Mayhem mars Def Con hack-fest

Scenes of mayhem marred this year's Def Con and Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

Things got off to a violent start when Cowhead2000, a member of the hacking group World of Hell, interviewed by vnunet.com back in April, was ejected for destroying a payphone in the hotel where the conference was being held.

Police made several arrests when a group of hackers tried to incite violence because they said the event was becoming too commercialised. Smoke bombs were set off at the poolside and part of a truck was dumped in the hotel lobby. At least one attendee went home in an ambulance after a drug overdose.

Less dramatically, but more significantly, a hacker named Optyx released a Trojan for the Linux operating system which bears some similarities to the Sub-7 tool. The KIS tool infects a machine at the kernel level, effectively cloaking itself and making it impossible to detect and remove.

It affects Linux kernel versions 2.2 and 2.4 and allows an attacker to control the machine via undetectable random network traffic. However, within days of the tool appearing, an anti-KIS project has appeared on SourceForge offering a method of detecting and partially removing the Trojan.

The Saint Michael Linux Kernel Module, found here, is a Kernel-Integrity tool designed to find hidden kernel modules.

Further reading

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'My nan could crack NT', says hacker

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