Luke Wurst
Luke brings with him two decades of cyber security and IT experience, along with a passion for explaining concepts in the simplest way possible. Inspired by the ingenuity (and sometimes accidental brilliance) found in game speed running strategies, he bridges the gap between seemingly disparate worlds to illuminate fundamental concepts in cyber security.
Session
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a critically acclaimed Nintendo 64 game from 1998, harbours a fascinating glitch: manipulating the game's state to trigger a null reference, which, under specific conditions, allows players to warp directly to the end credits, effectively "skipping" the entire game. This seemingly whimsical exploit mirrors a far more serious class of vulnerabilities in IT systems: null reference errors that malicious actors can leverage to bypass security measures, cause system instability, or gain unauthorized access. This talk will use the Zelda skip to explain how the exploit works and show how it can be used for malicious purposes in the enterprise.