[ISN] Call for DEFCON Capture the Flag Organizers.

[InfoSec News]

Forwarded from: The Dark Tangent <dtangent at defcon.org>

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Call for DEFCON Capture the Flag Organizers.
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Wanted:
An evil large multinational corporation, or...
An nefarious group of genius autonomous hackers, or...
A shadowy government organization from somewhere in the world

To:
Host, recreate, and innovate the worlds most (in)famous hacking contest.

Why:
For everlasting fame, intrusive media interviews, the respect of your 
peers, or the envy of your enemies.

Do you have what it takes and know what we're talking about?

The Story:
After taking it to the next level, creating a spectators sport out of geeks 
sitting at their keyboards 0wning machines, and fabulous recognition around 
the world, the Ghetto Hackers have retired their Root Foo as the hosts of 
DEFCON's Capture The Flag.  Our contest is not over, merely in transition 
to the next keepers of the flame.  This is the opportunity you and your 
crew, company, or government has been waiting for.

You too can pour your heart, countless hundreds of hours into planning, 
producing, and executing the world's most famous contest of hacking 
skills.  Like all of our contests, they are run by volunteers.

Our intent is to make a game that's fun for its participants. While the 
Ghetto did a fabulous job of allowing CTF to be a team and spectators sport 
through scoring visualizations, commentators, game updates, et cetera, this 
is not a requirement. They took it to a new level in one area, and you can 
take it to another. The heart hacking has many facets.


Your constraints:
You must design a cool contest.  This contest could have a multiplayer/team 
aspect, but does not have to.  Your contest can be based on previous games, 
but shouldn't be a mere replication of previous games.  You can determine 
the teams/participants before DEFCON, or at the conference.  You can have 
multiple contests (for example, one contest with individuals, one with 
teams).  You determine the constraints, size of teams, allowing remote 
teams to play, and more.

You design the network topology.  You determine the rules.  Your group will 
determine the winner, and the losers.  The idea behind this CFP is not to 
ask people to reproduce past Capture the Flags, but to have your group 
reinvent and create something new, based on the same ideas of creativity 
and energy. Challenge your friends!

You MUST:
Clearly communicate the rules to the participants before the contest,  set 
up clear eligibility requirements (if any) before the conference,  set up 
the network, provide any infrastructure that you wish to be part of the 
game, referee the game while it is taking place, create a scoring system, 
and determine winners. The easier it is for contestants to understand how 
to win, the more fair the contest will feel. The contest must end no later 
than two hours before the end of DEFCON (5pm Sunday) in order to provide 
time for final scoring and the awards ceremony.

Your contest MUST NOT:
Interfere with the DEFCON networks (ie: it must be a separate network), 
interfere with the 'live internet', involve non-consensual parties (ie: 
anyone who hasn't explicitly agreed to take part in the contests), take 
bribes that are not equally shared with the DEFCON staff.

In the past network traffic on CTF has been captured for later forensic 
analysis by groups such as shmoo, and Source Fire and shared with the 
community to further ids and network sniffer developers.  Expect that we 
will give access to those wanting to capture traffic while not actively 
participating in the contest.

Suggestions:
Allowing 'lone gunman' to participate (not require group play). This could 
be a separate contest, or they could participate in competition with teams 
(handicaps for teams, perhaps)

Allowing 'outside players', perhaps a VPN connection with one 
representative at DEFCON, the rest of a shadowy team located elsewhere in 
the globe.
Incorporating non intrusion/defense techniques to the game - stenography, 
covert communication channels, riddles/puzzles, social engineering, 
hardware hacking, radio direction finding, etc.

A 'theme' (like forensics, covert channels, attacking, defending, 
application security, host security, etc.) that would be announced 
beforehand with the contest focused around the theme.

You will be judged:
On any innovations or revolutionary enhancements to the game.
On the feasibility of your team getting all the work done (note: we will 
publicly humiliate you if you get accepted and fail to perform!).
On the amount of fun (as measured in FunMeters) that participants will have.

Resources we can provide:
Badges to the conference and access to the CTF area for setup on Thursday, 
the day before the con.
Physical space roughly equal to that which has been provided at past DEFCONs.
Tables for participants to use.
Screens and LCD projectors to display data with.
Network connections from the net if necessary.
Some network gear and power strips - please let us know early what you need 
so we can plan for it.
Prizes for the winning people or teams.

Research pointers:
If you haven't been to DEFCON before, you should understand the environment 
your contest must operate in! http://www.defcon/ will get you started.
These may help give you an idea about past contests, what has worked, and 
what hasn't. Ceazar gave a presentation on running hacking contests at 
Black Hat Asia (learn from a master): 
http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-asia-04/bh-jp-04-pdfs/bh-jp-04-eller/bh-jp-04-eller.pdf
Shmoo's CTF sniffing project: http://www.shmoo.com/cctf/
DC 10 Rules: 
http://www.DEFCON.org/html/DEFCON-10/dc-10-post/DEFCON-10-ctf-rules.html
DC 11 CTF Announcement: 
http://www.DEFCON.org/html/DEFCON-11/events/dc-11-ctf-teams.html
White paper on a teams participation: 
http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~crispin/discex3_autonomix_DEFCON.pdf
Ceazar briefly discusses CTF before GH ran the contest: 
http://www.antioffline.com/10/ghettohackers.html

While there is no formal submission form to fill out, you should address as 
many of these issues as you can. This will be a two way process if you make 
the initial cut. We want you to succeed as much as you do! Think long and 
hard if this challenge is for you and your friends, then contact ctf at 
defcon dot org with your proposal.

A discussion area has been created on the DEFCON forums 
(http://forum.defcon.org/) under the DEFCON 13 Events section to cover new 
ideas, ask for feedback, and get an idea of what is going on.

Thank you,
The Dark Tangent


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