Claims
Qualified triples from the transcripts. Origin, speaker, and evidence stay attached.
These are not independently verified facts.
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
ASSOCIATED_WITH
Seesaw
PPP competed in the Seesaw CTF and won its first major competition.
Explicit
Confidence 99%
· Jack Rhysider
EP 43
Details
“The first big CTF that was coming up they all wanted to compete in was called Seesaw.”
“they announced first and it was our team”
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
ASSOCIATED_WITH
Codegate
PPP qualified for Codegate and finished in the top three in one attempt, later winning it.
Explicit
Confidence 99%
· Tyler
EP 43
Details
“We managed to qualify for the competition”
“We managed to get first place which was I think, $20,000 prize money.”
picoCTF
ASSOCIATED_WITH
Carnegie Mellon
picoCTF is described as being backed by Carnegie Mellon and played by many schools.
Explicit
Confidence 98%
· Jack Rhysider
EP 43
Details
“Since it’s backed by Carnegie Mellon, it’s played by many schools around the world.”
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
ASSOCIATED_WITH
DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge
Tyler says he and other PPP members participated in the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge and won it with a company.
Explicit
Confidence 96%
· Tyler
EP 43
Details
“me and a couple of other people from our team were participants in the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge”
“we won first place in that”
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
DEVELOPED_BY
David Brumley
David Brumley proposed forming the Carnegie Mellon CTF team that became PPP.
Derived
Confidence 88%
· Jack Rhysider
EP 43
Details
“David looked around for some online CTF teams for this student to join but came up with a different idea.”
“Maybe we should just form a team ourselves and see how that goes.”
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
DEVELOPED_BY
Brian Pak
Tyler identifies Brian Pak as the founder of PPP.
Explicit
Confidence 99%
· Tyler
EP 43
Details
“Brian Pak, [00:25:00] who is the founder of PPP”
picoCTF
DEVELOPED_BY
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
Jack says PPP created picoCTF as an educational CTF.
Explicit
Confidence 99%
· Jack Rhysider
EP 43
Details
“Another really cool thing that PPP did was they made their own CTF. It’s called picoCTF”
George Hotz
MEMBER_OF
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
George Hotz joined PPP to play CTFs with the team.
Explicit
Confidence 99%
· Jack Rhysider
EP 43
Details
“George joined.”
“we quickly were like okay, you need to play CTFs with us”
Guy
MEMBER_OF
Legitimate Business Syndicate
Guy identifies himself as being from Legitimate Business Syndicate.
Explicit
Confidence 99%
· Guy
EP 43
Details
“I’m Guy from Legitimate Business Syndicate.”
Brian Pak
MEMBER_OF
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
Brian Pak is identified as the team's captain and founder.
Explicit
Confidence 99%
· Tyler
EP 43
Details
“At that time, the captain was a guy called Brian Pak”
Tyler
MEMBER_OF
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
Tyler says he joined the CTF group and later describes himself as the captain of PPP.
Explicit
Confidence 99%
· Tyler
EP 43
Details
“Then myself and one other person joined up.”
“Tyler, now the captain of PPP”
Ricky Zhou
MEMBER_OF
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
Ricky Zhou is described as another person on the PPP team.
Explicit
Confidence 99%
· Tyler
EP 43
Details
“One of the other people on our team, Ricky Zhou”
Andrew
MEMBER_OF
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
Andrew is described as one of the first people on the team.
Explicit
Confidence 98%
· Jack Rhysider
EP 43
Details
“my friend, Andrew, who is one of the first people on the team”
School of Computer Science
PART_OF
Carnegie Mellon
Jack says the School of Computer Science is one of the schools at Carnegie Mellon.
Explicit
Confidence 99%
· Jack Rhysider
EP 43
Details
“Carnegie Mellon is a university in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania and one of the schools they have there is the School of Computer Science.”
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
PART_OF
Carnegie Mellon
PPP is described as a student-run team at Carnegie Mellon.
Explicit
Confidence 98%
· Tyler
EP 43
Details
“This student-ran team at Carnegie Mellon was picking up some new students interested in hacking to help.”
George Hotz
USES
Reverse engineering
George Hotz is described as having reverse-engineered the PlayStation 3.
Explicit
Confidence 99%
· Jack Rhysider
EP 43
Details
“George reverse-engineered the PlayStation 3”
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
USES
Backdoor
PPP encountered and analyzed backdoors placed in competing teams' systems during the Defcon CTF.
Explicit
Confidence 98%
· Tyler
EP 43
Details
“One of the things we saw was some clear version of a backdoor.”
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
USES
crontab
PPP analyzed a malicious crontab entry used to maintain persistence in a CTF system.
Explicit
Confidence 99%
· Tyler
EP 43
Details
“it was installing a crontab entry.”
“it turns out they did add a crontab entry”
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
USES
packet sniffing
PPP monitored and analyzed network traffic during Attack/Defense CTFs.
Explicit
Confidence 99%
· Tyler
EP 43
Details
“you have to look at network traffic of things that other teams are sending over the network to your machine”
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
USES
Reverse engineering
PPP trained in and used reverse engineering to find vulnerabilities in challenge software.
Explicit
Confidence 99%
· Jack Rhysider
EP 43
Details
“learning how to reverse-engineer software like pros”
“This is what’s called reverse-engineering”
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
USES
Capture the Flag
PPP's core activity is participating in Capture the Flag competitions.
Explicit
Confidence 98%
· Jack Rhysider
EP 43
Details
“The CTF team at Carnegie Mellon was formed.”
“CTF stands [00:20:00] for Capture the Flag.”
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
USES
exploit development
PPP members wrote their own exploits while training for CTFs.
Explicit
Confidence 99%
· Jack Rhysider
EP 43
Details
“They were writing their own exploits”
Plaid Parliament of Pwning
USES
IDA Pro
The team uses a disassembler such as IDA Pro for reverse engineering challenge software.
Derived
Confidence 94%
· Jack Rhysider
EP 43
Details
“you use a disassembler like IDA Pro to do that”
Angler
AFFECTS
Adobe Flash
Jack says the Angler creators had a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Flash.
Explicit
Confidence 98%
· Jack Rhysider
EP 44
Details
“the Russian coders who made it had a zero-day vulnerability in it, too, a vulnerability in Adobe Flash”
Zain Qaiser
ASSOCIATED_WITH
Russian crime group
Jack describes an agreement and partnership between Zain and the Russian crime group that created or supplied Angler.
Explicit
Confidence 98%
· Jack Rhysider
EP 44
Details
“with his agreement with the Russian crime group in place”
“It was a partnership pitch and one of the Russians were open to hearing this pitch. An agreement was made.”