CAD participated in the Cybersecurity Summit at Universidad Nacional in Colombia

CAD participated in the Cybersecurity Summit at Universidad Nacional in Colombia
November 20, 2022

The Cybersecurity Summit at Universidad Nacional in Colombia is an event led by the university research group Tlon-Uqbar. The event has stood out for managing to attract both the national and international community involved in developing experts in information security. For some time, it has not been possible to do the event in-person, but this year (2022) the information security community returned to the facilities of Universidad Nacional during the 15th to 18th of November.

In this third edition of the event, the Digital Autonomy Center (Centro de Autonomía Digital or CAD) could take part and participate in the event, thanks to the invitation from the Tlon-Uqbar group. This participation took the form of three different spaces where we presented our work to defend the digital rights of everyone.

Workshop - Cryptographic protocols for secure communication - CoyIM

During Wednesday November 16th, several workshops were held for people that had pre-registered. These workshops took place in several of the classrooms of the university. CAD was going to give a workshop about the cryptographic protocols that CoyIM uses, and also about the technical decisions made to make CoyIM one of (if not the) best instant messaging applications for protecting the privacy of its users.

The workshop would have covered the definition of the XMPP and OTRv3 protocols, how Tor is used to add a layer of anonymity to the communication that CoyIM gives you, and also why Golang was chosen as the programming language for CoyIM. Finally, the workshop also would have covered the ethical principles underlying the development of CoyIM.

Because of events outside the control of the organizers of the event and the university, it was not possible to do the workshop. However, the initial contacts and connections have been made, and we hope that soon Universidad Nacional of Colombia can coordinate the necessary details to be able to give the full workshop.

Booth

On the 17th and 18th of November (2022), during the time the event was open to the public, a space for booths was made available, where CAD participated, giving information about our work defending the digital rights of everyone. In this space we received and exceptional response from audience members, teachers and students of the university. Many thanks to UNAL for the invitation!

Presentation - Digital security challenges in the Global South

Closing out CAD’s participation in the Cybersecurity Summit 2022, on the 17th of November (2022), CAD gave the last presentation of the day where we covered the main challenges we face in defending digital rights in the Global South.

You can see the presentation here. (In Spanish).

The Digital Autonomy Center is very grateful to the organizers of the Cybersecurity Day, and to Universidad Nacional of Colombia for inviting us to take part in the third edition of the event. We hope to continue strengthening the relationships which help defending the right to privacy for everyone.