'Free-of-Charge' Tariff. Hacking Coin-Operated Telephone at PHDays

Due to the fact that Positive Hack Days is a forum devoted to the issues of practical IT security, the competitive program contained competitions of practical nature (for example, a contest related to searching information hidden in the Internet and hash cracking).

One of the competitions, where not only your head but hands could work, was a contest named 2600, in the course of which the participants had an opportunity to demonstrate their skills in phreaking and to hack a coin-operated telephone. Any visitor of Positive Hack Days could partake in the competition. The participants were to call a predefined number from a coin-operated telephone using tokens as the means of payment and then extract the used token and give it back to the organizers.

Hack the RFID

The competitive program of Positive Hack Days 2012 was rich not only in battles of hackers, who tried to hack everything without exception via the Internet, but in "applied" competitions as well. One of such contests was Hack the RFID, in the course of which the participants' knowledge and skills in Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems were checked.

There were quite few people who wanted to partake in the contest, but those, who still took the risk, did not regret it for sure.

PHDays a la Tunisia

Participation in Positive Hack Days 2012, an information security forum, was available not only in the Digital October Center and by means of online broadcasting. Dozens of hackspaces all over the world joined our program PHDays Everywhere providing local hackers with an opportunity to watch the forum, partake in the competitions, and interact with their colleagues gathered in Moscow.

WikiLeaks at PHDays 2012

We continue our review of competitions at the information security forum Positive Hack Days 2012. Today we will tell you about one of the most popular online competitions – WikiLeaks, which challenged the contestants’ skills of surfing the Internet for concealed information.

There were 150 people registered for the competition, 60 of which managed to succeed at least in one task. A user nicknamed mchumichev took the lead on the first day and held it till the end, so the real fight broke out for the second and third places. Many contestants ended up with the same score, but only the fastest could win.

Workshop on $natch Results at Neúron Hackspace

Less than in a month – on August 11 from 12:00 a.m. till 3:00 p.m. — the Moscow hackspace Neúron [ru] is organizing a workshop that will cover the results of the $natch competition (PHDays 2012).

You will know how the hackers managed to crack the remote banking system at PHDays I-Bank developed specially for PHDays competitions ($natch and CTF vs. HackQuest battle), and will have a chance to beat the record of the teams and demonstrate their cracking skill on such system.

Big Shot — Hacking People at PHDays

This year PHDays 2012 has carried on the tradition of organizing intellectual competitions. The forum's guests saw a highly competitive program — PHDays CTF, Online HackQuest, HashRunner, $natch, and a lot of other contests, in which hackers could demonstrate their skills in hacking and protecting different systems.

However, there is no doubt that the Big Shot contest, in the course of which the participants needed to show their skills in social engineering, was one of the most interesting, peculiar, and funny competitions.

Each participant was provided with a person's photo not clear for unambiguous identification and a number of statements characterizing that person. These people were present at the forum, and the participants were to identify them and make certain actions according to the task (for example, to get the person's business card or to take a joint photo).

Hash Cracking at PHDays 2012: The Hash Runner Competition

PHDays 2012 featured a lot of highly technological, challenging and exciting competitions, but there was one that the visitors hardly noticed – Hash Runner, a competition in hash cracking.

All competitions of this type are characterized with hegemony of a number of teams: hashcat, Inside Pro and john-users, which is not surprising because these are communities of developers, testers and common users formed around most popular hash cracking tools.  And their success is rooted not only in years of experience, good training and unity of teams, and accessibility of formidable computer powers, but in the ability to modify  the tools in the real time mode in response to ever changing circumstances.

All the above-mentioned teams took most active part in Hash Runner at PHDays 2012. For two days the contestants fought for a useful prize - an AMD Radeon HD 7970 graphics cards.

PHDays in Far East

On May 30 and 31, PHDays Everywhere gathered dozens of hackspaces and universities all over the world, but the largest regional platform of Positive Hack Days 2012 was set up in Vladivostok. dvCTF 2012, a task-based CTF contest for university teams, was organized by Far Eastern Federal University.