BSides Joburg is back for a 2nd year following a very successful inaugural event last year. Our event will take place on 26 July at the Focus Rooms in Johannesburg. We hope to make this event even better than the last.
Event Details
- Date: 26 July 2025
- Venue: Focus Rooms, Johannesburg
- Time: 08:00-18:00
- Theme: Shadow Algorithms: Rewriting Realities
Reflecting on BSides Joburg 2024
BSides Joburg 2024, held on 20 July at the Focus Rooms, was a resounding success! Kicking off with two hands-on workshops on 19 July, the event brought together cybersecurity enthusiasts, professionals, and researchers for a day of insightful discussions and skill-building. The main conference featured two tracks of incredible talks from the community, covering a diverse range of topics including skills development in cybersecurity, corporate espionage, fake iPhones, car hacking, certificate pinning and bypasses, quantum cryptography, and much more.
In addition to the engaging talks, we hosted an exciting Capture The Flag (CTF) competition, which saw over 50 participants putting their hacking skills to the test. The energy and enthusiasm from attendees, speakers, and volunteers made this year’s event truly memorable. Thank you to everyone who joined us—we look forward to making BSides Joburg even bigger and better in the future!
Our new approach to tickets
BSides Joburg is evolving, and so is our approach to ticketing. As a registered non-profit run entirely by volunteers, none of our organizers or volunteers receive any remuneration as required by the global BSides Charter – every cent we receive goes directly back into making BSides Joburg possible. Our financial model has historically relied heavily on sponsorships, which have allowed us to keep ticket prices very low compared to other conferences. However, as our community continues to grow, we’ve reached the limits of what we can accommodate within our current financial model. Simply asking sponsors to contribute more isn’t a sustainable solution, so we have had to rethink our financial model for the event.
Starting in 2025, to support future growth without placing additional financial pressure on sponsors, we are introducing a tiered ticketing system. Instead of a single flat rate for standard or corporate tickets, tickets will be sold in batches, with each new batch priced slightly higher. This approach encourages early purchases, allowing us to plan more effectively while also adding financial resilience to the event. Early Bird tickets will still be available at a discounted rate when tickets go on sale, and volunteering remains an option for those who need an alternative way to participate. If this approach proves effective at BSides Joburg, we will extend it to BSides Cape Town, ensuring both events can continue to grow while remaining financially sustainable.
Theme: Shadow Algorithms: Rewriting Realities
Given the times that we are in, the theme for BSides Joburg is “Shadow Algorithms: Rewriting Realities”, which explores explores the unseen influence of algorithms in shaping our understanding of the world. These digital mechanisms, often operating in the background, dictate the content we see, the narratives we engage with, and ultimately, our perception of reality. From social media feeds to search engine results, recommendation systems subtly curate information, reinforcing biases, amplifying certain viewpoints, and suppressing others. As these algorithms learn from our interactions, they create personalized echo chambers, where truth becomes subjective and malleable.
This raises critical questions: Who controls these algorithms? What unseen forces dictate the reality we consume? And as machine-driven curation deepens, are we seeing the world as it is—or only as it is being rewritten for us? “Shadow Algorithms” invites us to interrogate these hidden digital forces and reclaim agency over our own realities.
Our soundtrack for our theme
We used AI to generate a sound track for our theme. Hope you enjoy.
Get Involved
If you want to attend BSides Joburg, grab a ticket!
Our event can’t happen without our volunteers, if you would like to help us run the event, apply to be volunteer.
We’re looking for talks across the board, have you worked on an interesting problem or have a new approach to an existing problem? We would love to hear about it!
We hope to see you at our event in July!
