Article Info  Defcon 12's Fear and Hacking in Vegas Created: August 2, 2004 By: Humphrey Cheung Category: Business Reports Summary: Hackers converged on the Alexis Park Hotel in Las Vegas for the 12th annual Defcon hacker convention. This may be the single venue in the world where hackers and hard-core federal marshal types convene to exchange ideas, listen to talks and discuss how exposed we really are.

Introduction

The 12th annual Defcon hacker convention was held at the Alexis Park Hotel in Las Vegas Nevada. For three days, hackers exchanged ideas, presented new and sometimes scary information and partied hard. More than a hundred speakers gave dozens of talks on computer security, hacking and privacy issues.

For a mere $80 attendees received access to the talks, contests and the after-hours parties. In this article we will cover some of the more interesting contests and give you an overall feel for the convention so that you can decide whether you want to attend next year. Three download videos are included.

Wall Of Sheep

The Wall of Sheep is a projector screen that displays captured usernames and passwords. The Wall, which originally was named as the Wall of Shame, is a time-honored tradition at Defcon where a loose knit group of people continuously sniffs the network for any plaintext usernames and passwords on the wired and wireless networks. Since this is a hacker convention, attendees using the Defcon network should protect their logins by using VPN, SSH or other encryption technology. Some attendees apparently didn't get the message.

In the first few years, the usernames and passwords were written on paper plates and then taped to the wall. As the number of passwords found grew, a better solution had to be found. A computer security engineer, named "Riverside", wrote the Wall of Sheep software from scratch. He also was one of the original people who started the Wall. The usernames and passwords cycle up and down so people can see all the information gathered since the start of the convention. In addition only the first three characters of the password are shown in order to protect the privacy of the user.

NEXT: Wall Of Sheep, Continued

	Computer HardwareCartridge DrivesCD & DVD DrivesCPUsDesktopsDigital CamerasHard DrivesHardware Access.Ink & TonerInput DevicesMediaMemoryMP3 PlayersMonitorsMotherboardsNetwork Hard.NotebooksPDAsPrintersProjectorsScannersSound CardsSpeakersTape DrivesVideo Cards

Table of Contents
Introduction Wall Of Sheep Spot The Fed Meet The Fed:Press Panel     Privacy And The Patriot Act     Child Porn Cases     Identity Theft Cases     Recruitment Bluetooth Vulnerabilities BlueSniper Vendor Area Wi-Fi Shootout Contest Tempers Flare Conclusion

	Sponsored Links
	Extend Ethernet to 1 Mile Over Copper Wires Patton Ethernet Extenders break the 300 ft barrier of Ethernet. Now you can extend ethernet ports upto 1 mile over regular voice grade telephone wire at full ethernet speeds.  Detect and Protect Your PDAs and Smartphones This white paper will guide you step-by-step through the best practices for securing PDAs and smartphones, along with the benefits of implementing a CREDANT Technologies solution for detecting and protecting these popular productivity tools.  Protect Your Valuable Files - Mirra How valuable are your digital files? The Mirra Personal Server is the easiest way to automatically backup your valuable files, emails, and more. Plus, remote access and secure file sharing. Ideal for small business.  Registry Cleaner - Free Trial Safely clean and repair Windows registry problems to stop crashes and increase performance.  Proactive System Admin: RemotelyAnywhere RemotelyAnywhere is the tool for remote access and proactive system administration. Be the first to know about workstation issues ranging from attempted security breaches to unstable software installations. Free 30-day trial.
	Buy a link now

Tom's Guides

Motherboards & RAM Mobo Makers Try Again with Intel's 925X and 915P Chipsets Processors Duron Successor: AMD Sempron Graphics Cards NVIDIA, ATi Bring Five OpenGL Workstation Graphics for PCI Express to Market Displays LCD's 17" and Larger Reviewed Video Making Videos on the Fly With Sticky Pod Camera Mount Mass Storage Hitachi's 7400 Hard Drive Capacity Reaches 400 GB, Maxtor's MaXLine III Advances Serial ATA Mobile Devices Apricorn's Ez-Bus-Mini 20 GB External Hard Drive Gets USB Power Peripherals & Consumer Electronics Nikon Enters 8 Megapixel Digicam Fray with Coolpix 8700 PCs & HowTo Drivers Improve WindowsXP Service Pack 2 FireWire Networking Hacking the Linksys NSLU2 – Part 3 – Adding an iTunes server Games & Entertainment QuakeCon 2004 Gets Doom 3 Business Reports Siggraph 2004 Brings Sci-Fi Imagery Closer to Reality

mainboards: asus, shuttle, abit, gigabyte, biostar, msi, aopen

cpus: amd, athlon, intel, celeron, opteron

ram: corsair, kingston, samsung, crucial, ocz

storage: ibm, western digital, firewire, seagate, archos, cms

graphics cards: ati, radeon, all in wonder, nvidia, geforce fx

monitors: flat panel, viewsonic, nec, samsung, philips, benq

cases: chenbro, cooler master, thermaltake, chieftec

digital cameras: canon, sony, olympus, nikon, fuji, minolta

pdas: palm, sony, handspring, hewlett packard, compaq