HITB
loreeventshacking
Stands for: Hack In The Box - the deep-knowledge conference born in Kuala Lumpur
Hack In The Box - the 'deep-knowledge' security conference born in Kuala Lumpur in the early 2000s, whose stages have moved across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
HITBSecConf made its name on technical depth - multi-track research talks, serious trainings, and its capture-the-flag heritage - and on geography: it was for years the gravitational center of the Asian security research scene, with the Amsterdam editions of the 2010s serving as its celebrated European counterpart until that chapter closed for good in 2023. The conference continues where it began and beyond, in Asia and the Middle East, keeping its founding proposition intact: research-grade content, no filler, and a stage that made clear world-class security research was never a Western monopoly.
HITBSecConf made its name on two things: technical depth, through multi-track research talks and serious trainings with a capture-the-flag heritage, and geography, by becoming for years the gravitational centre of the Asian security research scene.
The geographic point is the substantive one. Research communities need somewhere to gather, and when the recognised venues are all in one hemisphere the effect is not merely inconvenience. Work gets presented to the wrong audience or not at all, regional expertise stays invisible to the international field, and practitioners who cannot travel remain isolated from each other while being perfectly aware of what they are missing.
Its later expansion to European editions changed the shape without changing the argument. A conference that establishes itself as the place where serious work in a region is presented creates a feedback loop: good research goes there because the audience is there, and the audience comes because the research is. Breaking into that loop from nothing is difficult, which is why the venues that manage it matter far beyond their attendance figures.
Also known as: hitb, hitbsecconf, hack in the box