Analyzing Adversary Botnets for Offensive Cyber Operations - Joseph Slowik
Disobey 2026 · Main Stage
Joseph Slowik's talk, "Weaponizing the Neutral Web: Analyzing Adversary Botnets for Offensive Cyber Operations," delves into the evolving landscape of cyber threats, specifically focusing on how malicious actors, including state-sponsored entities, are leveraging compromised third-party infrastructure for sophisticated operations. The presentation offers a comprehensive perspective, blending elements of defensive security, threat intelligence, and offensive cyber operations, while also confronting the complex ethical and policy dilemmas inherent in responding to these threats.
AI review
Slowik is a credible researcher with real pedigree — MITRE, Dragos, Los Alamos, DomainTools — and the ORB network framing is a useful conceptual lens for threat intel and defender audiences. But as presented here, this is a synthesis and advocacy talk, not a research drop: it organizes and contextualizes publicly known material (VPNFilter, Cyclops Blink, KV botnet, Vault Typhoon) without adding new technical findings, new attribution, or new tooling of his own.