My Take on SummerCon 99 Case case@pilosoft.com summercon, summer, con, hackers, convention, case, binaryzer0, hacker con, 2600 A few months ago, someone reminded me SummerCon was approaching, and that it would be in Atlanta this year, so I naturally thought "Why not? Let's go!" And so, I began rounding people up to go with me. This was the first con I have attended, so naturally I was looking forward to it. In a way, attending a con helped place me more firmly, in my mind, in the ranks of hackerkind. It looked like Jaeger, BinaryZer0, Jackmov!, and I were all going together, but Jackmov! hadn't given me a definite answer and became very difficult to reach at the last minute, so when Error called me up asking about the con, I told him he could share a room with us. So on friday morning I picked everyone up and we headed east. We meant to attend the Kevin Mitnick demonstration in front of the courthouse, but by the time we found our motel, right outside ATL, it was a bit late for that. So we headed for the CNN Center/Omni Hotel. We had a little trouble finding the place, and we didn't know where to park, so we bribed a valet at the Omni. We then began the task of finding the SummerCon attendees. After a bit of wandering, we ended up in the bar/lounge, where some SummerCon people had already congregated. Here we met up with Korc, whom I already knew, as well as a couple of the Nashville se2600 guys: I know one was Maverick, and the other might have been Rattle. Guess I'd better get on their mailing list already; they seemed cool. Error and I wandered around a bit looking for people who might have had trouble finding everyone, and in the food court area we found some. We found Breaker and his friend (whose handle escapes me; I simply met too many people that weekend), who were from the Northeast, but still were pretty cool (heh. heh.). We also found some people from Tennessee, who were all dressed somewhere between the preppie and paramilitary styles and seemed to all have radios of some sort. Among them was a girl with green hair whose handle, I later gathered, was Mary Flopcat. We introduced ourselves while they scanned us for RF transmissions, and I asked what area they were from. When I heard they were from Tennessee, I naturally asked if they were with the Nashville group. They all rolled their eyes, and I heard someone mutter "MP3 kiddiez." One of the uniformed males explained to me that they were "independent," whatever that means. They didn't seem too eager to leave each other's company. Now, as I have mentioned, I have talked with some of the Nashville crowd and I like them, so it's anyone's guess where the attitude came from. Anyway, I showed them where everyone else was, so that they were able to stand in their own circle 20 feet away. After a largish number of people had congregated, most of us made our way outdoors to a large concrete landing, where people continued to mingle. Here I met Clovis, who organized the con this year. He did an admirable job, considering he had several speakers back out at the last minute, and I was impressed that he made an effort to greet everyone individually that evening. I met many more people that first evening, and I had trouble catching all their names and handles, So if I get any wrong, you'll know why. KC, aka someidiot, and Stan were among those who were amicable and knowledgable. I also met, for the first time in person, Aero from California and Amber from Georgia, and I wound up hanging out with them a lot. We left the Omni around 10 pm, and I don't remember a whole lot about the rest of the night. One thing I do remember is this: BZ, who is about half my size, eats twice as much as I do. Weird huh? The next day we got up and showered, then headed out to the Omni. We got there around noon, and found our conference room. We bought some T-shirts, and I saw Carolyn Meinel for the first time. She was there selling books and setting up a small ethernet, which I heard was giving her difficulty. Fortunately she had one of her happyhacker.org admins with her. I didn't talk to her at that point in time, but I heard her saying something about "neat war programs that attack people who try to break into your PC." After a while everyone settled down and Clovis called us to attention, after which he gave the podium up to CPM. CP Meinel's speech seemed to consist mainly of trying to convince us that everyone who claimed she was clueless did so because they were against her personally, as well as attempting to name everyone who ever called her a crackwhore, and explaining why she has turned in everyone who ever confided in her. She also demonstrated an inability to explain exactly WHY a boot floppy can defeat any non-physical security scheme short of a BIOS password. Now, I hadn't eaten that day, and I am really not too interested in Carolyn Meinel's personal problems and affairs, so when KC asked me and Jaeger if we were up for lunch, we accepted. We grabbed some Wendy's from the food court, and discussed the finer points of modems and phone scanning. We arrived back to find that Mike Roadancer had begun his presentation early, and I was sorry to have missed the beginning of his speech. Roadie explained what the Hacker's Defense Foundation has been up to lately, and I was naturally glad to see that people were looking out for our legal interests. The presentation wrapped up early though. Next up was an employee of the FCC. He made sure to state that his opinions did not represent those of the FCC, but he still gave the impression that he preferred we did not quote him, so I will leave his name out of this. He informed us of the FCC's plans to auction bandwidth in an attempt to legalize and regulate the types of stations that would now be considered pirate radio. Naturally, many of the con attendees had very strong opinions on the subject, and our speaker was very understanding of them all. Unfortunately, he is not the person making FCC policy. We were then addressed by Jen Caltrider, a producer for CNN, who works on science and technology news. She gave an "open discourse on hackers and the media" where she explained exactly why the media always gets stories about hackers and/or computers almost entirely wrong. She herself was very intelligent, and seemed to have a very good sense of what is real and what is not in this area, but again, she's not the one releasing all the stories. She explained that she does do what she can to ensure accuracy, and I am glad that at least one person at CNN has our interests in mind. She was very open to suggestions, and she received quite a few, especially from the Nashville crowd. After Ms. Caltrider finished, Clovis called for a one hour break. Jaeger and I took this time to explore the hotel, explore some 800 numbers (we found what appeared to be a girl's college dorm in Memphis... dial-a-coed!@!##!11), and take a walk through Centennial Park, the site of the Olympic bombing a couple years back. The park had these fountains with jets of water that seemed to act as a spectrum analyzer for the music that was playing over the loudspeaker. Sort of like a glorified WinAmp plugin I guess. It was also during this time that BZ spent some time with Ms. Meinel, interestingly enough. But quite frankly I don't remember anything he said about that. We also met up with Alric, whom I knew from IRC. After everyone wandered back into the conference room, Deceius took the floor, where he began his presentation by giving us some background on wearable computers. I was already aware of Dr. Mann's work in this area, and I had also heard that it was a popular subject for projects of MIT grad students, so I was at a bit of an advantage here. Deceius touched on rememberance agents, which was a concept I was familiar with, though I didn't know much about existing implementations. According to Deceius, an emacs extension already exists for this purpose. The focal point of the presentation, however, was the concept of a personal area network, or PAN, which involved the transfer of data across the human body. Deceius explained how he and a fellow student had managed to send and receive data across the body using a carrier based on alternating frequencies of low voltage electricity. This can be used to interface PICs and touch memory devices, such as iButtons and SmartCards. I found this talk absolutely fascinating, and I might get into this area myself someday. I was curious as to how the devices were physically interfaced with the body, and Deceius explained that he had had success using tight anti-static bracelets. Despite some noise in the back of the room from the area of CPM's table, the discussion was very enjoyable. This is when I noticed Dagmar from the Nashville group sitting across the room, and I planned to say hi to him after Deceius finished, but Dagmar seemed to disappear afterwards. Dagmar has pointed me towards a lot of good info in the past, and has always seemed very intelligent, but I had not spoken to him in months, nor had I ever met him in person, so it's not like he would have recognized me. I was sorry to have missed him. The remaining speakers didn't show up. I was a bit disappointed, particularly since I had been looking forward to the comparison of hacking to the Dukes of Hazzard. On the other hand, that gave me more time to meet people. I heard some stories of Cap'n Crunch stripping to the waist for group yoga at last year's con, and I spoke a little with Carolyn Meinel as well. She told me that the person she was speaking with earlier (whom I never saw) was in fact the notorious hacker Hagis. Now, it is my understanding that Hagis is a group, rather than an individual, but CPM's been on the scene longer than I have, so what do I know anyway? Jaeger and I played at the phones for a while longer, and discussed the concepts involved with modern blueboxing, as well as we understood them, with a couple of guys who asked about it. It was around this time that I noticed, with a little surprise, that a couple of really beautiful girls were present. I guess hackers really DO get chicks. I'll have to look into this. I found that some of my friends had ended up talking to a long-haired individual in a denim jacket, who turned out to be Kynik, from the L0pht BBS. It's a small world after all. After a while, BZ, Aero, Error, Amber, Alric, Jaeger, Kynik, and I went to a restaurant in the CNN center for dinner. We then headed back to our motel, and hung out together, having a generally good time. We of course stayed up really late. Now that I have done the math, I think I averaged 2 and a half hours of sleep per night during that 70-80 hour period. Of course we all overslept Sunday morning. I woke up at 20 till 11, which meant 20 minutes until check out time. We managed to clear the rooms in time though. We had planned to go back to the CNN center to see everyone off, but when we thought about it, most of the people we had talked to weren't going to be there on Sunday, the people we had hung out with most were already at our motel, and we could save nearly an hour of driving by sticking to the interstates and avoiding metro Atlanta (where streets and traffic SUCK, by the way). So home we went. There you have it: that was my SummerCon experience. Here's a quick rundown of things i didn't cover: Negative Things: Noone ever quit with the necrophilia jokes. That was only one incident. And it never happened, I swear. BZ doing his very best to provoke a homeless man while holding a laptop. Certain individuals with certain attitudes. Not getting a chance to talk to a couple people. Not hearing the Dukes of Hazzard presentation. Jackmov! couldn't make it. I guess we'll make up for it by hitting Malaysia or the Dutch Antilles together someday soon. Positive/funny things: Jaeger does a good Sean Connery impression. It's my vision! An...EVIL dialup, Mister Powers? Meeting people I knew for the first time. Meeting people I didn't know for the first time. Finding out that I wasn't stupid compared to most people there. I was only stupid compared to a few people. But I was able to hold my own, and there wasn't a single discussion I couldn't follow. Learning things I didn't know. So SummerCon 99 was a good experience for me. I hope to see a lot of the attendees at future gatherings. Maybe next year I'll make it to DefCon, and who knows what will happen then? ____________________________________________________________________________ [ ........ ] [ Damn, we're smooth. ] [ ........ ] [ black.box.sk ] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------