DEFCON 23 in the books

Defcon 23 was last week in Las Vegas, NV. It was my first year going, but certainly will not be my last. There is no adequate way to describe the number of things brought together in one (actually two) place(s). Not knowing anyone at the convention, I was worried I would spend most of my time on my own searching for things to keep myself entertained. I was wrong. So so wrong. A huge thank you to the folks from DEFCON for keeping an amazing event going.

Now let me go over some of the things I picked up while I was there:



New Tools
RFIDler

This is a low frequency, software defined, RFID card reader/writer/emulator. I picked one up from the Hacker Warehouse table at the convention. My very first thought was "For the cost you should at least toss in two keys" but I bought a 10 pack and was okay with the overall cost ($180.00). Considering the next competitive system, the ProxMark3, was selling for ~3x the price. I was also impressed by the sensitivity of the coil. I dove into the interface and was able to emulate a card within an hour. I was able to clone a card within a day. This was due to my having to figure out parts of the process on my own. The documentation is kind of sparse. I will do a more in-depth write up on this in the near future.

LAN Turtle

The Hak5 team has a new tool this year. Well, it is really a re-imaging of the classic hacker tool - The Drop box. The reason I picked it up was two-fold. First, it is a small innocuous looking USB to Ethernet adapter.  Placing this on a computer network wouldn't draw much attention. Far less than say a Raspberry Pi Second, it allows you to securely create a VPN connection to the host network from anywhere. I am looking forward to a chance to deploy this.

New Books

"The Hacker's Playbook 2" by. Peter Kim.

This is an overall view of hacking tools and a light sprinkling of tactics. It is very easy to follow, if you are a fan of football. There are several useful tips for beginners to save learning the hard way. I will definitely be modifying a few of his plays to fit into my own arsenal.

"Linux forensics with Python and Shell scripts" by Phil Polstra.

This book is an in-depth look at analyzing a Linux based system using my favorite tools. Python and shell Scripts. I am still reading this, and expect to reference it after I finish working through the examples. I plan to use this knowledge to help develop signatures of my own.