Threat Operations leader at Nvidia
Christopher Cottrell is a Threat Operations leader at Nvidia. By failing upwards into management after 10 years of being a red team operator for the government, he focuses on strategy, tactics, and philosophy the same way he applied himself to being a tactical operator. By taking a step back from the keyboard, he has discovered pitfalls that cyber teams are heading towards and is working on strategies to help the community avoid them. Christopher enjoys helping inspire others to be their best selves through writing papers on cyber philosophy, or by creating programs to give opportunities to break into cyber. He presented the red team development program at DEF CON 28 in the Red Team Village, titled "Guerilla Red Team: Decentralize the Adversary", and served on a joint panel at DEF CON 29 between the Red Team Village and the AI Village discussing the evolution of offensive security as AI/ML becomes more prevalent in the threat landscape. Christopher has published quality of life tools for Cobalt Strike (Deckbuilder, Quickrundown) and C2 tools for securely exfiling secret keys (Catcher). However his proudest achievement is serving daily as a husband and father to people who will forever be greater than himself.
The Naval Fleet: a symphony of specialized assets working together to complete a goal. Fleet doctrine and tactics were upended in the early 1900s when two new classes of ships were introduced: the carrier and the submarine. Looking at the past 20 years of cyber doctrine, new classes of capabilities were introduced: the red team and the hunt team. But unlike modern fleets, cyber teams are not properly incorporating these new assets to great effect, squandering the potential of the capability. The assets are leashed when they should be unleashed. By studying the unique capabilities of ships in a fleet and pairing them with a cyber discipline, we unlock countless real world examples of naval warfare tactics, battles, and strategy that can be applied to cyber and freeing the true potential of each cyber element. Like the critical evolution of the modern fleet from Battleship centric to Carrier centric, modern cyber teams are past due to make the same evolution from SOC centric, to Hunt centric.
