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Hacker Conventions Ranked By Bandwidth-Per-Visitor

Posted by timothy on from the elbowroom-is-too-hard-to-quantify dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes "Ever wondered how much bandwidth you will get at a hacker con? This web page tells you how much. It shows the total bandwidth and bandwidth for each visitor for all the recent hacker cons." It looks like Defcon attendees get the short end of the stick, while those at metarheinmain chaosdays are practically swimming in bandwidth. There are a lot of other cons (a few examples listed here) which I'd like to see added to this list.

17 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. How much does it matter anyhow? by Arainach · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You'd have to be pretty crazy and/or desperate to risk using the provided bandwidth at DefCon (or any hacker con) for that matter. Regardless of how much faith you may have in the people running the network, you're surrounded on all sides by people who would like nothing more than to steal your information. While at DefCon, stay away from the ATMs and if at all possible stay away from the network entirely.

    1. Re:How much does it matter anyhow? by lysergic.acid · · Score: 2, Insightful

      yes, because we all know that 99% of all internet traffic is used for the transmission of e-mail passwords, credit card info, social security numbers, and other sensitive personal info. after all, no one would possibly want to read the news, or check their favorite blog or web comic, or play some online games while at DefCon.

      and i'm sure no one at DefCon has ever heard of SSL.

    2. Re:How much does it matter anyhow? by Eil · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I can't tell if this is a troll or not, but I'll bite either way...

      You'd have to be pretty crazy and/or desperate to risk using the provided bandwidth at DefCon (or any hacker con) for that matter.

      I don't think you understand much about hackers or hacker conventions. The conventions tend to have the best network management and security possible, period. That's what these people do all day long. For most of them, it's their job to make things secure so of course they're going to put more effort into it, especially with their friends hanging around.

      Regardless of how much faith you may have in the people running the network, you're surrounded on all sides by people who would like nothing more than to steal your information.

      Sheesh, let me guess, you check under your bed for hackers at night before you go to sleep?

      First off, it's universally accepted at all hacker cons that you don't attack the infrastructure put in place by either the con or the hotel. Doing so will just ruin it everyone. It's the kind of thing that will get a person banned from both permanently.

      Second, hackers do not want your information. They mainly care about exploring and exposing weaknesses that will allow less scrupulous elements of society to steal your data. (Namely, fraudsters and most federal governments.)

      While at DefCon, stay away from the ATMs and if at all possible stay away from the network entirely.

      The advice to stay away from free-standing ATMs is always applicable, but I have no sympathy for someone who sends sensitive information over an insecure channel no matter which network they're on.

    3. Re:How much does it matter anyhow? by flosofl · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You'd have to be pretty crazy and/or desperate to risk using the provided bandwidth at DefCon (or any hacker con) for that matter. Regardless of how much faith you may have in the people running the network, you're surrounded on all sides by people who would like nothing more than to steal your information. While at DefCon, stay away from the ATMs and if at all possible stay away from the network entirely.

      Dude, what? I was there and as long as you use OpenVPN back to your home box and proxy everything through your cable modem you're going to be OK. Or create a SOCKS proxy using a ssh tunnel back to your home connection.

      Yeah, stay away from the ATMs because you will get raped by the fees. Or are you trying to say that someone will put a magstripe and PIN harvester on the machines. As if. Not only was security seriously stepped up compared to the last two years, the casinos have cameras that do nothing but monitor the ATMs precisely to stop this (I chatted up one of the security suits this year).

      Breath easy and just be aware of what kind of traffic is leaving and entering your system.

      Did you even go this year? If you did, I bet you were the one cowering in the corner removing the batteries from all your devices "just in case".

      --
      "This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence" - Vyvyan "The Young Ones"
    4. Re:How much does it matter anyhow? by leuk_he · · Score: 2, Insightful

      He is one of the spooks who want to keep their data safe instead of hacking...

  2. I don't get it. by SoapBox17 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Color me stupid, but I don't understand why anyone would care how much bandwidth per atendee is available at a hacker convention. You don't got to *do* hacking, you go to learn about hacking from people in the same building (thus requiring little to no B/W). And from what I have heard about Defcon you are best to not bring any of your own devices at all, lest you end up hacked yourself and on the wall of shame.

    1. Re:I don't get it. by wik · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Put another way, the bisection bandwidth between participants at a decent conference should be high. The bandwidth external to the conference really shouldn't matter.

      There are much better ways to get an internet connection which don't involve spending hundreds of dollars to get into a hotel.

      --
      / \
      \ / ASCII ribbon campaign for peace
      x
      / \
    2. Re:I don't get it. by flirzan · · Score: 5, Informative

      You don't got to *do* hacking, you go to learn about hacking from people in the same building (thus requiring little to no B/W).

      You have clearly never been to defcon, and/or miss the point of the con altogether. Sure, there are great speakers giving talks about important and relevant topics. Some of them are even useful...

      But the larger part of con the for a lot of the attendees is to get together with like-minded individuals and...wait for it...hack.

      Here are some examples of the hacking that went on at this year's defcon. The Lost@con Mystersy Challenge results aren't there, and as a participant I can tell you that it required breaking crypto, circumventing physical security measures, debugging code, hardware hacking skills, and trick-or-treating, among other things. I don't know what your definition of "hacking" is, but it should probably include a few of those.

      This also doesn't mention some of the cool things going on in the lock-picking village, the hardware hacking village, the wi-fi village, etc...

      And from what I have heard about Defcon you are best to not bring any of your own devices at all, lest you end up hacked yourself and on the wall of shame.

      Most people I know wipe and reimage their machines after spending any time at all on the defcon network. They call it the most hostile network environment on the planet for good reasons. That being said, the Wall of Sheep has absolutely nothing to do with being "hacked", it simply displays usernames and (partial) passwords for people who are too stupid or lazy to use encrypted protocols. If you show up at a hacker convention and can't be bothered to use TLS or SSL for your email, you deserve to be shamed.

      --
      Twinkies sure taste good for something that is 68% air.
    3. Re:I don't get it. by lysergic.acid · · Score: 2, Insightful

      if you really are there to learn, then being on the wall of sheep shouldn't be a deterrent from bringing your own device. being hacked is a learning experience in itself.

      and wouldn't you rather be hacked at a convention which promotes education and security awareness rather than in the real world where you're likely to be hacked by a script kiddie who's motivated by malice and won't be so kind as to let you know that your security has been compromised?

      if you do find your system hacked into and can't figure out how it happened, i'm sure you could find plenty of people around you who could help you find the security hole and patch it up. i mean, it's all in good fun most of the time. it's not like someone at DefCon will hack into your laptop and then purposely delete all of your important documents or infect you with a virus.

  3. Location by Vertana · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Location plays a major part in how much bandwidth is going to be available. Beyond being just dependent on the ISP based on location and what companies are available there, you also have to look at which building it is being held in. DEFCON may have gotten the short end of the stick because the owners of the building they used would only allow so much. Not that a lot is needed (at least in comparison to how many participants are there)... nobody exactly goes to DEFCON to torrent an HD movie.

    --
    "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec^2" -Marcus Dolengo
  4. Re:If you were at Defcon... by Darkness404 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There has to be at least one press member there that decides to go check his e-mail...

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  5. but what about... by liquidf · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...BiMonSciFiCon?!? of all the cons, that is obviously the most important

    --
    i've had just about enough of your vassar bashing.
  6. SIGGRAPH by morrison · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It'd be interesting to see the bandwidth statistics for the annual ACM SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference. With tens of thousands of visitors and thousands of full-conference attendees (a huge portion of which are on their laptops all week), I've yet to see a SIGGRAPH conference that didn't bring a convention center's networking to its knees (as well as most surrounding hotel networks). Of course, the per-person bandwidth is relatively low with so many users, but it would be interesting to see the statistics throughout the week regardless.

    Especially for such a massive conference that is accustomed to the sustained high-tech audio/video load and with organizers that try to anticipate the high-usage (and have a corresponding budget to prepare), I suspect that there are considerably more bits transferred during SIGGRAPH than most any other conference through sheer size alone.

    --
    Cheers!
    Sean
  7. Re:First Post! by spazdor · · Score: 4, Funny

    I was too slow! Goddamn this lousy con wifi access!

    --
    DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
  8. Duh! by itwasgreektome · · Score: 3, Funny

    Ummm, it's a hacker convention- Why would they purchase their own bandwidth when there's wireless in the office above?

  9. A thing about german conventions by foalkn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    We dont pay for our bandwidth... We get it for free and even the largest german internet provider asks us if they could peer with us.

  10. CCC's network information can be found here by kupojsin · · Score: 2, Informative

    https://events.ccc.de/camp/2007/Fahrplan/attachments/1348-Camp07-NetworkStats.pdf (the line had at least 300MBit for 1800 attendees ) Hope Number Six had a 45mb uplink, but only 10mb was used due to a bad cable connection and roughly 3000 attendees straight from network operator from the convention) someone can contact dragorn on nycwireless.net or watch the closing ceremonies of the last hope for the specs this year