Hackron: Hacking in the Canary Islands

In the Canary Islands talent alone isn’t enough, you also have to fight three hours of flying and a time difference to reach any conference on the mainland. Hackron was born out of that distance. I sit down with Igor Lukic, official ambassador for the Canaries, who got into this at the age of ten between IRC channels and forums where hacking knowledge was shared, and who today, at forty, leads the Red Team security side and organizes conferences.

We talk about why Hackron exists, about bringing hacking closer to a community that geography leaves disconnected, and about the format of the conference, which takes place right in the middle of the Tenerife carnival with a Call for Papers that Igor keeps open all year round. His goldmine is the CTF, which has produced players who ended up working as pentesters, some of them hired by Igor himself. When we recorded this chat, back in 2022, the conference was a week away.

Igor shares anecdotes that capture the atmosphere well, like tracking down an iron for a wrinkled tablecloth five minutes before a talk, or the joke of offering a rental motorbike to a speaker who couldn’t even ride a bicycle. Next year Hackron turns ten. A short, hurried chat, but one that makes clear why that community matters.