DEF CON in the news

[The Dark Tangent]

Since it is getting closer to con time, and DEF CON is starting to pop up in the press and on-line media a bit more, I thought I would start a thread where we can post articles that mention DEF CON.

Post excerpts and links to the article here, along with any commentary you may have about it. I'll start out with the first post next.

[The Dark Tangent]

Yahoo Finance Press Release - PointSecure super-sizing their performance

PointSecure posted a press release that was picked up by Yahoo!, and caught by the news alerts over at world domination HQ.

All is looking normal until the last bit, in the "About PointSecure" secion. The bullshit detector started ringing immedately!

"Our solutions have been declaired 'virtually unhackable' and were banned from Defcon."

See their home page for this as well: http://www.pointsecure.com/

Some digging turned this up:
www.pointsecure.com/attachments/Defconwhite.pdf

It looks like Green Team at DC 9 was comprised of employees of this company, and they did a great job of defending their boxen. They placed 3rd, and the Ghetto gave them props. A quick call to Caezar from Ghetto confirmed this. They had placed third. Great! Good work!

Now nowhere in the .pdf does it mention them getting banned, or explain why they would be. Ghetto never did it, and neither did I. So I have to think that the over anxious marketing department at PointSecure supersized their performance into being "Banned" from DEF CON. Lame.

[noid]

Smithers, release the lawyers..

[TheCotMan]

A little google-fu and we have this:
Link1

Also at the hackers conference defcon9, VMS would not break. In fact, VMS was banned from subsequent conferences: it's security was rock solid the whole time; the only OS to so do.

Link1 includes another link after that quoted text:
http://www.vmsone.com/~opcom/defcon9.htm
However, there is no response from the host that owns that URL at the moment, but google cahce provided this:

VMS will stand up flawlessly to the best hackers the world has to offer", and
"never allow a circumstance where someone can snipe your login".

and

Near the end of the third day, it was printed in the periodically updated intranet scoreboard, that "the green team's vax is running vms and seems to be unhackable" (not exact quote but real close)

The only reference I found similar to being banned in link2 was this:

How to get kicked out of DefCon:

Taking pictures or videos of people without permission. Damaging the hotel infrastructure. Getting caught stealing. Generally being an a**hole, such as spreading hate stuff, getting in people's faces, cheating at the games, etc..

Perhaps there was a misunderstanding? Did someone fron GhettoHackers mention that VMS would not be allowed in the future? Did someone joke about thi at the closing ceremonies? If *VMS was banned, perhaps that is what they are claiming in their ad? (Misleading, but some might see it as legal. It might also make sense with the other quotes and the context of the quotes.)

[Deviant Ollam]

Did someone fron GhettoHackers mention that VMS would not be allowed in the future?

i don't quite recall, but i think that also was the year of a good deal of unlicensed / unregistered software... there was something mentioned about a rule to be put in place for future years that no warez would be allowed after people were running pirated copies of vmware.

[The Dark Tangent]

HP fires real bullet at Storageworks array

Charlie Demerjian over at the Inquirer has a piece about HP shooting a .308 bullet at an XP12000 storage array, and the array still functioning. I have questions about where the bullet actually went, I mean if it smashed all the controller cards or went through the power supplies it wouldn't still function. But hey! They got it just right. The best part, though, is the end.

'The XP12000 was then brought back to a fully functional state without any loss of uptime. Not bad at all. As far as I know, this is the only test of it's type, but I am sure we could arrange something similar at DefCon if Sun wants to loan us a 15K.'

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31165

[Deviant Ollam]

now that would make an outstanding addition to the DCshoot... setup computers downrange running some O/S. participants take positions with their weapons of choice and fire, one round at a time, into their machine until it's dead. whoever kills their box with the fewest shots wins. (kills it by shooting the box and not the monitor... spotters would have to be watching the screens with binoculars) bonus points if you get your box to blue screen / segfault before totally killing it.

of course, varying weapons could make for something of a handicap. if one person is shooting a Ruger 10/22 and someone else has a Barret rifle i know where i'd place my bets on the one shot kill question.

[themagician]

We could try to kill this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Latitu...UAAOSwhJNc6BfB

[noid]

we could offer a hard drive decom service while we're at it. Stack em up and see how many me and Ira can punch through with our .50's

Probably a lot more fun than wet phonebooks

[TheCotMan]

I think this was mentioned in another thread, but included here with the others found links:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1...art.html?pg=14

Business claiming that it will be at Defcon 14:
http://www.solirix.com/newsevents/

Looks like a law university is offering scholarships to their students to attend Defcon and other events:
http://hightechlaw.scu.edu/law/ipa/event.html

This was a humorous find. It reminded me of people's home pages in the early 90's:
http://www.d3fcon.org/
On the plus side, it probably loads fine in lynx. I wonder if the design is intentional.

There were several discussions about Defcon 14 on various forums, but they were generally things like:
"I'm going. Who else is going?" or
"Has anyone here gone to Defcon before?" or
"The Call for papers has opened" (with or without links or text from the present FAQ.

Google News on Defcon 14 had nothing as of today.

[Chris]

Business claiming that it will be at Defcon 14:
http://www.solirix.com/newsevents/

Thanks for this link. I don't know anything about this company, so am not slamming them in any way...yet, but every year we get a few of these businesses that claim they are going to be at DefCon who I have never spoken to. Last year some Fake ID company said they would be in the vendor area, which was certainly not true.

On that note, this organization has not contacted me, to this point, so their claim of being at DC 14 is, at a minimum, premature and in all likliehood just false.

[TheCotMan]

Thanks for this link. ...

No problem man. If I find any other businesses, I guess I'll include them with the news link searches...

unless they links are obviously spam attempts, then they will be obvuscated URL to decrease the google-scoring system for sites.

[Merged to include:]

Defcon 14 Ranked "42" in someone's list of top internet Activist organizations.

[TheCotMan]

Defcon 14 mentioned, but not about what you might think.

Claims that there is a music category item called "Cult of the Dead Cow" that will be playing in Las Vegas for $75 on August, 5 2006 at DEFCON 14

blog-story-like-thingy about BH and DC (Posted 5/17/2006)

Another forum discussion about DC14 -- mentions Lost @ Con box competition. (May 18th, 2006, 04:25 PM)

"New Regenerator" to play B&W Ball?

Information citing reference to a presentation that has not yet happened


[Added:]

PointSecure in the news cites the "banned from Defcon" again:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060523/sftu150.html?.v=24

About wireless security with mention of Defcon:
http://software.newsforge.com/softwa...tid=78&tid=102

[The Dark Tangent]

TheCotMan is in effect.

Good work finding all that stuff.

[LosT]

Another forum discussion about DC14 -- mentions Lost @ Con box competition. (May 18th, 2006, 04:25 PM)

Who-hoo! Already getting word of mouth adverts for the contest. I already have a large number of teams signed up. Many more than I expected. Since I am funding this out of my own pocket, that is a bitter sweet thing! :)

LosT

[skroo]

Claims that there is a music category item called "Cult of the Dead Cow" that will be playing in Las Vegas for $75 on August, 5 2006 at DEFCON 14

Wow. Just. Fucking. WOW.

If this was put together as a joke, I'm fairly certain someone thought it was probably the most ironic thing they could possibly dream up. Unfortunately, the fact that it really fits with the general level of respect the cDc's managed to gain for itself over the past few years is likely utterly lost on the creator, who just managed to take the group summary from, "we once cranked out some useful stuff" to, "we have no worth anymore and have the Myspace page to prove it".

In other news, Kontrol Faktory says they'll be running an 'official' DJ night at con complete with $10 cover charge.