Website: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/
Das vierzehnte Türchen.
Der Chaos Communication Congress widmet sich mit Vorliebe den Chancen und Risiken des Hackens biometrischer Systeme. Schon vor zehn Jahren ging es um Gesichtsbilder und Fingerabdrücke in Pässen und Ausweisen. Diese ganze Reihe an Biometrie-Vorträgen hat ihren eigenen Charme und außerdem einen wiederkehrenden Protagonisten, gefürchtet bei Herstellern, beliebt beim Publikum: starbug. …
Time (2008-12-29) & Number of Streamers
FeM ran an array of 6 wmv streaming servers supplemented by 3 ogg theora relays provided by the …
As usual, we ask you to give your opinion on the lectures held at 25C3. Just go to the “Fahrplan”, click on the lectures you attended (or watched on video), click the feedback button, and tell us your impression. It is interesting and possibly helpful for the speakers to know your (anonymous) thoughts about their talks, and it is very important for the organizers to know what you liked and what you didn’t, when planning the next event. So, please, take your time to evaluate this year’s program.
Moreover, general feedback on all aspects of the event is welcome. Feel free to contribute to the …
Sadly, we’re on the last day of the 25C3. The good news is that your printed schedule is accurate with one very notable exception. All we have for you today is the addition of two really great talks in Saal 2:
The title of the talk “Making the theoretical possible” has been changed to “MD5 considered harmful today: Creating a rogue CA certificate”. The speakers will be Alexander Sotirov, Marc Stevens and Jacob Appelbaum.
Dag Arne Osvik, David Molnar, Arjen Lenstra and Benne de Weger will also be in the audience.
From left to right: Benne de Weger, Arjen Lenstra, Marc Stevens, Jacob …
Fornicating Formica robots
I gave the talk on the Formica project; thanks to all who watched. We had not realised the demand for kits. We started a mailing list at the end, but too late! So if you’re interested, please email me. If demand is sufficiently high we’ll sort something out. More information …
The Raumstation needs your help! Tonight, hackerspaces.org is bringing together hackerspaces, lockpickers, makers, crafters and other hacker groups from around the world to help the c-base. Please join us for an evening of foodhacking, fundraising and friendship to help secure the continued exploration of the space station under Berlin! Relax with food, chill music and have a quiet night before Silvester!
Here is the lineup of events going on tonight at the c-base:
Thanks to tef, netwalkerz_net, kap4001, hypatia.ca and Security4all. Don’t forget to tag your photos “25C3” and if possible, license your photos with a Creative Commons license. If there’s a particular picture you would like to see, leave a comment in this post!
Here are some quick updates to the schedule that do not appear in the printed program:
Non-German Speaking peoples! Now you too can find out what’s so funny about the Fnord News Show, and Hacker Jeopardy. These really popular events will be live simulcasted and translated into English for your viewing pleasure in Saal 3 on Day 2 (today) and Day 3 (tomorrow)!
The Phonoelit party is almost upon us. Come join us at the c-base as Dj Vela of Dangerous Drums and Mumpi of Phenoelit push you to the limit yet again. And if that isn’t enough to convince you, this year Phonoelit is kicking it old skool with special guest CMOS! He entertained some of you at the first and the third ph-neutral. Hell yes !!1!
Doors open at 22:00 PM, party starts at 23:00. A big group of us will be heading over after the Soviet Unterzoegersdorf talk at 0:00. Rumor has it that certain dissidents will be in the audience, but security will be heavy in the event of any disturbance. …
On the evening of Day 3, please join us at the c-base for an evening of events to help support the “mothership” hackerspace in Berlin. We’ll have talks, a chill lounge, an auction of really cool stuff and a special dinner prepared by the foodhacking workshop that you can be a part of. The evening is a fundraiser party for c-base to pay down their legacy power debt- that’s why we’re calling the evening “Power to the People”. It will be a lot of delicious fun, hope to see you there!
As part of the evening’s festivities, you can learn all about foodhacking! Starting at 2 PM, you can help prepare …
As mentioned yesterday, the 4-Day-Tickets for the conference are sold out.
There are still day passes left. Those day-tickets are being sold every day beginning at 08:00am, and can’t be purchased in advance.
Day 1 is over, and there are a lot of awesome photos leaving very little of the 25C3 to hide. Here are a few prime examples. Don’t forget to post your photos with the tag “25C3”. Photos with Creative Commons licensing might be posted here! Thanks to MrTopf, nennett, revolvingdork, Angelol and Security4all.
The 25C3 twitter has been abuzz with questions regarding the ticket situation. We hope this post answers your most pressing concerns.
This year, we will continue a tradition started last year with the “spontaneous simultaneous” interpretation of the Hacker Jeopardy. As of tomorrow, we will interpret one event in Saal 1 each day.
On day 2, we will give it a try with the Fnord News Show (11pm). On day 3, we will continue with the traditional Hacker Jeopardy (11pm as well). This is always a lot of fun for the participants, the audience, and the interpreters as well. On day 4, the finale will be the Security Nightmares 2009 at 4:30 pm.
If you would rather listen to bad English than perfect German, you can dial in to 8101 using …
It seems that the 25C3 is more popular than expected. Tickets have been sold out, as of December 27th, 7:14 pm. If you are planning to attend the 25C3 and are not here yet, please consider to watch the streams of our lectures at home rather than outside in the cold in front of the bcc.
The streams can be accessed here:
Imagine a swarm of small insect-like robots crawling around at the Congress (YouTube video). At least, about 20 of them will do so on stage in hall 3 on day 2 at 18:30. They are part of Formica, an open-source hard and software project about very affordable small robots initiated by a group of students from Southampton University. One of them, Jeff Gough, has brought his robot farm here. His hands-on approach combines electronics, mechanics and art and since it is completely open, everybody is invited to participate and produce more crawling robots.
If you’re in Berlin, why not get a head start on meeting fellow congress attendees at the Pre-Event Dinner at Maredo in Berlin-Mitte. We have 65 seats reserved under a heated atrium.
Arriving a little later? From 21:30 (that’s 9:30 PM) there is an all-you-can eat Late-Night special on the excellent salad buffet for only 3.50 euro!
After dinner, we’ll all head over to get our tickets for tomorrow! Please register here or call +49 179 3966141 for more information!
The spaceship has landed, a nice gentle coating of fairy dust has fallen on the bcc and the groundwork for the 25C3 is nearing completion! Here are a couple of quick updates and helpful hints:
… some already asked for it: The Fahrplan (schedule) as a handy A4-sized PDF for print-outs (fold it in the middle). So you can now use the lonely moments under the Christmas tree to figure out what lectures to attend – even without using a computer.
But there is no need to get your printer-drivers back to working – a print-out will be waiting for you at the entrance of 25C3.
To give you an idea on the “look’n’feel” and the wonderful arrangement of the contents, we compiled a small PDF-Preview of the Proceedings (2,5 MB, Acrobat 4.0). It contains front- & backcover, indexes, lecture-pages and the beginning the paper section.
The Proceedings will be for sale from the day congress starts for 23 Euros at the Information Desk (and via …
Guess who's bringing the Party Mode to the 25C3. You are!
We told you about the great speakers and their incredible talks. We told you about the awesome workshops. It seems like we’re missing something, doesn’t it? Oh! That’s right! Where the parties are! Thanks to your continuing contributions to the 25C3 wiki the parties have nowhere to hide!
Fortunately, the parties at c-base are always easy to find. As usual, the c-base will be hosting the afterparty and throwing an awesome New Year’s event. And as usual, Phonoelit is back to get the 25C3 party mode kicked off correct. Join …
Bre and Astera practicing for their Kartoffelpuffer workshop
In addition to the great talks and scheduled events, there are really great workshops that any person, group, or transnational delegation can host at the 25C3. If you’ve been to a BarCamp, you’ll feel right at home in a workshop. They’re another way to actively participate in the 25C3!
Best of all, there’s still lots of room! Take that talk, project or idea you’ve been thinking about and turn it into a really awesome workshop! There’s lots of prime time space available in Meeting Room C04 and lots of off-hours time …
Runs on open source. Srsly.
There’s very little hiding from participants at the 25C3. They’re even working hard to shed much needed light and openness on something most of us use every day—our mobile phones!
There’s a lot of activity surrounding GSM—the Global System for Mobile communications at the 25C3. While GSM is a well documented standard used by most of the world’s mobile phones, the hardware and software it runs on are largely hidden from public view.
“Nonetheless, in recent years there are a number of different projects working on driving a wedge of openness into this …
It’s time to glam up your lecture-descriptions!
Starting this year, every lecture’s long description will be printed in the Congress’ Proceedings. This was decided in the very last days.
So please try to enhance the abstract and description of your lecture in the particular Pentabarf-Record until:
Tomorrow, Sunday, 17:23:42 UTC
(9am PST; 12pm EST; 20pm MSK // 1am CNST; 3am AEST)
The long-description may even be one or two pages long, especially if you don’t submit a paper. Even your short-bio and, if given, a public photo will be printed.
If you are about to make a lightning-talk about your …
Oh look! Cupcakes!
the Paris Hilton of mobile phones” in a recent market study: all buzz, no value. Nevertheless, it is safe to say that it also makes quite a challenge for hackers: maybe it’s not the Holy Grail, but definitely some Candy Mountain to conquer. Why hack it? Because it’s there! And because Apple doesn’t exactly make it easy to use that device in ways you as a hacker may want to use it, e.g. installing stuff that doesn’t come out of their application store or using it with a phone provider other than whoever is the monopolist in …
“We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information. Historically that information has been costly – in terms of human life and human rights. But with technological advances – the internet, and cryptography – the risks of …
“Everyone needs to be prepared. The speakers, the moderators and even the audience. The speakers must know what they really want to say, the moderators must ensure a quick change between speakers and they need to set everything up so there’s no pause … the audience must be willing to listen and to forgive possible errors.”
Do you have something to say at the 25C3? Can you say it in 5 minutes or less? Give a lightning talk! These speaker-driven, self organizing collections of short presentations are a great way to get a quick taste of a lot of wonderful topics usually hidden from mainstream …
Christian Heller aka plomlompom self-identifies as an identity and meme machine currently living the future in Berlin so you don’t have to.
His talk Embracing Post-Privacy: Optimism towards a future where there is “Nothing to hide” ponders opportunities of a world we might live in all too soon. The loss of privacy we decry now may very well transform into something very utopian: A society where the borders of “public” and “private” life are blurring and human identity itself must be redefined.
Born and raised in East Berlin, Christian’s life as a media person started early when he became a …
_“Once upon a time, there were two young hackers attending HAL. They brought along their phone switch. As occupants of neighboring tents realized they could participate in yet another means of communication, the phone network expanded rapidly.
Whoever thought hackers were socially isolated nerds would have been contradicted instantly at this point. From here on, numerous European hacker gatherings have benefited from a reliable phone network, both for fun and event organization.”
How can you stay in contact with your friends at the 25C3? Get in touch with a project or workshop? Call back …
The congress is a truly interactive event. You don’t attend the congress, you experience it. Everyone who attends can do something to make it an incredible experience. You can host a workshop, help volunteer, trade knowledge in the Hackcenter or jump into an insanely cool conversation in the Hideout Lounge. Even though we’re still a few weeks out, there are lots of ways you can participate before the congress to make it truly epic!
The 25C3 is expected to have an unprecedented number of attendees who have never been to Berlin, Germany or even Europe! Berliners and congress veterans, we need …
“The first time I found my father’s porn I was trying to read his back issues of Mother Earth News. One day I did this while my mother was doing laundry…I was eight or nine years old.”
Rose White wants to find your porn stash. She is trying to unearth how we collect, store, organize (and hide) our collections, asking what these troves say about us.
“I think I was born a little socially miswired. I never quite understood why there should be anything wrong with talking about sex. In fourth grade I got in trouble at school for explaining to the other kids how human reproduction worked. I read it …
Looking at the schedule, you can see the 25C3 has an incredible lineup of talks on a wide range of topics from wearable computing to preserving fictional former Soviet Republics. (Yes, there’s even a talk on pornography.)
Yet talks are hardly the only thing going on at the 25C3. In addition to wonderful displays of Art & Beauty, there’s going to be lots of making going on! At the 25C3, everyone from soldering masters to hardware hacking virgins will be able to build projects of all shapes, sizes and complexity.
Even if you’ve never touched a soldering iron, you can drop by the Hardware …
There is yet another update on the conference talks schedule. Check it out.
Do you really have nothing to hide? Prove it.
CCC Sputnik, SocioPatterns.org, and the OpenAMD project from 2600‘s The Last Hope are teaming up to provide a real mass surveillance experience at the 25C3. What are the problems and possibilities behind these panopticon dreams of certain politicians? For only 10 EUR you can find out!
Using RFID technology, congress attendees can elect to participate in a massive human tracking network. Building on the success of previous efforts with Sputnik at 24c3, and at the 2007 CCC camp, this year’s project will use advanced visualization to allow you to see …
The registration for your personal phone number at the 25C3 is now up and running. Excerpt from the eventphone page:
If you want to create a phone number for one of the upcoming events, you have to sign up first and give yourself a username.
You will get an email to confirm your account. Then you can choose a phone number for your cordless phone.
That is all you need to phone other people at the event for free. You can make friends or retrieve them, when they got spread over the whole area.
If you already have an account for eventphone.de you only have to click login.Currently you can create …
Now is the time to find a place to stay at the 25C3. Fortunately, you still have a lot of good options left!
If you’re on a tight budget, The Gym is the most affordable place to stay for the congress. It is available from the 26th to the 31st and is only 5 Euros a night! Be sure to get your tickets at the main cash desk at the BCC. Tickets go fast. Without a ticket, you won’t get a place to sleep at the gym.
If the gym is not your style, you could also check out housing offers on the 25C3 wiki. If you have some space to spare, why not make an offer to help a fellow hacker? Lots of great …
We have a huge problem: Couches. We need couches for the 25C3. The more the better. Everybody loves to sit on a sofa with his computer and there can’t be enough couches for all the computers.
But organizing couches is hard work. Buying them on the internet, scheduling the pickup with the former owners, finding nerds who are willing and able (!) to lift and carry them three flights down, storing them, … you get the picture.
Here is your chance to contribute: Bring your own sofa. If your sofa is somewhere in Berlin we can pick it up and bring it to our storehouse. After the 25C3 we take care of …
We’re now on version 0.2 of the schedule. However, there is still some shuffling that needs to be done, so expect more updates soon.
You should have noticed by now, but I think it was never mentioned on this blog: The design for 25C3 is complete. Now is the time to get your banners and desktop background pictures at the appropriate wiki page.
Jetlag Bargainer asks: “Which will I regret more, sleeping through everything that happens early in the morning or sleeping through everything that happens late at night?”
Fortunately, there’s no need to worry about that! At the 25C3, the first talks begin at 11:30, and generally wrap up by 0:00. This means you have plenty of time to catch lots of great talks, have an awesome time partying at C-base and get a good 8 hours of sleep.
However, if you’re feeling sluggish, you can always catch an hour long nap between 15:00 and 16:00 and between 19:30 and 20:30 each day. (Some folks choose to call …
“Digital Fabrication … is going to change the nature of how we design and produce items in much the same way that personal computers transformed software development and the way we transfer information. Its going to rock.”
If Zach Hoeken has his way, one day we’ll all be able to print 3D objects as easily as we print on paper today. Digital Fabrication is at the core of Objects as Software: The Coming Revolution, his talk at the 25C3.
Like other speakers in the “Making” track, he’s hard at work designing, building and evangelizing the tools and techniques we can all use to create our own …
“Hackers and crafters do the same thing with different materials. There’s a lot of awesome cross-breeding going on and it’s rad, but I think each community finds the other a little mysterious. Also, crafters are mostly girls. Hackers are mostly boys. Match made in heaven?”
From hacking on a knitting machine one minute to hacking code the next, NYCResistor’s Kellbot is hard at work bringing the worlds of Hacking and Crafting back together. She will be covering this convergence and helping encourage its growth in “Crafting and Hacking: Separated at Birth”, her talk at the 25C3.
Craft has been a …
The very first version of our schedule (we call it “Fahrplan”) is out. Have a look.
The conference will present talks ranging from eVoting, a discussion of Methods for Understanding Targeted Attacks with Office Documents, to an overview about RepRap in the talk Objects as Software: The Coming Revolution. Phones and micro controllers will be a very big topic this year, but not all talks are fixed by now.
You will see a lot of empty slots, but it basically means that these talks are not 100% confirmed. The good thing: You still have something to wait for in the next couple of days.
Like every year, assigning seats and table space for projects is quite challenging. We don’t want to be unfair and we’d definitely like to prefer activists working on cool projects much more than just assigning this scarce resource to people merely using it for hanging around and watching movies.
If you’d like to reserve space on 25C3, please have a look at the projects page in the wiki. We want you to document your project and tell us, how much space you need and what else is required. Therefore you’ll need to create a wiki page before Friday, December, 5th, containing at least a common …
“There is a special addictive feeling to manifesting the objects of your imagination. It’s a much more powerful feeling than acquiring consumer goods. It feels really good.” – Bre Pettis.
Bre Pettis wants you to make things.
You’ve seen his DIY videoblogging for Make: Magazine and Etsy. You shouldn’t miss a chance to see his History Hacker TV show. If you know how to make an LED blink, you’ve almost certainly seen the work coming out of his hackerspace in New York City, NYCResistor. If Bre hasn’t inspired you yet, he will soon!
At the 25C3, you can find out about his latest passion for …
In 1970, The Beatles published a song about microblogging on their swan song album “Let It Be” that described Twitter as “Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup, they slither wildly as they slip away across the universe” (the song was later covered by Slovenian avant-garde music group Laibach). This year, information on the 25th Chaos Communication Congress can be found flowing out endlessly on Twitter.
This year, the CCC will issue invitations to journalists and bloggers to attend the 25C3. We will send out all invitations from now on until a week before the event.
Of course, this doesn’t mean the 25C3 will be an invitation-only event: Every journalist who wants to participate is welcome, but there will be no accreditation process or special treatment except for name badges which will indicate that the participant is a member of the press.
There will be an exception for photographers and TV teams. Since we know that the event can provide interesting pictures but we don’t want dozens of …
This weekend, the content team held the first round of talk selection. Some people had even gone to the pain of traveling to Berlin to participate. Kudos to them. We met, we were holed up for 17 hours total, much Club Mate was obliterated, benign (and evil) laughter and agitated shouts were echoing through the CCCB as we argued over which talks to accept, which to reject and for which to postpone the decision.
We managed to look at each and every submission we got – there were many funny and interesting submissions, and to all of you who submitted something: we thank you all for offering to …
Just a small status update: The deadline for handing in talks is over. Over 200 proposals await the content committee, which means we can unfortunately only pick about 50% of all submissions. Thank you for your work if you handed something in, it is very much appreciated. You will hear about the status of your submission on November 7th, 2008 or very possibly earlier than that. November 7th is also the earliest date that you should expect a published schedule for 25C3. And now: Back to work!
Imagine the following to be spoken in a deep, dramatic voice, not unlike the one of Laurence Fishburne:
This is your last chance
You still have lots of time to hand in your talks for the 25th Chaos Communication Congress, as submissions are due October 5th, 2008 (Midnight UTC). Then again, you may not want to wait too long.
We currently have about 70 submissions in our queue and there is definitely room for more. Some of the proposals for talks we received are very good and will probably make it into the final program of the Congress. However, some make us scratch our heads: With nothing more than a title and a name of a speaker entered, it’s rather tricky to decide if the submission is any good.
Please take your time …
Achilles had overtaken the Tortoise, and had seated himself comfortably on her back. Their race to the Berlin Congress Center, where the 25th Chaos Communication Congress was about to take place, had come to an end.
“So you’ve gotten to the end of our race-course?” said the Tortoise. “Even though it does consist of an infinite series of distances? I thought some …
Spread the word! Invite exciting people! Hand in amazing talks and workshops!
It’s time to announce the Call for Participation of the 25th Chaos Communication Congress 2008 (25C3). The Chaos Communication Congress is the annual four-day conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) and taking place in Berlin, Germany. The Chaos Computer Club has always encouraged creative and unorthodox interaction with technology and society, in the good tradition of the real meaning of “hacking”. You can find the preliminary agenda and additional information on our 25C3 website at …
