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Sered in Depth| Category | | | Summary | | On the 3rd of December, we finally got the news: it's new, it's exciting - it's Sered. CinC Condor191 posted the release of CyberArmy's next-generation security challenges on the Public Forum, along with an immediate promotion to General of Sered's projec |
| | Body | On the 3rd of December, we finally got the news: it's new, it's exciting - it's Sered. CinC Condor191 posted the release of CyberArmy's next-generation security challenges on the Public Forum, along with an immediate promotion to General of Sered's project leader, Goldfish. A field promotion to Kernel soon followed for Sefo. These two members have spent a lot of time and effort coding these challenges, and deserve our gratitude. Sered's development over the past few years, however, has not been without incident..
Pre-challenges CyberArmy
When CyberArmy first started out on the internet a long time ago, it was all about hacking and security. With the release of CA's first challenges set called "Zebulun", it quickly became a meeting point for programmers and security-savvy netizens. After the rank split however, Cyberarmy went on for about 1 year without security challenges, thereby reorienting itself towards the brigades and projects which aimed to better CA and the internet. After one year, Alphaplex was released. This temporary challenge ended up being CyberArmy's only challenge for over 2 years, and did not draw as many people to CA in 2 years as Sered has done in less than 2 months. In fact, in the previous zZine magazine, DigitalDemon reported an increase of roughly 300% in member activity after only two weeks!
Once Alphaplex was online, the challenge development (ChalDev) team went on to develop Sered, the successor to Zebulun. The development continued until the autumn of 2003, when part of the team, including Goldfish and Gabbana, retired, taking the original Sered code with them. These events almost destroyed the project, but challenge development went through a complete overhaul as a new development team was appointed under leadership of Tacheon, composed of a few core coders and even representatives from each top-level brigade. Development did not continue at an steady level though, until Goldfish was brought back in by ToTaL (the new project leader at that time) to do some coding for Sered, as he had a working knowledge of the Dinah API and mod_perl. However, things still didn't go as Goldfish wished, and he decided to start his personal development team, consisting of Enstyne, Booto, Sefo and himself, to code another set of challenges, which would end up as the Sered challenges we know today.
It is clear that the development of Sered has been a tumultuous path over the years, with the project being restarted 3 times.
interview with General Goldfish
I understand that you were the driving force behind the Sered development team from the very start, right up until it was completed. When Sered was first being conceived, who was on the development team?
At the very start? Me, sefo, booto, Enstyne, think12. We had lots of support from exec at the time, namely DigitalDemon, Chawmp and Condor191 (who during this period became CinC).
At some point you retired from CA, taking the original Sered code with you. What were your motivations to do so? I also believe that ToTal, who was the project leader at that time, asked you to come back to the team. Why did you decide to return?
When I first joined ChalDev in 2003 (or thereabouts) ToTaL was the leader of the team, then he retired and hellz took over (or was it the other way around?). After that, I took over as C/O. At the time the support of some of the members wasn't that great; people saw CA on a slippery slope and bailed early on, which is fair enough. However, gabbana, jeian, hellz and I did a lot of work in a small period of time on the challenges but whatever we did we just got complained about by the general membership. Pengo [the retired founder of CyberArmy] also demanded that Sered be developed and released within 2 weeks or he'd take the .com domain from CA.net. He also said he could have done it in a shorter amount of time and asked to be on the ChalDev team, which I turned down (anyone who's ever seen a single line of his code will know why!) Eventually 3 of us had had enough and went off to develop Sered elsewhere and put it online at a different location. Unfortunately in the end, the people who left all went their separate ways and went on to better things. I got demoted, g:lined and banned for constantly bullying people on IRC, the boards and where ever else I could get hold of people to insult. Odd that the people I was bullying are now banned from CA. I'm always right about everything in the end.
When I rejoined, I got support from exec staff to initiate things development for Sered and get it all going. I had a strong advantage developing the challenges because I have talented friends. This made it a lot easier to produce things. These were the people who liked CA in the times of Zebulun, and who just do things, instead of talking about them, or starting and half-finishing. Sefo's assembly skills are amazing, booto is genuinely elite and Enstyne is the ultimate creative challenge coder. A small team of people works a lot better than a large team. We had a lot of server trouble during the 3rd or 4th month of development which scanjack solved for us with his generous donation of a development server. We got going again and released [the challenges] a few weeks later.
Talking about Phoenix, Sered and Phoenix were recently merged, how does this affect the further development of Sered, and when can we expect to see the first level of Phoenix?
Phoenix and Sered were merged because the resources were being spread too thinly. I suspect that I will replace one of the lower levels of Sered with one from Phoenix. Some of Phoenix's level designs might be used in Sered, too. There are 2 new Sered levels in development for levels 6 and 7 (or something, not certain yet) and one Phoenix level will be introduced into Sered somewhere early on. At present, there will not be more than one individual set of challenges.
Where did the idea come from to use the Bourne Identity story for Sered?
I wrote the first two levels when I first got the go ahead. I didn't think the storyline was vital to a set of hacking challenges, and certainly wasn't going to spend all my time writing one. I was looking around my room for inspiration and had the DVD out in front of me. There's no underlying special reason.
What made you decide to put Carol in to Sered as well? Do you think that this part of Sered mimics a real social engineering case? And I'm sure alot of our male members would like to know, who's the cute gal in the picture?
The "cute gal" in the picture is I believe the result of fu's Google Images search for 'technical support' or something, I'd imagine. You all need to get laid.
I put Carol in just for old times sake. I tried to make her more logical this time, and I think I achieved that. It also helps all you socially stunted geeks to practice speaking to grown ups and women on a robot first. I'm always thinking of other people, aren't I nice?
I'm sure some would disagree, many people, myself included, were terribly frustrated with her. From what I heard Eliza's logs were sent to a channel on IRC, does Carol have something like that as well?
Not yet, more for reasons of security and lack of need and so on, although I'd never say never.
There was also a bug discovered in one of the levels, which caused a lot of commotion. What happened there exactly?
CA moved servers recently and, without being too specific, one of the crontabs on the server for Sered wasn't set up properly, meaning that the logs of the people playing the challenge weren't forwarded to /dev/null. This was only for about 12 hours, but someone spotted it and used the information in it to be a bit silly. Still (touch wood) it's been the only proper bug.
When can we expect the next level of Sered? I've seen "Lambda" pop up on the forums recently, and that raised some questions.
Contrary to our expectations, people actually passed sefo's level and as lame and egotistical as it sounds, we upped the rank to allow the Sered admins to be separated from the normal peons. There are two more levels currently in development and they will be released shortly. A third is being constructed to replace one of the current levels.
So Lambda is actually not the next level then? What will the new levels be called?
It's the Greek alphabet.
If you weren't part of the ChalDev team, how long do you think it would have taken you to get to Epsilon? Do you think a lot of members will make it to that level?
I don't think I could get to Epsilon. Sered 4 I could do, but Sered 5 really isn't my forte. That's what was good about working with some really skilled people in development; most of the time, I didn't have a clue what they were talking about. Everyone worked to their strengths.
What is your forte? Did you learn a lot working on these challenges?
I am the mod_perl coder for the group. I designed a couple of levels and helped with the integration into CyberArmy's current backend. I'm always learning things, and seeing how the challenges worked and working with the people I did is great fun and a great experience. It's impossible not to learn from them.
Do you think that people who get hints on the challenges are, or will be a big problem for Sered? I personally agree with the policy, but how would you respond to those who think the ChalDev team is being too strict sometimes? Isn't the ultimate goal of the challenges to learn about new subjects and techniques?
I'd hoped that a general respect for the rules would have been carried through to the new people who joined. However, it didn't seem to happen that way.
On a more personal note, what do you think of your career in CA so far? Any regrets? Any expectations for the future? How about in real life? I understand you are studying at the University at the moment and are going through exams.
My 'career' (such as it is) in CA is towards what I believe in and what I can do best. I enjoy the mod_perl bashing and chatting/learning from some of the friends I've made here. I first joined CA and loved the competitiveness and eliteness about the challenges and the skills required. In my humble opinion, it has recently become acceptable to be stupid and not want to do anything about it. There is no willingness to learn. This is what spurred me on to do Sered: to try and encourage a bit of willingness to learn and compete. It's what made me learn, and I'm attempting to repay the debt.
I'm doing a degree in Computer Science which I started last year, and yes, I'm doing exams at the moment. In fact I should be revising right now, but this interview gave me the perfect excuse not to.
How do you see the future of CA as a whole, now that Sered has been released? Do you think Sered will change CA a lot?
I was more optimistic about the instant effect of Sered than the actual reality produced, however I've seen the statistics for joins/participation and joins are up massively and brigade participation is up a bit as well. That's my aim. The idea with the Sered/projects combination was to get people to come and play Sered, and while they're going through the levels they join a project and participate a bit. It's turning CA into something with more 'hooks' to drag people in and keep them here.
What kind of instant effect were you hoping for exactly? I think things are going in the right direction. How do you see Sered changing CA on the long run?
Hopefully just more people participating in and around CA. A return to a more strict meritocracy based on justified respect and ability. More people to chat with in #cyberarmy. Just more activity, and more people with real skill who I can learn from!
And to finish, what will it take me to get to Gamma?
Alpha - £10 to CyberArmy
Beta - £20 to CyberArmy
Gamma - £50 to CyberArmy
Delta - £50 to NSPCC [National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children] + £50 to CyberArmy
Epsilon - Natalie Portman delivered naked to my door wearing only a size 8 silk thong, with 2 bottles of whipped cream and 1/2kg of strawberries. Natalie must be the Natalie Portman and delivered alive and unharmed. Oh yeah.
You can hold me to that.
Alright, that's it. Thanks again for doing this interview and good luck with your career, both in real life and with CyberArmy.
No problem. Cheers.
Review
It is obvious that the coming of Sered is going to have an important impact on CyberArmy. First of all, it will attract more people to CyberArmy, which the numbers so far support. In conjunction with the Projects system this increased amount of members will, with luck, also bring new blood into the brigades and increase the brigade work being accomplished. Secondly, the challenges will also entice our current members to learn the technical skills needed to pass the Sered levels. I personally believe that Sered is a success, a great way to learn new things, and just good old fun (and frustration). I am looking forward to seeing the next few levels of Sered (even if I won't get there anytime soon). In conclusion, I would like to thank Tacheon for the background information he provided, and of course Goldfish, for the interview. |
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This article was imported from zZine. (original author: Crash Reaver)
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