OK Computer

Defcon is now over. As you'd expect, the bottom line is that security is nonexistent, blatant holes are everywhere, and we should move back to paper and pencil communications (or maybe even stone tablets). The usual.

The conference was great. Here are some of the highlights of Defcon 15:

- 11 hours of classes with no breaks--yaay! Those of you who don't know me probably think, "surely she's being sarcastic." I'm not, for once. I like technology, I like classes and lectures, and I don't like breaks. I'm not just a workaholic, I'm an infoholic. If I'd taken a break, I would have missed something! I got tons of notes, too.

- The badge, as I mentioned in an earlier blog. Though sometime yesterday mine started freezing up. I noticed that the same thing was happening to other people too... I guess they followed the Microsoft model when they developed it. "Reboot required." (despite the glitch, the badge is still awesome)

- The whole issue with the NBC Dateline reporter. Yeah, I know, I talked about that already, too. It seemed to be the unintentional theme of Defcon 15.

- The poor guy in the "Hacking Social Lives: Myspace.com" (Rick Deacon's "assistant") who accidentally typed both his username and password in the login box... for a couple thousand people to see. Time to change the password for that account! And for all the other accounts that use the same password... :)

- Speaking of revealing passwords, I found the Wall of Sheep very entertaining. That's where they sniff the network for people using insecure logins for various things. They post the username and password (redacted, of course) for all to see. Hmm... searching "Wall of Sheep" on flickr led to this picture. What I actually meant was this.

- The wedding at the end of the award ceremony, for the new game, "Marry the Fed." IMHO, they should raise the bar next year by adding an extra rule: require that the two people who get married at the end of the conference must demonstrate that they were not dating at the start of Defcon. Hmm, I sense reality show material here...

- Priceless quotes (accurate? close enough). Sergey Bratus - "I developed a converter to convert Klingon to English so I could read the text of Hamlet like it was in its original Klingon." Jason Scott - "Wikipedia: It's like you built a really nice car, and then let 12-year-olds drive it into a wall repeatedly 24 hours a day."

- The TCP/IP Drinking Game was amusing. I actually knew some of the answers that the intoxicated experts didn't get (so maybe I had a sobriety advantage)...

- Entertaining shirts, various nerd slogans. "Legolas is my house elf." "Bic Pen Tester." (the latter was actually at Black Hat, not Defcon)

- The Black and White Ball. Great for people watching!

- Last, but not least, really good information. My favorites were "Aliens Cloned My Sheep," "CiscoGate," "Social Attacks on Anonymity Networks" (partly because I think Nick Matthewson has a great voice), "The Inherent Insecurity of Widgets and Gadgets" (though the speakers kept cracking jokes that the audience wasn't reacting to, like "If you're a werewolf, like I am, you probably are interested in adding a widget to tell you when the moon is full." No audience reaction.), and "Storing and Serving Malicious Content from Well Known Web Servers." I'm too tired to post recaps right now. Maybe later...

And I'll end this blog by posting a video to enlighten you on the grand beginnings of the Defcon enterprise: