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The Dark Tangent acknowledges those who made Defcon 13 possible, contest winners and the techniques that were used to win. Capture the Flag, War Driving, Robot Warz, WiFi Shoot Out, Scavenger Hunt, Coffee Wars, Cannonball Run (Final year!), TCP/IP Device Contest, Amateur CTF, Beverage Cooling Contest, Hacker Jeopardy, and more!
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The Dark Tangent acknowledges those who made Defcon 13 possible, contest winners and the techniques that were used to win. Capture the Flag, War Driving, Robot Warz, WiFi Shoot Out, Scavenger Hunt, Coffee Wars, Cannonball Run (Final year!), TCP/IP Device Contest, Amateur CTF, Beverage Cooling Contest, Hacker Jeopardy, and more!
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Several Regional Defcon Groups get together to answer questions and discuss DC group projects. What goals were in mind when creating a DC group? Five of the largest groups discuss what it means to be a part of a defcon group.
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Several Regional Defcon Groups get together to answer questions and discuss DC group projects. What goals were in mind when creating a DC group? Five of the largest groups discuss what it means to be a part of a defcon group.
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The Winsock SPI, or Service Provider Interface, has been a part of Winsock since the advent of version 2.0. It enables providers to extend the Winsock API transparently, by installing their own hooks and chains to application API calls. However, its formidable capabilities are not put to widespread use... aside from spyware (remember Kazaa's "sporder.dll"?). The talk will discuss (and demonstrate) some of the more insidious uses of the....
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The Winsock SPI, or Service Provider Interface, has been a part of Winsock since the advent of version 2.0. It enables providers to extend the Winsock API transparently, by installing their own hooks and chains to application API calls. However, its formidable capabilities are not put to widespread use... aside from spyware (remember Kazaa's "sporder.dll"?). The talk will discuss (and demonstrate) some of the more insidious uses of the....
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Infra Red is all around us. Most of us will use an Infra Red controller on more or less a daily basis, to change the TV channel, or open a car or garage door, but how often have you thought about how it actually works? This talk will describe not only how to analyse the signals being sent by your remote, but also how to use that information to find hidden commands and reveal functions you didn't even know your systems had.You will lear....
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Infra Red is all around us. Most of us will use an Infra Red controller on more or less a daily basis, to change the TV channel, or open a car or garage door, but how often have you thought about how it actually works? This talk will describe not only how to analyse the signals being sent by your remote, but also how to use that information to find hidden commands and reveal functions you didn't even know your systems had.You will lear....
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In the network security world, event graphs are evolving into a useful data analysis tool, providing a powerful alternative to reading raw log data. By visually outlining relationships among security events, analysts are given a tool to intuitively draw conclusions about the current state of their network and to respond quickly to emerging issues. I will be showing a myriad of graphs generated with data from various sources, such as We....
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In the network security world, event graphs are evolving into a useful data analysis tool, providing a powerful alternative to reading raw log data. By visually outlining relationships among security events, analysts are given a tool to intuitively draw conclusions about the current state of their network and to respond quickly to emerging issues. I will be showing a myriad of graphs generated with data from various sources, such as We....
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The Hacker Foundation, Doing Not-For-Profit Tech: The Hacker Foundation Year in Review
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www.defcon.org
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13 years ago
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eng
Jesse Krembs, President, The Hacker Foundation, Nick Farr (THF Treasurer), Emerson Tan (THF Vice President), Frazier Cunningham (THF Secretary), Jennifer Granick (THF Legal Affairs Officer), James Schuyler (THF East Africa Region Coordinator), and Christian Wright Fresh from a year of grappling with Tsunamis, the IRS and building IT in Uganda, members of The Hacker Foundation will tell the story of their first year as a federally reco..
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The Hacker Foundation, Doing Not-For-Profit Tech: The Hacker Foundation Year in Review
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www.defcon.org
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13 years ago
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eng
Jesse Krembs, President, The Hacker Foundation, Nick Farr (THF Treasurer), Emerson Tan (THF Vice President), Frazier Cunningham (THF Secretary), Jennifer Granick (THF Legal Affairs Officer), James Schuyler (THF East Africa Region Coordinator), and Christian Wright Fresh from a year of grappling with Tsunamis, the IRS and building IT in Uganda, members of The Hacker Foundation will tell the story of their first year as a federally reco..
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When was the last time you visited an actual human being to withdraw some spending money? In a world were most people visit computers for cash, ATM Networks have been traditionally thought of as a secure haven. Financial data theft is more of a reality than ever, but the backbone for the majority of cash to consumer transactions is not a target. I will show you why that is about to change. During my years at the NSA, I witnessed the growth ....
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When was the last time you visited an actual human being to withdraw some spending money? In a world were most people visit computers for cash, ATM Networks have been traditionally thought of as a secure haven. Financial data theft is more of a reality than ever, but the backbone for the majority of cash to consumer transactions is not a target. I will show you why that is about to change. During my years at the NSA, I witnessed the growth ....
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Philip R. Zimmermann, The Unveiling of My Next Big Project: ZPhone
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www.defcon.org
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13 years ago
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eng
Philip R. Zimmermann is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy. For that, he was the target of a three-year criminal investigation, because the government held that US export restrictions for cryptographic software were violated when PGP spread all around the world following its 1991 publication as freeware. Despite the lack of funding, the lack of any paid staff, the lack of a company to stand behind it, and despite government persecution, PGP..
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Philip R. Zimmermann, The Unveiling of My Next Big Project: ZPhone
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www.defcon.org
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13 years ago
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eng
Philip R. Zimmermann is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy. For that, he was the target of a three-year criminal investigation, because the government held that US export restrictions for cryptographic software were violated when PGP spread all around the world following its 1991 publication as freeware. Despite the lack of funding, the lack of any paid staff, the lack of a company to stand behind it, and despite government persecution, PGP..
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David Cowan - The Information Security Industry: $3 Billion of Snake Oil
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www.defcon.org
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13 years ago
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eng
David Cowan, General Partner, Bessemer Ventures A raging fear of The Computer Evildoers has driven enterprises to the safety of the herd, buying whatever elixirs the big vendors peddle. Security consumers waste billions of dollars on ineffective (but well integrated!) solutions. However, as technology users grow more sophisticated about security threats (often learning the hard way), opportunities will surface for innovative startups to de....
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David Cowan - The Information Security Industry: $3 Billion of Snake Oil
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www.defcon.org
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13 years ago
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eng
David Cowan, General Partner, Bessemer Ventures A raging fear of The Computer Evildoers has driven enterprises to the safety of the herd, buying whatever elixirs the big vendors peddle. Security consumers waste billions of dollars on ineffective (but well integrated!) solutions. However, as technology users grow more sophisticated about security threats (often learning the hard way), opportunities will surface for innovative startups to de....
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As you might already know, I like pushing the boundaries of what puppet is able to do. Today, I realized that I needed to include a class by variable name. A simple way to do this is possible with: $foo = 'world' class { "hello::${foo}::params": } I then realized that you could also do this with the standard include keyword: $foo = 'world' include "hello::${foo}::params" If you’re really insane enough to need t..
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As you might already know, I like pushing the boundaries of what puppet is able to do. Today, I realized that I needed to include a class by variable name. A simple way to do this is possible with: $foo = 'world' class { "hello::${foo}::params": } I then realized that you could also do this with the standard include keyword: $foo = 'world' include "hello::${foo}::params" If you’re really insane enough to need t..
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ShitRedditSays and The Downvote Brigades of Reddit (note: if you’re familiar with reddit and ShitRedditSays, you can skip to the next section.) As you probably know, Reddit is a site that revolves around voting. All users are encouraged to vote on things, which are then prioritized based on their total scores. Over time, Reddit’s userbase has grown a lot. It is now one of the most popular sites on the Internet, and nobody has enough ..
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Matt Alexander of One Thirty Seven made so many interesting points I had a hard time choosing an excerpt of acceptable length for this post. I ended up settling on this one though, reflective of the tone throughout his exceptionally well-written article We’re Boring, They’re Sexting : “Sitting on the front porch of our quaint weblogs and latte-art-filled Instagram accounts, we’re collectively yelling at the kids playing in the street u....
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Interesting, all the things people are starting to do with receipt paper. Sean Hollister tells of a DC restaurant that provides a collection of the latest news items printed on receipt paper when you ask for the check. Also mentioned in this article is BERG’s Little Printer , a neat thermal printer with a bunch of cool features . Permalink.
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As I concluded Defining an Industry I again found myself once again trying to decide whether I should continue writing or stop where I was. On the one hand I was happy with the article’s length, approximately 550 words. On the other hand though, I really wanted to spend some time talking about being overtaken in a market and about market cannibalization. Ultimately proposing that adhering to industry standards in a given market will not..
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Lately, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about disruption theory. I’m writing articles about podcasting, technology, and education, in which 5by5, Apple, and the likes of The Khan Academy are disrupting the incumbents in their respective industries to superb results. 5by5 proved the viability of business based on podcasts, and explosive growth in this space ensued as the medium gained increasingly widespread recognition outside o..
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From Christine Pelisek’s article on The Daily Beast, I thought these two excerpts were of particular interest: In the wake of the Newtown tragedy, NRA executive Wayne LaPierre drew criticism for suggesting that posting armed guards in schools could help prevent future shootings. Taft Union High School does employ an armed officer on campus, but he was snowed in on Thursday and did not make it to work. In another ironic twist, the shoo....
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Earlier today I stumbled across an interesting article called We Are In The Final Years of Our Internet over on Stupid Is Winning explaining why the author believes the internet as we know it is likely to gradually fade as a younger, more tech savvy generation comes of age. The author is hypothesizing that a generation raised on touch screens and iTunes is unlikely to use the internet in the same way it is used now, which will eventually ....
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When I was in college I would often skip homework or studying for a test. Why? Because I was inspired to work on something else.
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This was a busy week for actionHero! We are now up to version 4.2.2. Note that this release again changed some of the internal API’s.
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Paul Shawcross did an amazing job responding to the recent petition for the government to build an actual Death Star. An excellent article. Permalink.
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An interesting collection of thoughts and observations regarding the meaning of life. These are my two favorites, the first from Frank Donofrio: I have been asking myself why I’m here most of my life. If there’s a purpose I don’t care anymore. I’m seventy-four. I’m on my way out. Let the young people learn the hard way, like I did. No one ever told me anything. And from Charles Bukowski: For those who believe in God, most of the....
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Three months ago I installed Kippo in a low end VPS of mine. About a month after that, I got bored of manually checking kippo everyday so I made a small script to automate the process. Fast forward another two months and here we're.
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Being part of the subject of algebraic topology, this post assumes the reader has read our previous primers on both topology and group theory. As a warning to the reader, it is more advanced than most of the math presented on this blog, and it is woefully incomplete. Nevertheless, the aim is to provide a high level picture of the field with a peek at the details. An Intuitive Topological Invariant Our eventual goal is to get comfortable wit..
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Being part of the subject of algebraic topology, this post assumes the reader has read our previous primers on both topology and group theory. As a warning to the reader, it is more advanced than most of the math presented on this blog, and it is woefully incomplete. Nevertheless, the aim is to provide a high level picture of the field with a peek at the details. An Intuitive Topological Invariant Our eventual goal is to get comfortable wit..
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Being part of the subject of algebraic topology, this post assumes the reader has read our previous primers on both topology and group theory. As a warning to the reader, it is more advanced than most of the math presented on this blog, and it is woefully incomplete. Nevertheless, the aim is to provide a high level picture of the field with a peek at the details. An Intuitive Topological Invariant Our eventual goal is to get comfortable wit..
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I planned to work on a number of articles this evening, but then, after I got home a short while ago and opened Hacker News, my evening plans changed as I began to read about Aaron Swartz. Rather than attempt to write about a man I know little of and who I knew nothing of before this afternoon, here are the better articles I have seen floating around the internet: Permalink.
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Last month I published Introducing First Crack shortly after this site went life. In that post I outlined a number of goals I set for First Crack during its development, as well as a few of the advantages I believed my new CMS would have over the incumbents. Since making that post nearly two months have gone by. During those two months I have used First Crack exclusively, and I have not looked back. Permalink.
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The new Activation Blocks in Ninject are great for automatically resolving dependencies in the request scope. However they suffer from one…
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If you missed my previous post on Understanding Postgres Performance its a great starting point. On this particular post I’m going to dig in to some real life examples of optimizing queries and indexes. It all starts with stats I wrote about some of the great new features in Postgres 9.2 in the recent announcement on support of Postgres 9.2 on Heroku . One of those awesome features, is pg_stat_statements . Its not commonly kno....
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If you missed my previous post on Understanding Postgres Performance its a great starting point. On this particular post I’m going to dig in to some real life examples of optimizing queries and indexes. It all starts with stats I wrote about some of the great new features in Postgres 9.2 in the recent announcement on support of Postgres 9.2 on Heroku . One of those awesome features, is pg_stat_statements . Its not commonly kno....
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With From the Notepad: Perspective I started doing something the result of which I am very pleased with, and something I plan to continue in the future — an innovation of sorts: it’s not a post made in the traditional linkblog format, but it does draw some inspiration from it; it’s not a full-fledged article, it’s much more concise and to the point; it’s not an overly simplified, minified post condensed into a near-inscrutable tweet; it....
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