Locked Down, Not Locked Out: How I Escaped Yr Secure Operator Workstation
Aaron Boyd
DEF CON 33 (backfill) · Day 1 · Main Stage
In his compelling DEF CON talk, "Locked Down, Not Locked Out: How I Escaped Yr Secure Operator Workstation," Aaron Boyd, a seasoned system engineer at Liberty Energy with a distinguished background in pentesting at the NSA and Dragos, dismantles the common misconception that industrial control system (ICS) operator workstations are inherently secure. Drawing from over two decades of experience in red teaming and breaking into critical infrastructure, Boyd reveals a stark contrast between security expectations and the often-vulnerable reality of these systems across various industry verticals, including oil and gas, aerospace, and manufacturing.
AI review
Boyd delivers a practitioner-grade OT red team retrospective that earns its keep by grounding every claim in field experience — NSA and Dragos background, 20+ years of OT pentests, and specific findings that most IR folks sanitize into oblivion. This isn't novel research in the CVE-dropping sense, but it's the right talk for the right venue: an honest, technically specific teardown of why 'locked down' OT workstations are a fiction, told by someone who has actually broken them repeatedly.