The Scene is Dead
Unknown
BSides Las Vegas 2025 · Day 1
Allison opens her BSides Las Vegas keynote with a deliberate contradiction: she declares **the scene is dead**, then insists it is **more alive than it has ever been**—just **no longer underground**, still full of people she respects. The talk blends autobiography with a researcher’s longitudinal view. She traces dial-up **CompuServe**, **Hunt the Wumpus**, breaking **SimPark**, a high school programming class that taught her how rules work on machines, and a career studying **patterns of how humans interact with computers** while working the **criminal underground** since **2011**.
AI review
Uncomfortable, necessary sociotechnical keynote: long-view crime ecosystem analysis, sharp critique of industry myths, and a trust-and-vetting challenge that security culture avoids in favor of skill fetishization.