Ideas for Defcon 15

[TheCotMan]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

You can start planning for next year. I believe there was an announcement that the contest/events floor space has been filled and the skyboxes were done too-- though I don't remember if the skybox notice was posted here.

[Thorn]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

all joshing aside the PTC's last effort was fairly secure ...

That may be true, but you're missing the point.

... but seriously, i know some of you loony geeks have a basement full of monitors and PC's. it should be possible to ship a pallet of 8 of them via truck/train/plane in less than a week, so reply fast. if it doesn't work out you've still found a creative way to get rid of your crap.

Again, the point is being missed.

The point is that it is really late. Those of us running events have been coordinating with the DefCon staff for months just to get the appropriate amount of square footage, and even now the staff is working hard to do last minute juggling to accommodate the space needs of all known events. Ditto for the data connection. Our coordination with the NOC crew goes back months ago to make sure our connection needs were met.

[psypete]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

all joshing aside the PTC's last effort was fairly secure, if not a little less than robust over the token ring network (there were quite a few outages over the last con I attended).

the servers auto-created passwordless unique local users which were exclusive of one another (and deleted after log-out), and the terminal servers themselves were locked down to prevent mischief. the clients were X-over-SSH to prevent X snooping incase someone actually brought a PCMCIA token ring card. the OS itself loaded from an internally-mounted floppy drive. heh i even left a "root" prompt on one of the floppy os's and watched some endeavoring hackers try to find out how it worked - to no avail :(

i said fearless because i know some asshat will figure out a way to break the system and put GOATSE on all the terminals. the *point* is if you want to check Slashdot or get on IRC for 30 minutes it's handy. only those with true grit (And we are chalk-full of that man!) or true stupidity will enter their passwords...



... but seriously, i know some of you loony geeks have a basement full of monitors and PC's. it should be possible to ship a pallet of 8 of them via truck/train/plane in less than a week, so reply fast. if it doesn't work out you've still found a creative way to get rid of your crap.

[theprez98]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

Actually, I was thinking about this... The people that run the Wall of Sheep could provide this service. ]:>

Don't make it *that* easy for them!

[TheCotMan]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

Actually, I was thinking about this... The people that run the Wall of Sheep could provide this service. ]:>

[Dark Tangent]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

It is Agreed. My impression of those machines at HOPE was that I wouldn't trust using them any further that I could throw one.

How about "I wouldn't trust that overgrown hunk of silicone diode any farther than I could throw it!"

[TheCotMan]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

Where did I put those in-line USB and PS/2 keyloggers?....

Of course, I am not sure how useful it would be, if much of the typing includes people's own rendering of ASCII-Art Goatse images and "I am teh 31337 hax0rz! ph33rm3!"

[Thorn]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

This is like..... reallyreallyreallyreally last minute, but does anyone wanna take a week to throw together a Public Terminal Cluster like at hope? I volunteer to set up the terminal servers in bsd or linux and network the crap with network boot/remote X. Someone just needs to provide a pallet of monitors and $20 Pentium-1 computers with VGA, floppy and ethernet (though ether cards are cheap if you can find a bargain bin)

It is really late, and deviant's comments aside, you're going to have to do an awful lot of coordination pretty damned quick just to get the physical space and connection/bandwidth. My suggestion would be to do a poll at this year's DC to see if people perceive a need for it (although I have my doubts) and then proceed with setting it up next year if it's warranted.

... i've always sort of just scratched my head at those sort of setups, since i could never imagine who would be silly enough to use them. ... but the HOPE-style terminal clusters i've always just assumed were some sort of giant social engineering trick that attempts to harvest names and passwords from users who are stupid enough to create a temp account using the same credential pair that they use elsewhere in life. ...

Agreed. My impression of those machines at HOPE was that I wouldn't trust using them any further that I could throw one.

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

mostly for the fearless to use mail, ssh, blog and the like

fearless is right. i've always sort of just scratched my head at those sort of setups, since i could never imagine who would be silly enough to use them. maybe if you had a bunch of machines without hard drives that would only run live distros from disc or thumb drives that would be one thing... but the HOPE-style terminal clusters i've always just assumed were some sort of giant social engineering trick that attempts to harvest names and passwords from users who are stupid enough to create a temp account using the same credential pair that they use elsewhere in life.

at defcon i think that it's best to do all we can to encourage people to un-plug. if someone desperately needs to blog or check mail, let them do it in their room or on a shitty web-enabled handheld device... something that is quick, dirty, and not conducive to long-term time pecking at a keyboard whilst one misses out on the talks, events, parties, orgies, and other whatnot that only comes once a year for many folks.

[psypete]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

This is like..... reallyreallyreallyreally last minute, but does anyone wanna take a week to throw together a Public Terminal Cluster like at hope? I volunteer to set up the terminal servers in bsd or linux and network the crap with network boot/remote X. Someone just needs to provide a pallet of monitors and $20 Pentium-1 computers with VGA, floppy and ethernet (though ether cards are cheap if you can find a bargain bin)

--

note that you only need like 8 of these terminals and a stable internet connection for it to be a success. if the wireless stays up most of the time a decent 802.11b or g card like a 200mW orinoco, i'd bet 8 machines would be in use most of the con, mostly for the fearless to use mail, ssh, blog and the like

[astcell]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

When you say Rubber Duckies I think or short antennas for a Motorola.

[digital_dreamer]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

well, at least with rubber ducks we wont get banned from the riv for coloring the pool water

[converge]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

hell ya.. I'm semi disappointed that this hasn't already been trumped by the community yet. Maybe it just took a little breaking in at the new venue?

.. has anyone seen those infomercials for the $700 portable hot tub systems?

...

[renderman]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

For the outdoor area we re getting a bunch of kiddie pools and chairs. Bring your rubber duckies!

Ok, that is so just begging for a hack....

/me googles "10,000 rubber ducks drop ship"

[Dark Tangent]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

For the outdoor area we re getting a bunch of kiddie pools and chairs. Bring your rubber duckies!