The VM used for the game has been posted. Included in the distribution are the PDFs handed out to players and a README which has the username and password needed to login. There is also a bug in the VM that we never got around to fixing that requires one command to be run to start up all the jails on the VM. Please seed the torrent if you can.
With the VM posted our work for this year is pretty much done. With nothing left to do for this year I've been thinking about the future of Hack. I really don't know how much further we can take the puzzle concept while still keeping the game fresh. One idea I had is to change the game completely - instead of one VM with people hacking on it we would give out one VM per team and we hack it while others defend it (an idea inspired by something done years ago at Defcon by the Ghetto Hackers). The idea is that they can't just drop all traffic to the VM. Our code would make sure it's the VM and then exploit it using custom exploits we come up with. The defenders have to either patch the vulnerability or manage to convince our code that the VM is there while it's actually a replacement. I'm not sure this will work since our goal has always been to provide a short (2 hour) burst of fun and easy entertainment before we go drinking. The kind of work I'm talking about would be fun but may be a bit much for the goals we have.
The other piece that has been discussed internally has been the scoreboard. This year we got slammed with attendance and getting scores recorded was more difficult than it should have been. There is talk of expanding the scoreboard to work on mobile phones so that we can easily update scores during the game.
Of course, this is all just talk at this point. We want to encourage people to give us new ideas so please mail me your ideas and I'll make sure they get out to our mailing list.
One last thing is that while I will remain on the HoH list (unless Chris removes me) I do not intend to participate beyond forwarding any mails I get. I'm going to take the couple of months leading up to next years conference and enjoy them by working on other projects. I'm not sure what this means for the future of the game but with this post I've made my ideas known and leave it up to the rest of the team to figure out where to go from here.
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
-- WXS
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
I had a nice post written up that listed everyone individually and thanked them for all their hard work this year, but then my browser decided that crashing was a better thing to do than posting. I'll just say thank you to everyone who helped prepare/run the game this year. Thank you to anyone who played in it this year. In the upcoming week I hope that the VM will be cleaned up a bit and a torrent posted. When that happens I'll be sure to post a link here. I also plan on putting together a post which details my thoughts for the future of HoH and hopefully encourage some kind of discussion on it.
The Good:
This year we had some new things to the game. I think the wireless webcam (not sure if anyone actually cracked it) was a great touch, as was the phone and player attempts to social engineer their way into the building. A few hours before we went live with the game we decided to expand to allow everyone who signed up to play (the waitlist was 20+ people long). Besides some user error during the quick reconfiguration of the systems things went amazingly well with the last minute changes.
The Bad:
From my perspective I only noticed a few minor bugs. The entire "Binary Analysis" section was supposed to be on the www.evil.corp box. It ended up on ns1.evil.corp because that had a web server running on it a few weeks prior to the conference, and I had put the binaries there. When Fotios moved from ns1.evil.corp and set up www.evil.corp he moved everything over except my binaries (since he wasn't sure what they were). I didn't notice this until the game was started and I didn't feel like moving them during the game.
We had a minor problem with the link between the two switches going off-line for a few minutes while we tracked it down. This wasn't such a big deal.
Because we expanded the game to 40 people we had no way to fit that many people - plus team members in some cases - around a few tables. As such we just decided that sitting on chairs would be the best option. It turned out that we got absolutely slammed with people and we will have to reconsider how to configure the physical layout better for next year.
The only other bug I'm aware of was involved with the last row of the scoreboard not being saved properly. I believe Gentooooooo9er (he wrote the scoreboard entirely on his own and I liked it so much that we went with it during the game) has fixed this bug already.
The Ugly:
Jordan's Tequila Face
The Good:
This year we had some new things to the game. I think the wireless webcam (not sure if anyone actually cracked it) was a great touch, as was the phone and player attempts to social engineer their way into the building. A few hours before we went live with the game we decided to expand to allow everyone who signed up to play (the waitlist was 20+ people long). Besides some user error during the quick reconfiguration of the systems things went amazingly well with the last minute changes.
The Bad:
From my perspective I only noticed a few minor bugs. The entire "Binary Analysis" section was supposed to be on the www.evil.corp box. It ended up on ns1.evil.corp because that had a web server running on it a few weeks prior to the conference, and I had put the binaries there. When Fotios moved from ns1.evil.corp and set up www.evil.corp he moved everything over except my binaries (since he wasn't sure what they were). I didn't notice this until the game was started and I didn't feel like moving them during the game.
We had a minor problem with the link between the two switches going off-line for a few minutes while we tracked it down. This wasn't such a big deal.
Because we expanded the game to 40 people we had no way to fit that many people - plus team members in some cases - around a few tables. As such we just decided that sitting on chairs would be the best option. It turned out that we got absolutely slammed with people and we will have to reconsider how to configure the physical layout better for next year.
The only other bug I'm aware of was involved with the last row of the scoreboard not being saved properly. I believe Gentooooooo9er (he wrote the scoreboard entirely on his own and I liked it so much that we went with it during the game) has fixed this bug already.
The Ugly:
Jordan's Tequila Face
Sunday, January 25, 2009
How'd They Do That?
First, we all put on our white lab coats and safety goggles, and retreat for several months into our secret laboratory (pronounced luh-bor-uh-tree) to concoct devious puzzles, scheme, and generally test our plans for hax0r gaming domination.
Well, not everyone wears a lab coat, they're optional. But safety goggles are a must. We don't want OSHA shutting us down.
Alright, alright, I'll tell the truth, but only because I'm feeling truthy this evening.
We do start planning several months in advance, that wasn't an exaggeration. An event like Hack or Halo doesn't just come together in a couple weeks time. We are all pretty hardcore about learning from past experience, so after HoH4 we started discussing what went well and what we'd like to see us do differently the next year. And as early as July wxs was kicking around new ideas on how to structure the Hack side of the game with folks.
In October, Compton officially put together the HoH5 team - several familiar faces as well as welcoming a new member to the Hack side of the house and we started planning in earnest. wxs and his team are hard at work on Hack. a few months ago Compton and I met with a member of the XBOX team at Microsoft to learn more about how the NXE is going to impact Halo 3, so we can start planning tournament structure and implementation. At present we are still planning for a bracketed tournament starting with 64 players in 5 minute 8 person slayer elimination rounds until we are down to the final four Spartans… And mjxg cranked out a new tshirt design and a totally badass poster for HoH5. Remember how awesome our posters and t-shirts were last year? Yeah, that was mjxg's handiwork too. Who knows what else we had him design this year...
So all this work goes in before any one of us boards a plane for DC (or hops on the Metro, as the case may be). Once ShmooCon starts, we are all working like crazy at the booth to make sure HoH recruits players and runs without a hitch. You'll find me, mjxg, and compton signing people up for HoH. The Hack crew are all behind the booth making last minute tweaks to the puzzles and testing everything again. And again. And sometimes again. We do a dry run of the event Friday night, where we load all the gear into the room and light it up, testing to see that it works as expected and iron out any execution wrinkles that will cost us precious time on game night.
What's that? You don't know how game night runs? Oh my, we haven't really explained that at all yet, have we? There will be some changes this year, but the basics remain the same. HoH is Saturday evening, after the talks are done and before the party. You can Hack or Halo. If you want to sign up to do both that's fine, just don't whine to wxs about how you lost time on the Hack puzzles because you were busy shooting it up in Halo, or make excuses to me about why you missed your Halo timeslot because you were so engrossed in the DDA exercise in Hack. Only a master of time management can transcend the Hack or Halo experience, turning it into Hack AND Halo, young Padawan. Announce winners at end of game we do*. However, our fabulous prizes are not handed out until ShmooCon closing ceremonies on Sunday. Oh yeah, one other thing… Spectators at HoH are encouraged, but so help me, if you walk in front of one of the Halo game screens while people are competing I will subject you to the verbal equivalent of a gravity hammer and mercilessly berate you and say not nice things about your intelligence.
Game on...
-KxP
*DISCLAIMER: Last year (Or maybe it was the year before. I'm not sure) we didn't know the winner until Sunday morning because we had to figure out who had the most boxes, and then when we looked at the score sheets we saw there was a 4-way tie. We had to determine when each player solved each puzzle in order to calculate who did it fastest. So we may not announce the Hack winner Saturday night, even though I just said in a bad Yoda impression that we would. Not valid in AK or HI. Batteries not included. Your mileage may vary.
Well, not everyone wears a lab coat, they're optional. But safety goggles are a must. We don't want OSHA shutting us down.
Alright, alright, I'll tell the truth, but only because I'm feeling truthy this evening.
We do start planning several months in advance, that wasn't an exaggeration. An event like Hack or Halo doesn't just come together in a couple weeks time. We are all pretty hardcore about learning from past experience, so after HoH4 we started discussing what went well and what we'd like to see us do differently the next year. And as early as July wxs was kicking around new ideas on how to structure the Hack side of the game with folks.
In October, Compton officially put together the HoH5 team - several familiar faces as well as welcoming a new member to the Hack side of the house and we started planning in earnest. wxs and his team are hard at work on Hack. a few months ago Compton and I met with a member of the XBOX team at Microsoft to learn more about how the NXE is going to impact Halo 3, so we can start planning tournament structure and implementation. At present we are still planning for a bracketed tournament starting with 64 players in 5 minute 8 person slayer elimination rounds until we are down to the final four Spartans… And mjxg cranked out a new tshirt design and a totally badass poster for HoH5. Remember how awesome our posters and t-shirts were last year? Yeah, that was mjxg's handiwork too. Who knows what else we had him design this year...
So all this work goes in before any one of us boards a plane for DC (or hops on the Metro, as the case may be). Once ShmooCon starts, we are all working like crazy at the booth to make sure HoH recruits players and runs without a hitch. You'll find me, mjxg, and compton signing people up for HoH. The Hack crew are all behind the booth making last minute tweaks to the puzzles and testing everything again. And again. And sometimes again. We do a dry run of the event Friday night, where we load all the gear into the room and light it up, testing to see that it works as expected and iron out any execution wrinkles that will cost us precious time on game night.
What's that? You don't know how game night runs? Oh my, we haven't really explained that at all yet, have we? There will be some changes this year, but the basics remain the same. HoH is Saturday evening, after the talks are done and before the party. You can Hack or Halo. If you want to sign up to do both that's fine, just don't whine to wxs about how you lost time on the Hack puzzles because you were busy shooting it up in Halo, or make excuses to me about why you missed your Halo timeslot because you were so engrossed in the DDA exercise in Hack. Only a master of time management can transcend the Hack or Halo experience, turning it into Hack AND Halo, young Padawan. Announce winners at end of game we do*. However, our fabulous prizes are not handed out until ShmooCon closing ceremonies on Sunday. Oh yeah, one other thing… Spectators at HoH are encouraged, but so help me, if you walk in front of one of the Halo game screens while people are competing I will subject you to the verbal equivalent of a gravity hammer and mercilessly berate you and say not nice things about your intelligence.
Game on...
-KxP
*DISCLAIMER: Last year (Or maybe it was the year before. I'm not sure) we didn't know the winner until Sunday morning because we had to figure out who had the most boxes, and then when we looked at the score sheets we saw there was a 4-way tie. We had to determine when each player solved each puzzle in order to calculate who did it fastest. So we may not announce the Hack winner Saturday night, even though I just said in a bad Yoda impression that we would. Not valid in AK or HI. Batteries not included. Your mileage may vary.
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