how despite my internal dissatisfaction with my path it seems I am being taken along it anyway, and successfully so. Energy we put towards a path takes us along it in some shape or form; it cannot be helped – whether the path is your desire or not.

I thought of my mother, and the odd nature of sitting in Switzerland with strangers from around the world, never knowing why or how I got here, having all this novelty of experience, and yet my mother and I will never be able to experience each other again due to her passing in 2020. Chasing novelty of experience is an unending temptation and addiction like any other. In contrast to this excess of experience, the most meaningful experience would be to embrace my late mother and make her feel the unconditional love she once gave me. But one should not make the opposite mistake, the one of restricting life and experience simply because a loved one has passed. Do not bring to death two lives at the price of one, otherwise you are as miserable an addition to this existence as the lifeless body whom you have allowed to oppress your mind with the guilt of living on. Instead, do that lost one justice, live fully, and make this world shake with satisfaction to the beat of your heart. Touch everything with a gentle, compassionate, and comedic air, and all will settle where it should.

Later we headed to the Great Escape one last time to have a pint. The bar was loud and noisy and I felt like a little boy in there. Outside we sat on the ground and chatted nonsense until it was time to leave. I offered Gabriele to stay in Montreal with his girlfriend if they ever wished to visit, as well he has a friend in Montreal studying philosophy who I would love to meet. We shook hands and took a photo – that is it. Conference over.