IN A BLAST from the past, a hacker named Dead Addict dragged out a bunch of his memorabilia from Defcon 1. It pulled into focus exactly how far the show has come in the 16 years since that first gathering.
Sign up on the sheet
The most amazing piece of information among the press clippings, notes and printouts was the original sign up sheet for Defcon 1. There are some legendary names there, along with phone numbers and emails that probably would never be admitted to in this day and age. It was a simpler time.
We don’t need those stinking badges
Next up was an unused badge from Defcon 1. Given how few of these were ever made, getting one in perfect shape is nothing short of a miracle. Getting one and a speaker badge too almost pegs the nifty meter. Both are shown with SCI stickers for size.
Last up was one of the fund raising bits for Defcon 1, a printed notepad for hacker information. It had easy blanks for phone numbers, passwords, notes, and social engineering specifics. You just buy a pad, and don’t have to decipher the scribbles you made later on, it is all there. Brilliant idea!
Unfortunately, the feds saw it this way too, it is much easier to read that then to decipher the notes scribbled by a drunk hacker. Prosecutors would have loved to get their hands on a few of these, especially if correctly filed.
The pads didn’t sell well. Some people realized that it was dangerous to use, other, well, others realized that they just needed one and a photocopier. Many pads had one sheet removed and that was that. To paraphrase Dead Addict, you can’t make much money selling easily copyable things to hacker. The more things change in 16 years……S|A
Charlie Demerjian
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