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RobotWarez is a contest that takes place at each DEFCON. Since the target audience is hackers, elegant approaches are rewarded, and simple brute force is not encouraged. When I was there, the robots were firing something with compressed air and doing a good job of knocking some cans over. Photos here and here.
…the world record holders for the longest distance for an unamplified Wi-Fi link (55.1 miles at 30mw) blasted through their own year old record today at the Defcon Wi-Fi Shootout. Team PAD shot their signal a distance of 125 miles from outside Las Vegas, Nevada to a location near St. George, Utah, winning them a new record in the “unamplified” category at the shootout. Link.
The 3rd annual lock picking contest went on at DEFCON. It’s pretty amazing to see the wide variety of tools, locks and lock pickers all in one spot and all handily dispensing of most locks in record time. Here are some photos of the lock picking in action (I was able to liberate a couple locks, but there was this young kid who schooled me and did it with his eyes closed, the show off)… Link.
I was going to write up the IR hacking talk, but Wired news online got to it before I had access so here ya go. A vulnerability in many hotel television infrared systems can allow a hacker to obtain guests’ names and their room numbers from the billing system. It can also let someone read the e-mail of guests who use web mail through the TV, putting business travelers at risk of corporate espionage. Link.
BoingBoing has the latest list of the “many, many mirrors for Mike Lynn’s controversial Black Hat presentation in which he quit his job, described critical vulnerabilities in Cisco equipment and got sued by his employer“…I’m getting slammed with emails and IMs about this, so here ya go…Link.
