The task is mammoth and hence i have divided it into chunks. I am listing my current progress here so can keep a track of what is going on in this project.
How This Project Works
Hacking Archives of India is an aggregator, not an authority. We do not originate any of the information listed here. Every entry in this archive is rooted in an external entity of trust — a conference website, an official schedule, a published video, or a speaker’s own profile. Our role is to catalogue, organize, and preserve references to work done by Indian security researchers across the globe.
If a conference page, video link, or slide deck disappears from its original source, we lose the ability to verify that entry. This is why we place a strong emphasis on stable, linkable references and why we track sources like Web Archive snapshots wherever possible.
What We Expect From a Conference to Be Covered
For a conference to be tracked in this project, it should meet the following minimum criteria:
- Fixed, stable URLs — Talk and schedule pages should remain accessible at the same URLs over time. If a conference routinely breaks or removes old links, we cannot reliably reference it.
- Published schedule details — The conference should publicly share its schedule including talk titles, speaker names, and ideally abstracts or descriptions.
- A verifiable reference page — At the very least, there should be a snapshot in the Wayback Machine or a similar archive that we can link to for verification. If no archival reference exists and the original page is gone, we have no way to confirm the entry.
Conferences that do not meet these criteria may be excluded even if Indian researchers have spoken there.
Currently Tracked Conferences
Indian Conferences
International Conferences
- Blackhat
- Hitbsecconf
- Defcon
- Hacklu
- Deepsec
- Rootcon
- Phdays
- Brucon
- Troopers
- 44con
- Cansecwest
- Grrcon
- Hackfest
- Appsecdayaustralia
- Hackinparis
- Syscan
- Ekoparty
- Pacsec
Award tracking
For now only one award that is “web hacking top 10” is included as it go through rigorous scrutiny and is in public. If we find more such awards we will track them. Prospective candidates
- Pwnie awards
More Things to track
- Indian Conferences
- sacon
- Add more international conferences
- CCC
- OWASP AppSec
- Defcon villages
- Books Listing
- Tool Authors
Conscious Decisions
I have made some conscious decisions around following items
- ACM sessions are not covered as even the event proceedings are behind paywall
- IEEE also would fall under same bucket of paywalled content
- Local regional chapter level events like owasp or null chapter proceedings are not covered
- No profile data to be listed on website to avoid overhead on data gathering process
- Workshops or trainings are not considered in this listing. Multiple reason listed below, hard to objectively consider one when rejecting others so entire class is not kept on website
- closed door events
- no requirement to publish content even if its free event
- There are more then 1700 bsides events that have happened some yearly, some monthly, some quaterly, some with cfp’s some curated some adhoq, as such bsides is an non organized conference. As bsides themselves have state https://x.com/SecurityBSides/status/1973061560655294686
A reminder for all, BSides is a fully decentralized movement. There is no BSides organization, no board, those evolved or were dissolved long ago. There are just a few volunteers who do administrative and messaging tasks. That means it is up to the organizers and their communities to hold themselves, and each other, accountable for maintaining the BSides ideals and ethos.
Why BlackHat MEA Is Not Covered
BlackHat MEA is intentionally excluded from this project. While Indian researchers have presented there, the conference does not maintain stable references to past editions. Speaker pages and schedule links are routinely removed or reorganized, old talk URLs stop working, and there is no reliable way to verify historical entries after the fact. Since this project depends on verifiable, linkable sources for every entry, BlackHat MEA does not meet our coverage criteria.
Panels as secondary
We used to list panels as primary candidates but have since moved to tracking them as secondary elements. Being part of a panel does not add to home page counts. The home page only lists talks, books, tools, awards (and workshops, keynotes, tool demos) for counts and ordering. Panels are still tracked and we are happy to add them; they are not the primary target and are tracked on a best-effort basis.