At DEFCON 16 I managed to interview John Bos, the Team Captain for the Capture the Flag team: Sk3wl0fr00t (who won the tournament).

John explained how the CTF tournament worked. Eight team’s are provided with a server each which they must defend. All severs contain the same custom services. Teams are also give a disk containing an image of their server, allowing them to disassemble the executables which are running on their server.

A larger number of points are awarded for breakthroughs, where a team discover a new vulnerability and exploit it on other servers. Teams must also maintain a service level, to ensure their services are accessible to others. This models the real world, where unavailable services result in lost revenue.

John explained that the Capture the Flag contest kept his commercial skills sharp, as he was learning at the cutting edge. He also explained that DEFCON was an important networking and social ground, with a “group of highly intelligent people”.

The audio and text of this interview is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (CC-BY-NC).

Transcript to follow…

Tags: DEFCON 16