Archive, Talks

Physical Penetration Testing

An audience favorite from the archives – Walter Belgers with “Physical Penetration Testing”. This a great example of a presentation, which hasn’t aged a day since as updates to physical security controls rarely happen at regular predefined intervals. In addition to being good fun, covert entry can also save time and effort if you happen to *krhm* forget your keys.

The content was tailored to include material specific to Finland.  Impatient viewers just wanting to see the Abloy Classic lockpicking can start the video from 47:07. Those watching the presentation more carefully might notice the mention of a familiar name who presented at t2’17.

Archive, Talks

Dave Aitel keynote 2017

Good news everyone!

As both SyScan360 and INFILTRATE are just around the corner, it’s about time we release the long-awaited t2’17 keynote by Dave Aitel.  Whether you’re into policy, tactics, offense, defense, or meta in general, the keynote covers a whole gamut of cyber. For the younger generation, understanding the references and why they are relevant is a good starting point in a path of never-ending learning. Instead of dropping spoilers, here’s the actual presentation itself:

Friends of inconvenient truths, hard questions, analysis of cyber meta (or if you want to see Dave Aitel press volume control button during a presentation), this is the video to watch!

The keynote should be deemed mandatory for anybody working with cyber policy or lawyers.

Challenge, News

t2’17 Challenge winner announced

This year’s free ticket was awarded at LocalTapiola HackDay to the team who discovered the most severe vulnerability. After a full day of analyzing, verifying and rating the reported vulnerabilities, we had a clear winner rising above the competitors.

Congratulations Harri Kuosmanen of team ROT! Well done!

We would also like to thank all the other teams and those participating in the challenge during the summer. The countdown to t2’17 starts now – see you on Thursday! (..or Wednesday night at one of the many pre-event meetups/lobby bar gatherings)

If you have ideas on how to give out free tickets to our 15th anniversary event next year, please let us know!

Challenge, News

What ever happened to the t2 challenge?

So, the t2 challenge of 2017.. It’s over for sure, but not in a way we anticipated. Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s get back to the beginning.

The challenge was originally created in 2005 to give out free tickets to people with fantastic technical talents – there were two tracks, speed and elegance. You could either win by being the first one to solve the challenge, or by submitting the finest write-up. The idea was that also those without a personal training budget had a chance of participating the event – in practice, many new talents got a turbo boost for their contacts and career in security.

The format was successful for almost a decade, until the successful completions, attempts and downloads/page views started to drop steadily. The numbers were coming down and there was no denying it – the format of each year’s challenge appeared to have no effect on this.

We tried to compensate by putting more effort into creating the challenges, and promoted them also on Twitter in addition to the traditional channels. Alas, this did not work and we pivoted to a bug bounty this year.

The challenge was open for three full months over the summer, and during that time our own tweets alone reached over 130 000 people. Further promotion was done on our own blog, and mailing list, in addition to Full Disclosure and DailyDave. In the spirit of past challenges, the rules emphasized quality submissions and finesse to allow people to focus on what truly matters. Most importantly, the target had been selected exclusively for the t2 challenge, and had not been previously subjected to a bug bounty.

Despite a major scope increase two weeks before the challenge end date, we received exactly zero submissions. Not one, not two, but Z-to-the-E-to-the-R-to-the-0. Talk about failing..

Our question now to you, esteemed fellow hackers is:

How should we give out the free tickets in the future?

Please tweet or e-mail us, we want to hear your ideas! All feedback on the subject is appreciated.

There is sunshine after the rain – our good friend Leo Niemelä invited t2 to judge the annual LocalTapiola Hack Day. That’s the where the story continues in the following post.