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Hackers refine their head games
From: InfoSec News <isn () C4I ORG>
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 00:34:15 -0500
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/tech/ptk_docs/027786.htm Friday, June 16, 2000 LESLIE BROOKS SUZUKAMO STAFF WRITER The message on the simple black T-shirts sold by 20-year-old ``Overdose'' from Las Vegas says much of what you need to know about the three-day computer hacking contest at RootFest. ``My only crime is that of outsmarting you,'' it proclaimed. RootFest, a convention for Midwest computer hackers being held at St. Paul's RiverCentre, ends today. Like more conventional conventions, it has its speakers and seminars, its PowerPoint slide-shows by day and its entertainment -- a rock band, of course -- set for Thursday night. But hackers aren't your father's Shriners. Hackers hack. So the centerpiece of the convention, planted in neat rows of folding tables in the back of the RiverCentre ballroom, was the hacking competition. It is a test of caffeinated wits, tricked-up operating systems and humming hard drives as hackers plugged into an in-house network and tried to hack each other -- to outsmart the smart. Think of gladiators without the decapitations and gore, professional wrestlers in a cage match without the head-butts. It's a three-day mental slugfest in which each hacker tried to break into as many of the other contestants computers as possible without allowing his or her own system to be penetrated. ``Everybody is on their own and just beating the - - - - out of each other,'' said 17-year-old Dave Aaldering, grinning beneath his Minnesota Twins baseball cap. Aaldering, a hacker and free-lance computer consultant who just graduated from high school in the Netherlands, looks like a 6-foot-plus Opie from ``The Andy Griffith Show'' but sounds like Jean-Claude Van Damme with a Dutch accent and an attitude about computer martial arts. ``It's a matter of skills and strength and who's the best. It'll come out to who's running at the end,'' he said. It's not just a game, though. [...] ISN is sponsored by SecurityFocus.com --- To unsubscribe email LISTSERV () SecurityFocus com with a message body of "SIGNOFF ISN".
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