Hacker News Reader

Jacob Applebaum Keynote: Not My Department - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNsePZj_Yks

howto hack the law - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWdkSGuGOfQ

enemies of the state - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH2tJcU9lqU

I second this. Especially the first one.

Yes, the first and last were the best, I thought. I didn't see the second one.

- Hacking Cisco Phones - http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2012/29c3-5400-en-hackin...

- Writing a Thumbdrive from Scratch - http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2012/29c3-5327-en-writin...

I second "writing a thumbdrive from scratch"! There's much more to it than it sounds like. Travis talks for example about the possiblity of the drive being able to fingerprint the system it's mounted on, recognizing it's 'home' machine. From there he suggest counter measures like recognizing an indexing process by the read patterns and have the drive erase itself, or giving a different checksum every time the content is hashed.

The lightning talks were impressively high quality, on the whole.

On the social/political side, I loved http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2012/29c3-5305-en-long_l... It's more about conveying a perspective than information, though.

http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2012/29c3-5059-en-scada_...

http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2012/29c3-5275-en-factha...

http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2012/29c3-5393-en-milkin...

http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2012/29c3-5319-en-certif...

http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2012/29c3-5152-en-hashfl...

http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2012/29c3-5219-en-how_i_...

http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2012/29c3-5256-en-the_fu...

http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2012/29c3-5206-en-the_et...

I haven't watched all of them yet, but my favorite so far is "Enemies of the State."

Really? I watched that one (I was there...), and I found it absolutely uninformative. Just two whistleblowers and their lawyer, but not really anything new and or at least a good story. And one of them seemed bitter because his better surveillance system wasn't being used. I was also a bit confused about the audience clapping for basically nothing.

- Pagefault Liberation Army

Just a lot of fun ways to abuse x86 page tables.

- Low cost microprobing

This was probably the most practical explanation of what's involved in setting up a microprobe workstation that I've seen. Not a ton of depth, but interesting.

- Writing a Thumbdrive from Scratch

Starts with a good premise and goes into sufficient detail to be interesting.

- FactHacks

Best vaguely mathy talk. For some reason, I'm always surprised when I see video of djb -- he is a very good lecturer.

For some fun: Fnord News Show (translations should be included)

I've heard Everycook was good, too. Still need to watch it.

For some mathematics/security: Facthacks

Topmost on my to-watch list right now: Hacking Cisco phones.