Hack Your Site Before Someone Else Does

You've heard of SQL injection, but what about second order SQL injection?

The first half of this session covers modern attacks, vulnerabilities, and trends in cyberspace. Then, we'll roll up our sleeves in the second half and compromise a site or three.

At the end of the session, you should have the following information:

- Familiarity with common modern attacks
- How to identify commonly used vulnerabilities in your solution and web site
- Familiarity with tools and techniques to exploit vulnerabilities

Design and Debug Alexa Skills using Azure

More than an introduction into building Alexa skills. This session covers:

- how to access the user's personal data like the zip code and email (with permission)
- best practices to store user data between sessions
- nameless invocation
- debugging Alexa skills
- deploying Alexa skills on Azure

The Whetstone.Alexa Nuget package contains classes for serializing and deserializing Alexa messages.

https://www.nuget.org/packages/Whetstone.Alexa/

Source code for this package is available at:

https://github.com/WhetstoneTechnologies/Whetstone.Alexa

Examples of using this package in an Alexa skill can be found here:

https://github.com/WhetstoneTechnologies/Whetstone.Alexa.AdventureSample

As step-by-step guide for deploying and debugging an Alexa Skill on Azure is available here:

https://github.com/WhetstoneTechnologies/Whetstone.Alexa.AdventureSample/blob/master/docs/spacefactstutorial/SpaceFactsTutorial01.md

The Incubator Experience

Ever wonder what it's like to found a start up and participate in an incubator? John did and was accepted to the PlayLabs@MIT incubator. He'll talk about the experience from the application process to demo day.

Developing Google Actions on Azure

Introduction to building Google Actions. This session steps through the process of configuring a Google Action, connecting it to DialogFlow, and wiring DialogFlow requests to REST APIs hosted on Azure for fulfillment. At the end of the session, attendees will have an understanding of all the components required to create a Google Action.

We will also cover the differences between Alexa and Google Home.

Code samples highlighted in this session are available on GitHub at:

https://github.com/WhetstoneTechnologies/Whetstone.Alexa.AdventureSample

I presented this session and the Alexa session at the Philly.NET Code Camp earlier this month.

If I can put the a Google Mini on the IoT Wi-Fi, I can show how to hit a breakpoint on a request originating from the device.

Designing and Developing Alexa Skills on Azure

Design and develop an Alexa Skill hosted on Azure.

This session starts with a voice UX design session. Before writing a line of code, we'll write a script that addresses how a user is likely to interact with a voice application on Alexa. Then, we'll dive into natural language design and Alexa Skill configuration. The Skill will be backed by an Azure Function and other Azure services.

Reuse or Rework? Making the Connection Between Amazon Alexa Skills and Google Actions

Planning to create a voice application and you need to support both Alexa and Google Actions? What are the similarities and differences in their stacks, security models and hosting architecture? What are the most important technical considerations before designing a voice-first, cross-platform experience? Learn from Microsoft Alums and AWS Certified Skill Builders how to overcome the challenges in a multi-platform environment - from design to implementation. Take home tips and tricks you can use for your next project.

Delivered this talk at the Voice SUMMIT 2019 in Newark and was met with plenty of positive feedback.

How to Deep Fake a Voice in Azure

Deep fakes used for nefarious purposes have been making the news lately, but there are commerically viable use cases to create a customize voice ranging from marketing, to gaming, to entertainment.

Learn how you to use sample voice file to create a custom voice 'skin' with Azure Custom Voice and Speech and use it in a chat bot.

Exploring Homomorphic Encryption with Microsoft SEAL

Homomorphic encryption allows computations to be applied to encrypted data. It's a simple statement that carries broad implications. This enables one party to send data to a second party which performs computations and returns the results without the need to decrypt. Homomorphic encryption has been available since 2009, but the computational power needed for practical use cases has not been available until recently. This presentation explores use cases and dives into the Microsoft SEAL library.