I am waiting for the 38th Chaos Communication Congress from 27. – 30. December at CCH Hamburg to begin. The halfnarp already revealed some super interesting stuff. And the Fahrplan now has everything. The hub is mostly under construction.
The Chaos Communication Congress is an annual symposium and hacker gathering organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) in Germany. It is the longest-running German IT security conference and has grown into one of the most important conferences on digital transformation in Europe.
Held annually between Christmas and New Year’s Eve
Typically lasts for four days (December 27-30)
Attracts thousands of hackers, technology enthusiasts, artists, and utopians
Focus Areas:
Information technology
Digital security
Making and breaking
Creative and critical discourse on technology and society
The Congress offers a diverse range of activities:
Lectures and Workshops: Covering a wide array of topics related to technology, society, and utopia
Hands-on Projects: Participants can work on their own projects at „Assemblies“
Hacker Center: A large area where regional CCC groups showcase their technology
Art Installations: Exploring the intersection of technology and artistic expression
Historical Context: Established in 1984, initially held in Hamburg, later moved to Berlin and Leipzig, has grown significantly, with recent events attracting up to 17,000 attendees.
The Congress is known for its unique atmosphere, often described as a „family gathering“ for the hacker community. It’s a place where attendees can exchange ideas, learn from each other, and engage in critical discussions about the impact of technology on society.
Here is an excerpt of the talks am looking forward to most
Fearsome File Formats
Find My * 101
libobscura: Cameras are difficult
IRIS: Non-Destructive Inspection of Silicon
Demystifying Common Microcontroller Debug Protocols
BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective
Feelings are Facts: Love, Privacy, and the Politics of Intellectual Shame
All Brains are Beautiful! – The Biology of Neurodiversity
Euclid, das Weltraumteleskop – 180 Millionen Galaxien sind ein guter Anfang
RadioMining – Playlist-Scraping und Analyse
Clay PCB
Can We Find Beauty in Tax Fraud?
Typing Culture with Keyboard: Okinawa – Reviving the Japanese Ryukyu-Language through the Art and Precision of Digital Input
Update 26.12.2024
I found e really nice, new definition of Chaos on fediverse…
Chaos ist kein Durcheinander. Chaos ist ein selbstorganisierendes System, das festen Regeln folgt, dessen Komplexität jedoch genaue Vorhersagen unmöglich macht.
Stuff for later…
Odd stuff
I won’t go this year
That has primarily to do with the fact that there will be way too many people for me to cope with and my most recent experience I had at the last Chaos Communication Camp. But I will definitly follow the streams from our local hackerspace in Bremen. Highly likely doing some serious hardware soldering and microcontroller programming, while watching and listening to the VOC transmissions.
Why do I blog this? I loved the congress while it was smaller. 26c3 was my first one. I was still okay with it when we were in HH Dammtor with 6000 ppl. Leipzig was too big for me, you had to walk endlessly to get to people and talks. It was overcrowded in the gangways and the food situation was below average (WOC – Waffle Operation Center excluded).
Dies ist ein Post der alle 10 Jahre wiederkehrt aus unerfindlichen Gruenden erhoeht sich dabei der Zaehler im Titel. machenauchandereimmer .
Es gab anlaesslich des 30-Jaehrigen auch eine Veranstaltung im BCC (Video):
Aus der Videobeschreibung:
In der Nacht vom 16. auf den 17. November 1984 hat sich die Welt der Hacker in Deutschland für immer verändert: Mit dem sogenannten „Bankraub“ von rund 135.000 DM über das Btx-System der Deutschen Bundespost zeigten Steffen Wernéry und Wau Holland die Risiken des Systems für die Teilnehmer auf und schrieben durch die unkonventionelle Vorführung Geschichte.
Über Nacht wurde der Chaos Computer Club (CCC) in Hamburg damit einer breiten Öffentlichkeit bekannt. Der ganze Coup wurde überwiegend positiv aufgenommen („Das sind die Robin Datas von heute…“) anstatt die Hacker des CCC als gestörte Computer-Kriminelle abzustempeln. Dieses positive Image der Hacker als „die Guten“, die sich um Datenschutz und informationelle Selbstbestimmung verdient machen, ist bis heute geblieben.
10 REM Bankraub.ba
20 REM Version 1.00
30 REM (c) 1984 by Wau
40 MOTOR OFF:´Relais f. Geldtaste
100 CLS:PRINT"Bankraub.ba -Wiederanlaufprozedur"
110 INPUT "Geldeingang bisher: ";GELD
120 EIN=52:´Timewert Taste an
130 AUS=169:´Timewert Taste aus
150 CLS:PRINT@0,"DM ";GELD,"ein: ";EIN;" aus: ";AUS;
160 PRINT@90,"a<<<< aus >>>>A"
170 PRINT@130,"e<<<< ein >>>>E"
180 PRINT@170,"Halt mit x "
190 PRINT@210,TIME$:GOTO 1100
200 REM Rautenschleife
210 MOTOR ON:PRINT@40,"EIN":PRINT@60,TIME$:FOR I=1 TO EIN:GOSUB 1000:NEXT I
220 MOTOR OFF:PRINT@40,"AUS":FOR I=1 TO EIN:GOSUB 1000:NEXT I
230 MOTOR ON:PRINT@40,"EIN":FOR I=1 TO EIN:GOSUB 1000:NEXT I
240 MOTOR OFF:PRINT@40,"AUS":FOR I=1 TO AUS:GOSUB 1000:NEXT I
250 GELD=GELD+9.97:PRINT@0,"DM";GELD,"Ein: ";EIN;" Aus: ";AUS;
260 GOTO 200
1000 REM Geschwindigkeit
1010 X$=INKEY$:IF X$="" THEN RETURN
1020 IF X$="a" THEN AUS=AUS-1:RETURN
1030 IF X$="A" THEN AUS=AUS+1:RETURN
1040 IF X$="e" THEN EIN=EIN-1:RETURN
1050 IF X$="E" THEN EIN=EIN+1:RETURN
1060 IF X$<>"x" THEN RETURN
1100 PRINT@170,"Weiter mit x "
1110 MOTOR OFF:PRINT@40,"AUS"
1120 X$=INKEY$:IF X$="x" THEN 1150 ELSE 1120
1150 PRINT@170,"Halt mit x ":GOTO 200
Heute Journal Sendung: Der legendäre BTX-Hack
Auf Youtube gibt es folgenden Mitschnitt zu sehen:
Die Wau Holland Stiftung, benannt nach dem Mitbegründer des Chaos Computer Clubs (CCC) Wau Holland, hat in Zusammenarbeit mit dem CCC ein Hackerarchiv ins Leben gerufen. Dieses Projekt zielt darauf ab, die Geschichte der Hackerszene und der neueren deutschen Technikgeschichte zu dokumentieren und der Öffentlichkeit zugänglich zu machen.
Ziele und Hintergründe: Das Hackerarchiv, offiziell als „Archiv für Neue Technikgeschichte“ bezeichnet, verfolgt mehrere Ziele: Dokumentation der Szene: Es soll die Entwicklung und Geschichte der Hackerbewegung in Deutschland festhalten. Öffentliche Zugänglichkeit: Im Gegensatz zu möglichen geheimdienstlichen Archiven soll dieses Archiv für die Allgemeinheit verfügbar sein. Bewahrung des kulturellen Erbes: Es geht darum, mehr als nur verblassende Erinnerungen, Fernsehfilme und Bücher zu erhalten.
This year I did not visit Chaos Communication Congress. But I was watching the streams an the released recordings of the talks. I really liked some talks, so I now share with you which talks I can highly recommend.
Highly recommended talks
The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT): Building the biggest optical telescope on earth
I found the talks this year pretty good. Operation Triangulation is really the total collapse of the illusion you can have a safe mobile device that is still connected to the internet. It is a shame that this was not yet detected for so many years that a Font-functionality in PDF could be an entry vector for hacking your iDevice.
The Synthetic Sentience talk impressed me and gave me quite some food for thought. What if we can simulate a brain on submolecular level in the future on quantum computers? How can future AI’s and Humans coexist in peace?
The Zebrastreifen talk reflects my observations that governments i.e. politicians usually don’t care at all about the normal life issues. This is actualy what you would wish for every city in germany to happen in regard to digitalization efforts. pretty cool work guys!
The submarine talk kind a blew my mind, but then I thought also, what it would take to replicate this experience and I came to the conclusion, that the presentation was as much a lifestyle choice presentation as it was an engineering venture with lots and lots of time spent – nevertheless very impressive. You find also some more bits abouu this guy here: https://chrismon.de/artikel/52739/selbst-gebautes-u-boot-aus-leipzig and this article on golem. I liked especially the thinking out of the box to just build a pool of water (sandbox) around the submarine for testing. Also the underwater communication solution is really a nice hacking venture to learn a lot about water.
The Game Boy talk by Sebastian Staacks (he has a blog) is a marvel of reverse engineering. You should watch it because it is also a picture perfect template how to present stuff where you need to film your gadget to show to people while you present. Sebastian recommends this talk from 33c3. I would also recommend the video of Sebastian explaining how to create a wooden Game Boy hull.
Short interruption: I maybe should buy one of these games next year. Would resemble a lot of the real thing as a game. But let’s see…
I liked the Hacking the Climate talk a lot, because it made one aspect very clear to me: the only entity which was actively compensating atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in the past in significant amounts is the ocean with a potential of 37000 GtC (Gigatons of Carbon) bound already.
The Toniebox talk demonstrated to me in an astonishing way, how a community and 4 people can not just replicate but also rebuild a product as an open solution. They actually even rebuilt their own cloud, so the hacker community here demonstrated that we can adopt services for gadgets which suffer from retired-cloud-obsolescence.
I was rather disappointed by the Demoscene talk because there was way to much talking, then the demos themselves were obscured most of the time by weird text messages and I had the impression the guy was just happy to revive his memories of Spreadpoint in public. I will therefore add a list of demos below this post which resemble really excellent demos from the Amiga times and will represent my experience of that time better.
Spaceballs – 9 Fingers – Amiga Demo (HD 50fps)
I loved especially the digitization of real video movements which was astonishing at that time. And I liked the really nice techno track and the stroboscope effect in lime green at the end. I highly recommend the making of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4M7e79XTYk
Amiga demo Paranoimia crack intro 1989
This sound track just burned into my brain and heart. I love this song. It is minimalism in perfection. Thx paranoimia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSwgZ7wGus0
Unit A – Interceptor cracktro (amiga) 1988
This was kind of one of the most seen intro from me, because I was playing the Fighter Jet simulation game Interceptor a lot. No wonder I loved Top Gun as a movie too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJjQM982S6s
Amiga Demo – Crack intro by Quartex – 1996
Quartex was omnipresent in cracktros. I just remember their name.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yJc6pEYcQM
Red Sector Inc – RSI Megademo – Amiga Demo (50 FPS)
Red Sector also had many trainers and cracktros. Usually in very fine quality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTmpqBn4dfA
Megademo (Budbrain, 1990, Amiga ECS) HQ
This was one of the famous megademos. Those were pure demo disks (on 3.5″ diskette) which just contained all the assets to run the demo. This one was impressive at that time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXV5-GkKUsk
Spaceballs – State of the Art – Amiga Demo (HD 50fps)
This was also one of those nice demo only contents in that time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89wq5EoXy-0
RED SECTOR (1990) Amiga Cracktro [ Letter Writer 2.0 ]
Why do I blog this? I really wasn’t yet in the mood to visit 37c3 after my Camp 2023 experience. Geheimorganisation expressed that perfectly with „Mein Kopf ist leer“. I loved the talks being streamed, even though I know they only represent a tiny, tiny piece of the c3xp. I was pretty much irritated a lot being addressed with „Sie“ the formal way of addressing people by several talking heads (1, 2, …). Neverthelesse… big thx to the team that made the talks and relive and releases work so smoothly.
I am waiting for the 38th Chaos Communication Congress from 27. – 30. December at CCH Hamburg to begin. The halfnarp already revealed some super interesting stuff. And the Fahrplan now has everything. The hub is mostly under construction.
