AAA - ACCESS ALL AREAS
Computer Security & Hacking Conference
1st - 2nd July, 1995
(Saturday & Sunday)
King's College, London, UK
Written by Scavenger <sca@advantage.co.za>
In march 1995 I got some information about a h/p conference in London.
Soon I decided to go to it and made plans of a little trip at the first
July weekend. A friend (Cursor Cowboy) and I booked a 10 days trip.
We arrived on Saturday morning at about 8 am. At first we had to figure
out where King's College is. Using the underground we went to it and
met some h/p looking guys. They told us that the conference starts
at 12 am. One of the guys was a German. After some minutes of chatting
I asked for his name and it was Blackbird. Haha.. Yeah.. He trampped
from Germany to London(why not?!). The other guys came from England.
They had a mobile phone there and I asked them if I could check my VMB
for new messages(my VMB is an international one with toll free dialups in
most countries). But hell they told me that they have to pay in UK for
0800 numbers (toll free) from an mobile phone - what a bullshit.
So I tried the kuhl pay phones. They are really handy, you know in Germany
99.95 % of the pay fones uses analog dialing and about 40 % are able to
change to DTMF after analog dialing. All that I tested in London were
able to change to DTMF using '*'.
Blackbird told the english guys what he did with carding stuff from
US and how he got busted for it. The guys were really amazed.
It was about 11 am and I went back to the rotten hotel in
Sussex (suxx-sex) Garden.
At about 1 pm I got back to the King's College where the conference
already had started. I payed the the expensive registration of 25 pounds
(about 40$). They did not except credit cards, even real ones not.
There were a big conference room and one room with about 10 computers
that were connected to the Internet. I tried to connect my friend's
laptop to it and asked the guy who managed the stuff - but no chance.
The guy had no cable and no ethernet card for us so we had to use the
other PCs there. I know you think they installed some kind of Unix there
like Linux - but bull. They ran Windows 3.1 with PPP!
Yes you read right! Windows 3.1!!! I really had to laugh.
In the afternoon I met Ganja Man and Cobolt. They also trampped to London
started on Thursday morning and arrived on Saturday morning(luck).
After about 30 minutes of IRC Ganja told me that he think the conference
is getting to the same bullshit as the CHAOS COMMUNICATION CONGRESS'94 -
but I didn't recognized it in that way. But anyway the whole thing got
boring and I looked out for some interesting stuff. I went to he
conference room that was filled with about 300 people, listening to the
speaker and many journalists, fedz and TV cameras. After listening some
common things about hacking I met Dr.Fonk from UK. He really recognized
me well because I wrote him a messages that I wear a green T-shirt with a
big 'R2' in front and 'Phreaking in the 90's' in the back. We discussed
some phreaking stuff like the german filters and the BT tricks.
Back in the computer room it got really hot and because the
air condition did not work. Some rumors were about it that they turn it
off intentionally. The organizers got some problems with King's College
because it was wriiten in a newspapern about the conference something
like 'terrorists and criminals held a conference in King's College'.
So people from King's College didn't want to loose their acknowledgement
and tried to stop the conference one days before it started. But they
had no success in stopping it so they turned off the air condition and
cutted the internet link of the College. But that were only rumors... .
A problem was that you were watched by TV cameras without your permission
on Saturday. The dudes were everywhere all and sucked your ass to get kewl
pictures. Ganja, Cobolt and me told the guys that they need a permission
if they want to record anything. After some time of fights they followed
our rules. Now they wanted somebody that is into Internet hacking and shows
them some tricks. Nobody was interested in getting into TV so they finally
found an el33t one that showed them some 'kewl hacking tricks'.
Yeah he hacked into Internet using Trumpet Winsock. I was impressed how
he clicked the mouse button 2 times on the icon and hacked in using the
login script. As he tried to break into the Netscape WWW browser he had no
success... huh... Ok. The TV dudes wanted some more exciting stuff for
8their hungry cameras. Now a quick double click on the Paintbrush icon
and drawing some filled circles and rectangles and then typing in the
text 'HACKER'. The TV dudes were impressed how the guy el33t guy hacked
so quickly into the picture. Finally the proud el33t one showed his
face to the TV guys. I knew this guy was a /<RaD cybaspace haqa.
Time to make some calls from the english pay phones. Some strange things
happened to me. I made a call to germany using a company that excepts
credit cards(always useful to have some handy when traveling). All went
fine. I spoke about 10 minutes and suddenly the line was cutted.
I got a dialtone again. Shit! So I called the credit card dialup again and
entered my card...hehe..it was invalid.. 2 minutes later 3 cops came
but I was going back into the building (where the AAA hp conference was).
I heard the cops talking about a call using credit cards to germany.
hehe..I think they already have ANI or something on the lines from
UK to US.
'Special events' were planned for the duration of the Conference:
HACK THE BORDERWARE FIREWALL SERVER COMPETITION.
"The BorderWare Firewall Server(tm) is the complete Internet
gateway and security system in one. It prevents access by
unauthorized users to a trusted internal network while giving
internal users the benefits of full access to the Internet.
BorderWare Network Technologies Europe will be bringing along
their BorderWare Firewall Server and challenging anyone to try and
break through it during the Conference.
A case of Champagne will be on offer as a prize for any successful
attempts.
The Firewall will be connected to the local network, protecting a
second network and UNIX system running SMTP and the usual network
services (FTP, Telnet, etc). An attack will be judged successful
if the Firewall can be penetrated and a file can be retrieved from
the internal UNIX system."
You had to get the file /etc/Access from the protected server. I saw some
guys telneting to the sendmail port and trying some oldskool sendmail bugs.
The more experienced guys talked to the dude from Borderware and asked
what they have to do to get the case of Champagne. The trick of Borderware
was that you had to show them how you hacked the firewall else you didn't
got the case of Champagne.
Nobody of the experienced hackers wanted to hack it now. hehe
Sure, why should you show your tricks to the firewall company, they fix
it and make big $$$$ out of it. Finally some guys felt free to crash
the firewall server, why not.
A nasty thing of the organizers was that they installed a sniffer to get
all entered login/passwords from the users. Now I know why my files on
one server got deleted. Nasty dudes! If you sniff at an h/p conference you
must got much into lemmingness.
Listening to some boring lectures and explaining some guys that bb still
works I survived the day anyway.
On Sunday somebody spreaded the "0" - MCI backdoor around. The lemmings
tought they got something kewl and were proud to tell it to everybody.
There was an interesting lectures. The speaker was BIllsf from Holland.
He spoke about phreaking, phun with R2, ANI, CALLER ID, ... .
I think it was the best lectue of the AAA. After his speech Dr.Fonk, I
and some other guys had a private conversation with him. The main topics
were C5 protecting techniques, filters and R2.
In the afternoon I met BaDs & some other guys from England.
When I saw BaDs later he was always together with a a nice looking girl.
First I tought she is his girlfriend but she isn't.(h0h0)
The nice looking girlie was Annaliza Savage. Have a look at
http://bianca.com/bump/ua/savage.html.
She made a good film about hackers called Unauthorized Access.
Some lemming made a joke and called up fire brigade. Everybody had to
leave King's College as they arrived. Anyway they made a really relaxed
impression. One guy smoked a cigartte as they controlled all rooms.
Rumors were spread around that the next h/p conference will be on some
ship in greece. Would be nice! eh?
At all you can say the ACCESS ALL AREAs was bull***t in
organisation(no workshops,no ..), but anyway my trip to London was nice,
thank to many good conversations and phun.
Some locations to mention in London:
The best club:
The Gardening Club - for kuhl Harthouse & Progressive House
The worst club:
Club UK on Friday - 3 floors, 3 samples(1 floor - 1 sample) looped the
whole night for lots of kiddoz
If you want to contact me write an email to Scavenger <sca@advantage.co.za>
Please do not forget to use PGP:
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greets to: Ganja, Zerial, Omega, Tuf, Bads, Countz, Underflow,
Mr.Listerique, Ripmax, Daniel, van Hauser, Bspline, Ht, Kokey, Trax...
All guys 'n girls who asked me for the next version of the SCAVENGER-DIALER:
a non-public beta version will be ready in november & a public
version will be avaible x-mas