Sector.ca Conference - "Game Over, Man: Gamers Under Fire"

Guns, lots of guns. Well, two., originally uploaded by Paperghost.

Next month - October 6th & 7th - I'll be at the Sector.ca Conference, talking about a subject close to my heart: how lots of rather naughty people are using consoles to both cheat the system and attack other users, via spam, DDoS and account theft. Is it abstract extract time?

I think it is.

Game Over, Man: Gamers Under Fire - Chris Boyd

An exploration of security issues relating to consoles and their risks to both home users and the business environment. This will include issues such as custom built DDoS tools, social engineering of Microsoft support staff, account theft, the risk to businesses and personal tips to keep your own details secure. I'll also examine the trade of stolen Xbox accounts in return for credit cards, how the rewards that companies give gamers make them targets because of inadequate privacy features and how free programs allow hackers to exploit profanity filters, paid content and even the profiles themselves.


As you may know, I've spent a lot of time digging around script kiddy forums. By and large, most of what I see isn't very impressive. However, for a while now there's been an interesting offshoot of hacking forums, with entire sections devoted to console hacks and attacks. There's an impressive amount of technical knowledge and skill going into the creation of hacking tools for consoles, hacking the console itself and doing all sorts of horrible things to the people that use them.

Some of the techniques used to turn an otherwise harmless lump of content restricted plastic - whose very soul is supposedly on the leash of the company who made it - into something you can spend all day annoying somebody with never fails to amaze me.

How many companies now have gaming / recreation rooms with a console just plugged in and left to its own devices? How many parents think the worst thing that'll befall their kid is seeing someone get their head blown off on GTA4?

They're all accidents waiting to happen, and the general promotion of consoles as these "unhackable, unsinkable" battleships of gaming is something that needs to be examined in greater detail.

It's not just PCs under fire anymore...

Spectacular policing fail

Dear God, no.

It brings me no end of amusement that security researchers like myself - who, when you strip it all away, are effectively amateur crime fighters without a badge - are sometimes about a million times more professional than the real thing where tackling cybercrime is concerned.

ID Cards And Poor Excuses

You know what sucks? ID cards and poor excuses.

Yes, the clue was in the title.

Something that bugs me about the gradual creep, creep, creep of ID cards is that you just know eventually, they'll tie those stupid bits of plastic to essential services that you simply cannot do without. Sure, they'll be "optional" - if you want to live like a stinky hobo.

You don't, do you?

Well there you go, then. "Optional" is a joke when used in relation to these cards. I've been saying it for a while, and sure enough this popped up on The Register the other day, in relation to a local council offering up a "voluntary" ID card that local people can use to get discounts on numerous services - meanwhile, pesky outsiders get charged a higher price to do stuff...

"There is no obligation on local residents to use this card. However, some services, such as access to the local library or the Household Waste facilities, will only be made available on production of a card."

Naysayers will point to the closing comments of the piece in relation to how the above is a load of rubbish:

In this case, the initiative appears to have less to do with the drive towards a database state, and far more to do with Hillingdon Council finding new ways to fund their services via stealth taxes. Their stated aim is for this scheme to cost nothing overall, as the price of local services will be fixed for residents – but increased for anyone coming in to Hillingdon from outside the Borough.

If other Councils buy in to this approach, then over the long term it might encourage individuals to make greater use of local services, as the price of out of area services becomes relatively more expensive.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to call shenanigans on this one.

With specific regards to Council services - which are highlighted in the article - how many people go to another council borough to visit a library instead of the one on their doorstep, or use another councils household waste facilities (one county council alone has eleven of the things - is there really a council anywhere in England that doesn't have one such facility?) - or any other number of council services that their own council would logically provide?

Perhaps you might conceivably travel to another council district if you were looking for an obscure copy of Fly Fishing by JR Hartley or something, but if "stealth taxes" on council services for "outsiders" using council services like waste disposal are the overall objective I can't see them pulling in much money from it.

Speaking of which, some 400 businesses have apparently signed up for this scheme. Is this an idiot tax on people unfortunate enough to have to commute to (or through) Hillingdon? Because it doesn't take a genius to work out that people being charged more for being outsiders will simply start taking their business - and businesses - elsewhere.

In essence, Hillingdon just became an inbred shotgun waving outpost of fail. The logical extension of this scheme - if rolled out to everybody - says "Stay in your council area, and never go outside" which seems to be at odds with the rest of the worlds need to, you know, do stuff outside of your own little patch of land.

Oh, and as a final rebuke to the claims of this card being a way to ward off evil outsiders from using council services - here's a map of the London Borough. Harrow, Ealing and Hounslow are next to Hillingdon - and all of those councils are full of "libraries and waste disposal services", two of the services mentioned by Captain Council Flunky.

I'd imagine they all have the rest of the services that the glorious Hillingdon provides too, so what exactly are people going to come into Hillingdon to use that they can't get from their own area? Swimming pools? Pest control? Crackpipes?

Beats me.

"Voluntary" cards that are actually required unless you want to be excluded from what will no doubt be an ever growing list of basic services. Didn't see that one coming, did you.

Wait, you did? Ah...

Interview over at Malware Diaries

Yeah, I haven't been posting much lately as it's that dreaded time of year we like to call "Conference submission Hell".

However, Jerome over at Malware Diaries was good enough to interview me on his blog so here it is. Thanks Jerome!

Normal service will be resumed shortly (ish).