Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 16:59:45 -0800
From: The Dark Tangent <dtangent@...con.org>
To: "bugtraq-securityfocus.com" <bugtraq@...urityfocus.com>
Subject: Call for DEFCON Capture the Flag Organizers.


Call for DEFCON Capture the Flag Organizers.
-----------------------------------

Wanted:
An evil large multinational corporation, or...
An nefarious group of genius autonomous hackers, or...
A shadowy government organization from somewhere in the world

To:
Host, recreate, and innovate the worlds most (in)famous hacking contest.

Why:
For everlasting fame, intrusive media interviews, the respect of your 
peers, or the envy of your enemies.

Do you have what it takes and know what we're talking about?

The Story:
After taking it to the next level, creating a spectators sport out of geeks 
sitting at their keyboards 0wning machines, and fabulous recognition around 
the world, the Ghetto Hackers have retired their Root Foo as the hosts of 
DEFCON's Capture The Flag.  Our contest is not over, merely in transition 
to the next keepers of the flame.  This is the opportunity you and your 
crew, company, or government has been waiting for.

You too can pour your heart, countless hundreds of hours into planning, 
producing, and executing the world's most famous contest of hacking 
skills.  Like all of our contests, they are run by volunteers.

Our intent is to make a game that's fun for its participants. While the 
Ghetto did a fabulous job of allowing CTF to be a team and spectators sport 
through scoring visualizations, commentators, game updates, et cetera, this 
is not a requirement. They took it to a new level in one area, and you can 
take it to another. The heart hacking has many facets.

Your constraints:
You must design a cool contest.  This contest could have a multiplayer/team 
aspect, but does not have to.  Your contest can be based on previous games, 
but shouldn't be a mere replication of previous games.  You can determine 
the teams/participants before DEFCON, or at the conference.  You can have 
multiple contests (for example, one contest with individuals, one with 
teams).  You determine the constraints, size of teams, allowing remote 
teams to play, and more.

You design the network topology.  You determine the rules.  Your group will 
determine the winner, and the losers.  The idea behind this CFP is not to 
ask people to reproduce past Capture the Flags, but to have your group 
reinvent and create something new, based on the same ideas of creativity 
and energy. Challenge your friends!

You MUST:
Clearly communicate the rules to the participants before the contest,  set 
up clear eligibility requirements (if any) before the conference,  set up 
the network, provide any infrastructure that you wish to be part of the 
game, referee the game while it is taking place, create a scoring system, 
and determine winners. The easier it is for contestants to understand how 
to win, the more fair the contest will feel. The contest must end no later 
than two hours before the end of DEFCON (5pm Sunday) in order to provide 
time for final scoring and the awards ceremony.

Your contest MUST NOT:
Interfere with the DEFCON networks (ie: it must be a separate network), 
interfere with the 'live internet', involve non-consensual parties (ie: 
anyone who hasn't explicitly agreed to take part in the contests), take 
bribes that are not equally shared with the DEFCON staff.

In the past network traffic on CTF has been captured for later forensic 
analysis by groups such as shmoo, and Source Fire and shared with the 
community to further ids and network sniffer developers.  Expect that we 
will give access to those wanting to capture traffic while not actively 
participating in the contest.

Suggestions:
Allowing 'lone gunman' to participate (not require group play). This could 
be a separate contest, or they could participate in competition with teams 
(handicaps for teams, perhaps)

Allowing 'outside players', perhaps a VPN connection with one 
representative at DEFCON, the rest of a shadowy team located elsewhere in 
the globe.
Incorporating non intrusion/defense techniques to the game - stenography, 
covert communication channels, riddles/puzzles, social engineering, 
hardware hacking, radio direction finding, etc.

A 'theme' (like forensics, covert channels, attacking, defending, 
application security, host security, etc.) that would be announced 
beforehand with the contest focused around the theme.

You will be judged:
On any innovations or revolutionary enhancements to the game.
On the feasibility of your team getting all the work done (note: we will 
publicly humiliate you if you get accepted and fail to perform!).
On the amount of fun (as measured in FunMeters) that participants will have.

Resources we can provide:
Badges to the conference and access to the CTF area for setup on Thursday, 
the day before the con.
Physical space roughly equal to that which has been provided at past DEFCONs.
Tables for participants to use.
Screens and LCD projectors to display data with.
Network connections from the net if necessary.
Some network gear and power strips - please let us know early what you need 
so we can plan for it.
Prizes for the winning people or teams.

Research pointers:
If you haven't been to DEFCON before, you should understand the environment 
your contest must operate in! http://www.defcon/ will get you started.
These may help give you an idea about past contests, what has worked, and 
what hasn't. Ceazar gave a presentation on running hacking contests at 
Black Hat Asia (learn from a master): 
http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-asia-04/bh-jp-04-pdfs/bh-jp-04-eller/bh-jp-04-eller.pdf
Shmoo's CTF sniffing project: http://www.shmoo.com/cctf/
DC 10 Rules: 
http://www.DEFCON.org/html/DEFCON-10/dc-10-post/DEFCON-10-ctf-rules.html
DC 11 CTF Announcement: 
http://www.DEFCON.org/html/DEFCON-11/events/dc-11-ctf-teams.html
White paper on a teams participation: 
http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~crispin/discex3_autonomix_DEFCON.pdf
Ceazar briefly discusses CTF before GH ran the contest: 
http://www.antioffline.com/10/ghettohackers.html

So you want to play a game?

Here's the process:
1.Fill out the application below. You will receive an acknowledgment that 
your submission was received within 48 business hours of us receiving it.
2.We will use relatively simple criteria to judge your entry. 1:) 
Feasibility of your team pulling off this task, 2:) The amount of fun we 
image the participants will have with your contest, 3:) the coolness or 
innovation you bring to the contests.
3.We will contact finalists and ask them further questions, and talk over 
any questions that we will inevitably have.
4.We will announce the winner(s) on XYZ date. It is possible that we will 
choose multiple teams that run concurrent contests that are different.
5.We will hammer out details over the phone, participating in your game 
creation (not interfering with it, just ensuring everything is going 
smoothly). We will conference call with you and may fly you down to sunny 
Seattle to meet with us to discuss planning for the event.

Application:
All contact information will be kept private, and not disclosed outside the 
DEFCON planning organization.

About you and your group
Name of your organization:
Name of primary contact:
Email Address of Primary contact:
Phone number of primary contact
Number of people in your organization (that will actively be participating 
in creating/planning/executing CTF):
Experience team members have had in planning events (This could be a bake 
sale with 500 people, or a DoD briefings for 20 people, something that 
indicates some planning experience):
Technical ability of team (this would include a general list of people's 
abilities ­ networking, hardware, et cetera):
Physical resources (if any) that you will be bringing to help run CTF:
What experience have your team members had in playing CTF in the past (this 
is not a requirement, but shows real-world knowledge of the game as it has 
been played in the past)

Your Vision for CTF
-Explain, in a general manner, your vision of your CTF.
-Provide three reasons your group should host CTF.
-How do players or teams qualify (if there are qualifications)?
-Is it multi player or single-player, or a combination?
-What innovations or new ideas are you bringing to CTF.
-How long will the contest take, will it be 24x7, 8 hour shifts, etc?
-What technical work is required to execute your plan. This includes 
setting up environments beforehand, pre qualification work if any, writing 
a scoring system, etc.?
-Give an outline of the rules that will be presented to the participants:
-Why do you want to do this?
-What hardware resources do you request or need from DEFCON?
-Explain what you believe is the best way to gauge a hacker's abilities, 
and how your vision of the contest could do this?
-Tell us anything else that you think may be important or that we might 
consider in choosing your group to host CTF.

Send it in! Deadline is March 31st, 2005. Submissions go to ctf [at] defcon 
[d0t] org

A discussion area has been created on the DEFCON forums 
(http://forum.defcon.org/) under the DEFCON 13 Events section to cover new 
ideas, ask for feedback, and get an idea of what is going on, new 
announcements will be on the main DEFCON web site (http://www.defcon.org/).

Thank you,
The Dark Tangent

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