DEF CON is just around the corner and I’m pretty bloody excited this year (first time speaker and all)…but there’s something else this year too. The DEF CON Twitter Hunt

Why?

Since my talk was really triggered by wanting to data mine Tony Hawks twitter hunt  (don’t go a read this now, you might as well just come and see my talk for an abridged version) and a serendipitous twitter exchange with @l0sthighway, vis-à-vis Maltego, I wanted to give the audience a little taste of the twitter hunt experience…

…I wanted to do a couple of things.

1. See if I could get some signed Tony Hawk skateboards to give away.
2. Try and make some DEF CON decks.

Signed Tony Hawk decks

“Don’t ask, don’t get”… so I contacted Tony Hawk. To my amazement, Tony  (actually, one of his dudes, the legendary @SweetJerome) said “will 4 be enough?”… not “no, bugger off” or “TheSuggmeister who?” or “I couldn’t possibly do anything with a bunch of security geeks”…no, he said yes (x4).  I’m pretty sure that I didn’t sleep that night  (Thanks Tony and Jerome… most excellent).

Anyhow… 4 decks you say?  weeeeeeeeeelllllllllllllll.  I’m also talking at Blackhat (same time as some chap called Barnaby Jack… something about ATM’s) and BSidesLV (Thursday, 11am), so maybe I’ll be giving away a deck at those talks too….

OK, so we got the Tony Hawk decks (here’s one…)

DEF CON decks

Next up was printing some DEF CON decks… this took a little bit more work, but I eventually found somewhere to get decks printed… properly.  It would be remiss of me to not mention the help given my @mediakinetic.  She took the the DEF CON outline and helped get it skateboard size with photoshop….then some wicked cool graphics later and @mediakinetic had planted a seed

Turning idea into Contest/Event

I hadn’t intended to turn this into a contest, BSides Mik D was the guy who suggested (nudged me) I make it a contest… opens the fun up to a wider audiencce, not restricted to folks just coming to my talk, Tony Hawk, ‘kin-A.

A couple (well, more than a couple) of emails with (the ever helpful and ever patient) Nikita and Pyr0 later, and voila!  I’ve got me a DEF CON event/contest (see the forums).

Rules and FAQs

The rules are simple and they’re here.

What next?

Well, let’s see how it goes this year. If people have fun, I’ll probably try and do something next year too.. although the Tony Hawk decks are going to be a one year only thing. Catch em while you can.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

I had to share these fantastic images from my good friend, Mr. Patch Eudor.

iphone 3g v iphone 4g - count them pixels

A Patch commented… “If you count the pixels in the middle row of the right hand image (iPhone4) you will get 26. If you do the same with the left hand image, you’ll count 13. There you go – 2x, same scale. Wow!”

He took these awesome pics with a homemade lens stack inside a Celestron T-Adapter.

…in my opinion, this rather blows away the stuff the Penn State people did (although it’s pretty damn cool too)..

http://gizmodo.com/5571385/iphone-4-and-iphone-3g-screens-compared-under-a-microscope

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/23/iphone-4-and-iphone-3g-screens-go-head-to-head-under-the-microsc/

He does some really cool stuff and personally I’d like to see him blog about it publicly, if you would too send your comments/requests to me and I’ll pass them on.

Enjoy

“News 14 Carolina gets pwnt (sic)”

OK… a few years ago (2004) this hack/prank had me in tears (the funny sort).  I had the good presence of mind to download the posts relating to the hack for offline viewing and future pleasure.

Today, for your viewing pleasure, I’ve uploaded the pictures and message board threads so you can relive the hack/prank.  Have you seen anything funnier?  If you have, I’m all ears…lemme know.

Here’s a description of the hack/prank as covered on the North Caroline State university site (originally at  http://www4.ncsu.edu/~smheath/news14.html ), unfortunatly I don’t know/can’t cite the author.
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