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Security

Linux Top Gun Hacker Contest Report 179

Posted by timothy from the missing-austin dept.
A semi-anonymous reader writes with this account: "Kyley and I drove up to Austin for the Linux top gun hacker challenge event. We weren't sure what to expect, but looked forward to seeing a theatre with wireless internet, meeting security geeks, and learning new tricks at this hackfest. In the end, most people left early and unhappy, but I'm still glad we went." Read on for more on what was worthwhile about this event, and what left some of the audience disappointed.

We heard about this from a slashdot article ("Computer Attack and Defense As Spectator Sport").

Tough Audience

The event was held at the Alamo Drafthouse, a movie house with tables and a wireless network. The theatre was packed, and there was a waiting line going out the door. I talked to an admin who had driven in from Brownsville (South Texas) for this event, so obviously there was a lot of interest, although we didnt know what to expect. Many attendees, maybe 10%, had computers with them.

The event was supposed to start at 7 p.m., but because of technical difficulties, it didnt start until 9 p.m. In the outer lobby were vendors selling metal bras and edgy political/sex books. Very Austinesque.

The Event Itself

When the Top Gun event itself started, it went like this: there are a few registered teams; each team is given the 'target' box, and has ten minutes to secure it. After that, everyone in the room has thirty minutes to try to hack into the box. A few services had to be enabled -- http, https, ssh, smtp, and ftp. The defenders start with 100 points, and points are deducted if any of the services seemed unavailable, or if judges determined the box was compromised. DoS attacks are not allowed.

Already the idea sounded weak. On the big screen, they were running a homebrew GUI app that showed the score, time, IP addresses, and the services on the target. The services were being polled by a monitoring machine, and the response time was displayed. If the response time increased, i.e. the service was laggy, then points were automatically deducted from the defender's score. Laggy web server performance? That's a strange definition of 'hacked', but it is (or should have been) easy to monitor, which is probably why they did it.

Part of the draw to this event was that they were going to use "video animation" to "show how network attacks happen." I didn't have my hopes up for this, but I was still disapointed. They used their (Linux-based) homebrew GUI, which looked like it just used some libraries from etherape to draw lines from ips to the services on the target they attach to. That was it for the visualizations. The list of services was supposed to turn from green to red when they went slow, but for most of the night they stayed red and displayed just zeros, no readings. Their software appeared very buggy, hardly ever working, and windows in the background showed them fixing it as they went.

The commentary was sparse and uninformative. "Yes, that line shows connections to http, and it is taking a beating!" There was no discussion of exploits, security, concepts, attacks, what is currently happening, etc. After the attack session ended, the defenders were brought up for a brief Q&A, which reminded me of a post-fight boxing interview. "Uh, yeah, we felt good, we had a plan. A lot of things happened, and we applied patches."

Before, during, and after the attack session, no one knew what was happening. It seems that despite hours of trying by different teams, the target box was NEVER compromised. During the second Q&A session I stood up and asked, "Was the box hacked in any way whatsoever?" The reply? "Probably." But no one knew. If it had been hacked, I believe the person doing it would have said something, or at least bragged on the irc channel for the contest.

The entire operation seemed very amateurish. Technical difficulties occured during the event, giving one team a higher score becuase the monitoring software wasnt working to remove points. Most attendees left early, and a highlight of the evening was when someone posted ascii porn to the irc channel.

On the upside, the DJ had a good stream of music, there were more women than you'd expect, and some in small metal bras. And it was a gathering of a lot of smart geeks, a great opp to meet people.

Room for improvement.

The longest topic of conversation in the audience was how to fix this mess. We came up with some ideas:

Visuals

They should have used proven, off-the-shelf network visualization and monitoring tools for the event. We were _dying_ for some snort output, to see what exploits were being attempted. A tool like Demarc would have been perfect to show the events as they happened. Or at least snortsnarf or acid. The screen should have rotated between different monitoring tools to give an idea of what was happening.

Contest Format

The format of the event was flawed. The truth is most hackers take advantage of easy targets. Defending a box is not that hard. Simply applying the latest patches and configuring a basic iptables firewall about does it. After those steps are taken by the defending team, only truely leet hax0rs with 0day exploits are going to get root in thirty minutes.

A better format would be this: Bring an unpatched or lightly patched Linux server for everyone to attack. As soon as someone gets in, stop the show. The hacker gets a prize, and has to explain/show what they did. Then that vulnerability is patched, and the contest starts up again.

All in all, the event was a let down. Austin is a cool town, and lots of smart geeks came out. There is obviously interest in an event like this, but the execution didn't result in any entertainment or learning. If this is a PR event to generate publicity for the sponsors, I think it failed, because if this is an example of their organizational and technical skills, I would not hire them myself. But then, they're probably better at security than they are at public events.

Slashdot welcomes reader-submitted features; thanks to marc for this one.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Linux Top Gun Hacker Contest Report More

Linux Top Gun Hacker Contest Report

Comments Filter:

  • Dead Link? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Bush_man10 ( 461952 )
    Did someone hack this page? Seems it won't load for me :)

  • Overall impression? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chocolate Teapot ( 639869 ) on Thursday January 16, 2003 @01:16PM (#5095931) Homepage Journal
    On the upside, the DJ had a good stream of music, there were more women than you'd expect, and some in small metal bras
    So all-in-all, the evening was a resounding success then?
    • Flamebait? This is funny people. Women in small metal bras at a linux convention. Hell I wish I had gone just for that.
    • Where'd you get "flamebait" from?

      Its Funny! Laugh;-)

    • Nah, it'll be a, ummmmm, "big" success when it starts attracting women with *large* metal bras that just *look* small.

      I can't help but wonder though. Are the metal bras protection against the aliens beaming messages to their "assets"?

      KFG
    • It's a sad day when women in small metal bras and political flamage is considered 'Austinesque'. Used to be women in rumpled cowboy hats and gentle leftist politics were 'Austinesque'. I bet you few people there even knew who Willie Nelson is, and the ones who do know would look at him with scorn because he's a 'country' singer. Reminds me of a quote from 'Half-Baked'...

      Willie Nelson: "Man, I remember when a dime bag cost a dime. You know what I mean? You know how much condoms used to cost back in them days?"
      Thurgood: "How much?"
      Willie Nelson: "I don't know. We never used them."

    • I was there, and I'd call it a failure. The music wasn't very good, it was way too loud, and the metal bras didn't have to be big to cover the models. I left about 8:50 PM in disgust. Overall, it sounds like I made a good decision.



      The whole thing was a good idea, just poorly implemented. From the discussion of the people there, this was apparently a second attempt at this sort of thing. I heard that 2 weeks after the first attempt, they still didn't figure out who won.

  • lol (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Amateurish? From the site...

    "Everyone join #ltg on efnet for some Paco bashing, and to witness Dick Hunter in full rantitude.

    What are you expecting?!

  • Hacking (Score:5, Insightful)

    by burgburgburg ( 574866 ) <splisken06&email,com> on Thursday January 16, 2003 @01:17PM (#5095947)
    Another private activity that doesn't translate well to being a live public group activity.

    After the excitement of all of those hacker movies and TV shows, I'm suprised at this result.

    • Re:Hacking (Score:3, Funny)

      by JoeBuck ( 7947 )

      Just remember, you look at the screen intently, type really fast for 20 seconds or so, then shout "I'm in!"

      Or try the Russian variation: type really fast with one hand while clicking a ballpoint pen with the other, just so James Bond can give you an exploding pen later in the movie.

      • I am Invincible!

        Best shouted just before being doused in liquid nitrogen.

      • Or try the Russian variation: type really fast with one hand while clicking a ballpoint pen with the other, just so James Bond can give you an exploding pen later in the movie.

        Don't forget standing up, after the big shoot-out/movie climax, shouting "I am invincible!" just before having hundreds of gallons of LN2 poured over you.

        Kent

    • Re:Hacking (Score:5, Funny)

      by SnowDog_2112 ( 23900 ) on Thursday January 16, 2003 @02:06PM (#5096375) Homepage
      I have this mental image of something like The Iron Chef. I think the commentary style would work well :)

      Male Voice: "Iron Hacker Ginsburg is opening another xterm. I wonder what's going on?"
      Female Voice: "Is that kshell?"
      Male Voice: "Hrm. Well, I don't know...."
      Male Voice (from floor): "Sysop!"
      Male Voice: "Yes?"
      Male Voice (from floor): "Ginsburg is indeed opening another xterm, and it's not kshell, it's a special shell he's written himself. When I asked about it, he told me it has a custom completion tool and command substitution algorithm."
      Female Voice: "Oooh.."
      Male Voice: "Very unusual. Let's see what challenger Fordham has up his sleeve...."
    • I think it'd be a lot more interesting if they set it up like Red Hat's certification test - you get a really, really broken computer and you need to fix it. In the case of this it would be you get a really, really broken computer which still happens to be running TCP/IP, someone yells GO, then you need to get your webserver and mail server up before the bad dudes break in... I.e. both people start from 0 points and move up in real time, not someone starts with a 100 and it goes down.

  • Like the movie Hackers, or Swordfish... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KDan ( 90353 ) on Thursday January 16, 2003 @01:18PM (#5095953) Homepage
    Yet another event trying to make it look like hacking into computers is really cool and a fun activity... when in fact it's long, boring, solitary and quite pointless for most people when you think about it (especially pointless for those 14 year olds with too much time who would do better to go out and get laid than to DoS someone they don't like on IRC with one of the boxes they got into courtesy of code red or whatever). Daniel

  • hey (Score:5, Funny)

    by anotherone ( 132088 ) on Thursday January 16, 2003 @01:18PM (#5095955)
    there were more women than you'd expect, and some in small metal bras.

    pics plz

  • Uh HUH (Score:2, Funny)

    by LordYUK ( 552359 )
    "and a highlight of the evening was when someone posted ascii porn to the irc channel.

    You say that as if the highlight of ANY geekfest ISNT pr0n???? Just where are your priorities man!!

  • Austin humour (Score:5, Funny)

    by binaryDigit ( 557647 ) on Thursday January 16, 2003 @01:19PM (#5095960)
    On the upside, the DJ had a good stream of music, there were more women than you'd expect, and some in small metal bras
    One of the women was probably Leslie.
    • Leslie rawks.

    • Re:Austin humour (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      lol!

      Okay, for those who don't know who Leslie is or what makes this comment hilarious as all get out, I'll try to explain.

      Leslie is a real person, a very well known of person. Washington, DC has Bush, Austin has Leslie.

      Leslie is a crossdresser, often seen on 6th street on a friday night banging a bucket in a non-rythmetic way and other popular venues. Which the parent poster is stating here.

      There was a mayoral race a while ago, I've been told, that Leslie got his name on the ballot to be voted in, as a joke, I presume. I don't know how well he did, though.
      • Umm... the guy bangs the buckets on sixth street is not Leslie. I'm not even sure that guy dresses in drag.


        Leslie is the dude that rides a bicycle that pulls a cardboard and metal contraption he calls a home. He does indeed cross-dress, usually in a bikini top and thong. Just another example that in Austin, there is always someone weirder than you.

    • Re:Austin humour (Score:2, Funny)

      by JJ22 ( 558624 )
      austin humor i understand, and me with no mod points.
    • Leslie. Ugh. I'm pretty sure the scragly beard would have given him away. It's so frustrating to know he has a book published (after gaining noteriety as a cross-dressing bum on 6th st.), and there was a time when "Leslie for mayor" bumper stickers were going around.
      • I'm pretty sure the scragly beard would have given him away

        Yeah, but how much do you want to bet that many of the, uh, affection starved attendees still hit on him/her/it anyway ;)

    • Re:Austin humour (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yikes, as someone who lives in the Austin area, the thought of Leslie (well known local dirty homeless transvestite) in a small metal bra makes me want to lose my lunch.

    • Re:Austin humour (Score:3, Interesting)

      by parc ( 25467 )
      For those not familar: Leslie is a (pseudo) homeless cross-dresser in Austin. He/She has run for mayor in every election I've witnessed, and consistantly pulls in some votes. He/She is a true example of how Austin still holds on to some of what makes it special. For a little slideshow of leslie, go to this slide show [austin360.com]
    • Picture of Leslie [austintexas420.com]

  • and the real hackers... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MarvinMouse ( 323641 ) on Thursday January 16, 2003 @01:20PM (#5095977) Homepage Journal
    Won't even be at this show. They are too busy elsewhere.

    Personally, the idea of a hacking competition is interesting, but it would have to be done over a long period of time, and set up more like a war game than a boxing match.

    Skr1p7 k1dd13s treat hacking as a boxing match. Real hackers are far more efficient and skilled at it.

    An idea for a real hacking competition (Almost like capture the flag): Two sides to the fight, different locations for both. One side will have multiple targets, the other side will have multiple attackers.

    The goal of the attackers will be to get specific files from the targets, using any technique desired. (Including Social Engineering) The goal of the defenders will be to catch/name/etc the attackers, and thus completely neutralize them.

    Do this over a course of a month or a year, and make a TV show with the highlights of battle. Now that would be excellent viewing.

    ** NOTE: the term hacker above can also be translated as cracker for those who are offended by this use of the term hacker, thank you **
    • doesn't this violate the dmca?

      .oh yeah fuck the dmca.

    • A bunch of geeks sitting around trying to compromise a remote machine sounds like "hackers" to me.

      I assume that all of the people that posted something about "what real hackers do" must be the real thing. How else would they have insight into such an elite and presitgious field of uber-nerd malevolence?
    • ** NOTE: the term hacker above can also be translated as cracker for those who are offended by this use of the term hacker, thank you **

      I was telling that to some homey's on the South side last night about 2AM. They was strutting in there NFL jackets/NBA shorts with gold chains and giant medallion and a stocking caps. The was like like "This muthuh fnck1n cracker iz just aksin for a cap in his muthuhfnck1n a55!"

      I replied, "Sir, I appreciate that. Most people call me Hacker. And I much prefer Cracker."

      What swell fella's.
      (writing in from hospital)
    • I think it needs a bit of expansion. I'd set it up as an industrial or military espionage situation where *both* sides are trying to access vital data the other team has, while protecting their own. Even more like capture the flag than your suggestion.

      Each side would have three boxes with "hot" files on them. The goal of the game is to capture as many of your opponents hot files as you can while protecting your own. You get points for every file captured and, obviously, also loose points for every breach of your own security, even if some of those breaches don't result in the loss of a hot file. Points would also be given for every attacker "captured."

      Thus each side would have two squads. There would be the security team protecting the files, as well as a "tiger team" trying to gain access to the opposing teams systems.

      In fact, rather than calling it a "hacker's contest" I'd call it a Tiger Team contest.

      If nothing else it makes geeks sound more "macho."

      KFG
    • Your idea sort of reminds me of a game we used to play in high school called "Assassin". The game master assigned each player a target whom they were supposed to "assassinate" (via disk gun, toilet-paper garrotte, sticky-tack contact poison, alarm-clock bomb, etc.). So everyone was both a target and an assassin, but you never knew who was out to get you. Once you eliminated your target, you inherited their target. Last one left alive wins. Each game generally lasted for 2-3 weeks, depending on the number of players.

      (Naturally, this was several years ago. Any high schoolers caught doing something like this today would probably be locked up.)
      • We used to play that as well. However, our games typically only lasted about a week. But, we were ruthless, and almost nothing was forbidden. The only rules were that any attack had to be described to the GM before it happened, and it had to be something realistically buildable.


        I must have been blown up by a half dozen "car bombs" my senior year in high school. Of course, this was 1992, I'm sure that in today's political climate, this game would be viewed as extremely dangerous.

        • Hell, we played that back in 1983, complete with a nice black book of instructions detailing all the 'valid' methods of eliminating one's target. I believe the book was called "Killer", but I no longer have it so I'm not sure about that.

          The most popular method was to simply walk into a class your victim had and shoot him with a dart gun. But I bet if you tried that today you'd be expelled and given a court order to see a psychiatrist.

          Max

          • Sleeveless t-shirt under your other clothes marked 'bulletproof vest'. "Hey, I shot you!" "No, you didn't." *BANG*


            Cardboard box inserted in someone's locker, with label 'thermonuclear device'.


            Master the possibilities.

  • This sounds like ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mustangdavis ( 583344 ) on Thursday January 16, 2003 @01:22PM (#5095987) Homepage Journal


    ... a LAN party gone bad ....


    Speaking of which, did anyone get tired of the poorly thoughout contest and break into a game of Quake, Counter Strike, or War Craft III???


    Honestly, this event sounded like it had potential, but the organizers just didn't plan things well enough ... they obviuosl have never been to a well planed LAN party .... or maybe these are the guys that you get pissed at when they throw a reall bad LAN party :)

  • Boring, way boring.

    But, the format they used, while it has some problems, might be useful. I think a show-off night would be more fun. Everyone brings their laptops with their code on it, and they take turns showing off what they've done to the group on the big screen. While I wouldn't want to try this with a full theater, it'd be fun with 30-40 people.

  • An alternative would be a case-mod contest with action packed 3-D live animation of the modifications in progress and quotes from the contestents; "Um yeah, like we hacked the case with a jigsaw and added some blue neons right, and now it runs and looks cooler".

    Maybe even a contest to make the smallest distro right from downloading the latest mandrake linux to booting up on a 486DX66 with 32MB ram. Should be a fascinating spectator sport.

  • The contest (Score:5, Informative)

    by ChiefArcher ( 1753 ) on Thursday January 16, 2003 @01:25PM (#5096023) Homepage Journal
    Being on an actual team at the contest, It was a lot better than their 2nd attempt.. Every time LTG throws an event. it gets better..
    Although #2 required you to run a specific application on the webserver.. this one you could put anything you want.. (aka a static page with hello world).

    But all and all it was good.
    I came in #1 for the 2nd contest.
    Team 2600 came in 1st this time
    (We, team penguinati, came in second this time).

    but oh well.

    It was fun.... the best thing is the food and beer...

    ChiefArcher

  • My geeek card (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Take it, just take it.
    Seriously. I am not worthy of the title, because there is no way in hell you could ever drag me to one of these events.

    It turned out to be pretty boring?

    Gee, I wonder why.

    Hacking IMO isn't a spectator sport.

    Kinda like eating oatmeal isn't a spectator sport.

    Uh oh, here come the flamebait mods.

    Hey, it's my opinion folks. Don't like it? Reply with why. But you know I may just be the first to say it, but I'd be willing to bet many here are thinking the same thing.

    • Re:My geeek card (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's like the fishing channel, only with geeks instead of rednecks.

      It's like the golf channel, only with geeks instead of Republicans.

      It's like the NASCAR channel, only with geeks instead of trailer-trash.

      It's like the gardening channel, only with geeks instead of Aunt Lulu.

      One man's boredom is another man's thrill.

  • Pics? (Score:4, Informative)

    by geekfiend ( 448150 ) on Thursday January 16, 2003 @01:27PM (#5096037)
    http://www.gbronline.com/brooksdesign/

    Yah... People asked... I found... it seems...
  • perhaps a lightly patched server to begin with and teh team/attacker who comprommises gets to take over defending the box till it is compromised again..

  • "there were more women than you'd expect" (Score:5, Funny)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Thursday January 16, 2003 @01:29PM (#5096059) Journal
    What was her name?

  • Local information (Score:5, Informative)

    by chrysrobyn ( 106763 ) on Thursday January 16, 2003 @01:32PM (#5096090)

    Since this is in the Austin area, I recommend checking out the Austin area slash based GeekAustin [geekaustin.com]. They had a head's up on this event a while ago [geekaustin.org]. I haven't seen a followup yet.

  • Hacked Comp? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mugnyte ( 203225 ) on Thursday January 16, 2003 @01:36PM (#5096108) Journal

    Any hacker worth the time wouldn't shuffle off to an ACM-esque programming comp. Just doesn't seem to be what's cool to me. I'm much more inclined to believe the monitoring box was hacked to flop-like-a-fish all night.

    As far as hacking, why not run a box per team local to the gathering all night. They all have the same holes, and the team that can exploit it best wins.

    For the majority of my time though, I'd prefer to simply watch presentations about known hacks and documented exploits. Esp. given the mystery about the GOBBLE and such latests dealing with P2P.

    mug


    • I went expecting that it would be a demonstration of common cracking techniques and defenses. Unfortunately, everything was left to our imagination as to what was going on. Here's how they could have improved on this:


      1. Interview the attackers and ask them about the techniques they're applying.

      2. Have all the defending teams prepare their fucking boxes ahead of time. After the event starts, they can't touch them. That way information divulged by suggestion 1 can't be used to protect the boxes.

      3. Let people attack all the boxes at the same time.

      4. Improve the visualization using snort.

      5. Have web apps running on the server. Let them be simple and of the defending team's design (whatever apps they want), but they have to accomplish a specific task such as threaded discussion board, etc. Just a "hello world" web page is unrealistic for real-world comparisons.

      This was a fantastic disappointment for myself and the several hundred other people in attendance. I think the event was intended to provide the security company sponsoring it with research about current cracking techniques. I don't think they were so much interested in the educational opportunities that could have been made available to the attendees.

  • Ineffable (Score:3, Funny)

    by andbutso ( 637818 ) on Thursday January 16, 2003 @01:40PM (#5096148)
    the DJ had a good stream of music, there were more women than you'd expect, and some in small metal bras

    All elements meant to distract you from the fact that there is nothing going on in the room and you wasted gas and money driving there.
    I'm heading off to a dog show now...

  • More than the format... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ryan Amos ( 16972 ) on Thursday January 16, 2003 @01:51PM (#5096232)
    The entire idea of this contest is flawed. Like the article said, securing a box is trivial. Apply the newest patches and set up a simple firewall, bingo. But if everyone knew what was going to be open ahead of time, it'd just be a race to see who could run their exploit scripts first.

    Truth is, hacking in general is not rocket science. Anyone can do it. Securing a box is not hard, however the reason so many machines get hacked is ignorance and/or apathy to the situation. Hell, the hardest part about hacking is finding a box with holes to exploit. If you already know the box has holes, you can run a script to find them. I went to the first Linux top gun and it was a total washout as well. This one sounds a bit more organized (at the first one, half the attendees were bums there for pizza) but the entire idea of this contest just sounds stupid. Anyone can be a l33t h4x0r, it takes intelligence not to want to.

  • TOP GUN PHOTOS!!! (Score:5, Informative)

    by dallask ( 320655 ) <codeninja@gmail.cERDOSom minus math_god> on Thursday January 16, 2003 @01:51PM (#5096237) Homepage
    http://www.espressowebdesign.com/gallery/gallery.p hp?gallery=16

  • Team Penguinati (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ChiefArcher ( 1753 ) on Thursday January 16, 2003 @01:54PM (#5096254) Homepage Journal
    If you left too early and missed the penguinati presentation.. Check it out

    http://www.penguinati.com [penguinati.com]

    we did an "odd todd" ripoff to present our information.

    ChiefArcher

  • Hacker==Cracker? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Carbon Unit 549 ( 325547 ) on Thursday January 16, 2003 @01:58PM (#5096283) Homepage
    OK, I guess it's official now.
    Hacker = Cracker
    and good linux programmers are just good linux programmers.
    It's sad that mass media has finally triumped over the geeks.


  • On the upside, the DJ had a good stream of music, there were more women than you'd expect, and some in small metal bras.

    Come now, don't disappoint the Slashdot community. Where did you post the pictures?
  • Does anyone else find it amusing that they are not allowing DoS attacks but are awarding points based on service response times?

    It seems to be that the most legitimate measurement that response times provide in a hacking contest is how effective a DoS attack is.

    Past that, all the majority of that result comes from how much traffic you have. Last time I checked, this was a hacking contest, not a web server benchmark.
  • There is a big difference between what is enjoyable to a single being and what is enjoyable to a group. The movie industry is batting less than 10%.

    Expecting geeks to know what is entertaining in a group format is asking a little much. Also, the more intellegent the audience, the harder it is to satisfy them.

    Some real thought needs to be put into the venue. Conduct some tests and trials for christ sakes. That would have exposed the weaknesses of the format.

  • small metal bras? (Score:3, Funny)

    by AssFace ( 118098 ) <`stenz77' `at' `gmail.com'> on Thursday January 16, 2003 @02:13PM (#5096453) Homepage Journal
    tell me more about these bras that you speak of and that which they contained
  • There are a bunch of firearms enthusiasts in the open-source software community, but ESR's probably one of the most vocal :-)
  • Okay, so they failed on the visual aspect of the show. Good idea, maybe next time, keep it up. What about aural effects? Say a chime every time a packet was received by the target machine, or every 5th packet, etc? Different sounds for different packets. Maybe different sounds for packets aimed at different services. Each team could provide a "themed" sound board, and thus you could tell which team was attacking which service merely by the sound. Depending on how many teams are simulaneously attacking, it could be neat, or just really irritating. In addition to some good graphics, and actual possibility of a hack, it might a better night out of a bad night.
  • They should have taken a page from Swordfish and let the contestants receive blowjobs as they hacked. That would of spiced things up.
  • This event BETTER have had Tom Cruise in it, and in the most intense parts of the action, they better have played "Danger Zone"...

  • How do you improve the event? (Score:5, Funny)

    by cornice ( 9801 ) on Thursday January 16, 2003 @02:36PM (#5096679)
    Use real targets.

    Create a points system based on method of entry and create a rating system (open, hardened, impossible, etc.) for targets. Scores are created by combining the various entry levels with the various target ratings. Targets could be selected by the audiencs, the teams or the event coordinators. Targets could be published before hand or not.

    Granted this would be shut down so fast. All involved would be sent to Guantanamo Bay for being terrorists but it would be _really_ fun to watch. I also think that it could be done without causing real damage and in fact would _increase_ security. It would still be shut down though.
  • I was disappointed even reading this article!
  • They talk about women in small metal bras at a hacker event and there is at last count only one Root Access joke. Come on people your letting the side down.
  • This type of event is like golf--sucks to watch, but fun to play. However, if you want to host an event that is fun to watch, how about a reality TV series? Put a handful of the most l33t haX0rs you can find in a hooked up pad and see how they work and interact with each other. Think it will work?

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