Linux Top Gun 3 is this Saturday 11th, 7:00PM, at the downtown location of the Alamo Drafthouse. This will also be the last LTG before SXSW interactive — and that one will probably be hella crowded. If you haven’t been before, this is the one to go to. Yours truly, LinearB, will be one of the judges.
For months now, I’ve heard members of the local technorati speak of LTG as “Paco’s thing.” an easy assuption, since Paco has been responsible for quite a few events over the last decade — including the infamous Austin performance of Survival Research Laboratories, and the oft-lamented performance art piece cum bookstore, Fringware. However, you’ll notice that Paco’s name is entirely missing from the LTG website. I decided to drop a line to Paco, and say: “What gives?”.
Paco told me: “While I’m the guy who’s in front of the
audience, and the one writing graphics software and press releases, there are others doing as much work as me, notably Mike Erwin and Jamie Pugh on NetOps. We’ve all worked together developing network architecture, defining the rules, putting together visualization software, etc., since our trial by fire together at the first event. You’ve probably seen on Slashdot or AWN how when LTG gets dis’ed, it’s usually represented as my deal — which Mike and Jamie and I tend to have a good smirk over. Jamie and Mike are effectively the two guys which all the teams are attacking during the whole event — and not getting anywhere.” Paco went on to mention Brian
Gannon from Team WireTap, which took first place at LTG 2, and Amatus, from leading contender Team Austin 2600, as major contributors. He also said that Austin 2600 is responsible for consistently previewing exploits at LTG before they hit the Net.
Amatus, who daylights as a CS student at UT, said that LTG started as more of a media event than a real test of hacking skill, but it has been improving, and seems to be moving in the right direction. He went on to say that “Capture the Flag” at Defcon is one of the few hacking competitions of respectable caliber, but: “watching this disorganized mess of hackers scrambilng to attack a webserver provides great entertainment for me”
Brian Gannon (who is rumored to have once been an offshore casino programmer in the Caribbean) had this to say about his LTG experience: “I had an amazing time meeting top crackers/sysadmins with common interests. LTG strives to make all the competitors more security aware. I was extemely scared for Lone Star’s network after LTG was over that I actually ran back to work the next day and patched a few things that were brought up. Linux Top Gun keeps the system admins on their toes. Brian also said that: “I think Paco has the right idea about making this a national event. I think security is looked upon too lightly in the IT world. Anything that can create more media attention (and create more jobs for security experts) would be of great benefit.”
Mike Erwin is one of the founding members of Symbiot, the lead sponsor of Linux Top Gun (Symbiot is an Austin-based computer security firm specializing in computer crime, incident response and risk management). Some of you might remember Mike as the founder of the regional ISP, Outernet. He is also one of the authors of the O’Reilly title, Virtual Private Networks. Mike told me that “LTG has an ideal event to help collect field analysis and promote education. It also ties together a variety of disciplines into a fun and easy-to-follow experience for non-security observers.I see the work we’ve done to organize LTG so far as the initial steps in developing a repeatable, consistent event that could take place anywhere in the world. I’d love to see other LTG’s popping up around the country, using the model we’re building here in Austin. We’ve been talking with groups in New York, Las Vegas and San Francisco, and they are as excited about the future of LTG as we are.”
So there you have it — a peep behind the scenes of LTG 3. Hope to see you Saturday!
