Lessons Learned and Thanks

[sk00t]

Okay, here's what I think I figured out so far...


Defenders need an event
Solo People (sans posse) need an event
People like blinky lights and traffic maps
I really should just write down my root pass
Vegas 2.0 are amazingly nice people
People will do ANYTHING for a t-shirt
Ding Dongs from the gift shop + Monster Java is not a good breakfast
Really old hardware is pretty tough for anyone under 40 to exploit
Running a contest is a massive amount of work
Zac, Major, Russ, Hackajar, DCNetworking, and all the goons are AMAZING
A 10-foot high "0wn me" sign confuses people
Sniffers make people nervous (seriously, we didn't want your 0days)
The DefCon community is the best one on the planet
I really should sleep more


... and probably a lot more. Still digesting. I had an awesome time, and it was incredible seeing this instant community spring up simply from spamming the forums and bugging people.

If I do this or something like it again next year, I think the format will be quite a bit different. I got a lot of feedback from people, and a lot of great ideas, so we'll see.

After a month or two of recovery, I'll try to run some polls to see what people would like to see. I want to keep the openness, the solo aspect, and try to keep this as something that doesn't try to compete with aCTF and CTF, and try to keep it funny. Beyond that, who knows?

Thanks so MUCH to all of you who participated, helped, got food, heckled, harassed, and generally made this a blast.

Without leaving anyone out, I want to thank PukingMonkey, Izer, PunkAssBitch, and Tatsumori, all of whom pretty much lived in 115 for the whole con, and Jeff and Nate from INAV (http://inav.scaparra.com) who showed up at the last minute and ended up being booth jockeys for most of con and running the kickass display everyone liked watching. And also GFleischer, who I forgot to mention during closing ceremonies because I'm a dumbass.

Thanks again all, see you again next year, with (if I can catch up on sleep by then) something else fun to do.


-- sk00t

[tatsumori]

Hi,

Defenders need an event
Definitely
People like blinky lights and traffic maps
Let's attach blinking lights and more stuff to the contest-room-door next time to attrackt some more attackers.
I really should just write down my root pass
Yeah, but at least it taught us all a valuable lesson: Never underestimate the box's owners ... umh ... capabilities ;)
Vegas 2.0 are amazingly nice people
Oh yes. Definitely. Thanks guys!
People will do ANYTHING for a t-shirt
Maybe we should stop handing out hardware in case of a hack but rather hand out shirts...
Really old hardware is pretty tough for anyone under 40 to exploit
Tell me about it...
The DefCon community is the best one on the planet
Yes, so many people jumped in and helped out about everywhere.

After a month or two of recovery, I'll try to run some polls to see what people would like to see. I want to keep the openness, the solo aspect, and try to keep this as something that doesn't try to compete with aCTF and CTF, and try to keep it funny. Beyond that, who knows?
I'm really looking forward to those. I think the contest rocked, even though it had some natural startup problematics. If the concept keeps being improved it should be even better next year.


Without leaving anyone out, I want to thank PukingMonkey, Izer, PunkAssBitch, and Tatsumori, all of whom pretty much lived in 115 for the whole con
I barely spent 20 hours in there. The others deserve your kind words much more than me. You guys have been great.

Izer - thanks for crashing my box. I will see if I can get some DOS-defenses up next year. Oh, and no more ARP-Spoofing next year - I promise... Maybe ICMP-redirects though...
PukingMonkey - thanks for the best spoofed FTP-header ever that kept me busy on Google for about 20 minutes
PunkAssBitch - man, trying to hack the NEXT-box sure was fun - even though we didn't make it on time. But I'll find or write up a NEXT-rootkit for next year, just in case.



and Jeff and Nate from INAV (http://inav.scaparra.com) who showed up at the last minute and ended up being booth jockeys for most of con and running the kickass display everyone liked watching.

You guys gave the whole contest more attention than anything or anybody else. Thanks a lot for the visualization and the nice talks we had sitting in front of it.

And last but not least,

thanks sk00t, for putting together this fun contest. I know you probably don't want to hear it, but you were actually the one making this experience possible for all of us!

I really hope to see this contest back next year. If I shouldn't bee living on the street by then (hey, I'm moving to Japan, who knows what will happen ;) ) I'm sure to attend DEFCON again. So once you start planning for next year's contest, be sure to count one entry box in from the beginning - no matter what exactly the rules will be.

Many Greetings @ all
tatsumori

[PunkAB]

And strippers. We can attach LEDs to strippers and have them hang out in the room.

-PunkAssBitch

[tatsumori]

Ok, so we'd have blinky lights, strippers, t-shirts...
What other amazingly great powersource in the universe could we further use to make people more interested...?

YES! We almost forgot about free beer. Definitely.:wink:

Oh, and another one: Fuzzy little animals for those soft-minded people among us.

And arcade gaming machines! And a massage salon! And a box of crayons!

So all we'd have to do is to simply find a way to combine blinky lights, strippers, t-shirts, beer, fuzzy animals, arcade games, massages and a box of crayons into one major room concept.
Hey, how about cooperating with the "Hackspace Prototype" next year? They were next door anyways. :biggrin:

[sk00t]

Already went broke on the T-shirts, and now you want free beer? Yeesh. Plus, Tatsumori I can't legally offer you any unless it's in Berlin. The beer, I mean. Not sure on the stripper age regs.

PAB, I can't promise strippers but I do have a MASSIVE collection of ASCII pr0n I can run in a loop on a projector. Maybe we can hook it up to a LiteBrite for the LED effect.

I'll start a thread in a bit on thoughts for next year. At the moment I'm still in recovery -- sorry for sucking at answering mails and PMs, all.

[Thorn]

... but I do have a MASSIVE collection of ASCII pr0n I can run in a loop on a projector. Maybe we can hook it up to a LiteBrite for the LED effect.
I see a new badge hack.

Lessee. The Zigbee chips could link them, and the accelerometer and POV used with about 30 badges should provide a 50 ft horizontal nude by my estimate. :wink:

[sk00t]

I see a new badge hack.

Lessee. The Zigbee chips could link them, and the accelerometer and POV used with about 30 badges should provide a 50 ft horizontal nude by my estimate. :wink:

I dunno, as far as the badges progressed from last year I wouldn't be surprised if Kingpin gets a full color LCD in there somehow next year...

[nbender]

PunkAssBitch - man, trying to hack the NEXT-box sure was fun - even though we didn't make it on time. But I'll find or write up a NEXT-rootkit for next year, just in case.

Bring it. If the cube makes the trip again it will be even less standard NeXT, maybe with a beer tap tended by blinking strippers...

[sk00t]

Bring it. If the cube makes the trip again it will be even less standard NeXT, maybe with a beer tap tended by blinking strippers...

Blinking strippers... Now there's a plan! I bet I can get cut-rate strippers with blinks, twitches, and verbal tics at a massive discount! Tourette's be damned, there's a home for them at DefCon.

[LosT]

I don't know why, but for some reason this gives "mystery box" new meaning some how... :)

Great job on a 1st year contest guys!


LosT

[lordwud]

I learned that I need to compete in every contest I can next year.

[sk00t]

I don't know why, but for some reason this gives "mystery box" new meaning some how... :)

Great job on a 1st year contest guys!


LosT

Thank you sir. FWIW, I had a number of folks who wanted T-shirts for their girlfriends. Hrmmm.

I think if we do this next year we will have to work on a new name to prevent collision:

Convo with some people in the NOC, names changed to protect the innocent.

Me: "We're working on a network drop for the OwnTheBox network..."
NOC person 1: "Mystery Box?"
NOC person 2: "No, the other box."
NOC person 1: "Skyboxes? For Kenshoto?"
NOC person 2: "HackInTheBox, HackMyBox, something..."
Me: "That's a con in Malaysia, I think..."
NOC person 1: "Oh, yeah. You mean the OTHER box thing..."
Me: "....."

[Deviant Ollam]

NOC person 2: "HackInTheBox, HackMyBox, something..."
Me: "That's a con in Malaysia, I think..."anyone else going to that, might i ask?

[tatsumori]

Hey, where did this active discussion come from all the sudden.

Already went broke on the T-shirts, and now you want free beer? Yeesh. Plus, Tatsumori I can't legally offer you any unless it's in Berlin. The beer, I mean. Not sure on the stripper age regs.

I don't drink anyways, so don't worry about me demanding beer. Actually I should probably invite you to one if you make it to Germany or Japan some day. :) And regarding the strippers: According to what I found on Google Nevada only requires you to be at least 18 and considered an adult wherever you should come from. I guess this qualifies. Apart from that: I couldn't find anyone who actually guessed my underageness (<- YES! Wordart!) on the spot this year. Oh, and maybe I'll be able to help you by throwing in my speaker's honorarium next year - cashing checks in Germany turns out to be a real pain in the ***.

I dunno, as far as the badges progressed from last year I wouldn't be surprised if Kingpin gets a full color LCD in there somehow next year..

I am actually sort of counting on that. Joe did a great job last year and he really broke the record this year. So I have absolutely no idea what he'll do next year. But an LCD definitely sounds cool. And maybe some SD-card slot to solder on so we can store more than 16 Bytes.

Bring it. If the cube makes the trip again it will be even less standard NeXT, maybe with a beer tap tended by blinking strippers...
Time for me to get one of those cubes on eBay and start developing a complete rootkit. Oh, and I'll eventually come up with some shellcode next year. There ought to be an emulator for those boxes SOMEWHERE though... But I will try hard to come up with something as weird as your NeXT box next year... Maybe I'll be able to put Linux on my Wii and harden it. /me makes a quick note

Convo with some people in the NOC, names changed to protect the innocent.
How about pwn-me-contest? Or maybe we should stick to what most people ended up calling us this year and simply call it "that other contest" right away. Or we could try to make Jeff and Nate come over again and call it the "INAV demonstration contest". :biggrin:

[PunkAB]

Strippers with LEDs opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for SE.

Am I dwelling? *grin*


-PunkAssBitch