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23c3: The 23rd Chaos Congress in Berlin/Germany: Who can you trust? by SkyOut/EOF =================================================================== Background information: ----------------------- The Chaos Congress is an annual event, which is organized by the german Chaos Computer Club since more then twenty years. The event takes place the days after christmas and ends before New Year (This time between the 27th - 30th of December). It is located in the Berlin Congress Center, which is quite in the middle of Germany's capital city. Over the years it has become one of the most important computer security events in Europe and visitors from all over the world come to "be a part of it". Introduction: ------------- The idea to go to the 23th Chaos Congress was born somewhere in summer 2006, more then half a year before the event actually takes place. Until the end we were not sure whether we can travel to Berlin in the winter or not, it depended on many factors, that we were not sure about (e.g. work and school... and of course money!). Nevertheless it did work in the end and we were able to drive to the congress... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Day 0: The arrival and the meeting with Helith: ----------------------------------------------- 26. December 2006 ----------------- On the 25th of December RadiatioN and me finished the last things, that were important to know and now we were able to start this journey. As RadiatioN told me, that he would start at eight in the morning I guessed, that he would be here about ten in the morning, so I stood up, had some breakfast and waited for him to come. As expected he arrived here around ten and so we started right a way to not loose any time. We were ready to take the several hundreds (!) of kilometers, that were between us and the city of Berlin. It did take a lot of time and even more energy, but in the evening we were in Berlin and able to get our stuff in the hostel room. Just after this we drove to the center, where the congress was located to get some "tickets" and meet Rembrandt and Teco. We ended up in the C-Base (c-base.org) with Teco, Concode, Rembrandt and several other people around us, sitting in front of computer screens. Without Teco we went on and got to know each other better while going into a bar and talking, drinking... you know... that kind of stuff! After getting our "tickets" around three in the morning we walked to our hostel and slept a few hours only. Comment: Those "tickets" were a band, that were put around our arms and there they have to be there for the whole time. *annoying* Day 1: The congress starts: --------------------------- 27. December 2006 ----------------- The day started as expected really hard: 4-5 hours of sleep after a long day made us feel really exhausted... After one hour, that we needed to get up, we took a train and drove to Berlin center again, where we bought something to eat as a morning lunch (It tasted quite well). Then we went to the congress and with the help of our bands around the arm we were able to enter the BCC (Berlin Congress Center) without any problems or a long waiting time, which was really motivating. As the first event we had chosen the talk about the new german hacker law and this talk does still influence RadiatioN and me, as we are not sure how to handle this problem (The law will take place soon!). With breaks in between we also went to speeches about designing a decent user interface, mind hacking and reverse engineering firmware. After all this we were totally exhausted for this day and met Teco at the BCC and went with him to the C-Base, where we could relax with others. While RadiatioN felt in love with the massage chair, that they had there, I installed some tools on his laptop (using Ubuntu parallel to Windows) and started coding some application. It is now four in the morning and even I will go to sleep now, Day 2 is waiting for us! Day 2: The darklab party: ------------------------- 28. December 2006 ----------------- Day number two started very early for me, after maybe 4 or 5 hours of more or less good sleep I finally stood up and went to the Berlin Congress Center to watch the first talk that day. I did so most of the day, watching one talk after the other. In between I met RadiatioN, who came around 14 pm. At 16 pm we both decided to go into "Saal 1" to get some nice places to sit and rest and we wanted to be there to not miss the talk of J. Rutkowska about stealth malware! We had about two hours until this talk would start, thats why we looked for someone having a switch and we had luck finding a switch and getting an internet connection (which was very INSTABLE and SLOW). Nevertheless we had a connection and electricity for the storage battery of the laptops. Okay to make it short, the talk, that we waited for was boring and uninteresting at all, the subject was interesting, but the way it was presented was bad! After this RadiatioN and me walked a bit disappointed to the "Brandenburger Tor" and went into a nice restaurant to get our first good meal after some days of messy food. After this we went to the C-Base to get into the Darklab party, yeah this was a lot of fun =). After being on the first floor for a while, where the music was played we chilled a bit at another place at the C-Base and drank some (a lot :P) Vodka-Cola. The day ended around 5 in the morning, drunken, exhausted, but happy! Day 3: The end is near...: -------------------------- 29. December 2006 ----------------- This was the last day for me and for RadiatioN, that we went to the congress, RadiatioN had to go very early this day, around midnight he left me to sleep long and be ready for the long travel home. As a consequence I tried to use this day to have as much fun as possible and did not even thought of going to bed. I hang around the BCC the whole day, watched a very nice talk about freedom and creativity in modern culture, called "On Free, and the Differences between Culture and Code" by Lawrence Lessing. When the videos of the 23c3 are online I suggest you to load this nice one! As I said around midnight RadiatioN went back to the hostel and I hang out with Rembrandt at the congress waiting for the CTF (Capture The Flag) to start. This was expected to become a hacking contest with about 12 teams, that should secure their own server and hack the ones of the others. Okay... it did not become a hacking contest or at least one, that became awkward for the organizers. After two hours of waiting they told the people, that their great server with 16GB of RAM and this and that crashes after starting the fourth Xen image to be used for the teams as servers. Ehm... yeah... This was a great disappointment at all. About 4 in the morning the Xen images worked and the LAN as well. I decided not to watch this any longer (and many others thought the same, so most visitors were gone). Another time I walked through Berlin in the night, hanging out with Rembrandt and talking about this and that. Finally going to bed around 6 in the morning! Day 4: Going home again: ------------------------ 30. December 2006 ----------------- Two hours sleep had to be enough for me this day. RadiatioN and me had to stay up and leave the hostel around 8/9 in the morning. We did not visit the congress another time. This day nothing special did happen, RadiatioN drove the car and I slept a lot of the time, being totally exhausted finally! Some hours later we arrived at my home, like on the way to Berlin we still had not even one traffic jam the whole way, which was really nice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conclusion: The congress was a lot of fun to me, less for RadiatioN, who seemed to have expected more for his money. Nevertheless the things at the BCC, the stuff that people presented was very interesting to see. It's cool to see, what can be done with computers and some technical stuff. So I think I will come back another time to meet the people there, which were really nice and to have fun at the BCC! Greets: Rembrandt: It was cool to hang around with you and talk about stuff ;) Won't be the last time! Teco: You're a really nice guy and it was fun with you and of course thanks for the help and trust, that you had! Concode: If you read this (maybe, who knows), thanks for the time and sharing your ideas with us, I will come back to this, when the time is ready and hey it was A LOT of fun (just remembering the second day :P).