The Main Event: LSU Cyber Students Invited to Teach at DEF CON
June 30, 2025
When the annual hacker convention DEF CON kicks off in Las Vegas, Nevada, in August, an LSU cybersecurity team might be the only university-based team to host a workshop for some of the nation’s foremost cybersecurity experts.
DEF CON is the world’s largest and longest-running hacking conference and features talks, workshops, and competitions. LSU’s workshop, “Effectively Detecting Modern Malware with Volatility 3,” will teach how to defend against the sophisticated, memory-only malware techniques used by highly organized cyberattackers, such as ransomware and advanced persistent threat groups, which regularly target critical infrastructure—a core focus of cybersecurity research and education at LSU.
“LSU computer science students who choose the cybersecurity concentration gain first-hand experience with this type of analysis during their courses and research,” said Andrew Case, director of research at the cybersecurity firm Volexity, industry liaison and adjunct professor of cybersecurity at LSU, and leader of LSU’s DEF CON team. “This means our students and graduates are immediately effective at the frontiers of their field and able to deliver hands-on workshops at premiere cybersecurity conferences, such as DEF CON.”
Two LSU doctoral students will teach the workshop together with Case.
Lauren Pace
Lauren Pace from Covington, Louisiana, has already taken and taught the highly technical Malware Analysis and Reverse Engineering course at LSU and helped Case teach a similar workshop at last year’s DFRWS conference, held at LSU.
“I’m incredibly excited to now be assisting with the Volatility 3 workshop at DEF CON, and very thankful to Andrew for the opportunity,” Pace said. “It’s great to have an introduction to leading workshops without the full responsibility of being the primary instructor. This will also be my first time attending DEF CON and I’m thrilled for it to be in this capacity, representing LSU.”
Daniel Donze from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has already been working as an instructor at LSU for three years while working on his cybersecurity Ph.D. and serving as a red team advisor for the free, NSA-supported LSU Cybersecurity Clinic for small businesses in Louisiana. This fall, he will teach the highly technical Software Vulnerabilities and Exploit Development course at LSU.
Daniel Donze
“It’s always exciting to be able to give back to the community, whether through teaching, conference presentations, or workshops,” Donze said. “Malware has evolved to evade traditional forensics tools by covering up its tracks. However, memory forensics provides insight into systems as they run, making it much harder for malware to hide.”
Modern malware regularly conceals itself by hiding in the volatile memory of victim systems. Unlike traditional malware, which persists long-term on infected devices, memory-focused malware becomes untraceable upon reboot and avoids detection by traditional investigation techniques and tools. Such stealthy tactics require the use of advanced analysis methods, such as memory forensics, which is part of the cybersecurity curriculum at LSU.
“Our workshop will teach how to use Volatility 3, which is the most widely used open-source memory forensics framework, to quickly detect, analyze, and help with remediation from sophisticated attacks, such as ransomware deployments and digital espionage,” Case said. “The workshop is a mix of lecture and several hands-on labs, so attendees immediately learn the skills to find and remediate threats within the corporate networks they’re hired to protect.”
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