Defcon Quals Retro Revisted 100 Write-Up
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.