Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Security

Defcon X - Live in Las Vegas 125

Posted by timothy from the land-of-the-free dept.
Navisto writes: "DEFCON X gathering has begun in Las Vegas already as everyone begins to prepare for the start of Friday's event at the Alexis Park. The hacking convention is in its' 10th year and this is said to be the largest yet. This year there are dozens of speeches happening ranging from wireless, .Net security all the way to Mac OS X AppleScript security issues and hacks. Gathering in Las Vegas brings all the hackers together. This year the official events of Defcon include DC Shoot, Capture the Flag,Hacker Jeopardy, Scavenger Hunt, and this year's first WarDriving Contest. When Live Streams are activated the information will be posted on defcon.org and on the Defcon Forums... PS - E-Mail the Alexis Park letting them know their site isn't cross-browser compatible. Not everyone uses IE and NS ;)"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Defcon X - Live in Las Vegas More

Defcon X - Live in Las Vegas

Comments Filter:

  • Alexis Park Site (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Teknogeek ( 542311 )
    >> PS - E-Mail the Alexis Park letting them know their site isn't cross-browser compatible. Not
    >> everyone uses IE and NS ;)"

    There's a deep irony in the home of DefCon not working with Opera.

    I think it's somewhere along the lines of the Microsoft website wsorking best with Netscape.

    • All it is is a flash thing. ugh. oh, and opera's half price for students. they sent me a code and email. i wasn't gonna buy it, i just wanted to see what the student discount was :P my only gripe with non-ie browsers is java and flash support... otherwise, i'd be using them more.

      as for Defcon, it's my kinda time. drunken. wish i could go, but i'm stuck working to pay $23k of tuition. boo that.

    • It's not ironic, it's appropriate. Anyone who went to any of the Defcons before the Alexis Park became the permanent home will agree.
  • Lets hope the goodness going on can/will reach the masses. And good luck to attendees. Hope you brought your fake ID's and smile for the Fed cameras that will be all over the place catalogging every pretty mug. Were a hat and glasses while you run Snort off your IPaqs, ok?

    So how many people will Adobe(TM) arrest this time? I can't help the sarcasim when I feel so sad. From the days of Xmodem and BBS's to fighting DRM, Adobe, MS et. al to let information be free. Sad days indeed, but I look forward with keen eye to what comes out of their.

  • I went to a DefCon a few years ago and the place was crawling with feds. That's not surprising since the guys at those conventions are potential world-class criminals. What annoyed and disturbed me was that I, basically a nobody, was traced back to my home and lab. For about 3 years afterwards I would hear odd clicks on a lot of my phonecalls and I had all of my nuclear-related grant proposals denied on the basis of "security".

    Anyway, my point is that these DefCon thingies are totally hard-core and you need to be careful.

    • I went to a DefCon a few years ago and the place was crawling with feds.

      That just makes for a good game of Spot the Fed [go.com].
    • >That's not surprising since the guys at those conventions are potential world-class criminals.

      No, many of them are just a bunch trying to be 31337 , a minority are real techies which are to smart or to well payed to act real foolish. If you have any 'world-class' you don't showup there and try to show off.

      >For about 3 years afterwards I would hear odd clicks on a lot of my phonecalls and I had all of my nuclear-related grant proposals denied on the basis of "security".

      guess you live in the land of the free ... :-(
      FWIW in the last 15 years, listening in on your phonecalls is 'click-less' or the tapping was done in a stone-age fashion

      hope you feel more at ease now :-)

      --red.

    • Re:Be discreet (Score:4, Flamebait)

      by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @09:51PM (#3996249) Homepage
      HAHAHAhahaha hohoho hehehe...hohoHAHAHHAHAAA...whoo...almost burst my lungs laughing there. Thanks for the chuckle.

      Defcon was, at one time, a cool place to go and meet really freaking cool people that didn't live anywhere near your area code. Since Defcon has been at the Alexis Park, however, it's attracted a completely different crowd. Basically, Defcon is the culmination of the Black Hat Briefings, a weeklong big-dollar security conference. The attitude is, come to Vegas during the week, see the shows, attend the real security briefings, and on the weekend we trot out the tattooed freaks for your amusement. Defcon isn't just a simple hacker con like Cuervocon or Xcon used to be. It's the weekend entertainment for a weeklong security conference. Few coders, but plenty of people dressed in black playing quake on windows laptops.

    • Re:Be discreet (Score:3, Interesting)

      by zCyl ( 14362 )
      I don't usually post this type of message.

      PhysicsGenius is not a physicist, and almost every post he makes is ficticious. Check his posting history and then stop modding him up!

  • Why does everything have to be "X"? Why can't they just use the number 10?

    We have "Generation X",
    "OS X"
    the "X BOX"
    the "X Games"
    the movie "Jason X"
    the movie "Triple X".

    Cut the marketing crap. Using the roman numeral "X" doesn't make anything more cool or "hip", it just makes it seem tired, rehashed, and derivative.

    Maybe they'll even advertise it as "Defcon: eXtreme"! I can hardly wait to see!
    • X BOX, X Games, and Triple X have nothign to do with the number 10. While the rest do, anyways I digress
    • We have "Generation X"

      Since when did "Generation X" mean "Generation 10" (1956 - 1976)?

      There's nothing wrong with being 40, but they ain't "gen xers"...
    • They might suddenly have the urge to call it Defcon XP...

      Get you Defcon XPrience soon...
    • Before you get too worked up about this, you should realize that the organizers of DefCon have always used Roman numerals to refer to their conferences. For example, the last one I attended was marketed as "DefCon VIII" on most t-shirts and paraphernalia I saw.

      If you were asking why do people use Roman numerals when perfectly good modern numbers exist? Well, I have to agree with you.

      I just wanted to point out that the organizers of DefCon were using Roman numerals long before the recent explosion of the letter X.

      peace.
    • Damn Dirty Romans!!!!

      X is something different in each of your examples. X in the generation is for the "unknown" - i.e., a generation without identity. For Defcon, Jason and the OS, it is simply the number ten. By the time things (like movies, operating systems or conventions) hit ten, they have generally switched to roman numerals. Many conventions and movies start out with roman numerals. For Games, it stands for eXtreme. Goofy, but it's used in several (some fictional) sports like XWF and the XFL. Maybe it's from X as in eXtra Large - XL, XXL. For that matter, the SuperBowl is in the thirties - XXX. No idea about the movie Triple X, never heard of it... does it have to do with porn? And the X Box is probably playing off of the sports X.

      Hit the yellow pages and see how many A's Plumbers and AAAA Towing companies there are, how many eMacs, eLamps, eMeters (whups) and other eThings there are - plus iBooks, iLink on Sony equipment, iPhones, etc... At least part of it is to use a single letter to distingush the item from others.

      If only my users weren't distinguished with the letter "L". *sigh*.

      --
      Evan

    • "Blackmail is such an ugly word. I prefer Extortion. The X makes it sound cool."
      -- Bender, "Futurama"

      Tim :)
    • I can't explain most of them, but for OS X, one of the reasons for choosing X over 10 is best summed up by Linus (when talking about the name Linux):

      "It's unix. The X has to be there. It's like a law."

    • They actually used 0A for the badges and shirts
  • Defcon used to be an "underground" convention where hacks and stories were openly shared as if everyday conversation. The events, which were fewer, were far more interesting and had fewer Joe Computer User's.
    The last time I went to Defcon, 2/3 of the "Hacker's Jeopardy" questions had nothing to do with computing whatsoever (causing a friend's team to lose--they answered the obscure encryption questions correctly but knew nothing of politics and pre-WW1 history history) and almost nobody was able to break into any of the servers in CTF.
    There were entirely too many people on LSD and just about everyone was too drunk to speak coherantly. There were some interesting talks and some interesting people, but Defcon is becoming just another computer technology and open source convention. Give a talk about breaking in to a system and the feds, which are 3/4 of the people there, will have a discussion with you.
    If any of this has changed, please post.

    Note that Defcon is still the absolute best place to get clothing, besides maybe ThinkGeek.
    • Out of curiosity, define "Joe Computer User". Do you mean some Dell-buying Windows yuppie, or a 15 year old script kiddie, or someone who knows quite a bit about computers, linux, etc. but is not a true "hacker"?
      • [offtopic reply to individual]

        Joe Computer User is a stereotype. It's fairly obvious that this term is a gross generalization, but I think most people would agree that this term refers to people who have very little knowledge about their computer and make no effort to learn more. Of course, your opinion of "very little knowledge" is relative to one's own level of computer knowledge, but if somebody's computer stops working correctly and he gets angry instead of inquisitive, he is probably an "average computer user" or "Joe Six-Pack" or whatever.

        And regarding your signature, you probably have some spyware installed. I do not get any requests for doubleclick.net cookies.

        peace.
        • You stated my definition of a Joe User, although far better than i could have done it. I was wondering who the parent considered to be a Joe User. I'm certainly not a "l33t hacker", but computer security interests me to no end. Would he call me a Joe User? About the sig, both my FreeBSD and Windows XP box get the requests. Maybe it's some bad voodoo.
  • PS - E-Mail the Alexis Park letting them know their site isn't cross-browser compatible. Not everyone uses IE and NS ;)"

    Oh, I have a sneaking suspicion that one of the Defcon attendees will 'fix' the page for them.

    Message to the soon-to-be [h]cracker of the Alexis Park webpage, while you are modifying the Alexis Park webpage, please remember to "demonstrate security bugs" in the Alexis Park employment database and "Flash" the webmaster out of the system.
  • interesting to see people drawing attention to their Wifi and BSD honeypots recently, especially while all of Americas hackers are getting loaded on hookers, shitty hotels and changing their homepage to Google-H4x0r [google.com]

  • Hotel recommendations for hackers (Score:4, Informative)

    by TeknoDragon ( 17295 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @08:37PM (#3995954) Journal
    Try the Alladin!

    yes, it's pricey and they make you walk through their mall... but but their network is 3MBps up AND down (unfortunately NAT'd) and here's the best part:

    dirty dirty... WINS traffic everywhere

    don't bother using the dumb-terminals they give you... just unplug it from the wall and plug yourself in... then connect with YOUR NIC using IE and try to browse... it will send you to their subscription page and you click 'OK' to be charged $10 for a 24 hour period of net usage

    I'd like to see/hear what the Defcon crew does to their network ;->
  • Here [9news.com] is somemore press by a small local shop, which after reading I find to be kind of funny
  • <Shameless Self-promotion>
    I will be giving a talk on The Freenet Project [freenetproject.org] at 5pm next Friday at DEFCON. If anyone would like a high-speed warts 'n all introduction to what's interesting about Freenet, past, present, and future, feel free to stop-by.
    </Shameless Self-promotion>
  • PS - E-Mail the Alexis Park letting them know their site isn't cross-browser compatible. Not everyone uses IE and NS ;)
    Well maybe they should! (what's that burning sensation?)
  • The site will not load with Mozilla, it is built entirely of Flash content. The only email address I could find, using IE (ugh!) was
    sales@alexispark.com.

    The contact page was simply a scan of a brouchure map cutout.

  • So was anyone kind enough to offer GOBBLES enough money to fly out and back?

    Are they really from Baltimore? (/me is from just north of DC)

  • Did they really offer prizes for hacking Las Vegas wireless networks. Please tell this is a joke.
  • I sure hope we don't get a play by play this year, it's annoying enough hearing about it in the first place.

    Those of us who care that much would be there already.

    So cut the shit.
  • Somewhere on Pecos near a liquor store and near a pancake house by the library

  • Defcon may be crawling with feds, but CTF rulez (Score:4, Informative)

    by goonda ( 158626 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @09:54PM (#3996262) Homepage
    CTF is the sole reason to attend Defcon. If you are a security admin responsible for firewalls, VPNs, and most importantly IDS systems, plugging into the CTF network is a fantastic learning experience. Mostly cause its the most malicious traffic you are ever likely to see in one place. Don't bring your work laptop ;) I like to start up services on my *nix box, start snort, and see who knocks on my door.
  • So much for the server with the page for the DC Shoot [23.org]...
  • This started out as being a way kool gathering but now it's like Burning Man. It's "DefCon - The Event"
  • PS - E-Mail the Alexis Park letting them know their site isn't cross-browser compatible. Not everyone uses IE and NS ;)"

    Their website came up blank in Opera. So I can't even see what f#$king email address to send my complaint to.
    Poor choice of hotel, if you ask me.

    • Check the page source. You can see a link to textonly.htm, which says you can email to sales@alexispark.com. Better yet, try this [alexispark.com].
    • Conferences choose hotels for many reasons other than their website.

      For example, from our research into hotels in Las Vegas, if a hotel has both a bar and gaming, then there are legal restrictions on the ability for someone under 21 to make their own reservations their, even on their own credit card (yes, unbelievable isn't it). By staying at a non-gaming hotel, such as the Alexis Park, one can get around those restrictions. I would imagine this might be a concern for Defcon.

      If one is trying to negotiate lower rates, and find a hotel that is less smokey, then the field is also much more limited. The newer hotels are often pricier; the older hotels are smokier. These are also factors.

      Other factors that come into play are available meeting space, connectivity in the rooms, the willingness of the hotel to negotiate (some hotels do have an attitude). These also influence the decision.

      Truthfully, in my experience, the web page of the hotel is usually the lowest concern. It is used for initial fact finding about the hotel, but once the negotiation is done, is not a significant factor.

      D
  • Is she there this time?
  • > E-Mail the Alexis Park letting them know their site isn't cross-browser compatible. Not everyone uses IE and NS ;)

    I really do find this a bit rich.

    First, their site isn't *horribly* cross-browser incompatible. Crumbs, I can Lynx it just fine.

    Second, I really have to wonder where you get off asking people to do this for you. If it was such a great requirement that their site fit this criterion, surely enough people would already be complaining. This, to my mind, is like asking people to email the webmaster telling them their site isn't in Swahili, Nepali or even Spanish. "Not everyone speaks English".
  • Gawd, wish I had a top floor room with an 802.11b antenna on the balcony facing defcon central - think of the honeypots you could setup to trap these guys, esp during the wardriving contest. A little weak encryption for cover, lots of pseudo-confidential bait, watch the fun.
  • Is spot the RIAA--they have to start somewhere!

    --hsm
  • I just thought I would let folks know there will be another computer security conference at the Alexis Park later this year, of a nature pretty different than Defcon. For those working in the industry, it would be well worth checking out.

    The 18th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference [acsac.org] will be held the week of December 9-13, 2002 at the Alexis Park. We're still in the process of finalizing the technical program, but I can tell you there will be two days of tutorials, followed by 2.5 days of technical programs. Tutorials will include Information System Security Basics, Understanding Biometric Technology, Denial Of Service Attacks-Background Diagnosis and Mitigation, XML Security, Cryptography and PKI Basics, Mobile and Wireless Security Issues, Risk Assessment, and Survivable Systems Analysis. Invited Speakers include Earl Boebert and Dan Geer.
    (and you read it on Slashdot first!)

    Look for Advance Program information to be going up on www.acsac.org [acsac.org] around September 1. If you have questions before then, feel free to visit the site, and contact one of the members of the conference committee.

    Daniel (Conference Chair, Tutorial Chair, ACSAC 18)
  • hey all, if anyone reading this goes, be sure to check out the minibosses [minibosses.com] - old college friends of mine who play video game rock!
  • ...shall we say, posterior penetration image that is the first thing you see on the Web site.

    Somebody has made their displeasure with this conference known in no uncertain terms!

Slashdot Top Deals

BLISS is ignorance.

Close