Access to secure dependency management everywhere w Nix- T Berek, F Zakaria & D Baker
Thomas Berek, Fared, Morgan Jones
DEF CON 33 (backfill) · Day 1 · Main Stage
This talk, "Rebuild the World," at DEF CON marks a significant moment as the first official DEF CON stage presentation dedicated entirely to **Nix**. Speakers Morgan Jones, Thomas Berek, and Fared introduce the Nix ecosystem – comprising the **Nix package manager and language**, **Nixpkgs** (the extensive package set), and **NixOS** (the operating system) – as a fundamental paradigm shift in software development and deployment. Their core message revolves around Nix's ability to provide unparalleled reproducibility, atomic updates, and a robust trust model for managing software dependencies.
AI review
A competent introductory Nix talk that earns its DEF CON slot by framing supply chain reproducibility and SBOMs-by-construction as security primitives rather than DevOps convenience features. The content is honest and technically grounded, but it's a 101-level ecosystem overview that stops well short of the depth this audience expects — no novel attack research, no live exploitation, no rigorous comparison against competing reproducible-build approaches.