Well, we intentionally made our team name ambiguous so we’d double our chances of it being an appropriate name. In hacker speak, it’d be pronounced just like lastplace, but if you literally read it as 1 @ st place, it might be read as first place — to further the layers of meaning, our team captain is @tlas, so it might also be the first @tlas team. And in the end, it turns out that we weren’t last place, but the name was still accurate.
I’m so incredibly excited to have been a part of such an awesome team. I had a blast not only with the truly awesome competition, but interacting with my teammates as well. They’re all great people, not just hackers, reversers, exploit writers, sniffers, etc.
In the end, I had to skip out a day early, so I missed the award ceremony and the chance to stand on stage and be recognized as l33t hax0rs. Of course, I also missed the nerve-wracking final hours where we were trying to maintain the lead we had established and held through the entire competition. I consider that almost, but not quite, an even trade.
I found a few other photos of the ctf event, and there’s also @tlas’ post, and some news stories. Of course, the AP wire story spelled our team name wrong, but that doesn’t really surprise me. I’ll have some links to my own blog entries and podcasts sometime soon.
Update #1 (2006/08/08): A little bit of coverage after the win. Also, a better picture (thanks, Andrew).
Update #2 (2006/08/09): I’m hosting a copy of @tas’ presentation, “the making of atlas: Kiddie to Hacker in 5 Sleepless Nights”, as well as his @UtilityBelt, and deadlisting.txt.
Congratulations!
Please tell me what in the WORLD could have made you leave a day early?
Jordan: (link to the team photo moved above, thanks)
Left by Andrew on August 8th, 2006
Some of the schedules (including the printed schedule given out at the conference), had the original end time for the CTF at midnight Saturday. There were basically only two flight times available out Sunday — 11pm and 7am. I wanted to get back without flying all night, so I took the 7am flight, forgetting that I’d be missing the final day of the conference, and indeed, what turned out the be the most important part, the award ceremony where we got our recognition and prizes.
Left by Jordan on August 8th, 2006
You were surely missed. We got by with the help of fury and mezz, but we felt the lacking
atlas
Left by atlas on August 9th, 2006
[...] Florida Free Culture staff advisor Jordan Wiens, a UF security engineer, was part of a winning team of hackers at Defcon 14 in Las Vegas on August 4-6. Team 1@stplace took first in the Capture the Flag contest. See press release, articles in the Alligator and Gainesville Sun, and this post on Jordan’s blog. [...]
Left by Florida Free Culture » Chapter advisor hacks to victory at Defcon on August 15th, 2006