CTF Rules (Score 5, Interesting)

The rules for CTF at DC9 were, unfortunately, not well tested prior to the actual event. The intent of the rules were to provide more targets to attack, by shifting the burden of providing targets to the competitors. However, with the rules as written at the beginning of the contest, it turned out to be (pointwise) not worth attempting to hack. The net effect of the rules were that most groups were simply putting up a server, getting the points and pulling it down. While this is a valid strategy for that ruleset, it doesn't make for much of a hacking competition. This constant churning of servers also made hacking difficult, with targets disappearing by the time you could identify them through the standard CTF network instability.

We (the GhettoHackers, with the much appreciated help of Jennifer Grannick) managed to slowly, over the course of the competition, convince Miles to change the rules to a set more conductive to an actual hacking competition. When teams began merging due to the rule changes, we merged with Digital Revelation, to both group's benefit. We gained their server points, and they gained our capture points.

Besides winning CTF, the GhettoHackers / Digital Revelation team also had the highest average Blood Alcohol Level of any group (check out http://cow.pasture.com/~tcroc for more details). As announced at the awards ceremony, we, the GhettoHackers, have retired from CTF after DC9. To help foster more competiton, and for a different application of our expertise, the GhettoHackers will be helping to run CTF at DC10.