Jul03 Meeting Report.
Brum2600 Jul 2003

Brum 2600 July 5th 2003

Righto I'm back in Brum and this is my report....

Quotes of the evening fuelled by much alcohol include....

"In the interests of zipsers privacy we shall call him Dave" --Reload/L-s-L

"Why not just call us all Dave" --Reload

"It got so big I couldn't control it" --L-s-L

"Their idea of security is to put a dot in front of the file" --Reload

"I built a telephone exchange" --Dave

Bambam --"Give me an account"
Anon --"No"
Bambam --"Well just give me an IP address"

"Imagine a US marine dropping 3 E's and having nowhere to dance, thats a
pregnant woman" --Reload

Bambam --"Is it June or July?"
Savvy --"July"
Bambam --"Shit already"

"Nout wrong with pigs" --Bambam
"Snout wrong with pigs" --Unknown

And many many more.

The usual suspects included

L-s-L
Bambam
Pink
Savvy
Zipser
Reload
-Q
Random Mate of L-s-L who left early.
Autom8on

I arrived at Snow Hill with Pink and Bambam (a touch shocked, for reasons I
wont go into) and met up with Reload, Savvy and Zipser. After screwing with
-Q's voice mail we decided that waiting for the stragglers would be pointless
and moved on to the Hogshead. The initial conversations where very hackerish
with HP-UX and Linux 'spoits on discussion.

##############################################################################
DISCLAIMER: BRUM2600 IS A FORUM FOR FREE AND UNCENSORED INFORMATION
EXCHANGE. WE DO NOT ENGAGE IN, OR CONDONE ILLEGAL BEHAVIOUR.
##############################################################################

The spolits in question where as old as some of the attendees and thus sys
admins really should have no excuse for having such vulnerabilities on any
box.

Shortly after arriving in the Hogs' we where joined by Auto8on, -Q and X, a
matey of L-s-L and Bambam. Conversations did the usual trick of drifting off
into various tangents with small groups covering specific subjects. The
subjects I remember include the following.

DVD region changing on Sony DVD players and methods from using standard
universal remote controls to laptops and handheld with infrared capability.
The whole region issue was also covered, why DVD manufacturers want to stop
people sharing DVDs on a global scale was beyond the group.

Continuing on the DVD theme, Re-Writable DVDs made an appearance with much
discussion as to which format (+ or -) will win or even the possibility that
both formats will live in harmony. Also the 'new toy' factor of each drive
and which one will get my hard earned cash.

Xboxes and the Xbox Linux project provided some amusement, especially with
the news that the FreeX(box) project had used a software hack to install
Linux on an Xbox, then tried to blackmail Micro$oft into signing a Linux
installer. Microsaft responded in typical fashion by waking up their army of
lawyers and throwing money at them until the problem goes away.

Digital photography was discussed by a couple of members, as the others
listened to what seemed like an endless stream of cryptic acronyms and
numbers and tried to look intelligent. With differing degrees of success.

One topic of great interest to myself, and one which has been covered before
was the freenet project (freenetproject.org) and the IIP (anon IRC)
project. Freenet in recent months seems to have lost some of its direction,
the latest builds are suffering from poor networking and lost files. Also
the developers seem to be in disarray over the type of content freenet is
being used to disseminate. I appeal to the freenet staff, don't remove the
freedom of the masses just because of the few who may abuse that freedom.
Freenet is being used already in China and the Middle East to get
information in and out of countries in the grip of tyranny, that alone is
reason enough to continue with the impressive work already performed.

On a lighter note OpenDildonics (www.opendildonics.org) may a reappearance
with some ideas and developments which will be added to the site shortly.

Getting encrypted drives under Linux using the Crypto API was discussed
(www.kerneli.org) especially in relation to the news that the AES cipher may
not be as secure as previously thought. Blowfish may be a better
alternative. Any comments on Linux loop-back devices would be welcomed as the
documentation for this project is so poor and largely out of date I'm going to
write my own. (lsl[at]opendildonics.org)

Other topics included set top boxes and digital TV, Credit card fraud,
loverly ladies and Mac OS and the new Mac.

The night drifted from discussion to discussion fuelled by just enough alcohol
before we all finally staggered out into the night.
Big thanks to -Q for lift home.

See you all soon.

Peace

L-s-L
lsl[at]opendildonics.org

Meeting report { www.brum2600.net, "5th July 2003" }

In attendance {
re-load
savvy
zipser
bambam
lsl
pink
-q
autom8on
}

Turned up late and left early {
dave
}

Operational outline {
Met at silver man. Went to hogshead. Drank beer. Conversed.
}

The appropriate background disclaimer {
NOTHING ILLEGAL EVER OCCURS AT A BRUM2600 MEETING. BRUM2600 IS
A FORUM FOR INFORMATION EXCHANGE, NOTHING MORE.
}

Conversation {
hp-ux {
oops.
}

Linux vs BSD {
Reasons that *BSD is gay.
}

MAC OS X {
Will be good when the client code is more secure/stable etc.
I'll buy one.
}

SPARC/Solaris ASM {
General discussion about this. Apparently autom8on is looking into this area
for his employer, but can't go into operational details, and can only talk
about general problems and general tasks.
}

x86 problems {
bambam was having problems with inline asm for x86 using gcc. Near jumps
weren't working; instead of giving 0xeb 0x[byte address], it was giving
some other instruction, despite AT&T notation giving that:

jmp 0x[byte]

should give 0xeb 0x[byte]. Turns out that if you just use labels and jump
to them it sorts itself out.

bambam was unconstrained by commercial NDA to say this was for "shellcode".
}

Digital Photography {
dave works for a camera shop.
}

XBOX {
A little talk about exploiting the dashboard, and other attacks on the xbox.
}

MacDonalds {
Uniqorn got a job at McDonalds, got some (very large and thus expensive)
shoes and then quit. Made us go MMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmm......
}

Receipts and Credit card info {
Don't really know what went on here.
}

Pregnancy {
One of us experiencing pregnancy second hand was berating it.
}

Literature {
Although some of us are illiterate.
}

Web defacement competition {
Apparently there is usually a drop in web defacements before a competition so
as the servers are "pre-rooted" to bump up scores. heh.
}

Time management {
How to fit in research and education (or research and a job, or research and
education and a job).
}

What Zipser got up to when he was young {
"I built a phone exchange"
}

Differential equations {
bambam went on to -q for too long about the "differential equations view" of the
world. How mathematical objects can built into a system which can be expressed
as a differential equation (just with complicated (and complex) parts).
}

Taking the piss in the meeting report notes {
When leaving the notes duty to -q and autom8on the entry upon return was simply
"Geology studies". :-)
}

http://www.niscc.gov.uk/ {
A helpful website if ever I saw one. :-)
}
}

Quotes {
"Imagine a US marine dropping 3 "e"'s and having no-where to dance. That's a
pregnant woman" - anon.

"It's worrying when the person next to you answers questions about *your*
lubricant" - autom8on

"Now I know why you go out with him" - -q to pink after bambam licked the
bottom of a pint glass.

"I always carry a 4 mil drill with me - you never know when you may need it"
- Re-Load.

"You've got your time in prison planned, haven't you?" - -q to Re-load.

"Are they using..... *parity bits*????" autom8on (on pink and bambam kissing)

"So, old people can't blow themselves up?!" - -q on equal opportunities in
terrorism.
}

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