Leeds2600

Good turn out tonight, with Nav, Squirrel, Mick, Tamonten and myself in attendance. Jonny wanted to make it but ended up being on call out for the duration.

Topics of discussion through out the night included:

• High and low tech confidence tricks, from fake ATMs (such as the one at Defcon this year), to entire fake banks, shopping chains etc. The power of the high-vis jacket, as worn by workmen the world over, and just looking like you belong when it comes to social engineering.
• Well thought out heists such as the recent Apple store robbery, high value jewelry robberies, and less well thought out failures.
• Creation of fake bombs and fake 007-villain-style WMDs, e.g. tricky LCD countdown displays, coloured wires, and various tricks you can program in with a microcontroller programmer.
• Related: Nav getting cheap electronics from a trade fair.
• Teleconference tricks.
• Overheating server racks and idiotic workmen.
• Home-made bars/pubs, breweries and tiki bars.

The next meeting is tonight, 7pm, Grove Inn.

Sorry for the late announcement, just catching up with reports and the like now (you’d think a full week off would’ve given me the chance, but noooooo).

Hope to see you there!

Not many people managed to make it out tonight…in fact for the most part it would have just been me sat by myself at the Grove Inn, but Jonny turned up with some our fellow colleagues from Sense Internet to fill the hours up.

Not much hacking related topics on the board, with the less-than-usual-2600 crowd in attendance, however when Gemma turned up we had a few fascinating chats on British/US law, including (but not limited to) the whole Gary Mckinnon mess.

I’m not entirely sure what the turn up was tonight, as I wasn’t there (celebrating my wife ‘s birthday), but I’m told about 3 or 4 people made it out (in the I must marvellous summer evening, shame on more people who didn’t).

Here is a quick report as kindly supplied by Tamonten:

Airport security: Some airports are more twitchy* than others, does
being allowed to carry liquids as far as the boarding gates make for
happier passengers or move the target for terrorists? Slot machines and
margaritas make for a fun airport layover, but not a great long haul
flight when you wake up.

Hunting Rouge APs: Stop looking at your screen once in a while you might
be on top of the AP, literally. A photo of the AP > a mark on a map. No,
you can’t have Digininjas room key.

Physical security: Careful where you place those trees, you might be
providing cover for nefarious types to cut that chain link at their
leisure. New job = fun testing how far into a building you can get
before being ID’d without having to worry about the consequences.

RFID: Reverse engineering protocols by MITMing with two USB readers, and
the best way to hide them using your sleaves and a fat wallet.

*not the word actually used

Small turn out tonight, including myself, ReeFlex, Jonny and Carolyn, all braved the wet and dreary West Yorkshire weather.

DigiNinja and Tamonten were conspicuous by their absense..DN it seems was packing to fly to Kenya, Tamonten was just being a softy and avoiding getting wet..or showing off his shorts-cladded legs. ;)

Topics of discussion on the table:

• SEO, and how it’s really a load of old bollocks.
• Whether snubs is hot or not.
• Your mum.
• Proliferation of conficker…especially across Humberside police’s internal network.

Remember, next meeting is tonight, 7pm Grove Inn, expect beer, bring gadgets, trust no one…oh wait, ok, trust some ppl, but not everyone.

As is now the norm all hackers, phreakers, tinkers, coders, geeks, nerds, anarchists, cryptos, admins, wannabes, etc. etc. are welcome to descend upon The Grove Inn this Friday @ 7pm(ish) for an evening of general phun and phrollicks..not to mention a drink or 2-dozen, 2600-stylee.

See you all there.

The night started off a little shakily for myself as I was late getting to the meet and a bit worried about having just eaten some dodgy lobster…however things went swimmingly with everyone out in the beer garden at the Grove Inn, which we chose this month as the actual starting point rather spending half the night moving from place to place until ending up there anyway.

Good turn out with a new face for Leeds2600, but an old face from from the golden days of hackHull?.

Topics of the night:

• Leeds Hackspace, as Jonny managed to drag himself out for a bit to show off photos of possible spaces.
• Talks and the low quality of stands at Infosec, and digininja‘s mistake awesome tactic of turning up a week early.
• Testing an unlocked G1.
• The “cupcake” branch of Google’s Android platform finally being pushed to consumer handsets.
• Professor Heinz Wolff.
• Fooling airline passengers into thinking you’re flying a plane using a laptop, flight info, and a good simulator.
• General agreement that wifi is magic.
• GPS hacking could go horribly wrong.
• Good tech dims lights.
• OpenHackDay.

As I left early I’ll leave you with this one tidbit for how the rest of the night went, from @tamonten: “accidenaltly shouting armed police somewhere with good acoustics makes complete strangers bab themselves.”

As ever If I’ve missed anything, and I’m pretty sure I have this month, please comment / email / twitter / delicious / facebook / etc. andf I’ll amend the report.

Out.

p.s. These reports are now being emailed to the good people at 2600, each month.

Come one, come all, to the next Leeds2600 meeting, aka “Return of the Agenda-Hating Hackers“, this Friday @ 7pm in The Grove Inn, Leeds.

Bring your friends, bring toys, bring an open mind, or just bring yourself.

Yet another venue disaster as it turned out the Brewery Tap had their entire second floor rented out for a private do, with all the pub customers crammed into the main downstairs bar it made a little difficult to have a meeting, with loudness and general lack of space getting in the way.
After an hour or so we ended up yet again in The Grove Inn, or rather outside the Grove Inn enjoying the night air.

Attendance was the same as last month, with 2 new faces. @digininja came all the way from Sheffield for the phun.
One of the main topics of the night was up coming cons, including Infosec, toorcon, and OpenHackDay, GoodHack, as well as cons past like shmoo and brumcon.

Other topics of discussion:

• Leeds Hackspace
• Conficker – scanning massive networks for, and the likelyhood it was probably professional made for organised criminals
• Hacking netbooks
• AlertMe alarms and interesting uses/hacks
• Of course venues came up again, we generally decided on just coming straight back to The Grove Inn next month
• Protocol level and MITM SSL attacks

As ever if I’ve forgotten anything leave a comment or leave a link on Delicious for:leeds2600.
Look forward to seeing everyone at the next meeting.