This is the story about how I acquired a black badge from DEFCON (pictured above).
We also hear the story about who PPP is, and their CTF journey at DEFCON.
The image above is the picture of the “PPP power book”. This had some pretty awesome LEDs scrawling words across the back. And PPP used this in DEFCON 21 to launch all their attacks with.
Photo of PPP after DEFCON 22. Tyler is in the red shirt kneeling down in the front row.
A few members of PPP have also won the Pwn2Own competition. This is where the web browsers and software companies all come together to see if any hackers can find vulnerabilities in it and will pay out prizes for any vulnerabilities found. George won one year, and Richard Zhou won another year.
Guests
A very special thanks to Tyler. Good luck at Defcon this year.
Sponsors
This episode was sponsored by Detectify. Try their web vulnerability scanner free. Go to https://detectify.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=DARKNET
Full Solve the Badge Writeup
CTF Links
- PicoCTF (the one made by PPP)
- Video: Tyler discussing what it takes to build a world class hacking team
- TunnelsUp: A list of Hacker Challenges like CTFs
- TunnelsUp: A handy set of linux commands to help you solve CTFs
- CTFTime a schedule of all upcoming CTFs
Links to Further Reading
- Video: Short Documentary on PPP at Defcon
- Video: Defcon 21 closing ceremonies (Winners announced at 1h 17)
- Black Badge Hall of Fame - List of Winners by Year
- David Brumley Wikipedia
- George Hotz Wikipedia
- PPP in the Washington Post
- DEFCON official website
Thanks
Thanks to the reviewers who previewed this episode before it went live and provided valuable feedback. They include @greyhathackr, Nick, Brett, @r1otctrl, @Pyrostic, Karla, and a few more who wish to remain unidentified.
Attribution
Theme music created by Breakmaster Cylinder. Theme song available for listen and download at bandcamp. Or listen to it on Spotify.
Additional music by Epidemic Sound.
Equipment
Recording equipment used this episode was the Shure SM7B, a cloudlifter, Audient ID4, Sony MDR7506 headphones, and Hindenburg audio editor.
Transcript
[FULL TRANSCRIPT]
JACK: [MUSIC] Okay, so this one time at Defcon – see, Defcon is in Las Vegas and Vegas never sleeps. Well, neither does Defcon. After the conference ends for the night, the place morphs into a night party, so after me and some friends spent the whole day at Defcon, we went and ate dinner, freshened up, and headed back to Defcon to check out the scene. We were told there was this rocking party in this one conference room so we all pop in and check it out. It was loud, like really loud. The room was actually quite small, about the size of a small classroom, and at one end of the room was a DJ spinning tunes. He looked bored as he was doing it. The room had bright red lights everywhere with intense blacklights shining in your face. I looked around; there were like me, my three friends, the DJ, and two other guys in this room.