Progress is being made, we’re all fulfilling our dreams in exotic ways. Tune in 6:30p tomorrow as we drink away our frustrations and verbally abuse one another.
Servers
Where’s the best source for decom’d servers these days? I’ve been checking Craigslist, FB Marketplace, ebay and local auction sites. Looking for real deals on equipment that’s still relevant. C’mon, non-profit status is pending. 🙂
DC540 Infrastructure
DC540’s infrastructure (remember that? physical infrastructure?) runs on two servers. We have an R620 running all the administrative crap (confluence, jira, parts db, bitbucket, etc.) and an Intel Hades Canyon NUC running all the CTF platforms.
The R620 was just upgraded to 96GB of RAM. Even cheap RAM is expensive when you buy a lot of it. I got a bunch of 4GB modules for just $6 each. This thing can handle over a terabyte of RAM, but that’s out of the financial range and kind of silly. It would be nice to get it up to 256GB, though. Unfortunately that would require 16GB modules, which are still pretty pricy, even pre-owned.
The NUC was recently upgraded from stock 32GB to 64GB, and houses two 2TB M.2 NVME sticks. It handles its business just fine.
Both are currently running on ESXi, although it has been on my bucket list to acquire another beefy Dell server, move everything off of the NUC, and rebuild it using CentOS/KVM/Qemu/libvirt. The biggest gain from this transition is that I believe it can handle inbound and outbound wifi or wired capabilities in the host operating system, making it a fully portable CTF system in a (very small) box.
Monday Night News…
We had another fun hang on discord this evening. A new hacker joined us, which is what we’re all about. We’re just a bunch of mutants with more energy than sense trying to find other people who think sorta like us. Whoever you are out there, on the fence of whether to engage, come on in, the water’s fine. We’re smart, tolerant, irreverant, sometimes downright insulting but it’s all in good fun. We do this because we enjoy people, and interaction, and we’re looking that X factor. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Non-Profit Status
The paperwork is in — DC540 is hopefully on the way to 501(c)3 status. We want to make it easier to receive donated equipment and money, to participate in community programs and partnerships, and to reflect the non-profit nature of the group. Could be weeks, could be months.
YouTube Channel
I’ve set up a YouTube channel and thrown up a few videos. I picked up a GoPro knockoff a couple of weeks ago (the Dragon Touch), and I plan to record a few videos which make a shitty attempt to pass on the odd bits of wisdom I have collected over the years. I’d like to do a few deep-dives on some of the technology I’m into, and I’ve got one percolating in my head about how to “recover” from tech hoarding without giving up your shit. I feel like that’ll resonate with some people.
Saturday Coffee
We’re setting up a coffee meetup again, Harris Teeter Starbucks in Stone Ridge this Saturday at 8AM.
Hackerspace Meetups
I can’t wait until we can do in-person meetups in the hackerspace again. Actually, I can. I’m using this no-meetup time wisely and improving the space in so many ways. It’s gonna knock your socks off.
DC540 held an in-person DEF CON SAFE MODE event
We met at the local coffee shop, tried (and failed) to flash a DC26 badge, and held a mini MohawkCon.
3D Printing Fails
The world of amateur consumer-grade 3D printing is fraught with challenges and opportunities for catastrophic failure.
We were on a pretty good roll for a while, some good large pieces completed nicely, we got the bed leveling procedure down to a science, the system seemed pretty reliable. Unfortunately, purely mechanical systems like this (at its core, 3d printing is just motors and heaters) prefer to revert to chaos. Vibration shakes things loose, and then all bets are off.
In this case, this piece was probably 80% done when the heating element set screw vibrated loose, and then the heating element itself shook itself loose from the extruder block, and then was just dragged around on the bed by its wires until it was discovered about 15 minutes later. You can see the melted areas along the rim where it dragged over those edges repeatedly, and then the melty paths along the floor of the surface where it was simply dragged across the floor. Gorgeous, and not the quickest repair job for the printer either.
Stardate 98195.74 — I have bitten off more than I can chew.
I have yet to even absorb the schedule for Def Con 28 Safe Mode. Don’t even get me started on the Million Channels of Discord. But here I am just the same, in addition to all the mental gymnastics to pump me up for this virtual con, having signed on to participate in a dynamic android debugging CTF remotely at work tomorrow afternoon.
In the process of installing all of the prerequisites, I discover/remember that I had Android Studio 3.1 on this laptop 27 months ago, for. a similar CTF, my first one at this job.
Also, installing Android Studio, plugins, SDK, tools, etc., makes a MacBook Pro a bit… WARM.
WOOHOO, I have a working Pixel 3a XL emulator!
Group Participation Invite for Def Con Safe Mode 28
My plan is to stay home from work on Thursday the 6th and Friday the 7th, and be as fully immersed in DCSM28 as I can be. It’s been an important part of my life these past few years, and I refuse to just pretend it’s not happening, or “skip a year.” It’s obviously going to be a very different experience this year than in prior years, so I’m staying open to that experience.
To that end, I’m planning on monitoring the DC540 Discord throughout the event, while participating in whatever ways reveal themselves.
Please feel free to join in if you’re so inclined.
DEFCON MUD
Are y’all playin’ EvilMog’s MUD yet?
Defcon badge info
SO the Defcon Badge deep-dive was well-received during tonight’s Zoom, there were some interesting ideas thrown about. For now, we’re collecting everything we figure out about it in the bad decisions discord. If you’re not on that, ask yourself what you’re even doing with your life.