DEFCON: The Documentary Page #7

Because it says there's a whole cornerstone

here of another way of looking at things,

that we're missing.

Well, that's what hackers are looking for.

And that's why I've taken to it so.

Because the edge where new realities are

appearing, and normals don't see them at first...

But hackers are looking for them. They're kind

of the little homunculus, inside the machine.

When I come here, I don't have

to explain anything, to anybody.

My point of view, or

my point of reference.

Or, why I said what I said. Or, what was ironic.

Or, or, what was meant straight up.

Because people just kinda get it.

And that's a terrific thing.

Probably our signature

event, is Capture the Flag.

When you go to DEF CON, and walk

through the Capture the Flag area,

you're seeing some of the best of

the best teams that are out there.

Well, this is really, this is the Wimbledon, this is the

place around the world where it all comes together.

What strikes me isn't in the room. It's the fact that there were a couple

thousand people competing, from around the world, to get into that room.

Some of those guys, that travel from like South

Korea, or from the Middle East, to do CTF...

they came thousands of miles, and are

not going to sleep for three days.

To participate in one game, at one

event, that happens once a year.

And that's what amazes me.

It's about a bunch of different teams,

getting together on a big network,

trying to steal each other's stuff, in essence. 6930:57:42.592

-- 0:
57:45.428 It's worth coming once, to see it.

Capture the Flag has been

there since the beginning.

And, really, from a hacker perspective,

it's the type of thing that you think of,

"Hey, how do I take over

this guy's computer?"

Don't miss any con where you can sit down at a laptop

and make the network work, and start breaking things.

So, Crash and Compile is a programming

contest, crossed with a drinking game.

What could possibly go wrong?

If you're familar with the ACM

style programming contests;

You're given a challenge,

a word problem, you know?

Write a program, that takes this kind of

input and generates that kind of output.

Or some arbitrary word problem.

And you start coding. And you're

coding along, you're coding along,

and then you say, "I think I'm gonna test

something," and you try and compile it.

And it doesn't compile.

You take a drink.

If it compiles, but doesn't

run, you take a drink.

If it runs, but doesn't produce the

right output, you take a drink.

Okay, you can see how this

could degrade very quickly.

After 45 minutes, any points that are not awarded, or that have not

already been awarded to competing teams get awarded to Team Distraction.

The team with the most points at the end

of the night goes home with a Black Badge.

No, Team Distraction does not qualify

for a Black Badge, unfortunately.

And you're coding? No. I am

part of Team Distraction.

Our first goal is make sure that they get

enough water, and they don't drink too much.

But then, of course, you know, we have

to distract them from their coding,

and kinda like mess them up, and, you

know, just, distract them a little.

Does everyone have a beer? Let's rephrase that.

Who doesn't have a beer?

Are we there yet? We're there. Okay.

Any other questions? No? Groovy.

Let's go program.

Brilliant. Let's go program.

Gotta energize the crowd. I gotta set

the pace, set the tone. And then I have

to say something outrageous pretty damn

quickly, gotta insult somebody quickly.

The show's begun and I'm not really

aware of much of anything else for the

next couple of hours. I want the

audience engaged within 10, 15 seconds.

I want to have that dialogue.

"Copyright lawyers mean this, by I.P."

[buzzer goes off] "Win or Lose!"

"What is intellectual property?"

- "What is intellectual property is correct!"

You can piss this crowd off very easily. So,

you get your feedback very very quickly

as to whether you're doing

a good job or a bad job.

Jeff and I had talked, and he says "I really

wanna notch up the 20th, I wanna go out"

with a bang, and I wanna do all these

crazy things." And it was "COOL!"

"The final category is Beer."

I think that this audience, probably 50%

bigger than last year. So that would put

that crowd, I'm guessing, in the 2,500 range,

something like that. But this one was huge.

We'll see you tomorrow night, for the final final

final round of Hacker Jeopardy, DEF CON 20.

Common experiences at DEF CON include...

I don't remember.

Meaning that if you have a good con you

probably have no recollection of what

actually happened.

If you've never been, don't base your

assumptions off what you've read or heard.

At this point especially, DEF CON is

something you just have to experience.

DEF CON is not a convention, it's a meta-convention.

But there's so many smaller

events, gatherings, meet-ups, projects, that it's

become a group of other smaller conferences.

There are other aspects, other facets

of the con, that are completely

different then what you have heard, thought

of, expect or even dreamt are possible.

There's people you've known from internet stuff,

only through that, and you come from a small

town, right, you don't know anybody, and you have this

weird stuff you're into. And then you go to DEF CON,

And that's where you meet the people, right?

And it's beautiful. Just hangin' out,

the conversations. It's the place.

DEF CON is the place.

So they change periodically. And so the

fire marshall you had last year may not be

the fire marshall... Oh, I think that's... the attorney.

"Hello? Hey, OK, we'll let you in."

I can think of a couple of things he might have

done, ya know, that I wished he hadn't have done.

I can think of one.

When we started, it was very clear that Jeff

was younger, and he was way smarter then me,

but in my opinion, he had no street sense,

which essentially just meant that he didn't

know what the ramifications could be from

a law standpoint on some of the stuff we

were dealing with. You know, it's really

not property damage stuff. We, you know,

that, we can do something about. You can

liquidate that, you can price it, you

can figure it out. I mean, we've had

lawsuits, we've dealt with big major

battles with me versus eight lawyers

from Cisco for about 2 years. You know,

it's got these players that can get involved

that aren't really attached to DEF CON that

could put DEF CON at massive risk for

government intervention, heavy duty

lawsuit intervention.

People want to come to DEF CON, which is fine,

that's what DEF CON, Jeff likes it, I think.

They come to DEF CON, they're like

"Hey man, I wanna step on the toes of

"fill in the blank" mondo, master, master

of the universe, aggressive company.

"I wanna come to DEF CON and piss them off,

what do you think?" And it certainly isn't

boring when somebody says "Yeah, I'm gonna

shut down, ya know, huge Corporation X."

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