as we go through this just kind of keep
in mind this is just our experience
there's a lot of experiences so I'm
going to kind of reflect on that but
it's the Lost underground and we're
talking about this today because there's
a lot of this that's just missing we
don't talk about it anymore we don't
know about it it's not really captured
we've evolved in the industry so we're
going to kind of just reflect on some of
this growing up uh me specifically
growing up in his house was uh
definitely an outlier experience so
that's what we're going to kind of cover
uh a little bit about me um if my
presentation slide here will switch I
don't know what's going on let
me so why I win
first and it's not working so we might
just have to use the keys all right yep
all right well we're shot so we're just
going to
use this
so a little bit about me uh I'm going to
go through this quick I've been hacking
since like the late 90s I got my start
in the CGI B phf vulnerability like old
school remote code execution kind of
powered me into this um I've been
developing since like the vb3 days so
kind of get my hands in that and then
I've been pentesting officially at some
capacity since around 2005 um and I got
my start really in bbs's so there was a
lot of BBS back doors and so I kind of
got going there and I'm going to just
introduce him real quick this is uh Ray
and he is a an old school pay phone
embedded firmware engineer so if you
know anything about payones and the
whole freaking scene um he was the one
that was writing a lot of the um
security controls in order to kind of
remediate those he's a hardware hacker
and he designs all the badges as you
already know and uh he has a lot of fun
with iot so he's hacking a lot of the
iot stuff and all the wireless protocols
and
whatnot so this presentation
specifically is going to cover the 80s
the 90s and the early 2000s and once
again this is just from our experience
and so just kind of bear that in mind
and so in the 80s we're going to start
with like the microprocessor movement
and then roll that into the cracking
scene because those two go really hand
inand and then in the 90s we're going to
look at some of the hacking scene that
was going on in the community um from
that time frame and we got a lot to
cover there so we're going to kind of
stream through that and it'll bring us
to the 2000s in the 2000s in the early
2000s there was a huge black hat
movement so I'm going to kind of cover a
lot of those grounds as we get through
this and then we're gonna kind of just
talk about how the content rolled out
back then uh and so with that I'm going
to go ahead and hand it
off to Ray so you should be on well here
I am he didn't he forgot to tell you
this is my first talk ever so he h the
bar real low
okay all right anyway we're going to
start like you said in the 80s we didn't
have internet we didn't have YouTube we
didn't have Google to search we didn't
didn't even have home PCS yet okay so
before I get started I I need to go back
to 1974 75 and uh tell you what we did
have we had main
frames and they were huge 6 feet high uh
10 and something pound they were crazy
they had a whopping 6K of memory and
mostly corporations and government could
afford them cuz they're running they
around about $170,000
back today's money back then it was
18,000 but anyway that's where we were
um real interesting but not not for any
consumers um but then in 74 and
75 we
uh let's sorry about that uh intel was
uh making static RAM and ROM they
weren't really into microprocessors they
they had a
404 808 and an
8080 but uh they didn't they just used
it to support their memory line they
they weren't interested in even selling
for our systs which I thought was pretty
interesting
um at that Intel there was an engineer
named Fredrico Fagan and he was on the
team for the Memories as well but he was
doing a side project he was doing a side
project called super 80 he wanted to
make a really good project at a real
reasonable price uh but Intel wasn't
really interested and then they had a
major
reorganization and they were even less
interested and then they had a
layoff well he B ban wanted to keep that
super 80 thing going so he he left the
company and took a couple Engineers with
him and uh that's where we're at right
here two other Engineers follow they
formed a company called Z zock I hope
I'm saying that right um their super 80
chip ultimately became the z80 processor
um hold on sorry about that yeah many
use cases there was a world they hit the
World Market obviously anyc TOA shop
aachi but they made the Radio Shack
computers also which is where I got my
start the
trs8 yeah man
uh 65 also at about the same time motor
roller was trying to work on a processor
called the 6800 and Chuck P worked for
them and he he wanted to make basically
he went on some calls with some
salespeople and he found out that they
were really put off with the the price
of the of the processor it was something
like $360 back
then oh I'm not talking into the mic my
bad just hire all right anyway uh he he
started to follow the sales people on on
their calls and he found out they they
they wanted a cheaper processor so him
and eight other gu or seven other of his
engineer France formed another company
to make a 6502 CHP basically is what it
it sparked the computer boom and then
then you got your attire commodor the
whole line just the whole line just just
hit and
up so what happened here you're good
okay anyway I did get the TR s that was
my first computer it got me started in
programming I I I enjoyed Assembly
Language
programming the graphics weren't all
that block figures stick figures not
very good graphics but I did get a
really good learning experience from
messing with the z80 chip um
oh yeah well there's my TRC information
anyway um so s language we me and me and
my cousin I have to say this me and my
cousin uh got enjoyed doing this uh
assem language program we we created our
own games we created one called Sona
that was based on a coin operated Sona
game and we we created one called The
Great Wall which was uh basically
breakout but it was ours we we we did it
we were real proud of ourselves and we
went
on like I said I didn't care for the
graphics on F City but when the Atari H
oh my God it opened it opened all the
doors uh it has a 6502 processor uh
which means I had to learn a whole new
Assembly Language instruction set but
that's that's fine it's actually better
I think
um but uh 2 million were sold in
1979 and video games started to become a
peel we used to go to the coin operator
arcades all the time me my cousin we
loved it but now we we had video games
that were available and we could uh mess
with those as well we had D modem it was
only 110 R uh or 300 B if you had the uh
a smart
B uh but we had Bing boards so that was
that start to be a
thing and we this is this is where we
got into the game cracking my kid told
me he says yeah you you you're a hacker
I'm not a hacker but yeah I really was
and I didn't realize until now um we we
had floppy discs and um cassette tapes
that was how we saved our our games and
all but we wanted to back up stuff and
we wanted to share with other people and
uh so we had to get into uh cracking
just just so we could do that you know
um protective measures were obviously
implemented and
uh they had a couple different methods
the code Wheels we had a spin it and um
licensing Keys which ended up being a
key gen they put bad sectors on floppy
discs intentionally so that they could
check for it and allow execution or not
and the happy driver obviously was a
drive that could could copy those bad
sectors but it had no red yet so copy
protection started to cause a rebellion
people wanted to be able to copy their
stuffs and back it up and they didn't
like
this so I was mentioning the B sector
read which is really really cool it it
was my first real exposure to some real
serious cracking um they like I said
they deliberately put a b sector on the
floppy they would boot it and they would
read that that sector
hoping that it's bad if it's bad it says
yes go ahead and give execution it's a
school but if it read good that meant
you copied it and they would they would
just break hang
up so we had to do is we had to reverse
Engineers so if I were to use that
example of the bad sector um we' have to
determine what copy uh protection method
was and we in this case we know and uh
we would load the software into
memory and then we we will try to find
information that would help us now Atari
is real good about documentation they
gave us memory maps of everything uh so
all we had to do is find out when they
were calling that read of the bad sector
and then we we would be in the ballpark
or where we need to be and let me go
ahead let's
say this this is where we what we would
find typically is we know that uh they
do it jump sub routine to
e453 that call will read the will read
the uh desk and then we would load the
accumulator with the status register so
if the bits were set for the error then
then we were cool and it would fall down
and it says if it rank Ranch equals zero
meaning the accumulator was Zero we
didn't get any bad errors it would it
would fall through to to a good read and
then we uh we would stop program
execution
basically that' be good a little bit
horse original cracking looking at
assembly on an assembler seeing these
jumps and we were having this
conversation when he was telling me hey
we're looking at sub routines and
looking where these jumps were at and
we're just like doing all this cool
stuff to try to patch it and I'm like
dude that's like memory stuff that we're
doing today and it was just crazy to
have that
conversation for for those of you that
that aren't familiar with Assembly
Language uh it's it's it's a language
that the computer needs to talk to in
machine language to make it easy for us
the we use pneumonics um but for example
the jsr to
e453 the jsr is a hex value 20 so if you
see over a little bit to the side there
you uh you'll see the 20 then you'll see
the address low high and I'm saying this
because some instructions require two
operands some only require one some
instructions don't require any at all so
like transfer X to a that would be one
by that would be the op code no oper
ANS and the reason I say that is you can
see the machine code right here what we
did we didn't wanted to do that check so
we went in there we found the address
and we put no Ops
that's a one bite instruction that
basically says don't do anything just
just just go to the next nine so we put
no Ops in
there and now it's not doing to check it
it falls right where it needs to go to
start the program
execution and when we did that and we
booted it we got the
game anyway what we discovered too is
it's a cat Mouse kind of thing we we we
quickly learned that the developers
caught our little trick and they would
take the next step which would be maybe
do a check sum on their on the routine
to make sure it wasn't altered or
modified in any way the number needs to
come up correct so in other words in
this particular example the check sum
would have been
16 so if they ran the check up on our
routine it would have been C2 it would
have failed they wouldn't allowed
execution so what we did we took a
couple of those EAS noops and we
replaced it with a load accumulator with
some value we don't know what that value
is going to be yet but we're going to
load it with something and what we need
to do is pick a value that will get us
the 6E so now we have a noop routine
with 6E for the check some and when we
run it it goes It goes through
so and finally there's a third method
that we saw that they use developers
clone their original function and then
they hid it they back then they were
using exclusive ORS to hide stuff I
think they still do actually um so they
hit it by exclusive or all ones become
zeros all zeros become ones so if you
were to look at it it would look like
trash just
garbage we decided to we figured that
was what probably what they were doing
so we exclusive Ed the whole program now
we expected to not have any more machine
code anymore but as we scroll down the
routine popped right out at us so we
knew at that point we knew that's what
they
did and I put a success up it's too
early dude um so what we what we did
what we did once we discovered what they
were doing we put our original code back
in there and then we exclusive order a
copy and put it over the over their and
saved it and that and then then you got
the sucess my
bad
so anyway the summary on this is that um
consumer microprocessor started to
become a thing because we now had home
computers tr8s and apple even the Apple
was a 6502 as well and uh that it was
basically the start of the home computer
boom and also we obviously got involved
with copy protection Rebellion we wanted
to constantly try to find a way to get
around this stuff we didn't know it at
the time but we were hacking we were we
were doing it for fun we just enjoyed it
a lot matter of fact and we wanted to be
the first ones to get our software onto
a bulletin board before somebody else
did our copy of the software basically
but anyway um this is where I guess I
hand it to my son and undo all my
mistakes all
right think I fix
this maybe
not hacking scene so we're going to talk
about the '90s
so as he ended with the bbs's um I'm
growing up in the 9s I was born in ' 81
so growing up on a PC through the 80s
and then hitting my 90s um now I'm
actually functioning on a computer and
dealing with electronics and seeing him
go to Blockbuster and renting my
Nintendo games and then dumping the eoms
and trying to clone them and I didn't
know what was going on back then I knew
that he was cloning the games but I
didn't know um anything about all the
electronic components of it and that's
kind of where I got started so when I
jumped in um bbs's were the thing so we
had Renegade Wildcat um a lot of these
bbs's had back doors that the ssop were
or the software developers were
embedding and these BBS as I've noticed
were really all about the free flow of
information so I didn't know it at the
time but going into my house into his
closet my mom would have these Avon
boxes cuz she sold Avon and so we would
look in these Avon boxes and we would
have copies of literally everything so I
had like Unix system 5 release 4 I had
Red Hat power tools like 3.1 and so I'm
in this house growing up and then I open
up this piece of paper and I find a list
of local BBS nodes with their dial up
phone numbers and so I starting to dial
into these bbs's and getting familiar
with the war's door or the BBS doors and
the games and fell in love with Legends
of the red dragon anybody a lord player
yes my people we probably playing on the
same ones um and so these nodes were
spun up all around the world but I was
on my local ones and getting familiar
with them and they were all text based
and um and so using that list logging in
Playing Lord and then finding where's U
you could see why I I stayed um and that
was where I first got my The anarchus
cookbook and so in probably everybody
knows about the Anarchist Cookbook so
I'll skip that but uh yeah it was just a
really interesting time to kind of grow
up and so kind of going through we had a
lot of early influences in these bbs's
and that we were sharing files from
these groups and I had no clue who these
groups were at the time it was all just
kind of an introduction but you had the
legions of Doom U they were founded in
the 80s uh and that they kind of created
the hackers Manifesto so we probably
know that one from the mentor um initial
vulnerability um contributions that we
found were through bbs's and so it was
really this influence IAL portion of the
hacker culture that I was getting
introduced to that I really didn't know
anything about and I was a kid um and so
obviously he didn't know what I was
doing and uh so it was just really kind
of interesting uh so I remember um
reading about this a long time ago but
um LOD actually created a TLD um on the
root DNS that was called LOD and somehow
it just showed up some way I'm not sure
how it got there um and you had masters
of deception this was really cool
because they were um doing a lot of the
research into the systems at the time
and so it really popularized the whole
freaking uh culture and and movement
that kind of happened and so I talk
about the mentor a little bit the
conscience of a hacker the Hacker's
Manifesto super super influential in the
early days culture and so it was just
really motivated by that Curiosity um
and then the free flow of information it
was about challenging everything
challenging Authority challenging the
rules challenging the systems and it
just created this pursuit of breaking
boundaries and it was involving Tech and
it was just this this is who I was and
it was the makeup of what my dad was
introducing me to although I didn't know
it at the time and um and it really
wasn't about being malicious it was
really just about that seeking of that
Curiosity and that was the hacking
mindset that they really laid out so it
was laid out in the 80s but this was
well into the 2000s um later on that
people were still talking about this um
and when we talk about freaking a little
bit I wasn't super big into freaking my
dad did more of the the phone system
systems and stuff but um we had the blue
box everybody knows the you know Captain
Crunch and how he discovered the 2600 um
and there was a lot of fake coin deposit
sounds that they were able to trigger on
these payones but I remember being at
home cuz my mom worked at the same pay
phone company that that my dad worked at
they they manufactured payones and so
she worked on the the assembly side and
said they were creating like anti-
stuffing devices and ways to make sure
that they could detect those um those
hacks on the payones and uh and I
remember the first smart card pay phone
I remember you having like the card and
I had like the u a smart card on there
first Spanish pay phone it was this
whole freaking scene was interesting
because it was like opening up the
hacking of what was to come later on um
when my dad was kind of working on the
other side and the phone systems were
being tricked and you could like you
could make an additional phone call like
a longdistance one um without actually
being built and without being traced and
so there was this super surge in these
boxes that people were creating to do
these different weird things some were
generating tones and um others were
doing other things um but were doing a
lot of wiretapping and snooping on phone
calls and just a lot of good groups came
out of this um and so it kind of kicked
off this whole hacking freaking virus
cracking Anarchy movement um with the
bbs's and so uset kind of popped up and
it was the alt. 2600 probably everybody
has heard of that at one point and we
talked about the BBS back doors but some
of them were like with the Renegade you
could push I a 100 times and it would
actually push you into the siso menu and
you could access some of the ssop
functions which was like the
administrator of the bbs's um there were
other ones that had hardcoded
credentials back door does this sound
familiar I mean I think we have this
still happening today um there were a
lot of um different file access
vulnerabilities because they would
truncate the file name and so you could
append different ones to do these
downloads and you could download the the
config files with the passwords that
were playing text um it was just really
interesting time frame for bbs's um if
you wanted to uh to try to Brute Force
login into bbs's you could just do it
with two attempt cycles and you could
actually evade that detection so it
wouldn't lock out or do anything so you
dial in two times you stop you pause you
do it again a little bit later and it
just this very slow Brute Force but it
was super cool and then we had these
things called local ssop meetings where
all of the local BBS nodes that were
ssops would get together they would meet
at IHOP in our town um and IHOP would
they would bring these big bulky laptops
and you see all the ssops kind of over
there and and so me I was young like I'm
a teenager so I'm going to talk about
some that I've done um but just know I
was really young and it was just kind of
not good but we would shoulder surf the
ssops and so me and a friend of mine
from a town over we grew up together we
would shoulder surf the ssops and and
then go home dial into their bbs's with
their credentials and we got banned
across all of the local BBS
nodes yeah so they didn't know that and
uh and so you wonder why you can't dial
into the BBS anymore was because they
they would block your phone number from
being able to call the nodes so you have
to change your phone number or go to
your neighbors or do something like that
and so that kind of happened um and so
there's some dial up there and it moved
into the AOL scene so full disclosure I
skipped the AOL scene um we had 128k
ISDN so two 64k lines um that were
joined so we always had internet I had
the best of the best because of him and
his work and um the work equipment that
they provided he would bring home so I
kind of was the outlier but I did do a
lot of AOL progs and I did them for my
friends so you could like put a prag
together and a little room Buster or
something and you could sell it for like
15 bucks in the neighborhood and so um
that ended up up happening um and moving
into this whole dialup War where a lot
of these big software Solutions were
being created like aohell and so aohell
would steal accounts you could fish
generate fake credit card numbers um
there was these things called puning
where you could send over and over and
over messages and kick them offline um
there were scrollers there were mail
bombs where they would dump a bunch of
mail into people's email box um and and
there was just a lot of stuff happening
you could subscribe to mass males I
completely forgot about this until I was
starting the the presentation but you
could get wees in your AOL inbox just by
signing up on these Mass mailers and so
um this is where I got my start with
really developing so vb3 was like the
hot thing at the time and we would just
use send Keys like I wasn't even smart
enough to like do anything else other
than just like send Keys um but it
worked and you could send Keys over and
over with loops and Brute Force into
rooms and it was super cool at the time
time they had AOL had like what they
called a BL it wasn't a blue team but it
is a blue team called catwatch and so
catwatch was basically the the staff of
AOL that was monitoring for the people
using these progs in these rooms and so
everybody was trying to fish these
overhead accounts and so an overhead
account was basically a staff account on
AOL and you got access to do stuff like
reset users passwords and so people were
using overhead accounts to steal screen
names and so it just caused this massive
blowout then there was Merlin Merlin was
the software that AOL used to log in and
so people were trying to get access to
it and this is kind of the the red blue
slide so on the left you have blue team
this is what Merlin looked like for the
overhead users so when I worked at AOL
they gave us an overhead account and so
we would log in and this was actually
the first place I ever had to use the
RSA tokens this was a long time ago um
they were using RSA tokens for Merlin
because of what was going on and then
you had aohell on the other side it was
just kind of this interesting movement
that happened um skip ahead a little bit
because I told you I was ONN and on ISDN
we had IRC obviously I wore the shirt
radicalized by
IRC we had channels and these channels
you had nicknames and people went by
nicknames and personas you didn't go by
your real name and that was I don't know
if I talk about it in here or not but
actually it's the next slide I'll just
wait but you had TCP client and server
so you take your client connected to the
server and we start learning that you
could send like ICP icmp unreachable
packets and spoof the the source to the
server and it would it would nuke the
person off it would disconnect their
session and so if you could get their IP
address if they weren't behind like a
Windgate proxy from back in the day you
could use these denial of service
attacks at the time to boot people off
IRC log in steal their nickname rejoin
the channel and it was just causing all
of this new movement on IRC and so you
had a couple different clients um and
then you had scripts that people were
starting to create and the scripts were
super fun so you could run you could
build these scripts and write these
tools and then automate a lot of your
tasks and so the popular servers at the
time that I was on was fnet and Undernet
um fnet was more fun it was a lot more
talent that was there Undernet was a lot
more trollish um but it was fun I I did
both but it really started to to
permeate in a culture and so I want to
talk about that a little bit because
it's super important to reflect on the
culture that we had then everything so
far sounded really good but the reality
is that we had a super super toxic
culture you want to talk about
gatekeeping at the keynote um they
talked about this a little bit it was so
bad then because it was always public
shaming it was always public humiliating
um there was discrimination against
everything it could be where you were
from what country you lived in and they
would shun you um it be that you were
from dnet another IRC Network and all of
the sudden you were like frowned upon
and nobody cared about you it was where
the the terms script kitties and Skitty
and skids really got popularized I'm not
sure where it really started but what it
meant was people that were new to
security that were using someone else's
scripts to cause havoc and so that's
where skites or skids or script kitties
came from but it also coined the terms
the 31337 the one 337 because it
differentiated between whether you were
accepted or not accepted whether you
were frowned upon or whether you were
just pushed aside and it was really hard
to start fitting in I mean I already had
a hard time fitting in at school right
like being a nerd growing up in a house
with super thick glasses and then going
into like the the IRC and seeing all the
same stuff it was hard to fit in you had
to like start trolling also or join up
with someone that you had friends with
in order to start being accepted and
then the was people are being um hiding
behind personas and because we're hiding
behind personas people would use the
finger D to try to dox you and if they
doxed you they get your IP address they
get you some of your personal
information and now they start dropping
docks that's where that really started
emerging I know we still talk about that
but that's really where it was at and so
IRC became a Battleground and so you had
IRC Wars you had takeovers of channels
you had people people pushing net splits
and driving a lot of bandwidth to
servers to overwhelm them so that we
could cause a net split and then rejoin
the server ride that net split into a
channel take over the channel ban
everybody out of it set a key make it
locked down so nobody had access to it
it was wild wild west and so this is
going on there's full-blown um denial of
service attacks happening there were um
they used xdcc for wees so you could
join the channel do pound xdcc send
Visual Basic three dis one of a 100 cuz
you had to download a 100 of them um and
then you'd pull it down and then so it
was like full leech on Wares it was just
this crazy time to kind of grow up well
what emerged out of that was people that
started fitting in with each other would
start forming a group and that group
would be closed off they wouldn't allow
Outsiders to come in it became invite
only and these groups were kind of
protecting each other because of that
crazy toxic culture that was going on
and they started Waging War on each
other I'm going to talk about that in a
little bit but it became this movement
of mass defacements and so what you have
is you have these groups I'm going to
talk about a couple of them here and so
these are mainly on Undernet and fnet I
know there were other groups on other
IRC networks and I'm only speaking of
the ones that I'm familiar with and so
there were enforcers Oblivion innuendo
those are some of the bigger groups um
um pound chaos they created a lot of
tooling for the groups and then you had
some groups that spun up called infrared
infrared moved into becoming total chaos
and then there were other groups like
feed the goats and all of these started
breaking up and so these groups were
groups of people that were actually
starting to do blackout stuff and so a
lot of them were really skids a lot of I
was there so I was a skid like that was
us and so these tools were coming out to
take over IRC channels to Nuke to do
and as that was happening you had two
new groups that really formed one was
Global hell and one was milworm you
probably know milworm as the exploit
repository that came after prior to that
stroke and milworm created another group
and these two groups really started to
rival each other so there was a lot of
crossover milworm would leave milworm
and come to Global hell Global hell
would leave them and go to milworm and
it became this super fight between the
two which led into Mass defacements
across the internet and and bear in mind
when I say Mass defacements I'm not
talking about like rming and deleting
all the stuff back then these groups
were not intending to cause damage they
were only doing they they would take an
index.html and rename it because I
didn't want to damage the server it
wasn't about the servers or the admins
that were being defaced it was about
graffiting a high popular traffic
website to throw shade on another group
gr then you had other groups that
started taking over so there was
Oblivion that started and they took over
Undernet they hacked Bob KC which was an
IRC op and they ended up hijacking C
Service which was a channel service for
controlling services and then they added
what they call gines which was like a
ban on a user They just added star
exclamation star at Star and banned
everybody which caused massive Chaos on
Undernet everybody was banned and these
groups were just battling back back and
forth and so this kind of Spun up into
the whole reverse engineering uh
vulnerability research and exploit
development mode because now these
groups were turning super blackout and
so as it was getting in there obviously
everybody knows Frack but Frack was
really popularized around this time and
so everybody knows lf1 smashing the
stack it like popularized bypassing you
know memory corruption all these
different types of vulnerabilities that
were surfing and and then you had full
disclosure bug track that dropped and so
what was happening was you had a lot of
really good groups which I'm going to
talk about next but these groups were
releasing these vulnerability details on
full disclosure so now you have these
black ha hat groups getting access to
this disclosures and learning how to
weaponize it slowly learning how to
reverse engineer learning how to read
frack and get into a disassembler or
using soft ice and you know trying to
learn how to do some sort of Kernel um
exploitation and you get you get access
to these tools and research and things
start going crazy and so on fnet some of
the channels that I hung out with was
pound hack probably a pound hack on fnet
I know there's some people that here I
talked to already and I know y'all are
there um pound Frack was obviously the
the big one uh 2600 was there I wasn't I
idled in there um pound Wares was a
popular one if you could even get in
there because that was usually um
blocked and then on Undernet there was
hack freak VY some of these other
channels um super cool places to hang
out to learn but it was still a toxic
environment then you had other groups
that popped up you had woooo you had
woooo tesso ADM um a lot of these big
names you probably already know like
Loft and at stake came out at the time
um CDC with back orifice which was like
the original C2 but these groups were
doing like crazy research people that we
looked up to all the time you'd see them
they were like unreachable you couldn't
get with them because they were a group
of people that didn't want all the Riff
Raff they just wanted to make computer
security better so they joined up and so
you have this split that was actually
happening had two groups that were
interested in security there was a
little overlap at times where some would
kind of come but um but for the most
part these groups that you see up here
were the groups that we were getting
vulnerabilities from or full-blown
exploits that were leaking to the groups
and so a leaked exploit would come out I
think my mic is messing up a leaked
exploit would drop that weap that
exploit would get weapon
really quickly and it would go and just
ravage the internet and so you have that
kind of happening I want to highlight
woooo a little bit because I'm just
going to highlight as we go through I
know we have some woooo here um woo woo
in the back so uh super super massive
impact on the security industry like if
you look at just the historical people
that were there and the contributions
that they made and then looking at the
people that were there and where they're
at today you see them leading the
security industry for the most part and
so you have a lot of people that you
look up to tools that you've used or
that you know about nmap Napster you
have a lot of stuff that dropped uh like
WhatsApp um Duo security a lot of these
people that we have today came from this
this group of people and I know after
talking yesterday with one of them um he
was saying that they're still around
like I didn't know this it was surprise
to me because I don't follow it all the
way that I used like I used to but
finding that they're still around and
that they're still functioning is just
amazing to me I even heard that they
might be looking to try to recruit John
strand that's what I heard might be a
rumor uh but anyway yeah so woooo um
going to highlight Global hell here for
a second because I highlighted a white
hat and I want to show a black hat group
at the same time you have Global how
founded by mosted diow loophole and mind
phaser these people are known it's not
even I'm not like name dropping or
anything um the reason why they're known
is because there was a big bust that
ended up happening down the road but it
was infrared turned into total chaos
which turned into global hell same
people different nicknames same people
different personas they just came and
rebranded and this is kind of how they
did this and they used teleconferences
so what they were doing was they were
spinning up 1800 number teleconferences
under under people's identity and they
would use this for like two months
straight to coordinate attacks and so
this kind of was causing massive
disruptions across everywhere and so
what ended up happening was you had this
big group of people getting these remote
route exploits
that were weaponized and just damaging
kind of everything and it started um
once that started happening raids
started happening and I'll talk about
that later on but people started getting
raided and so then they started shifting
their Direction so instead of just
targeting like China because China got
targeted because they sentenced two
hackers to death right it was like way
back in the day so all of a sudden
China's in the Limelight they're hacking
every Chinese website they could find
and just def facing it in retribution
for were sentencing the two hackers to
death um then you had um the milworm
global hell drama so there was a lot of
defacements against milworm and then you
had the shift towards the government
because the government was now starting
to Target them and what you're left with
is a bunch of hacks the the jet
propulsion laboratory at Nasa got hacked
white house.gov got defaced um Noah got
hacked there's all kinds of different
types of hacks that happened they
started just hitting everybody and as a
result of hitting everybody 30 like over
30 um indictment or raids started
happening across the country in the
United States alone and so FBI was
flying around and they really weren't
sure what to actually charge people with
and so what ended up happening was there
was a lot of multiple indictments that
ended up happening um most hated ended
up getting hit for the teleconferences
he owns like I think I like I think I
talked to him like last week over two
million in restitution still he's not
even in security anymore he left the
whole industry um zyclone got busted for
the white house. goack mine phaser got
busted busted for the Pentagon hack
there was all kinds of stuff that
started to happen but you could start
seeing this evolving now it went from
just targeting other groups innocently
to minor defacements to actually turning
it into a real movement that was very
bad it was horrible for the industry it
was horrible for the culture it was
horrible for the people it was horrible
for the families um but it started in
movement that I'm just call the black
hat movement in 2000 um because you
think that was bad but these zero days
were dropping like crazy so now you have
the wild wild west of remote root
vulnerability some of these are going to
look familiar you have statd you have
bind you have Samba all these were
remote root vulnerabilities memory
corruption you had send mail pop all of
the mail demons were being popped all
the FTP servers were being popped and
these are remote Roots these are Damons
that are running as root open and
externally facing to the internet with
no memory mitigations there was no packs
on a lot of these packs was like a
hardening kernel that you could roll
into Linux that did a lot of cool stuff
that we use today we we take for granted
now it's just in the operating system
but back then you didn't have anything
and so the only thing that were required
was these vulnerabilities affect a drro
or a version of the dro so you had to
know the memory location offsets so all
that meant was you just had to load it
up in a GDB or just a a disassembler and
step through find that memory offset
Chang it in the the vulnerability um
code and now your shell code would be
loaded at the right offset for that
Linux drro or or Sonos or
BSD and so there were no mitigations you
didn't have NX bit you didn't have aslr
there was none of that at the time that
was openly available easy you had to
when we were compiling kernels you had
to compile it from scratch like if you
were running genin 2 or Gen 2 however
you wanted to pronounce it you had to
emerged world like you had to compile
that thing all the way through and so
Pax was introducing this new Harden
Linux kernel which did a lot of really
cool stuff like it was would stop memory
execution they would make memory
locations non-executable so you couldn't
just jump to that memory location to
execute code it would take the memory
map and randomize it which is what we
now have as aslr it was built into packs
um and it would be able to detect
overruns so anytime you were overflowing
a buffer it was able to kind of detect
that it was all depending on what you
wanted to do so it was a really cool
thing um so RPC statd I just wanted to
talk about it real quick this is a super
cool slide because it talks about the
the cve it was a it was a string format
vulnerability but remember this is
running as root and so you need a
precise accuracy and if you could get
that offset stat D would would execute
your code otherwise it would just crash
you got one good shot you didn't run
these crazy slide NOP sleds and all this
stuff and or rope gadgets to jump around
you just had to get that right offset
and you were good and so because it ran
as root when that vulnerability dropped
publicly it was game over and so you had
full disclosure which I already kind of
talked about but you had a lot of cool
stuff in there um you had this movement
called antise security. this is the
original anti-security movement so
you've seen Anonymous or whatever come
out with this anti-security movement or
anti-c anti-c was actually way back in
the early 2000s and it was put together
by ADM plus security. and so they were
wanting to keep all these bugs private
vendors were using them and then
complaining and not patching and then
not giving credit researchers were
stealing them and using them or leaking
them and taking credit for them and so
this whole thing was don't share bug
details anymore no more free bugs and
you can't claim someone else's bug and
it led into these Zen that were being
dropped by these black hat groups you
had a lot of new black hat groups that
were spinning up you had Defcon 10
gobbles wolves Among Us you had the
Frack High Council not to be confused
with Frack it was another troll group
for Frack you had Project Mayhem and you
had acid in el8 or TIY el8 if
you're familiar with them and zf0 zero
for owned or B4 and all of these groups
were hacking white hats they were
targeting the white hat vendors they
were targeting white hats they were
compromising their email spools dropping
them in text Zs publicly and then
everybody was waiting on these new
releases so you would see emails and
you'd see Linux server contents and you
see database passwords and they would
just troll the heck out of the industry
they were going out vendors they were
going after white hats and they were
dropping them in these and they were
just rebranding once again a lot of
these groups I'm not going to name drop
or anything these groups were rebranding
as themselves so it's the same groups of
people doing the same thing now there
was other that spun up and spun down but
one particular was TI El late now till
El late a lot of people knew about this
because they introduced The Project
Mayhem and Project Mayhem targeted
everybody it was targeting websites
people IRC channels they were leaking
logs they were backdooring source code
repost they were dropping email spools
and code and files public L um and they
were super hardcore trolls and they only
released a few of the Z but there was a
lot of damage that they caused they wre
it and so they released everything and
it was all in text form and they were
targeting high-profile people some that
are still in the industry today and so
where are they today a lot of these
black hats either matured or went to
prison I think Soup Nazi from the TJ
Maxx hacks just got out like a month ago
I think I tweeted it on Twitter um that
he was getting out but he's out now I
don't know how he is I don't know what
he's doing um so the TJ Maxx guys out
but some of the other ones like the Unix
terrorist that was a part of the TJ Maxx
hacks he's out he's a really good guy
now um super good dude uh and so just
it's really cool to see how people have
matured over the time and so um there
was a lot of people that died like
zyclone Ben Z evil Rabbi a lot of these
people died some committed suicide um
they were being targeted by the
government because they were about to be
raided um and then others started
pentesting CIS ading some left the
industry most hated is a plumber now um
he just likes it he just he doesn't like
to deal with te he doesn't use Tech um
but a lot of people don't want to talk
about it and they don't want to talk
about it because it's an embarrassing
culture right we see what we have today
and what we had today is not what we had
then and so there's an embarrassment
that comes with it nobody wants to talk
about this stuff and so because of that
we're losing this stuff and so why is
all this important to remember so I want
to really highlight how we've
grown we have a strong infoset Community
now this is something that wasn't around
then we have we have a lot of mentorship
and a lot of internship now I'm not
saying we're there yet I'm not saying we
reached it and we're great and we're
doing it great but I can tell you what
we have today is not what we had then it
was like 98% gatekeeping then we have a
lot of variety of people that come from
different backgrounds that come from
different countries that have different
skill sets that might have never even
been in Tech but we've ate lunch with
them we've sat down together we've had
awesome conversations and we share this
information because we all bring
different gifts and talents to the table
and so I wanted to kind of highlight
that because we have a lot of tools that
are open source a lot of research that
we just drop and yeah there's a lot of
stunt hacking and we have fun but we've
grown tremendously from then this is not
who we are today but we are still losing
we're losing because we no longer
challenge the status quo we're told what
we need to
think we're told what we need to believe
if you don't believe with the entire
Community you're going to be shunned I'm
telling you now you're going to be
shunned because we have this group mind
think that we all have to believe the
same thing and think the same thing and
if we don't then we hate each other but
who is seating all of this where is this
divisiveness coming from because I could
tell you when I don't know people's
background and they don't know my
background we love each other we have an
amazing time we hang out we eat we do
stuff together we code together but when
we don't and we learn that oh yeah you
know what this polit politician said
this and if you side with this and you
must hate everything no that's not how
it is
we've lost our individualism in this
because of that and there's a lot of few
there's a few voices so there's a few
voices in the industry that shift all of
this they push us in one direction we
use our platform wrong we push people
towards a mindset rather than cherish
their mindset and the div diversity that
they actually have we don't want them to
speak because we they don't agree with
us or we don't agree with them and so
this is where we're losing and so
usually the loudest voice dictates the
direction for the community and it's if
you're wrong on the wrong sides then
you're going to get bullied by the
community and I hate it it drives me
nuts I try not to get involved I don't
get involved with politics I hate I hate
both sides I'm just going to tell you I
hate both sides I don't agree with
either side I don't like it either side
because we're just so divisive and it's
just causing so much Division and it
drives me nuts and so we no longer
cherish our uniquness so now what now
that we know where we came from and
where we're at today we see the right we
see the wrong wrong what do we do about
it I'm going to say we should be
welcoming everybody we need to quit
judging based on the opposing beliefs
let people have a wrong opinion don't we
don't have to correct them all the time
it's actually harder to allow someone to
be wrong and not correct them than to
just correct them we need to lift
everyone up because your character could
change someone else's life even someone
that you don't necessarily agree with
then that's
okay but let's show some some Grace
because you know what we're all not the
sum total of our mistakes everyone in
here has messed up somehow some way and
if everybody knew our mistakes and the
sum total of our mistakes nobody would
like us no we wouldn't like anybody we
would be more divisive than what we are
now and then I'm just going to say love
everyone everyone don't let them whoever
them is divide us you know who your them
is I don't know who it is for you I know
who it is for me but I'm not allowing
them to divide us and so that's what I'm
going to leave you with and the last
thing is just challenge the status quo
bring your uniqueness bring your own
beliefs bring your own opinion bring who
you are bring your skill sets don't let
anybody tell you anything else and
that's what I'll leave you
with we got one more thing one more
thing we have a special uh thing it
turns out that it's somebody's birthday
today what's and we would like it if uh
everybody would join us singing Happy
happy birthday to Ray it's his
birthday happy
birthday all
righty birthday to
you happy birthday to
you happy birthday dear
Ry birthday to you woohoo yeah I feel
much better now