HOPE Day Two

I went to lots of talks today, some of which were very good:

Radio Communications.
This talk covered the different parts of the radio spectrum and how they are used in the USA.

Phone Phreaking 101
Basically how the phone system in the USA works and its history. Didn't learn anything new, but enjoyed the talk greatly. The speaker presented well and had a good sense of humor.

Making Reliable Links Using WiFi
This talk mainly covered antenna design. I arrived late and wasn't in much of a mood to pay attention but the parts I did catch seemed interesting.

Password Cracking And Time-Memory Trade Off
Didn't see all the talk, spent some of the time checking email etc. The main thrust of the talk seemed to be that when cracking passwords you can do much of the work in advance and store the results in a database. The demonstrations were very scary. Longish passwords were cracked in seconds.

Hackers In Prison
Bernie S. and FiberOptik. Kevin Mitnik couldn't be bothered to turn up so his girlfriend sat on the panel in place of him. I hope that this marks the end of 2600's love affair with Kevin Mitnik. Mitnik has done nothing of value since being released from prison for breaking into computer systems.


Law Enforcement Wiretaps
This talk included live demonstrations of how to stop government phone bugging and pen recorders. Fantastic. Matt Blaze is double-plus leet.

Building A Hacker Space
The hacker spaces described in this talk seemed quite easy to set up. Just get a bunch of friends with a bunch of money, and find a space to rent which you can fill with computers.

Drama!
One of the speakers at HOPE was arrested by the FBI a couple of minutes before he was due to be part of a panel. There are news reports floating around the Net, but there aren't any clear details yet.