Positive Hack Talks is a free, technical, community-driven cybersecurity meetup for people who break, build, defend, and investigate. No marketing, no sales, no business talks.

Got something worth sharing? Submit a talk, a community stand-up or a village and be part of PHT Goa.

Past PHTs

→ Bengaluru, India
→ Hanoi, Vietnam
→ Cairo, Egypt
→ Jakarta, Indonesia
→ São Paulo, Brazil
→ Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Or search #PHTalks on X to see what people say.

Where & When

Date: December 10, 2026
City: Goa, India
Venue: Taj Cidade de Goa Heritage, Dona Paula, Panaji

→ Event website

What you can submit

Pick the session type that fits your proposal.

Talks

Offensive talk (primary focus)
Everything offensive: pentesting, red teaming, exploit development, vulnerability research, bug hunting, OSINT, reverse engineering, web, mobile, cloud and hardware hacking, social engineering and the like.

Defensive talk
Most talks at Positive Hack Talks are about offensive security. We also accept defense talks, especially those closely tied to offensive techniques or giving a defender's view of real-world attacks.

Community talk
Not a technical deep dive: a talk about the people in security. A story worth telling, what you learned building a local community, a CTF team or a bug hunting group, how you bring newcomers into the field, an appeal to the community, a personal take on where we are heading. It has to be real and valuable to the people in the room, not a pitch.

Community stand-ups

Community stand-up
10 minutes on stage for the local community: a tool you built, a finding, or a hot take. Short and to the point.

Villages

Village
A community-run space at the venue for the whole day (09:00–18:00): hands-on activities, demos, challenges, anything that gets visitors doing rather than listening. Tell us who runs it, what visitors will do there and what you need from the venue.

Format

• Talks: up to 40 minutes total, Q&A included
• Community stand-ups: 10 minutes
• Villages: all day, at the venue
• Everything on stage is in English (live translation from English to Hindi available)

No AI slop

We do not accept AI slop. A proposal is rejected without further review if:

• the topic or the abstract was generated by an AI tool rather than written by you about work you did;
• it is a generic overview ("AI in cybersecurity", "top threats of the year") with no research of your own behind it;
• the findings, tools or demo it promises do not exist yet.

Using AI in your research, or to polish your English, is fine. Presenting generated content as your research is not. If we are not sure, we will ask you for details before deciding.

No product pitches

Positive Hack Talks is not a vendor stage, and that goes for us too: Positive Technologies does not pitch its own products at PHT either. We do not accept open promotion of commercial products: a talk, a stand-up or a village built around selling a product, a service or a company is rejected.

Community-oriented projects are welcome: open-source tools, free resources, community platforms and research you share with everyone. If your work is tied to a product you build, focus on the technique and the findings, not on the product itself.

Guidelines for Submissions

• Write a clear, specific abstract. Say what you found, built or will run, how, and what people will see. We must understand exactly what you will present.
• Less talk, more demo. Show real research, tooling or practical techniques.
• Talks and stand-ups may be recorded and slides published if you give your consent.

Speaker Journey

• By November 20, 2026 (end of day): submit your proposal
• By November 23, 2026 (end of day): the PHTalks team reviews submissions and notifies everyone who applied
  (Goa local time, IST, UTC+5:30)

We support our talk speakers (Offensive, Defensive and Community talks): speakers coming from another city or another country get a round-trip flight to Goa and two nights of accommodation; local speakers get their taxi fare to and from the venue. Every talk speaker gets a PHT swag pack and an invitation to the speaker party.

Want to stay longer at your own expense? Tell us your travel dates before we book your tickets, and we will book the flights for those dates. Extra nights beyond the two we cover are on you.

Community stand-ups and villages are community-run: they come without travel, accommodation, taxi fare or other speaker perks.

Coming from abroad? Check the visa requirements for India early and make sure you can get one in time.

Selection Process

Proposals are evaluated for clarity, originality, technical depth and community value.

Speakers are confirmed on a rolling basis and published on the website early. Our events come together quickly, usually within 1–2 months, and the lineup keeps evolving until the day.

Contact

Questions? Email us at phtalks@ptsecurity.com

You can enter proposals until 2026-11-20 12:51 (Asia/Kolkata), 3 weeks, 6 days from now.