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AvengerCon is a Hacker Con for Department of War Personnel
LAUREL, Md. – AvengerCon X, the free cyber event specifically for personnel supporting the Department of War cyberspace operations, returned to Maryland for the Con’s 10th anniversary at the Kossiakoff Center on the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory campus, June 30 and July 1, 2026.
AvengerCon is hosted by volunteers from the 780th Military Intelligence Brigade (Cyber), the Praetorians, to benefit the hackers of the U.S. Cyber Command and the DoW. The event features presentations, a hacker village, training workshops, and there was also an AMA-sanctioned FPV Drone Race.
Capt. Ken McGaffey, a Praetorian cyberspace operations officer and the event lead for AvengerCon X, provided the opening remarks, followed by Dr. Joe Billingsley, Military Cyber Professionals Association (MCPA), who talked about the mission of the MCPA, and he emphasized it is not an industry association.
“(The mission) It’s you. Those who are in the fight, today, and who have been in the past,” said Billingsley.
McGaffey then introduced the AvengerCon X keynote speakers, Army Maj. Skyler Onken and Capt. Andreas Kellas, both Praetorian alumni, who discussed the origins and growth of AvengerCon. Onken is an AvengerCon founder, currently serving as an Army Reservist, and co-founder of Twenty located in Arlington, Virginia. Kellas left the Army in 2021 and is a computer security researcher and PhD candidate at Columbia University.
“If you were in the 780th you were familiar with something called the Army Cyber Skills Challenge (est. 2014), which was ran by the warrant officers to really try to bring this warrior and cyber ethos together,” said Onken. “This was about the best we had at the time for building what an identity was to be a cycle warrior. But simultaneous to that, there were debates as to whether or not you could be both technical and a leader…”
“So, in essence, the problem that we were looking at culturally was why do we have to dichotomize the process of being both a hacker and being a Soldier? Why was there a strange comparison, you can be technical, or you could be a leader, but you can’t be both?” said Onken.
According to the AvengerCon founders, the goal was to define what it meant to be a cyber warrior. To create a culture that did not dichotomize these identities and allowed them to merge these two worlds together.
“If you look at what it means to be a hacker, it means that you are going to be curious, that you are going to be disruptive, that you’re going to do things that are atypical or that are, maybe antithetical to the status quo. That culture is critical,” said Onken “It’s just what the nature of hacking was, is how we look at a system, how to find the loopholes or the unintended functionality within the system, and take advantage of it. And at kind of the surface level, that runs antithetical to what the military was pushing… And as we looked at it, we said, you know, if we don’t actively try to merge these cultures together, the one will eat the other.”
Kellas added that in a “good year” the brigade might send three of four Soldiers to Las Vegas to attend DEF CON – he did emphasize that there are other conferences and there are legitimate reasons why so few attend, i.e. cost and current operations; however, expecting those few to share the culture, the current creativity and disruption experiences presented and demonstrated at these public (and costly) cyber conferences, with others, was not realistic.
Leading off, the first guiding principle that really drove the creation of AvengerCon was this idea to bring the hacker culture to the Cyber Mission Force (CMF).
“Why is the event called AvengerCon?”
Because those initial founders, who developed the initial concept in a Johnny Rockets on the Las Vegas strip, where assigned to A Company, 781st Military Intelligence Battalion (Cyber)… The Avengers.
“The Soldiers who don’t know the hacking culture – there’s a number of us who were hackers before we joined the Army – and then there are those who joined the Army and want to be cyber awesome, they want to be a cyber Soldier,” explained Onken. “They don’t understand this outside culture. They don’t even know that this world exists, or they only read about it online, and how do we bring this to them? We can’t fly them out to Vegas every year. And we kind of (came up with this) idea, essentially, we should just throw our own DEF CON.”
The second principle was of intellectual merit over rank. Since its inception, AvengerCon’s uniform was “Hacker Casual.” It emphasized that attendees were valued for their ideas, not their rank, and promoted open interaction among all participants. It was meant to instill an atmosphere where the most junior Soldier (Sailor, Marine or Airman) would feel comfortable contributing.
Principle three was AvengerCon is for the Soldiers. Their focus then and now, is not on the keynote speaker, the sponsor, the organizer, or the general officer – it was an opportunity to the Soldier to give their first talk. “Annually, this is something we’ve returned back to, especially in our AARs (after action reports). Did we achieve success in terms of keeping the focus on Soldiers,” said Kellas.
It would have been very easy for the AvengerCon organizers to invite a general officer; however, Onken stated the keynote speaker selection was very intentional.
“If our in-state was to merge these worlds, so that every Soldier could benefit from essentially a wider community and a way of thinking about cyber warfare and cyber operations, that was kind of moralistic as to what the technology, what the environment entailed. We realized we needed to bring in different people,” said Onken. “Year one was Eugene Spafford, and year two was Bruce Potter, and then year three was Chris Eagle… and then year four Daniel Cuthbert… that was all very, very intentional in the way that we did that.”
See AvengerCon History at https://avengercon.com/history for the full list.
The topic of the mid-day panel, in honor of AvengerCon’s tenth anniversary, was the “History of the 780th Military Intelligence Brigade (Cyber).” The 780th is the Army’s only offensive cyberspace operations brigade and will celebrate its 15th anniversary on December 1, 2026.
Although there might be some curious about the highlighted panel topic, those who heard the panelists or know of our history (notwithstanding as short as it is) know the significant impact of our people, past and present, on the origins, growth and maturity of the military cyber enterprise and ensuring our nation’s security.
The panel members, introduced by Col. Candy Boparai, the commander of the 780th MI BDE (CY) commander, included Col. (Retired) Benjamin Sangster; Chief Warrant Officer 5 (CW5) John O’Reilly; CW5 (Ret.) James Richards; Command Sgt. Maj. Ronald Krause; and Mr. Chad Dickerson.
“We continue to evolve, as Skyler (Onken) spoke about, ‘who would have thought of seeing drone racing at AvengerCon’ and yet this is where we are. So, who knows what the future will bring, but events like this truly help us at the 780th and in the Cyber Mission Force to broaden our horizons and just continue to grow,” said Bopari. “Sklyer and Andreas spoke about this culture of curiosity, and just always wanting to learn, and I agree with (them), that this is really emblematic of that culture.”
The panel moderator, Lt. Col. Robert Frost, brigade S3 (Operations), asked the panelists questions ranging from the unit’s biggest challenges to solving problems and challenges.
“I think, for me, the thing we’ve done the best, looking back over my entire time in the brigade and the CMF, is that we have normalized our independence,” said Richards. “So, when I started in the CMF, it was everything was ad hoc. Everything was the first time. You could see people writing awards for the end of tour, and everything was, did this for the first time, did that for the first time. And I also wondered how many of those things were the only time we did that, because we were experimenting and trying to figure it out.”
Frost left the audience with two thoughts on behalf of the group.
“First, about a decade ago, then Colonel (Jennifer) Buckner said something that when they were building this whole ship, they were 50 percent confident that they got 25 percent of it right,” said Frost. “To echo something the sergeant major said to those of you who are still in, you have the opportunity to change it, and then something else that stuck with me over time… I personally wish if I had been more thoughtful back in the day, you know, maybe we would have solved problems earlier. Your senior leaders enjoy feedback. They seek it out from you who are at the tip of the sphere. Help us shape the next ten years of both AvengerCon and the Brigade.”
Much like other hacker conferences there were presentations throughout the day in the main auditorium, as well as in the adjoining APL classrooms.
A huge shout out to all our second day presenters from the Praetorian Brigade to our sister unit, the 91st Cyber Brigade, U.S. Army National Guard; from the CMF, to academia, and industry. The topics ranged from ‘Smartphone OPSEC Risk: Mobile Apps that Target U.S. Service Members and their Families’ to ‘AI and Social Engineering in Offensive and Defensive Cyber Operations’, from ‘npm install && pwned: A Field Guide to the npm Malware Landscape’ to ‘Becoming and Exploit Developer in the Age of AI.’
The results of the first AvengerCon X FPV Drone Race, Drone Dominance, organized by Capt. Ryan Johnson, 780th MI BDE (CY), who is also a member of the Army Drone Team, was in fourth place, Ensign Joey Mentel U.S. Naval Academy, FPV Pilot name: JoeM7; third place Ensign Caden Warren, USNA, FPV Pilot name: BanquetFPV; second Place, Capt. SAM Fox, 780th MI BDE (CY), FPV Pilot name: UnfilteredFPV; and first place, Warrant Officer Jerimiah Katen, 780th MI BDE (CY) FPV Pilot name: iCrashFPV.
Much gratitude to our partners – the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the Army Cyber Institute at West Point, and the Military Cyber Professionals Association – as well as our sponsors and exhibitors.
We hope to see all our in-person and virtual attendees back for AvengerCon XI in the spring of 2027; and we will hope to see you at HammerCon V, hosted by our MCPA partners, hosted here at the Kossiakoff Center, on the JHUAPL campus, September 24, 2026.
Ubique Et Semper In Pugna
“Everywhere and Always...In the Fight!”
| Date Taken: | 07.03.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 07.03.2026 17:36 |
| Story ID: | 569350 |
| Location: | LAUREL, MARYLAND, US |
| Web Views: | 47 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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