72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
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72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
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Re: 72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
#2He should have gone to BlackHat if he wanted to see anything really interesting. Def Con is mostly a big party with life style talks and people talking about old stuff.
Thats not to say there isn't neat stuff to do at Def Con (I've seen plenty of neat talks) but its mostly a big party. There's nothing really scary going on there.
Re: 72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
#3There ought to be a way, at the OS level, to configure a machine so no network traffic goes in or out over an unsecured link except for the VPN application's traffic.
Then, if you configure secure links to be WPA at work, WPA at home, and your VPN, there should be little risk to joining an open network to bring up a VPN.
Re: 72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
#4He should have gone to BlackHat if he wanted to see anything really interesting. Def Con is mostly a big party with life style talks and people talking about old stuff. Thats not to say there isn't neat stuff to do at Def Con (I've seen plenty of neat talks) but its mostly a big party. There's nothing really scary going on there.
It sounds weird that they're selling key-logging sticks for $50 and spoofing routers for $100 at a convention where you'd think everyone can build that stuff by themselves for a much lower price.
Just to add to your point, I suppose.
Re: 72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
#5There ought to be a way, at the OS level, to configure a machine so no network traffic goes in or out over an unsecured link except for the VPN application's traffic. Then, if you configure secure links to be WPA at work, WPA at home, and your VPN, there should be little risk to joining an open network to bring up a VPN.
You can do that with the routing table.
Re: 72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
#6He should have gone to BlackHat if he wanted to see anything really interesting. Def Con is mostly a big party with life style talks and people talking about old stuff. Thats not to say there isn't neat stuff to do at Def Con (I've seen plenty of neat talks) but its mostly a big party. There's nothing really scary going on there.
I went to HOPE a few weeks ago, after having been to such things before, but not for a few years.
I had exactly the same impression - mostly a lifestyle / social / political thing, pretty light on in the way of talks with actual technical detail. Kind of like TED talks - well presented, entertaining, but not really actionable.
In years gone by, I went to some excellent events, with talks on really specific, useful things (kernel internals, gdb use, ELF dynamic loading, ltrace / strace use, that kind of thing). Can't help but wonder if those sorts of conferences still exist, or the whole scene has changed into something less practical and more lifestyle.
Re: 72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
#7He should have gone to BlackHat if he wanted to see anything really interesting. Def Con is mostly a big party with life style talks and people talking about old stuff. Thats not to say there isn't neat stuff to do at Def Con (I've seen plenty of neat talks) but its mostly a big party. There's nothing really scary going on there.
I went to HOPE a few weeks ago, after having been to such things before, but not for a few years. I had exactly the same impression - mostly a lifestyle / social / political thing, pretty light on in the way of talks with actual technical detail. Kind of like TED talks - well presented, entertaining, but not really actionable. In years gone by, I went to some excellent events, with talks on really specific, useful th…
Events are just mainstream now; unless there's a chance the FBI is going do a raid, likely nothing you're not going to hear about a day later on the net.
Re: 72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
#8He should have gone to BlackHat if he wanted to see anything really interesting. Def Con is mostly a big party with life style talks and people talking about old stuff. Thats not to say there isn't neat stuff to do at Def Con (I've seen plenty of neat talks) but its mostly a big party. There's nothing really scary going on there.
It sounds weird that they're selling key-logging sticks for $50 and spoofing routers for $100 at a convention where you'd think everyone can build that stuff by themselves for a much lower price. Just to add to your point, I suppose.
At a convention you can pay cash (semi-)anonymously where if you had to build that stuff you'd leave a paper trail.
Many I know in this group of people (DefCon/HOPE attendees) do things like trade around craigslist-cash-purchased laptops.
Re: 72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
#9He should have gone to BlackHat if he wanted to see anything really interesting. Def Con is mostly a big party with life style talks and people talking about old stuff. Thats not to say there isn't neat stuff to do at Def Con (I've seen plenty of neat talks) but its mostly a big party. There's nothing really scary going on there.
It sounds weird that they're selling key-logging sticks for $50 and spoofing routers for $100 at a convention where you'd think everyone can build that stuff by themselves for a much lower price. Just to add to your point, I suppose.
Even if you value your time as worthless then maybe you could build a hardware key logger for less than $50 in parts but I really doubt it.
Re: 72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
#10There ought to be a way, at the OS level, to configure a machine so no network traffic goes in or out over an unsecured link except for the VPN application's traffic. Then, if you configure secure links to be WPA at work, WPA at home, and your VPN, there should be little risk to joining an open network to bring up a VPN.
You can do that with the routing table.
Interesting - links/details?