I just went to the legendary hacker camp that happens only once every four years, and I'm here to tell you about it.

Let's start with some background. One of the things Berlin's and Germany's tech scene can rightfully be proud of is the Chaos Computer Club.

Chaos Computer Club, or CCC for short, is Europe's largest hacker association, founded back in 1981. In terms of insider recognition, it's comparable to Anonymous, though the latter is more of a movement of random anons without any organization, while CCC is an official community with 10K+ official members, their own base in Berlin, and regular events.

CCC members often serve as expert consultants for the German parliament when it comes to privacy laws, decentralization, and other IT regulations.

Thanks to them, Germany still manages to stay in touch with reality when it comes to crypto regulation or batshit crazy laws like the end-to-end encryption ban in the UK. ? At least the EU kept them in check before Brexit, but now it's a complete circus over there.

Moreover, CCC is famous for several major hacks. While hacks of DECT telephony and German Teletext might be ancient history now, they were the first to crack the GSM protocol, demonstrating how to successfully clone someone's SIM card and why SMS codes aren't very secure.

In 2008, when the German government planned to collect biometric data for e-Passports (before Touch ID even existed), they pulled off another famous hack. They published the fingerprint of the German Interior Minister along with complete instructions on how to get anyone's fingerprints and use them.

They threatened to release fingerprints of other prominent German politicians, including Merkel, as a protest against biometric data collection in Germany. The program was significantly scaled back.

These folks actively promote privacy and decentralization, partly thanks to which cryptocurrencies are essentially legal in Germany, and parliament and bundeswehr (army) members use the decentralized end-to-end encrypted Matrix protocol as their official internal messenger and even sponsor its development with my tax money (though I don't mind this one).

Sure, we could argue that Germany's IT sector sucks because of their obsession with privacy and "datenschutz", but that's a topic for another discussion.

The whole world is heading towards Cyber-Gulags anyway, so personally, I find it somewhat comforting that governments occasionally listen to people from CCC when making decisions. Some CCC members even officially work for the government (though most are still anarchist-libertarians and fuck-the-police types) :)

CCC has its own "base" in Berlin — C-base, near Jannowitzbrücke and KitKat Club. They often host events, parties, and workshops, with a "members-only" hackspace in the basement. I recommend checking it out when they have an open event. Hack and Tell meetups are usually good for getting started.

There's also a funny legend that the entire C-base is a spaceship, and the TV tower at Alexanderplatz is its antenna. There's quite a bit of lore around CCC.

So sometimes CCC hosts big events. These are the Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg (previously in Leipzig) and Chaos Communication Camp, which we'll talk about today.

Chaos Communication Camp, or CCCamp, is the largest Chaos Computer Club event, held every 4 years somewhere in the middle of nowhere near Berlin. Like DEFCON, it attracts people from all over the world. Once every four years might sound rare, but neighboring countries also have similar camps: Dutch MCH (May Contain Hackers) and British EMF (Electromagnetic Field). They're held in years when CCCamp doesn't happen. That's hacker solidarity for you.

So you don't have to wait 4 years - you can plan something for next summer already.

CCCamp runs for a week and looks like a real camping event. Everyone sleeps in tents, or (less commonly) in camper vans, like I did. The space organization has some similarities with classic Burning Man - there's "free camping" where you're on your own, and there are "camps". Camps can be themed (like FoodHacking or BDSM) or just communes from friendly hacker groups.

You can join a camp and enjoy its perks like three meals a day, beer fridge, and sun shelters where you can sit with your laptop and hack something.

Camps work "for donations" to somewhat cover their expenses. Most of our folks stayed at Milliways camp, where you could buy their commemorative coin and then use the camp's amenities.

You can also donate a couple of beer kegs or help with cooking for the whole camp. We did that a lot, it was pretty fun.

Don't want to stay in a camp? You can live on your own and wander around other camps. You'll be welcome everywhere and will likely get fed, get drinks, and invites to parties.

Unlike Burning Man, they use real money here (cash only), but everything is basically at cost. If you want to buy some beer or Club-Mate at the local "späti" during the day - it'll be at regular Berlin kiosk prices. And in the evening, beer is usually free at the camps.

Prices without taxes suddenly become so nice :D

The second big difference from Burning Man is infrastructure. Cable spools are scattered throughout the territory - you can hook up your extension cord and have 220 volts right in your tent.

There's internet too. In the corners, there are so-called Datenklo - literally "data toilets". The guys take regular blue portable toilets and put a ten-gigabit server rack in them. On top, there's a pole with a WiFi router and a couple more devices that broadcast their hacker LTE and DECT. I'll tell you more about those later.

WiFi is constantly congested (obviously, when every hacker brings 10 devices), so if you need really stable internet, it's recommended to bring your own ethernet cable, contact the Network Operation Center and they'll give you a toilet key and assign you a personal port and IP address on the switch.

That's how you can get more stable internet. However, setting up your own WiFi points is strongly discouraged to avoid cluttering the airwaves. So grab an RJ-45 to USB-C adapter and you're good to go.

Having infrastructure kind of kills the "survivor" vibe. At Burning Man, part of the experience is setting up your camp, installing solar panels, antennas, and generating your own electricity. Here everything's ready to go.

Though I understand, the territory is small compared to the desert, and if everyone started deploying their own infrastructure, it would quickly turn into a circus.

Plus, good infrastructure allows real-time video streaming of all sessions. At CCCamp, even internet viewers can ask speakers questions in real-time. All stages are streamed on streaming.media.ccc.de, and after the camp, videos are edited and uploaded to their "own YouTube" (of course hackers reinvented everything) somewhere around here.

Now to the question "why bother?". If you're among those 99% of my readers who are classic "Slavic IT folks" who only care about their 300k salary and relocation, and couldn't care less about technology - this definitely isn't for you.

I met a couple of Twitter friends there, and they all fled home on the second day. Not the best way to spend 380 euros for a ticket :D

But if in "IT" you still see the word "technology", an event like this might, even briefly, bring back that childlike geek fascination with weird gadgets soldered from circuit boards and transistors, illegal radio hacks in the spirit of old radio enthusiasts, and people completely passionate about their craft who don't give a damn about mainstream.

Like, I heard the phrases "Fuck Google" and "Fuck Cops" from different stages at least three times :D

Let me tell you what I personally did there.

Here and there, different camps organize workshops on their themes.

Lock-picking Camp did a workshop on picking locks with lockpicks for kids (!). In Germany, it's a popular and completely legal hobby, unlike some other European countries.

The most memorable workshop that I unfortunately missed was building and soldering your own hydrogen cell to generate electricity!

Apparently nothing even exploded during the hydrogen extraction process.

Workshops aren't limited to electronics. For example, the "food-hacking" camp conducts masterclasses on making your own salami and curing meat, while in the neighboring tent people write chiptune tracks on a bunch of old Nintendo GameBoys.

Can't do without them. Some people ignore them, which I also do at other conferences, but here some topics turned out quite interesting and I actively attended them.

The most interesting talks for me were on the third day when everything got rolling. Many things at CCCamp are actually revealed to the public for the first time.

For example, security researchers from the Netherlands told how they spent the last 3 years hacking the TETRA protocol - the one used by police radios across Europe and half the world. The protocol used a proprietary encryption algorithm, and the guys thought this was security through obscurity and something could definitely go wrong.

What followed was pure chaos when they started reporting their findings to the European Whatever Commission for Communications and TETRA developers, who started backpedaling saying "you used specialized equipment not available to regular users."

In response, the guys bought a 1998 Toshiba laptop on eBay and performed the same operations on Windows 95 :D

In short, some pretty LOL-worthy stories happen sometimes.

The talk is already available online: All cops are broadcasting.

There were reverse stories too: how guys from the German government protected their infrastructure from DDoS attacks by Anonymous and Cyber-Berkut (a Russian pro-government hacker group). There are lots of insights from 11 years of defense against attacks, including that in Russia there are entire data centers that specialize exclusively in DDoSing other "unfriendly" countries.

The recording is also available: How to survive getting DDoSed by Anonymous, Cyberberkut, Killnet and noname057(16) since 2012

You can browse other published videos, maybe you'll find something interesting: media.ccc.de/c/camp2023.

There are also more down-to-earth topics like creating your personal botnet from robot vacuum cleaners. Well, "down-to-earth" :D

About 80% of talks are in English, but 20% are in German.

People bring their gadgets and show them to others. Also quite an engaging format.

For instance, we went around with Leo Kaganov (whom everyone knows for a long time) and Kirill Pimenov (with whom we wrote the post about AI Alignment), who made their own open-hardware wallet that works forever without a battery. It gets its charge from NFC on your phone, which is enough for a few seconds of E-Ink screen updates and transaction signing.

I also remember guys who made a robot bartender that can mix cocktails on request. We had long discussions about unsolved problems with milk going bad in tubes and wasp protection. The latter turned out to be very relevant because August in Germany is just a freaking wasp invasion.

And of course many other interactive art objects, like the ability to play Tetris where the blocks are windows of a real building.

At night, of course, the global party begins.

The whole camp is flooded with neon, smoke machines, lasers and other LED magnificence. DJ sets of all sorts start on the stages. Camps throw their own parties and treat everyone to everything - from homemade waffles to moonshine.

For example, we were at a party celebrating Debian's 30th anniversary. They had excellent Aquavit, after which I don't remember anything.

And of course all other illegal attributes of Berlin parties are present in abundance. If that's your thing.

I want to tell separately about several more cool things that make CCCamp stand out among other festivals.

During CCCamp, there's a "hacker" version of Deutsche Post operating on its territory. The camp has its own official address where you can send packages from outside, and you can also write and send a postcard to anywhere in the world.

I sent about five.

This artifact is so unique that they even make their own stamps that are officially recognized by Deutsche Post. The postcard reached Berlin in 1 day. It was delivered right by a coffee delivery courier.

Chaos Post works inside the camp too. Only there are no addresses, so instead you write something like "big bald Russian guy in Milliways camp, named Ivan" and local volunteer postmen try to find such a person :)

Any old-timers here? Who remembers what DECT is without Googling?

Surely somewhere in the 00s, your old rotary phone at home was replaced with a fancy new WiReLeSs one? Something like this:

How convenient it was to take it to another room and chat with friends for hours, right? Well, the protocol this handset used to communicate with the base station was called DECT.

I mentioned above that Chaos Computer Club itself is famous for two major hacks - DECT-hack and GSM-hack. They cracked the protocols and their encryption many years ago.

So to keep enjoying the hacks, the entire CCCamp is covered with hacked DECT and LTE base stations.

You can bring your old DECT handset to the Phone Operations Center, they'll register it in the network and give you a four-digit number like 1234.

ANYONE can now call you at this number from another DECT handset. People use them like walkie-talkies. You just walk around the camp with the handset, friends call you asking where you are. Speakers often leave their DECT number on slides next to their other contacts :)

And to make it even cooler - they connected this numbering capacity to an external line. Meaning anyone from anywhere in the world can call DIRECTLY to your DECT phone hanging on your belt by dialing the German prefix +49xxx + your 4 digits! :)

Where else would you get fake documents if not at a hacker conference :)

There's a separate tent that makes them. You write any data, name, surname, date of birth, place of residence, and then get an "almost real" German ID.

You can write nonsense for fun, like I'm Darth Vader, but many people think of making a "legitimate-looking" ID to use in places where they shouldn't really require your real ID but somehow want to.

For example, in some sketchy hotels in Albania, they'd actually take our IDs in exchange for the room key. The worker would just put all our documents on a shelf right at reception, and at night would simply GO HOME. I always wondered why nobody steals them.

Sometimes I managed to convince workers in such places that if they lose my ID, I won't even be able to leave the country and return home, so they'd accept, for example, a health insurance card. But that didn't always work.

So now I plan to use it in wild countries as an alternative. In Germany, obviously, everyone will spot it right away.

And another interesting thing about the whole camp is its general decentralization. There's no central "organizers" camp and everything is done by volunteers. Even the Chaos Computer Club itself is just the largest camp within all of CCCamp.

All organizational matters are divided among Operations Centers. Network problems - go to Network Operations Center, want to get a case of beer for the evening - go to Beverage Operations Center, and so on.

Everything is so decentralized that even the Ambulance here is their own. These are the same hacker volunteers who have medical degrees in real life, and arranged with a local "private" ambulance to provide them with a vehicle for evacuations.

Inside the camp, they ride special bicycles.

There's even a fire department, but that's more complicated since they need specialized vehicles and equipment, so they arrange with local Freiwillige Feuerwehr (volunteer firefighters) to bring all this to the camp. But volunteers still help.

How can all this work and why doesn't it fall apart like any other decentralized project? Simple - these guys have been doing it since 1999 :D They've gained experience.

And starting from scratch definitely wouldn't work. We tried.

Finally, let me tell you about the art objects. What self-respecting festival happens without various weird things you can ride or otherwise interact with.

My favorite art object. Meet the techno-bot.

It's a robot made of a speaker, a big battery, and a Raspberry Pi inside. All it does in its life is play algorithm-generated techno music on the fly. For Satan's glory.

It's impossible to turn off, and the only way to influence the music it generates is to physically move it to another location. It uses its own GPS coordinates as a seed for generating new techno beats. That's all.

What's the point?

The point is that its entire personality is based on everyone hating it. Random people find it and roll it from camp to camp. Since its battery charge is practically infinite, it keeps playing its weird algorithmic techno forever. If you leave it at any camp - it quickly annoys the local inhabitants and they roll it far away from their camp. And this repeats endlessly.

Sometimes they take it far into the forest, but someone finds it there and jokingly brings it back.

Everyone hates techno-bot :(

At the last MCH, they even locked it in a toilet and broke the lock. Techno-bot kept playing its music in the locked toilet for THREE whole days until someone freed it :D

I asked many people and no one could tell who made it or who owns it. Apparently guys from EMF.

That's the story of techno-bot.

I never found the real name, so we called it the Austrian Embassy between ourselves, since many camps here are called "embassies."

For example, there's an "Italian Embassy" with a "Vatican Embassy" inside and they don't like each other. But they make amazing pasta for lunch and give it to anyone who wants it :D

So about the Austrian one.

It's a stand in the middle of the field where anyone can write and submit an official complaint about anything they want to complain about.

The embassy worker gives you a huge form with dozens of questions in German, scolds you for every typo and makes you rewrite everything three times so it's all filled out perfectly and according to standards.

Then an official stamp is put on the form, and you're given an application number and certificate.

After going through all these circles of hell, all you have to do is drop the form into a special slot, under which is... a shredder and trash bin :D

Thank you for your feedback! This all reminds me very much of my last 5 years in Germany!

To add another bucket of irony to the situation, the stand is constantly closed for breaks. And at the bottom there's a DECT phone number to COMPLAIN about that too! :D

So I didn't use the stand myself, telling this from friends' stories.

That's it. Maybe see you next year at MCH in the Netherlands. We'll see.

So, a bonus story. Since I was camping in a van, naturally all friends and suitcases rode with me. And on the first day we carried lots of stuff from the camper parking to the camp.

First night: I returned to the Van way after midnight and suddenly discovered that the trunk hatch was wide open. Nothing was stolen, just everything open and facing the parking lot. What a dumbass, I thought, how can you forget to close a two-meter trunk, damn.

Okay, second day: a wild storm starts hitting us and I rush on my bike to the Van to roll up the awning and hide everything before it gets blown away or soaked.

Operation successful, I return to camp, party until about 3 AM, drive home. I approach the Van and see... the trunk hatch is open again!

Wait, here I'm already 100% sure I can't be such a dumbass to go prepare the Van for the storm and forget about a whole open trunk. All other doors were locked with the key.

Suspicions start creeping in. I'm at a hacker conference, almost every other person has a Flipper here, and every third has even more serious and powerful devices.

Could it be... I was HACKED?

We even gathered a whole council of guys to figure out how this could happen.

Lockpickers playing with picks? Ruled out, the van's trunk has no lock cylinder, it opens with the key.

Someone set up a huge antenna and is just cycling through all known radio hacks and 0-day vulnerabilities in cars? Possible, the van is quite old, but even then - the door still needs to be physically opened. It doesn't open up by itself.

Anyway, not coming up with anything, I decided to put a sign on the back trunk saying "TELL ME HOW???" with an email :)

Never got an answer. But the door stopped opening.

Although just in case, all other days I locked the car with the key, not through the radio fob. That's the cool story.