July 23rd, 2008 Anthony Towry
This past Friday the Defcon 405 group held the July edition of the monthly meeting. This round featured 0hm as our headliner. He presented a riveting talk on "Hardening Windows Server: Building a House out of Greased BBs". I taped the presentation and as soon as I coordinate slides, will post the video.
I also handed out a few samples of the latest homebrew.
The Ingredients for DC405 Truth Serum:
- 7lbs DME
- 3lbs Coopers IPA LME
- 1lb Crystal Malt
- 1lb Liberty Malt
- 1oz Saaz
- 1oz Columbus
- White Labs Dry Ale Yeast
So far it's been a pretty tasty beverage. Not my typical hop bombs, but I guess I can get used to it. Look for it at Defcon! 0hm and I will be attempting to dish out some nasty at the 0wn the b0x/0wn the b0x contest, find us there.
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June 28th, 2008 Anthony Towry
This year's Defcon event is well under way. The speakers list has been finalized and I'm already thinking about what talks I want to make it out to.
Here's my hit list so far, which I'm guessing will get totally screwed by the time slots.
- MetaPost-Exploitation : Valsmith and Colin Ames
- VulnCatcher: Fun with Vtrace and Programmatic Debugging : atlas
- Playing with Web Application Firewalls : Wendel Guglielmetti Henrique
- Grendel-Scan: A new web application scanning tool : David Byrne and Eric Duprey
- Wide World WAF's : Ben Feinstein
- Advanced Software Armoring and Polymorphic Kung Fu : Nick Harbour
Additionally, the EFF and All Your Sploits Are Belong to Us panels might be fun. Oh, and whatever Dan Kaminsky has to talk about will most certainly pack the house.
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June 11th, 2008 Anthony Towry
Boys and Girls, Defcon XVI is just around the corner and it's time to start thinking about what to take, were to stay, speakers to see, and skills to hone. I thought I'd drop my extensive con knowledge. If you've never been to Vegas or Defcon maybe this'll be helpful. For a much better post, check out the official "Be Prepared" thread on the Defcon.org blog.
So, I've been to Las Vegas and Defcon a total of 1 times, so I'm an expert. Let's start with the location.
The Riviera (the Riv as the vets call it) is a great place for a convention and a fairly crappy place to stay. That said, first timers may benefit from being on top of Defcon at all times. Once was enough for me. The rooms are slightly less comfortable than a college dorm and for the money, you could wrangle something much nicer down the strip.
Other issues with the Riv is the food. There really isn't a good place to grab a bite. There is a food court with Pizza-Hut, Quiznos, etc., but you'll not find a world class buffet or other typical Vegas eateries.
What to take:
- Caffeine
- Alcohol (Suffer thy Guinness unto me!)
- Geek games and other crap (Whoever brought robot sumo last year...that was fun as hell)
- Sense of humor
What not to take:
- Unless you're participating in the contests, forget your laptop/backpack/fishing pole
Defcon should be sweet this go round, make the most of it. Crash parties, social engineer and make some friends!
Tip: Do Vegas stuff if you can find time. See the fountains, Fremont Street and gamble a bit. All the videos will be online in a few months anyway!
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April 20th, 2008 Anthony Towry
A new contest is making it's way to Defcon 16 this year. The contest titled "Race to Zero" is challenging reversers and malcode analysts to modify viruses and malware to see if they can't slip it by several scanning engines. The contest's website racetozero.net has tips on creating a proper participant environment for analyzing the beasties.
This looks like a very cool contest for taking a look at how malware is identified by popular scanning engines. I'm already getting stoked.
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