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Return from Defcon 18
Haha, there is the official receipt for Defcon 18 for all of those needing to expense it. Overall I had a great time at Defcon, really no thanks to the actual conference.
I will start with saying they need to learn a LOT from Shmoocon! I understand the idea of not wanting to deal with credit card or prepaying for tickets, and you can claim privacy, but it just doesn’t work anymore. When a thousand people more show up at a conference than you planned for then things go downhill quickly!
The talks were actually just so-so. I really wasn’t impressed with many of them, most of the stuff honestly just seemed like a rehash of things from two years ago mixed with other stuff that has already been presented on.
Now the saving grace, the parties! Wow, and let me tell you, there are some companies and groups that know how to throw a party. I felt like I was living out The Hangover!
Overall I had a lot of fun, but if I had to choose between Shmoocon or Defcon in the future, Shmoo would win hands down.
Serial via USB in OS X
So I went to rebuild a Cisco router the other day, but didn’t have a freaking serial port anywhere to drop the config! So I ran down to Fry’s to get a USB-to-Serial adapter. Looking online there are several options, at the actual store I only had two/three to choose from. So I ended up with that ugly thing up above, mostly because even though I will PROBABLY never need dual rs232 ports, there might be that day that I need two (and it was only $1 more!). So that ugly thing up above is the USB-2925 from Cables Unlimited. The BIG problem is that according to their website (which contradicts the package) is that it only works on Mac OS 10.0-10.3! OUCH! But we can find a way around this, cause if not this write up would be worthless 
The USB-2925 uses the Moschip MCS7720, which has drivers for OS X. The only problem is the drivers are for 10.4, but they worked for me just fine in 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard). You do have to do the install followed by the restart, but after that take a look:
$ ls /dev/tty.* /dev/tty.Bluetooth-Modem /dev/tty.USB-Serial0.0 /dev/tty.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync /dev/tty.USB-Serial1.1
After that you can use the screen command to work with the connection as found in this guide.
Here is a copy of the drivers if you need them: MCS7720DRV_MAC10.X.zip
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