My second cyber-security/hacking related con this year was the Red Hot Cyber Conference in Rome. While I really enjoyed my stay in Rome, I didn't really enjoy the conference. The location is pretty nice and the city offers so much, while the conference was to entry level for me so I ended up skipping the second day in favor to enjoy the city...
At least the conference was for free.
Overview
| Criteria | Rating | Desc |
|---|---|---|
| Vibe | 1/5 | Felt mostly corporate or ads for the companies sponsoring it. Felt like I wasn't really the target audience. Think more Cyber than Hacking. |
| Talks | 2/5 | I visited 3 talks. One about LLMs, one about over the air pentesting and one about CTF to Bug Bounty Pipeline. They had some nice infos, but seemed to basic to be called "Skills-On" or "Hands-On" as they were advertised to be. |
| Location | 4/5 | It's pretty central to rome (like 15 mins by metro to the coliseum, 8 mins by cab). I got my hotel right next to the venue so that I could be there faster. |
| Premises | 1/5 | I liked the outside of the "Teatro Italia", but inside wasn't really "big". There was one stage for talks/workshops and a little room for the CTF. There was not WiFi or LAN provided for the CTF. |
| Schedule | 2/5 | Schedule was a 9 to 5 or rather a 9 to 7 but with like a 2 hour lunch break in between. As said, I like my conferences to start later and go on longer, but it was nice to know you could still catch some sun at the coliseum after the con. |
| CTF | 1/5 | The easy challenges were super Easy. Like basic " OR "1" = "1"; -- type of SQLi challenge easy. I did not bring my flipper Zero. But even tho I was alone I managed to be like 45th place out of 100 teams taking part, by only attending 2 hours and solving 3 challenges. |
| CTF Team | 0/5 | Didn't really get to find or join a team during it :/ |
| Food | 1/5 | Didn't get to check it out, since most of it wasn't vegan. Coffee was nice |
| Workshops | 2/5 | Workshops == Talks in this conference. |
The Arrival - 17th June 2026
Similar to the insomnihack I arrived the day before. But this time I arrived around 4 PM and was still able to enjoy some nice weather and food in Rome. Finding Vegan restaurants and options in Rome (especially the part I was at) is a bit difficult. Coffee of course didn't disappoint - it is Italy after all.
Since I'm pretty hungry at the moment I also went to do some groceries so I had water, food and snacks in my room at all times.
I also got a hotel pretty close to the conference so I could reach it pretty fast and the only available room was one with a Whirlpool - which I decided to make use of :D
First day of the Con - 18th June 2026
The con started around 11 and I made it to it around 3PM, since that's when the CTF started. I quickly got my entrance badge/tix and got into the 2nd floor of this nice building. Only to be surprised by a pretty small room, with like 2 tables, no WiFi or any other infrastructure. All I had was a chair and an electric plug to charge my laptop.
So right out of the bat I had to use my hotspot to connect to the CTF even.
The plattform
The plattform was kinda nice and familiar as it was the hackthebox ctf platform and I use hackthebox a lot. It was pretty easy to connect, login etc... BUT you had to be registered in advance -> which luckily they told you on the conference website and I did.
The challenges
I was able to solve 3 challenges before I had to go to the "workshop" that interested me about "over the air pentesting".
One challenge was a simple "inspect element and find flag" kind of deal. The other was a simple OR "1"="1"; -- SQL Injection to get the flag. And the last one I did was a challenge where you had to read modbus data from a pcap file to get the flag. (tbh, I tried to solve this with chatgpt with one prompt and it worked)
I landed on 45th place after the ctf ended (out of 100 groups). The ctf was a group based one, but I didn't find any group to join sadly, so had to do it on my own :S
The workshops talks
I visited the over-the-air pentesting talk and it was basically a company "selling" or explaining their service, what they do and what the most findings are. It wasn't really hands-on workshops as advertised.
The second talk I went to was about turning ctf players into hiring candidates. Which sounded interesting, but was filled with a lot of numbers and stats that I couldn't really keep up.
Also: Everything was in italian, but I can speak it fluently so no problems for me :)
The night - 18th June 2026
After the con I went to rest at my hotel and later went out to the coming out bar in ROME right by the coliseum for a Drag-Bingo night.
I made some friends there and we ended up chilling in front of the coliseum till 3AM after the Bingo.
The 2nd Con Day aka ROME by day - 19th June 2026
After being a lil disapointed by the conferences first day, I decided to make the best out of it and enjoy the city. Hard to feel motivated to go to a conference you're not really into when there is ROME right next to it.
I mostly walked around the city and the coliseum and took a bunch of pictures. Even trying to imitate a JoJo picture:
Conclusion
All in all I would reccomend it, if you're looking for a way to have business trip to rome and maybe get some connections in the italian cyber security scene - but I wasn't able to and I still gotta see if I visit it again next year :/
