Alligator Online
By APRIL DUDASH
Hacker team "1@stPlace" knows its name represents the thin line between valiant victory and thorough defeat.
However, at DEF CON, one of the largest underground hacking events in the world, the team has been labeled as world champions for two years in a row.
John Sawyer, 30, and Jordan Wiens, 27, are UF senior security engineers. They hold the secrets to UF's networks. They know the solutions to computer glitches and meltdowns. They have busy lives, wives and kids.
But in the hacking world, they go by other names: "mezzendo" and "psifertex," respectively.
As members of 1@stPlace, Sawyer and Wiens traveled to Las Vegas Aug. 3 through Aug. 5 as returning holders of black badges, the highest award given at DEF CON. These badges grant them free admission to the event for life.
They joined seven other team members in Nevada: a lawyer from Washington D.C., two hackers from the Midwest and four from the Northwest.
Their team captain, who mysteriously goes by "@tlas," selected the hackers based on their compatibility.
"He handpicked us not only for our technical skills and promise," Sawyer said, "but for our personalities."
About 160 teams from around the world competed in a Jeopardy-style tournament in June, where the top seven teams would qualify to compete against last year's winner, 1@stPlace, at DEF CON 2007.
1@stPlace members competed in the tournament for practice, Sawyer said, as well as to individually develop their skill sets over the past year.
"Everyone knows what they need to be better at," he said.
Wiens and Sawyer arrived in Las Vegas with loads of equipment, including masses of cables and laptops.
"All they give you is a connection from your server to their network," Sawyer said.
The competition started Aug. 3 at 10 a.m.
The competition organizers, also known as Kenshoto, controlled the networks. Each team had a server with 20 services on it that it had to defend, find holes in and attack on the other teams' servers.
Teams were awarded points for service level, steals, overwrites and breakthroughs, or being one of the first three teams to exploit a particular service. Penalties were given if teams tried anything inappropriate, like illegal-hacking moves or real-life physical violence.
1@stPlace protected its servers early on in the game and retrieved everyone else's passwords.
It worked Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m.
The competition grew tense as the second place team, comprised of naval postgraduates, kept gaining points.
However, 1@stPlace had the advantage because the second-place team was more focused on educational aspects, Wiens said, than the dirty tricks they could use to get ahead.
They cleared their creative moves with Kenshoto to make sure they were legal.
"We did some things in the game that they (the second-place team) weren't really happy about," said Wiens, whose tactics have earned him the nickname, "Minister of Mischief."
"We really prevented them from getting a fair number of points," he said. "While what we did was tricky, they could have stopped us a number of ways."
1@stPlace kept the lead for the entire weekend, Sawyer said, except when another team took it for 20 seconds Friday afternoon.
Besides winning, the team also had the highest number of breakthroughs on opposing systems.
Wiens and Sawyer said l@stPlace was successful because it ran like a well-oiled machine.
After the competition was over, an opponent walked up to them and asked, "What is it you're doing that we're not doing?"
"We were much more effective at taking what others have done and learning from it," Wiens said.
@tlas emphasized the importance of being humble during the game. When others might have cursed and grown bitter, 1@stPlace kept positive.
"When other teams scored breakthroughs, we'd clap for them," Sawyer said. "Not all the teams were doing that."