Index
Subject
: LUG: Security Competition on December 3
From
: Chris Bookholt <cgbookho@ncsu.[redacted]>
Date
: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 00:03:12 -0500
Hi Folks,
I wish I had good news to report regarding yesterday's security
competition. However, it was what most would call a disaster.
Right from the start we shot into the lead and were facing strong
competition for the top 3 positions. 20 minutes in, the scoring system
went down. It came back up with only about 15 minutes remaining in the
7 hour competition.
There were also routing issues that prevented us from connecting to
other teams. A number of teams were the same position as we were, but
not all of them; several other teams were not prevented from connecting
to us.
Two phrases come to mind: "like sitting ducks" and "hands tied." The
organizers were aware of the problems, but were unable to debug them in
a timely manor, which is unfortunate and frustrating for everyone
involved.
I am *very* proud of my teammates. They wrote their own exploits and
verified them on our test systems, but were prevented from using them on
the other teams. I sent them home after they went 3 hours with nothing
to attack and no scoring system to watch.
Even considering the events of this year's event, if any of you have the
chance to do participate in next year's competition I would still highly
recommend it. Having participated in a successful competition in 2003 I
can safely say they are a lot of fun, not to mention extremely
educational.
Thanks to everyone that participated and everyone that gave their support.
Happy holidays & best wishes,
Chris
--
Chris Bookholt, RHCE
cgbookho@ncsu.[redacted]
PGP Key: http://chris.kavefish.net/pubkey.asc