HIR Issue 7: Axon's Defcon Experience
Defcon 6.0
I sit here in this bizzarre place surrounded by psychadelic light shows, reflecting upon the past 2 days worth of events. This is quite possibly the best place to start my reflections, as I am totally immersed in techno music at the Black & White ball, dressed in a three-peice suit and sunglasses. When we actually arrived in Vegas, it was a day early for the Con. While lounging around in the casino, we heard phone pages for Kevin Mitnick. That was our first clue in that the crew was already arriving. There were several shady figures hanging around the place already, in the pool, casino, in the halls, etc.
Friday morning, the HiR crew arrived at the convention center in plenty of advance. We were among the first into the con. We were all awestruck by the amount of hardware for sale, and some pretty good deals. There were shirts for sale, stickers, magazines, modems, hard drives, radar guns, geiger counters, tons of cellular phones with "EVIDENCE" stickers adorning a good percentage of them. People were scurrying to apply for an IP address, and still more were already attaching the veins of life to their laptops and other systems. They already had techno pumping full force for the con in the same room as all the hardware and booths.
The first thing that actually surprised me was the number of middle-aged hackers at the con, and how few of them were actually feds. After that, I was amazed at how many people actually knew their shit. Sure, I was approached by people who were eager to learn. Newbies, but at least they were eager, which makes any newbie worthwhile to talk to. Most of the lesser experienced entities there had a general additude of "So what do you have to do to get to hackerdom? Where can I find more information? I want to know how it works!" instead of the typical "how to i get root with sendmail? How do I screw up my enemy's box? Damnit I wanna hack!" I really enjoyed the eagerness.
The first day there wasn't a whole hell of a lot of demonstrations. There was an okay demo on lockpicking, and some stuff on casinos. Not a lot. For me it was more like a time to enlighten myself about what all was out there. The scene in Kansas City is not nessecarily reflecting what the rest of the underground world is up to. It turns out that the KC scene is a tad bigger than I had expected, as there was a whole load of 913/816 people there.
As far as what I actually learned, I'm not sure any amount of typing or talking will ever summarize it. I learned so much more than just what was demonstrated or talked about. DefCon is something that one has to actually experience to even comprehend.
Of course we weren't the only group there. It seems that many people were hanging out in their own little bands of like-minded hackers. Some of the groups were actually professionals, with a business structure. Others were just kind of there. Many of these groups covered all their bases when it came down to knowledge and skill.
Among the groups which I had quite a bit of contact with was the Hack Sec Klahn. They were selling card readers, barcode scanners, and various other items. Other groups that were there: 2600 (the magazine staff), L0pht Heavy Industries, Cult of the Dead Cow, and many others.
One of the most memorable events was the grand release of Back Orifice. The official announcement of a final product by the cDc. There'll be an article on it later. Grandmaster Ratte startled the crowd with chanting, screaming, and free M&M's coupons.
One thing to note, though, is the fact that you should never bomb out of a seminar that covers a topic that you aren't interested in, just because it sounds boring. After all, it's only an hour of your life, maybe you could learn some new ideas. There were several tech talks that I wasn't particularly thrilled about attending at first, but I ended up sticking around, and picked up some cool information (like router passwords when I was sitting through a mundane talk on how radio works in the Pirate Radio thing)
All in all, the con was one of the most enlightening experiences I've had. I picked up new tricks, new ideas, and new knowledge about what the rest of the hacking, phreaking, underground, hamming psychos of the world are up to now.
