Slashdot Mirror
Computer Attack and Defense As Spectator Sport
zanbar writes "There was a Slashdot story in March about the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin -- using WiFi in a theater. On Jan 11th, an event at the Alamo will combine video with wireless.
LinuxTopGun.org gives details about a series of computer network attack competitions going on tour through North America.
They bring in a Linux/Apache web server, a bunch of teams bring in their laptops and attack it over a wireless network. Teams take turns onstage defending the server and then answering audience Q&A about their strategies. MCs interview competitors and explain network attacks to the audience. DJs mix and VJs flip live video with network visualization software -- animations like in the movie 'Hackers.' Judges award points for how well competitors perform, both online and onstage, and the top teams win prizes... It's like watching computer attacks as a live sport. There is also some discussion taking place in #ltg on efnet."
Magic 8 ball points to very doubtful.
ostiguy
I'm not a crook or a terrorist for God's sake. I'm in *training.* Coke is talking contract and they're considering me for a color commentator position with "Monday Night Crack."
Oh stop crying Ma. That does *not* mean I'm a junkie.
Jesus I've gotta move out of the basement and find my own place.
KFG
if they have trouble with video game tournaments getting mega-popular, i cant imagine how hard it will be to promote the local ghost white chubby kid typing away at a command prompt.
"wow, he typed a string of commands... the crowd hushes"
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Why not put phone booths up where the guys who are doing the hacking will go, and kit them out with bizarre headsets (with no apparent function) and laptops that have been doused in spray paint.
:)
Hack the planet!
And yes, I am kidding
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
It's like watching computer attacks as a live sport.
As the geeks slowly take over the earth, and the collective physical fitness of the human race goes down.. we'll be seeing this at the Olympics one day.
Awesome.
I want to see a DDoS illustration using people and ping pong balls. Now that's edutainment!
I wonder what network visualization tools they're using? It'd be interesting to see what visualization tools are compelling enough to use in a spectator sport.
I checked the site, but there was only a link to one.
Does anyone else know of any dynamic, visually-interesting (and preferably free) visualization tools? Something like this might be a big hit if done at conferences and the like. I'd like to introduce them to a few I attend.
.@.
Junkyard wars is 12 hours long (10building+1tweeking+1competing), but when slimmed down to an hour TV show it is one of the best things on tv.
Why?
Because they talk with the teams, and explain the engineering behind the plans. I think that by having teams rather than individuals compete, with a team radio or something that the audience could listen to it would be worth attending/watching.
How long does my younger brother have to wait for the cartoon?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Laptops used attack over a wireless network? Teams take turns onstage defending the server?
Bah, Feh!
Whatever happened to the good-old-days of experimental theatre when the audience was encouraged to take off _their_ clothes and join the fun onstage?!
--- have you healed your church website?
Naysayer's to the contrary, it's actually an interesting event.
I attended part of the last LTG at Mojo's Daily Grind. There were many, many people there participating and watching, and you have a lot of opportunity to meet new people. The actual "hacking" was slow, but there was music and a projector screen showing what was going on, if you could follow it. One of the better features was that after their attempts each team would have a Q and A session with the audience. I'm looking forward to attending the next one at the Alamo...
Hey,
My main question would be: How are they going to make this interesting?
I mean, computer security usually means good network structure, strong passwords, turning off services that aren't required, and keeping up to date with patches. And they almost certainly won't allow rewiring (i.e. firewall installation).
And the red team institutes a password requiring passwords to be 18 charachters long, and not found in any dictionary! The crowd goes wild!
Oh, and the blue team schedules an automatic twice daily apt-get of all updates! Surely the red team are done for?!
But no, the Red team have found a finger daemon they missed, and deactivated it! This is turning into a very close contest!...
Of course, the website talks about support by models from Hot-Tool Fashion Crew. So it could be good.
But it'll be hard.
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
-Well Norman, looks like team 1337 is going for the Port 24567 vulnerability.
-Yes Edmond, but I think that h4x0r's defenders probably have that patch on disk.
-(9 hours later)Oh, 1337's coders were just using that as a distraction while they sniffed other open ports.
-Well Ed, looks like team 1337 has really got a 'handle' on the buffer overflow.
-Thanks, Norm, looks like this could be the end for h4x0r. We'll be back with highlights after the break.
hazardfactory.org
Karma: Censored (mostly affected by decency laws)
It's a proven fact that more people hack Windows :)
than Linux. I think they'd open the competition up
to more people if they use the number one operating
system for the target. There is an enormous pool of
MCSE's nationwide they could draw upon to defend the
windows server. I personally think that would be a
lot more fun to watch. *cough* *cough*
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
While this idea sounds like it might be rather slow paced, I think this would be a great idea for an advanced network security class. The class is divided up into teams that is responsible for admin'ing a server. They have to keep it up while attacking the other team's machines. You get to learn about system admin as well as actual hacking techniques and defenses. I wish my school had a class like this...
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Today's secret ingredient is...a Tux webserver!!!
Fuki San! (yes, go ahead!) The challenger is now going into the KDE menu and invoking nmapfe!
(one of the guest judges:) Hahaha, he'll soon find out that the people running the server took notes from a different competition and firewalled everything but port 80 on the server.
Fuki San! (yes!) The Iron h4x0r Linux commented on the challenger's methods by saying true l337 people run nmap from the command line. The Iron h4x0r has also already discovered that only port 80 is open and is now launching a brute-force attack on any default CGI scripts the secret server may have installed.
Ah yes. They could call it the I 0w|\| j00 Stadium and have Iron Cracker for Linux, BSD, Solaris, and I guess Iron Cracker Windows would be like "Iron Chef TV Dinner" or something.
Would you really want a bunch of pasty white geeks getting their kit off on stage, and "joining in" on the action?
It would certainly violate most cities decency laws, as well as pushing the bounds of bad taste in ways only John Waters could almost tolerate.
the AC
I'm going to relapse into a quivering useless mass until I purge those thoughts from my poor brain
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on