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One of the most annoying features of Backtrack 5 is that you can no longer lock the screen when you want to go away from your keyboard. In this post, I will give a Howto on an alternative way to lock your screen when you are logged in as root. One thing to point out is that if you look up the documentation of xscreensaver-command or gnome-screensaver, the developers state that the reason a screen doesn’t lock as root is because it is a bad security practice to be logged in as root. Although I agree with them, it is an ever worse practice that one cannot lock their screen as root, so shame on those lazy developers. Here is an alternative way to lock your screen when you are away from your keyboard in Backtrack 5 gnome edition:

1. Install xlockmore via the command line by running the command – aptitude install xlockmore
2. Go to System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts
3. Find the shortcut labeled “Lock screen”
4. Click on it and set the shortcut to disabled by pressing the backspace button
5. At the bottom of the screen click “Add”
6. For the name enter in something like “Lockscreen”
7. For the command enter in “xlock”
8. Click Apply
9. Click on the newly created menu item you made “Lockscreen” at the bottom of the list and press CRL+ALT+L or whatever you want to bind your screen locking key to be.
10. Click Close
11. Vuala! Now you can lock your screen by pressing the key you bound.

Notes: I had this freeze once for me before, but after the initial installation I rebooted and I never got another frozen screen.

Hope that helps! Enjoy!

So I guess someone has to post the solution for the most newb puzzle in Defcon Quals this year. This is the only puzzle I (of team Bulldogs) was able to get. At least we didn’t get completely stumped this year though and I’m happy about that. No hackers left behind guys! (lulz). The clue for Retro Revisited 100 this year was simply a message that said:

“____ ___ ______!”

If you closely examined the underscores, you’d see that there are 4 underscores, then 3 underscores, then 6 underscores. Using google kung fu, I searched for a long time looking up keywords like “retro phrases”, “retro defcon”, “retro hacker phrases”. I finally looked up “retro hackers”, which lead me to a dialog from the movie “Hackers”. I figured I was onto something because the movie Hackers is pretty old or “retro” and it has to do with hacking. In scanning through some of the phrases for the movie Hackers you will notice that there is one phrase in the dialog that fits the 4, 3, 6 pattern phrase you have to look for perfectly. That phrase is “Hack the Planet!”. I tried typing this in as the answer, but it was not working. I knew that phrase had to be it though, so then I tried typing it in in lower case as “hack the planet” and the board accepted my answer.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/quotes

Dade Murphy: Hack the Planet! Hack the Planet!

P.S. If you have never seen the movie Hackers, you should. It’s classic.