2025 · keynote
Regex for Fun and Profit
A primer on regular expressions, highlighting the specific applications of this skill for cybersecurity analysis. This presentation reviews the background, basic syntax, pitfalls, development tools and cybersecurity applications of regular expressions. Example syntax is based on the Perl-compatible Regular Expression (PCRE) flavor. This talk also contains a discussion of Regular Expression Denial of Service (REDoS) - both how this vulnerability is introduced and how to test for it. Practical applications demonstrated include searching through logs, utilizing the regex functionality in YARA to detect malware files, and including pattern matching in Python scripts.