Archive > 2004 Activities
Throughout the weekend at RUXCON there are both RUXLAN and social activities held for attendees to enjoy. Some activities allow you to test your computer knowledge and give you the chance of winning prizes, while others are solely for the purpose to entertain during lunch and drink breaks. This page has information on some of the acitvities that were held at RUXCON 2004.
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RUXLAN Activities
A LAN was available to attendees at RUXCON 2004. The LAN was used for some competitions and also general file and information sharing.
- Capture The Flag Competition
- The RUXCON 2004 CTF tested out a new system featuring a concept called RUXBUX. Each team had to possess the skills of a system administrator whilst understanding implications of application vulnerabilities in a hostile computing environment. Teams competed to earn points (RUXBUX) which could then be used to perform varying configuration actions on their machines.
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- Exploit Development Competition
- This year we ran a basic judged exploit development competition. Four levels were released early for people interested to get a head start, and the remaining levels were released at RUXCON.
The vulnerable levels are available in the xcomp website.
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- Reverse Engineering Competition
- This was two competitions in one. People not adept in one of the fields of crypto or reverse engineering could participate in the other section of the competition and should not be hampered in their progress.
A very flawed cyrptographic program was custom written for this competition. Many hints were given out during the competition. Step one was released early on at RUXCON, and involved the release of a binary of the encryption program. The winner was the first person to submit a description of the algorithm, and, using this, the decryption algorithm. Anybody finding the encryption algorithm contained in the binary should be able to write a decryption algorithm with minimal difficulty.
Competition two began at the completion of competition one. The source code to the encryption program used in step one was then released. Using this source code, entrants had to write a program to crack the encryption algorithm, and produce the key.
The source code for the reversing / crypto competition is available in the Archive section of the site.
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Social Activities
Social events are of a relaxed nature and are held in the main social area of RUXCON, where there's seating, a bar, and stage area. This allows attendees to either sit back and watch the activities, or participate themselves with the chance of winning some cool prizes.
- RUXCON Panel Discussion
- The RUXCON Panel was an informal discussion with participants from diverse fields sharing their opinions on current computer security issues. There were participants representing the media, law enforcement, antivirus research, our Legal system and of course a RUXCON staff member.
The panel was made up of the following people:- Andre Stein - Lawyer specialising in IT and telecommunications Security law
- Brian Diplock - Team Leader Investigations of the AHTCC ICT Enabled Crime Team
- Chris Spencer - RUXCON Representative
- Patrick Gray - Freelance journalist
- Paul Ducklin - Head of technology, Asia Pacific for Sophos
The panel will be run in an informal and open manner. The audience was free to voice their opinions on subjects under discussion or pose a possible discussion topic to the panel members.
Some issues that were touched on include:
- DMCA: effect this will have on the computer security community
- How much privacy should we sacrifice online in return for greater security?
- The Australian underground scene, the past, the present and where it's going.
- Cybercrime 2001, and its effectiveness.
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- THC Trivia
- THC is an acronym for "The Hacker's Choice" and is a group of international experts involved in network and system security. THC was founded in 1995 in Germany, has published over 60 software releases and technical papers and currently is among the top ten security groups worldwide.
The THC Trivia was a popular social event where attendees could participate in a hacker trivia competition. Our friends from THC will be making it over from Germany to run the trivia. The competition was held in the bar area and ran over a lunch break so everyone could enjoy a beverage while testing their IT knowledge, with the opportunity of winning some cool prizes.
The trivia was done in rounds, both team based and individual, and questions ranged from relatively easy to advanced. Question topics included: hacking; computing; security; history; and programming.
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- Chilli Eatoff
- The chilli eating competition allows daring attendees to step up and see who can stomach the most chilli, while others not so gutsy may sit back comfortably and enjoy the firey action.
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- YoYo Demonstration
- YoYo's are a fad that some will not let die. As computers have advanced over the years so has the yo-yo. Gone are the days of solid axles and simple tricks like walk the dog. Hi-tech yoyos are being produced to allow thousands of tricks to be performed. A small group of YoYo enthusiasts made it out to RUXCON to boggle attendees with tricks they only dreamt about in the playgrounds at school.
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- Pool Competition
- Another one of our social activities is the RUXCON Pool competition, held towards the end of the conference.