DefCon 14
Or, Vegas Baby Vegas!
So I went to DefCon this weekend.
After Scott and DJ returned from the 2600 meeting on Friday night, they asked if I wanted to go. Since DJ, a few others, and I had a final exam on Saturday night (7-10pm), we’d all figured we couldn’t go. At 2600, though, somebody suggested that we take off immediately after the final; we’d be there by 1 or so, and he knew somebody who had a room where we could stay. So DJ and Scott made preparations to go, and asked if I was interested. I thought for a while, about how awesome it would be, and how crazy it would be, and how scary it might be, and how boring it might be, and eventually I decided I might as well because I may never even have the opportunity to do something so crazy again.
So I left my PowerBook at home, and took everything out of my wallet except proof of car insurance, AAA card, medical insurance card, and cash; and put my drivers license in my shoe. DefCon is possibly the worst place on earth to lose a DL - it WILL make its way to identity thieves, and I guess these days a DL# is enough. DJ made more extensive preparations, since he brought his laptop.
After the final, we took off up I-15. Shortly after we got on, around Carroll Canyon Rd, I think I saw a DeLorean. It exited before we could get closer, though. We stopped for burgers and gas at Corona. Somewhere just this side of the CA/NV border is a road called Zzyzx Rd, which has an interesting story behind it.
By 1:15am we were rolling down the Strip. It is, in fact, crazy. We found the Riviera, parked, and headed up to the Skyboxes overlooking the convention halls - where all the parties were. As we waited for David, our contact, we sat in the hallway and Scott and DJ tried to get online. Scott’s machine got unstable after just a few minutes — might have something to do with using an Intel wireless card. I enjoyed watching the people walking by in various states of inebriation discussing obscure issues of computer security. A pair of guys walked by, party-hopping, one saying to the other “…and we’re not gonna drop anything out of this fuckin’ skybox, are we??” We met up with David and hung out in his skybox for a while. Eventually we headed off toward the Hilton, where David had a suite, and crashed.
The next morning we woke up around 11 and lazily got ready. We helped David get packed, and gawked at his 4U two-motherboard machine with around 10 FPGA cards. He’d used it for his talk on cracking wireless encryption in real-time. We went to eat at the Riviera’s champagne brunch. No cards, we just came back to the table and there were four cups of champagne. Only in Vegas would champagne be served from a pitcher into small plastic cups.
We cruised around the vendor area and bought some stuff. I got three very nice t-shirts and an EFF membership. DJ renewed his EFF and picked up some stuff, I didn’t see what. Scott got a few shirts (one free) and a diskless thin client: 800MHz cyrix, some ram, full complement of ports, one PCI slot, and CompactFlash slot, for $60. I think he’s gonna make it his router, once he refactors Athena.
After that, we caught the closing ceremonies. Interesting stuff; next time I would like to see some of the CTF games.
We met some cool folks around our age, one from MIT and one from Santa Cruz, had dinner with them at a very nice Korean restaurant down the street, said our goodbyes, and headed home.
I’ll upload pictures later. Remind me.
Scott has a much shorter take on the whole thing.