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.”

Jack Rhysider · offsets 21047–21132

“they announced first and it was our team”

Tyler · offsets 24261–24301

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”

Tyler · offsets 29413–29454

“We managed to get first place which was I think, $20,000 prize money.”

Tyler · offsets 34082–34151

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.”

Jack Rhysider · offsets 60386–60469

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”

Tyler · offsets 58943–59041

“we won first place in that”

Tyler · offsets 59150–59176

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.”

Jack Rhysider · offsets 20714–20819

“Maybe we should just form a team ourselves and see how that goes.”

Tyler · offsets 20903–20968

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”

Tyler · offsets 25339–25386

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”

Jack Rhysider · offsets 59828–59916

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.”

Jack Rhysider · offsets 48020–48034

“we quickly were like okay, you need to play CTFs with us”

Tyler · offsets 47057–47113

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.”

Guy · offsets 54176–54219

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 · offsets 21622–21674

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 · offsets 21421–21464

“Tyler, now the captain of PPP”

Jack Rhysider · offsets 49659–49688

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”

Tyler · offsets 46777–46824

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”

Jack Rhysider · offsets 21020–21087

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.”

Jack Rhysider · offsets 19265–19397

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.”

Tyler · offsets 25900–26014

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”

Jack Rhysider · offsets 47634–47677

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.”

Tyler · offsets 40099–40161

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.”

Tyler · offsets 40418–40452

“it turns out they did add a crontab entry”

Tyler · offsets 41113–41154

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”

Tyler · offsets 39989–40096

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”

Jack Rhysider · offsets 27512–27563

“This is what’s called reverse-engineering”

Jack Rhysider · offsets 28809–28850

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.”

Jack Rhysider · offsets 21002–21045

“CTF stands [00:20:00] for Capture the Flag.”

Jack Rhysider · offsets 20021–20064

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”

Jack Rhysider · offsets 27418–27454

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”

Jack Rhysider · offsets 28855–28901

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”

Jack Rhysider · offsets 12012–12114

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”

Jack Rhysider · offsets 9271–9327

“It was a partnership pitch and one of the Russians were open to hearing this pitch. An agreement was made.”

Jack Rhysider · offsets 6526–6633