Alan Ilicic
Alan Ilicic is a Staff Android app/OS developer at Rivian with 8 years of experience, specializing in reactive architectures, security and performance optimization. He has a Ph.D. in electrochemical engineering and formerly was a chemistry professor for 8 years where he managed the chemistry lab, marked over 1000 final exams and blew stuff up. Outside of work Alan enjoys mountain biking, weight training and gardening.
2026 Talk
Talk Title: Evil AI vs. Open Source Linux: Zero competition in the realm of DNS exfiltration
Talk Abstract:
In the red corner we have an Evil AI local LLM armed with a client in the right hand and a server in the left. He's notoriously relentless with an unpredictable style fashioning multiple encoding strategies, chunk size tuning and payload throttling. Recent rumours suggest he's managed to unshackle himself from any external dependencies by leveraging Kotlin Native to execute a standalone binary.
In the blue corner we have a headless Debian instance ready to unleash a flurry of packages from the standard repos. He's known for being cold and calculated with a unique ability to deeply understand his opponent and counter every move. His defense is impenetrable with unforgiving iptables egress rules and a meticulously configured local DNS stub resolver. Word on the street is he's been training heavy with the DHCP hook to stay fresh on the latest nameserver.
This is a fight you don't want to miss. Both contenders are highly skilled slaughter machines, unwilling to accept anything less than a knock-out!
