CFB: Call for Boxen

[sk00t]

0wn the box? Own the box!
CFB: Call for Boxen

Vendors, hardening projects and security-centric distros? Random people with Crays in their basement? Bring your gear, plug it in, and prove your worth. Earn cool prizes (we don't know exactly what yet, but they'll be cool, we promise) and earn mucho street cred.

If we don't see at least two boxes from the OpenBSD folks, and Adamantix, Hardened Gentoo and others, we can only assume you're nancy-boys. Here's a chance to put your money, and your gear, where your mouth is.

But what about Vista? OSX? Quick Bill, tear the BlueHat boys away from their X-Boxes and get to work! Steve, bring the OSX security team (you have one, right?) back from the Ashram and tell them they have a chance to redeem their Karmic energy from the last few 0day embarassments!

And how about the freaky stuff? Amigas running Cern httpd on Plan 9? Pocket calculators with IP stacks? Bring it on.

For our part, we'll make sure the scenarios are real, and everyone gets a fighting chance. We're putting some of our own gear up for grabs as well.

To sign up, post here, send me a PM, or send a mail to ownthebox {at} cipherpunx {dot} org.


The DCNetworking folks are graciously giving us space and connectivity, but BOTH ARE LIMITED. If you show up at con with a box, and want to participate, we will do our best to help, but we can't promise anything.


Sign up now, in advance, or risk not getting 0wned. That didn't sound right. Feh.

[sk00t]

I'm going to start posting entries I've got so far out here.

I'll start with me:


Tyan GS14 1U w/ happy li'l LCD screen, 400GB SATA HD, 1GB RAM, Intel EM64T 3.2GHZ. Maybe Hardened Gentoo, maybe OBSD

Sun Ultra5 desktop, with 370MHz USparc, 512MB RAM and a rinky HD. Probably OBSD or FBSD

Apple G3 "Yikes" Tower. OSX

A laptop as yet to be named, running an OS as yet to be defined

[sk00t]

NickB, who is my freaking hero, was the first to answer the CFB.


A low serial number NeXT cube. NeXTdimension 32-bit video, maybe a monitor. 64MB RAM, 25MHZ 68030. NeXTStep

[sk00t]

An anonymous donor in .mil, with an agency that has an acronym for a name, with four, not three letters, each of which are different, is bringing something, on the condition he gets captures, which I happily agreed to.



Some kinda box. Built with his agency's default build. He's waiting on a PO approval from his CO before he can give specifics.


I shed a little tear on this one. How monumentally cool is that???? Attack a DOD box without going to GitMo.

I am awed and humbled, anonymous military dude. You seriously rawk.

[sk00t]

An anonymous donor who wishes to be known as "Teh K1ng 0f B3nt0n P4rk" is bringing:


HP DL360 G2 1U server. 2xP3 1.4GHZ, not sure about HDs or RAM. Running "The oldest Slackware I can possibly load on it"


Anonymous guy with alphanumeric name, I salute you.

[TheCotMan]

These updates are great!

Keep them coming. :-)

[sk00t]

After a few spams to some security distro and other listservs, I got a nibble from someone "unofficially" representing OpenBSD. I'm still waiting for a response on whether I can use his name, so for now, let's call him Shirley. If he responds to my mail within the edit threshold, I'll change this.

Like anonymous .mil dude, Shirley wants captures and a dd image. I told him he could even keep the drive if he's 0wned -- people getting free boxes don't get to complain.

Shirley is offering up some schweet gear, running of course everyone's favorite NetBSD fork by Calgary's best-known Praetorian transplant.


Soekris 4801 266MHZ (dunno flash or RAM specs)
Sun X2100 M2 (dunno RAM / hd but Sun's site says these are at least 2GHZ Opteron)


Thanks, much, Shirley. Your generosity warms the cockles of my heart. At the moment your X2100 is top contender for "Prom Queen", as the most attractive box. :)

[sk00t]

DC15 presenter (http://www.defcon.org/html/defcon-15/dc-15-speakers.html#Ziegler) Paul Sebastian Ziegler is bringing a box as an entry, on the plane from Germany.

He tells me that most likely his candidate will be one of those skinny IPaq (http://www.shopping.com/xPO-Compaq-iPAQ-Avant-Garde-21301645) SFF PC's, which should be easy to get on the plane. It's probably going to be running Gentoo Hardened.

I am so lame. When I was in high school my key acheivements were partying and trying to snag free time on Delphi to look for Space Quest walkthroughs. And here's Paul, doing a talk at DC, writing papers and schlepping a box over the Atlantic for this harebrained contest.

Danke Schoen, Paul. Good luck with TSA.

[Nikita]

I am so lame. When I was in high school my key achievements were partying and trying to snag free time on Delphi to look for Space Quest walkthroughs. And here's Paul, doing a talk at DC, writing papers and schlepping a box over the Atlantic for this harebrained contest.

Danke Schoen, Paul. Good luck with TSA.

This youngster is AMAZING! I will say this he is a damn smart and responsible kid, I might be placing high expectations but i think he will rock DC.

As for the contest, that's great! I would totally place a bet that this kid ownzor teh boxen, fo sho!

[sk00t]

As for the contest, that's great! I would totally place a bet that this kid ownzor teh boxen, fo sho!

Or be unownzored, as a defender entry. But yeah, count me in as member # 2 of the PSZ fan club -- I have a feeling after con it will be a much bigger club. Talks like his coming out of nowhere are the best thing about DC.

[sk00t]

CiscoStu, from the PacketProtector (http://www.packetprotector.org) project, is bringing an awesome li'l WiFi box, running (naturally) some code from the project.


A spanking new Asus WL-500g (http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=12&l2=43&l3=0&model=1121&modelmenu=1) Premium WiFi router, running of course PacketProtector.
Stu, thanks for jumping in. I will look for your bell bottoms and denim jacket in the contest area. If you have a mirrorball to bring with you, we'll hang it prominently above your entry.

[tatsumori]

As for the contest, that's great! I would totally place a bet that this kid ownzor teh boxen, fo sho!
Or be unownzored, as a defender entry. But yeah, count me in as member # 2 of the PSZ fan club -- I have a feeling after con it will be a much bigger club. Talks like his coming out of nowhere are the best thing about DC.

Now those are definitely words to help out on a rainy day. :)
I hope to be able to meet your expectations. Anyways - I'll do my best. My attack-skills are about average so I don't expect to be able to take a box home (I'll try though). But still I hope that my def-foo will lead me to be un0wned... Or at least be interesting to hack. Expect some sick combinations of chroots, virtual machines, and various IDS-integrations (+ some secret foo I'd better keep to myself if I want to survive 48h).

I'm really looking forward to meeting both - all you guys and all your 0days - at the CON.

[sk00t]

Thego Rilla promised an extremely freaky box running a bunch of VMs -- I'm really stoked that someone else thought of this. I think it should be interesting to see if anyone can pop out of Xen / VMWare / OpenVZ.


Yorkshire Computers Pentium 233, 93MB RAM (must be shared with video), 6GB HD, likely running Gentoo

Thanks much, Mr. Rilla. I salute you and your primate pseudonym, and applaud the several weeks worth of effort it must take you building ports on that box.

[sk00t]

Lockpick ninja, human SAN and winner of "least annoying animated avatar" Deviant Ollam is ponying up two boxes, one running Win2K, the other 2K03. His two entries have the distinction of being the first boxes running an MS platform, which is cool, and being further entrants in the growing "0wn a goon / presenter" category, which get a special spot on the scoreboard.

(2) Gateway E-4000 series, which Cnet says are 2.4Ghz P4's, 256MB, and 60G HD. Win2K and Win2K03

Ollam, thanks for stepping in. Make sure you run Windows Update every few hours and turn DEP on for all services. :)

[shoegoo]

We are bringing 3 x86 boxes.

[hackajar]

Vegas 2.0 is brewing something big for this contest.... Think 5+ boxes of fun :smile:

[sk00t]

Vegas 2.0 is brewing something big for this contest.... Think 5+ boxes of fun :smile:

Holy shit. Okay, gods bless all of you last minute entries, seriously. The more boxes we get the more progressively stoked I am.

The only warnings I have -- you may not get a shirt till after con, and at some point I will run out of crypto keys (30 ciphertexts are on the DC CD). That said, fuck it, we'll figure something out.

Much love, Hackajar, I know you have a ton of stuff going on so thanks much to you and Vegas 2.0 for everything you do!

[hackajar]

I am the public face for Vegas 2.0, it will actually be a crew within the group bringing the boxes to the table. As you mentioned, lots of stuff going on, though our group has ballooned from 6 people last year to over 20 this year! So we will be out in force for sure!