Day after fest 2k4

Well it was a blowout, and YSRD is again the world champ.
We had everytool you can think of and all major firewalls and OS combos you can imagine and Every root password of the target servers and all contestants falling to the champ.

the contest is based on the hacker being able to get into the system without getting caught by any honey traps and IDS software and get the holy grail of hacking, the root password. This involves finding and exploiting any hole in the system and then cracking the native mode root or administrator password and ten announcing their ability by changing a file or web page on the server and doing so while the owner is on the machine and possibly seeing you do the damage.
Secondary is protecting your own system while you do this to every other machine on the network. With 6 native servers on the network (the targets) and from 4 to 20 people connected at once trying to do the same thing to you. Winner take all, getting all root passwords is an automatic win.

This year we added wireless and Bluetooth segments to the network and had people using Mac, Intel, Palm and PPC systems. It was a ball and one of the only safe hacking forums left with all contestants and participants signing wavers to allow hack attacks while connected to the network. (All legal and fun.) The main goal is to show that no system is completely secure and to show the participants (mostly 500's employees and administrators) how they can be attacked and to possibly show them how to defend themselves and protect their IP.
Even Ysrd learned a trick or two and everyone went away with something they could apply back at base.

I had a lot of fun as did everyone who attended.
Best newcomer was a 13 year old girl (accompanied but not helped by her dad) and she shows a lot of promise as well as an enthusiasm and focus that many of her older peers could learn from.

Best firewall is a new comer that is not yet released, brought by it's creator in an attempt to stop the champ. Watch for him to incorporate what he learned and make a remarkable firewall that can stop anything thrown at it. Running on a new OS that will be released at the same time keep an eye out for "the Moat(tm)" to be released in early fall.

New Ideas for next year (or earlier if we can get together again) are tunnel and VPN hacking.
Happy hacking but keep your white hats on,

YSRD