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DEFCON 12 - After the Hangover
DECula writes "Humphrey Cheung has written an excellent article for Tomshardware about what WAS Defcon 12. The combination of talks about a BlueSniper antenna and BlueSnarfing was a good match."
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Its not a real convention hangover unless your first words after getting up are "oh yea, I married that chick last night". Which is not likely given the male/female ratio at Defcon.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Is there another field that has as many useless acronyms and busswords as the IT industry?
I mean, hell, you can't even describe it without USING A DAMNED ACRONYM.
Sheesh.
Sent from your iPad.
DEFCON stand for anyways?
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
I need one of those where I work. Each time you appear on the list, you get docked $50 from your pay :) Now to get it past the management.
Omg! There's a suicidegirls password on that board!
Where are the obligatory 100 pictures of weirded out booth babes?
What? It's not that kind of convention?
Crap. That's not much of a convention at all then...
Moo.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Didn't we discuss this the other day...
good ones here from DEFCON 12...
http://www.timekiller.org/gallery/SomeChick
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
Is this site slashdotted or do I not know how to click with my left mouse button?
Defcon was great. plenty of pictures are up for your post-Defcon viewing enjoyment.
or do all of these pictures from Defcon look like they were taken at a giant IRC meet?
Anyone know what happened in that fight they mentioned in the tomshardware article? I read this earlier and I was curious.
defcon stands for DEFinitely CONned out of a social life.
One of the pic sites has several photos of team Tsunami locked into an epic FPS netgame, complete with multicolored LAN cables and cans of soda, right before showcasing the team learning how to use REAL firearms at one of Nevada's many target ranges.....
One might doubt the wisdom of issuing sniper rifles and live ammunition to Counter Strike junkies.
Blackrobe "The Original TechnoWeenie!"
I only disagreed with a few points raised on it. For example, where it [an error occurred while processing this directive], it was kinda dumb.
On the next page, the analisys [an error occurred while processing this directive], again, very dumb.
Overall, a good article. But in the next time, I think we could see [an error occurred while processing this directive]
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
...hehe, i gotta love a tradition such as this: both parties being good sports and enjoying the moment. You know the agents consider being "assigned" to Defcon to be treat - it's fun. New stuff, new tech, new ideas, new kids breaking the system, just good ol' fun as i see it.
:)
Oh lord, the oh-no-it's-not-fun-it's-against-the-law crowd will come out on this one. Seriously though, know thine enemy, what good fortune that you can enjoy the company of said "enemy". Hell, the Defcon kids enjoy knowing the "Feds" are there and will be watching. This is the cat and mouse that i admire and enjoy.
i'm serious, good to see this tradition is still going strong. May both parties always be present, enjoy and learn....and i mean that, both parties. Happy hunting
Odd that they'd mention the BlueTooth rifle, but not mentioning the Shmoo 802.11 rifle..same idea, much sexier design, dangerous power levels...like, 13 Watts. They claimed that it was dangerous to stand in front of or behind it while it was on.
Yup, slashdotted. Here's what I've been able to read so far.
.PDF format at the convention. This traffic was immediately intercepted and the above humorous message was displayed on the projector. Also another person was emailing people asking how to get a fake ID. This was also intercepted and displayed. I have blacked out some identifying information to protect the users' privacy. [an error occurred while processing this directive]
The 12th annual Defcon hacker convention was held at the Alexis Park Hotel in Las Vegas Nevada. For three days, hackers exchanged ideas, presented new and sometimes scary information and partied hard. More than a hundred speakers gave dozens of talks on computer security, hacking and privacy issues.
For a mere $80 attendees received access to the talks, contests and the after-hours parties. In this article we will cover some of the more interesting contests and give you an overall feel for the convention so that you can decide whether you want to attend next year. Three download videos are included. [an error occurred while processing this directive]
Wall of Sheep
IMG: sheep1.jpg
The Wall of Sheep is a projector screen that displays captured usernames and passwords. The Wall, which originally was named as the Wall of Shame, is a time-honored tradition at Defcon where a loose knit group of people continuously sniffs the network for any plaintext usernames and passwords on the wired and wireless networks. Since this is a hacker convention, attendees using the Defcon network should protect their logins by using VPN, SSH or other encryption technology. Some attendees apparently didn't get the message.
In the first few years, the usernames and passwords were written on paper plates and then taped to the wall. As the number of passwords found grew, a better solution had to be found. A computer security engineer, named "Riverside", wrote the Wall of Sheep software from scratch. He also was one of the original people who started the Wall. The usernames and passwords cycle up and down so people can see all the information gathered since the start of the convention. In addition only the first three characters of the password are shown in order to protect the privacy of the user.
Riverside said that some people have been so ignorant in using the wireless at Defcon. He gave several examples of people who had their passwords intercepted, who then tried to change their passwords on the same insecure network, only to have the information intercepted again! Riverside examines all the new attacks at Defcon and then implements a defense at his daytime job.
About 200-500 passwords are found every year at Defcon. The typical passwords are email, FTP and other login passwords.
IMG: sheep2.jpg
This year, someone was dumb enough to email their tax returns in
As Riverside explains, "The Wall has shown people the importance of using encryption, not just at Defcon but in all network traffic. I have had security experts who have attended Black Hat, SANS and other conventions thank me for showing them how vulnerable their traffic was."
Video
Here is a downloadable video of the Wall of Sheep in action.
Wall of Sheep video - 1.4 MB - 1 Minute 24 Seconds
Spot The Fed
IMG: spotthefed.jpg
Another time-honored tradition at Defcon is the "Spot the Fed" contest. Attendees win shirts for spotting federal agents in the crowd. Most of the time the Feds are very easy to spot as they generally appear healthier and wear a more conservative style of clothing than the normal Defcon attendee.
At the beginning of a ta
Anyone? Details, please!!
I liked it when the guy figured out the phone number that they were using in the voip speech. He called up and yelled "owned" on the phone that was attached to the PA system, I fell out of my chair
Read all about AirPwn, the best wireless remote goatse display app ever used at a Defcon, here:
http://www.evilscheme.org/defcon/
At Defcon 12 this year my cow-orkers and I brought along a little piece of code called "airpwn." Airpwn is a platform for injection of application layer data on an 802.11b network. Although the potential for evil is very high with this tool, we decided to demonstrate it (and give it its first real field trial) on something nasty, but harmless (compared to say, wiping your hard-drive)
airpwn requires two 802.11b interfaces, one for listening, and another for injecting. It uses a config file with multiple config sections to respond to specific data packets with arbitrary content. For example, in the HTML goatse example, we look for any TCP data packets starting with "GET" or "POST" and respond with a valid server response including a reference to the canonical goatse image.
(Hugs toast!)
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
...unless someone posts the photos on the Internet the next day.
continued from here
Bluetooth Vulnerabilities
Hackers have found many flaws with Bluetooth devices. As these devices gain in popularity, the public needs to be made aware of vulnerability issues with the various Bluetooth devices such as phones, PDAs and wireless headsets.
Three of the most interesting attacks were Bluesnarfing, Bluetracking and Bluebugging. Bluesnarfing is attacking the Bluetooth device, usually a phone, to rip out information. Hackers can obtain phonebooks, calendars and stored SMS messages.
Bluetracking is tracking a person's movement by tracking their Bluetooth device. All Bluetooth devices have a unique address, similar to a MAC address on computer network cards. By using special sensors or antennas you can see where a particular Bluetooth device pops up and record a person's movement. [an error occurred while processing this directive]
Bluebugging involves sending executable commands to the Bluetooth device. With the proper software, you could secretly turn on a phone and make it call you. Why is this important? You have just turned the phone into a listening device that can record without your target knowing it.
BlueSniper
IMG: bluesniper.jpg
When the Flexilis team walked in with their BlueSniper Bluetooth sniper, everyone wanted to know what this evil looking contraption could do. It looks like a mutant cross between a sniper rifle and Ghostbusters particle canon, complete with nuclear backpack. Thankfully, it is a very simple device that can do one thing well: find and attack Bluetooth devices from far away.
The BlueSniper is a rifle stock with a scope and yagi antenna attached. A cable attaches the antenna to the Bluetooth card, which can be in a PDA or laptop computer. The laptop can be carried in a backpack with the cables connecting into the backpack, giving it the Ghostbusters look.
The Flexilis teams demonstrated the gun with some home-brewed Bluetooth scanning software. They pointed the gun down the hallways and out windows. Almost instantly, vulnerable phones with their unique Bluetooth device numbers appeared on the laptop screen. The device is powerful enough to detect devices through building walls.
Video Interview
Here is a downloadable interview with the Flexilis team that designed the BlueSniper Bluetooth rifle
Video - 14.9 MB - 3 Minutes 16 seconds
Vendor Area
IMG: lockpicks.jpg
The vendor area had several stores that sold everything from lockpicks to funny shirts. Most everything was available as a cash-only purchase. There are no paper trails here.
Irvine Underground was selling all types of lockpicks and lockpicking manuals. They also had a practice lockpick area where attendees could try out their newly purchased picks.
IMG: shirts.jpg
Hackers wanting to proclaim their skills to the whole world could buy cool shirts and stickers at the Jinx.com booth.
IMG: stickers.jpg
Wi-Fi Shootout Contest
IMG: pad.jpg
Defcon had its second annual Wi-Fi Shootout contest. This contest pits teams against each other in the pursuit of the longest 802.11 link. Teams must be able to send a test message from laptop to laptop out in the searing Nevada desert. P.A.D. was the winning team with an amazing 55.1 mile successful link.
The video/audio may not be released... so your guess is as good as mine. I didn't get to go to the talk but a bunch of other press guys did. Apparently the talk went downhill after he started advocating violent acts.
Looks like this putz wants to get some attention by getting stupid followers with minimal script-kiddie skillz to attack RNC web sites.
IHMO, it's the stupidest idea since the republicans decided to exise the word "french" from capitol hill menus.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I love how they take the piss out of people from the Wall of Sheep (most stupid name. ever.) while having numerous "[an error occurred while processing this directive]" error messages displayed across their site, maybe THEY should learn a thing or two first.
not safe for work.
1) The best you can propose is a DDOS attack? I mean, come on! That's just stupid, and causes collateral network slowdowns as well... how about something useful, like getting into the servers, redirecting to other websites or plain ol-fashioned defacing of main pages? A DDOS attack... it's just so lame...
2) The guy can't even write a decent call-to-arms. "undemocratic will of the people" ? Did someone proofread this crap?? ;-)
And no, I am not advocating that anyone should hack into any computer system, anywhere, because that would be wrong and illegal. No, really...
Besides, individual bodies actually showing up in person all at once would be much more convincing and newsworthy than a website being down for a few minutes. If you want to disrupt the convention, I'm guessing a whole bunch of protesters showing up in person would be more effective than shutting down a website.
Later that day, I talked to the fed who got nabbed in that spot the fed video. He was running Kismet when he got called up. Others around him whispered "He can't be a fed, he's running Kismet". Don't be fooled. I think some of these fed types dig technology as much as any hacker.
The Bluesniper rifle by the guys at Flexilis is so cool - I built the bluetooth gear for them from the kits on my bluedriving.com site. And I had a chance to look through the scope at DefCon, but didn't get to bluesnipe anyone with it yet.
The Shmoo Group has another rad wireless sniper rifle they showed at DefCon. (I think the Flexilis guys got the bag on Shmoo this time for walking in the first day carrying the rifle.) Check out Shmoo's build-it instructions: LINK
--
Carbolic
www.bluedriving.com
There is a story about the miners strike in England 1983-84, that the [fascist] state tried to have automated tape recorders to record any miners strike conversations, but everyone was talking about it then, and so the tapes ran out.
From the Article:
'The volume of information being seized for forensic analysis has mushroomed. It is not uncommon to see multiple terabytes of storage being examined. Agents said that some cases are approaching the petabyte range. Usually is because of emails and email attachments. Only with the development of better search techniques can the evidence be examined, as it is physically impossible to read every single email in many of these massive cases. [an error occurred while processing this directive]'
Sounds like a challenge to blow their storage capacity and search capacity, blow your Broadband upload and download limits, you know you want to, it is for a cause (the development of better search algoriths of course, or sedition, or both).
I reckon they store everything and look back at their logs when something crops up through less automated means.
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
For those curious about the Electronic Civil Disobedience hubub, the Inquirer has a couple paragraphs on what happened.
Speaking of BlueJacking et al, here's a nifty little Bluetooth utility that runs on cell/PDA and can fulfill your, errr, communication needs :-)
If you are able to get past the horrible English, that is.
http://www.net-cell.com/mp/index.html
where nerds don't have to drink alone with their imaginary friends!
i'm sorry, i'm just sleep deprived... but bitter. yes. very bitter.
I have had security experts who have attended Black Hat, SANS and other conventions thank me for showing them how vulnerable their traffic was."
"Security experts" eh? hahahah
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
The
Challenge of Managing Petabytes of Storage
The great sucking noise of the expense of many Petabyte cases has got to be visible somewhere outside classified media.
Like I care, I pay taxes in more of a bananna republic, well I do care a little, just want to persuade someone else to do the spade work, while it is not part of my job, at which point I will become a lacky like everyone else, probability of selling out 99.9 percent and rising.
That does mean I have not crossed the line and it makes me 0.1% questionble, good job I did not go for the security check for that non dual use war job back in 1993.
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
You'all might not want to skip this site: bluejackQ.com
Although I can see the argument that some sort of electronic attack on the RNC cold be a valid form of civil disobedience
No, it's not. If the clown doesn't like what the RNC has to say, his right is to comment on it, and try to draw attention to his counter-argument. Trying to shut someone else up by flooding out their web sites is just wrong.
individual bodies actually showing up in person all at once would be much more convincing and newsworthy than a website being down for a few minutes.
Only trouble is, showing up in person actually takes some guts, which is not at all in evidence in this kid's call for a DDOS attack.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That would be *really* fun to read about.
=D
I should know...I just went to see them a couple weekends ago in Portland. But they also have a book out - check out Powells.com
Priest very clearly stated that DEFCON staff and planers in no way, shape, or form encouraged the views of Crimethinc, or breaking the law and went on to emphasize that if people wish to protest injustice, they should do so within the law.
I hate to assume too much, but I hope we all know better than that. (Interpret this how you will.)
Seeing theKR1PT0 Car parked out back of the hotel was pretty cool.
The bumper stickers are the best part.
Forgive my use of the "royal you" in the following rant. Rant not directed at the parent poster, but at the idea in general.
Although I can see the argument that some sort of electronic attack on the RNC cold be a valid form of civil disobedience
It's a valid form of stupidity. We all know that the feds are worried about something going down during the conventions. That's why the DNC had so much security. Electronic attacks are (like it or not) considered a form of terrorism. You're pissed at the current administration for enacting laws that make electronic attacks severely punishable because "hacking is not a crime" or "information wants to have sex with me" or whatever stupid cliche you're stuck to this week. So what do you do about it? Commiting what is going to be portrayed as an act of terror precisely when and where it was predicted one will take place is no way to get the means of delivery declassified as worthy of special consideration. All it would do is give Mr. Ashcroft and friends an excuse to say "See? We told you we need to crack down on these computer guys, and this President is commited to doing just that!" Seriously... What kind of idiot would think that somebody who managed to get themselves elected POTUS would _NOT_ be able to spin such an event in their favor? We're talking about politics here, afterall.
This space intentionally left blank
They probably have the storage but probably blog analysis software is catching up on their analysis tools.
I remember reading that people are using blog analysis to track language development, presumably including cross blog information spread, so doing that with emails if you have everybodies might be an interesting academic exercise and it would be nice to know what the state of the art is, classifies and unclassified, and nicer to know what is hard and will be hard for the next 20 years.
At what point the information becomes worthy of an AskSlahdot is another question, left as an exercise to the 0 readers.
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
Was this conference the reason behind a large increase in SSH attack attemps over the past two weeks? The past few months had been relatively quiet in regard to SSH attacks (I was wondering if I'd been cracked and they weren't being reported any more), but I've been getting multiple attempts pretty much daily for the past two weeks. What's up?
She's fucking hideous, man. Ugly as fuck.
The most technical competitions at the CON were the Rootfu, Robotics, and the TCP/IP device competitons.
The Lockpicking contest was raw skill as well.
LosT
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."
I'd call it fascism.
Not safe at all :P
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
How desperate am I? I just looked at third-rate pr0n. Shouldn't my GIGABYTES of illegally-gotten pornogrophy be enough? I guess this is what /. and DefCon will drive a person to. And by the way, what nerd's sister was that?
What part of NOT US (i.e. thehacktivist.com) don't you understand? The ECD call was forwarded by another group, we made the information available to our readers.
This is the originating site:
http://phil.ist-backup.de/rncelectronic/