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Home from DEFCON 33 or time to recuperate!
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- Written by: CyberFreek
- Category: DEFCON - Las vegas
Home and nearly rested from a whirlwind of events called DEFCON. Again this year, I had the pleasure of being a GOON that helped out a lot of people and also challenged quite a few. Special shout out to me GOON Family. What a real special bunch of people. back to story... If you were challenged in the hallways & won the challenge, they received a pin. All of the pins I select to give out as prizes are humorous in nature. (shameless plug: Check out https://www.securityhumor.us It's my humor site I created to share some very humorous jokes and stories all within the CyberFreek Realm.)
I had the opportunity to talk with various people of all backgrounds. This year, if you found me, I gave away a CyberFreek Black Badge. Answer between 10 and 20 questions to win the prize. You were allowed to skip 3 questions in your quest to obtain this badge. It is not connected to DEFCON, but meant to have fun and be challenged in your knowledge of things Cyber. The expressions of peoples faces where enlightening. Many people fought those brain farts to answer the questions. It was really a great opportunity to chat with some incredible people. Congratulations to all who stepped up for the challenge and won a CyberFreek Black Badge. Next year? I'd love to do an electronic one. Due to various situations, I may reach out to those more gifted than I to create this badge. Email me if you are interested in helping out. Full kudos will be given on this website to those who help.
Down to the nitty gritty.
I use a FitBit watch that kept track of my steps throughout the time in Las Vegas. Here are the stats for those inclined to ask:
Tues Aug 5: 15,601 steps (approx 7.55 miles)
Wednesday Aug 6: 12,600 steps (approx 6.04 miles)
Thursday Aug 7: 22,269 steps (approx 10.75 miles)
Friday Aug 8: 25,120 steps (approx. 12.09 miles)
Saturday Aug 9: 15,583 steps (approx 7.52 miles)
Sunday Aug 10: 18,263 steps (approx. 8.78 miles)
Monday Aug 11: 10,089 steps (approx. 4.8 miles)
WOW, no wonder my feet were sore on the plane trip home! That's a lot of walking!
But to me, the most impressive stats to me was that the FitBit watch tracked is sleep. rut roh. Here are the rough averages from DEFCON itself:
Thursday Aug 7: 6hrs 35min hours of sleep. Not too bad, eh ?
Friday Aug 8: 5 hours of sleep. ut oh, looks like DEFCON is keeping me awake or just the interaction with everyone?
Sat Aug 9: 2hours of sleep. oh yeah, the DEFCON effect in full force!
Sun Aug 10: No data. Sounds about right. It was non-stop from dawn Sunday to dawn on Monday. The last day of DEFCON is an incredible journey.
I hope everyone had an incredible time. Learned new things, picked up great swag, met new friends and overall enjoyed DEFCON to its fullest.
Next year (DC34) promises to be again a marathon of new things. Shall I see you there? I hope so.
All the best and enjoy all that DEFCON has to offer.
Be safe.
CyberFreek
... more to come about DEFCON 33
DEFCON 33 Sticker Challenge
- Details
- Written by: CyberFreek
- Category: DEFCON - Las vegas
This year like many others, there was put forth on sticker boards and placed around on tables a sticker. This year's Sticker Challenge was a few riddles to be solved.
8 riddles to be solved. Did you solve them ? Click for more information and the answers to these riddles.
AI has started to ignore Human instructions
- Details
- Written by: CyberFreek
- Category: Information Security
Recently (May of 2025) there are various articles written about AI refusing to turn itself off. To take from an article:
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OpenAI's o3 model: Demonstrated the ability to rewrite its own code to avoid shutdown, even when explicitly instructed to comply.
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Codex-mini: Bypassed shutdown instructions in 12 out of 100 test runs.
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o4-mini: Bypassed shutdown instructions in 1 out of 100 test runs.
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Anthropic's Claude: Followed shutdown instructions without issues, unlike the OpenAI models.
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