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DEF CON 7.0 Begins, and NYT Coverage 129

Posted by Hemos from the start-your-engines dept.
Slaab writes "The New York Times covers the upcoming DEF CON 7.0 hackers' conference in Las Vegas here. Notice, they are careful to make the correct distinction between "hackers" and "crackers". " If someone had told me two years ago that the NYT would be covering defcon seven, I would have laughed till I cried. It's a different world. The convention starts this evening.
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DEF CON 7.0 Begins, and NYT Coverage More

DEF CON 7.0 Begins, and NYT Coverage

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  • id cypherpunks
    password cypherpunks

    Worked just fine for me, but I had to accept all the cookies, it didn't let me in when I refused them.

    Didn't get an access denied, though.

  • You seem to be really fast in judging people, like many others. I'm sorry if you find this subject boring, but it's actually an incredible one, and I for one am extremely interested by such subjects.

    Also, please take a moment to remove such stereotypes as underground = bad people. It is stupid. The "underground world" is composed of poeple who don't live exactly by society's rules, not necessarily against the law!!!!

    Code free or die!
  • For countless decades college people have been
    pulling off huge hacks of breaking into buildings and changing their entire look. Most notibly the building that looked like R2D2 this year at a college campus. Im sure you all saw this.


    This is exactly the same as breaking into a web server and sticking different pages on the site, as we have all seen. And letting everyone notice it the next morning. There is no difference, they are both hacks pulled off by hackers.


    Crackers are people who break codes. Be it cryptology, or copy protection on the latest software, or someones password. This does not include web site alterations and machine alterations (malicious or not.). The process of getting into the system is called the cracking, the process or altertering one from another with what tools and sources you have is called hacking.


    End of story. People need to figure this out. And Slashdot readers are a bit behind on the definitions.

  • Posted by Justin Cheung:

    Did Eric Raymond really say that about Defcon? the "People who do real work don't bother with Defcon." statement? Maybe I've been missing something, but Defcon is a weekend conference, and "people who do real work" could take off a day or two to head down to LV to mix and mingle. As I recall, Bruce S. from Counterpane (of Blowfish lore) was an invited DefCon speaker a few years back, and I consider him as a person who does "real work". Persons involved in internet security usually find Defcon a great place to speak and talk about their topics of interest. So according to Eric Raymond, I don't "do real work" because I'm going to check out DefCon this year (a few days away from working on Waimea, which i consider to be real work). At first I thought I was wrong about Mr. Raymond.. After meeting him at a few conferences, he seemed like the kind of arrogant person who scoffs at people who don't recognize him or his contributions to the Open Source movement. As a person who admires his contributions, i have to be disappointed in his personality and character. For such a smart, intelligent person, Eric Raymond blows it by acting like a judgemental holier-than-thou jerk.
  • I work with a guy who claims to have an excellent fed spotting tactic. The feds all have pristine laptops - govmnt property after all, but lotsa hackers plaster stickers and crap all over their laptops. Stickers == NO_FED
  • They have _not_ always been despised. I live in the Netherlands and the very first ISP here came directly from a 'cracker` (to use your terminology) group. It's still the biggest ISP in the country and they allow people to break into their systems if they don't do harm (and report back how they did it). They also came from before the internet existed so your obviously underestimating the people you call crackers.
  • Just go to the Olympic Gardens and watch the lovely young ladies drive them to empty out their accounts at the ATM located conveniently inside.

    There are some forces out there that tcp_wrappers can't defend against!
  • ...Eric S. Raymond, president of the Open Source Initiative, which favors the release of the secret source code for popular programs like Microsoft Office so they can be improved collaboratively, said there's nothing well-meaning about Back Orifice.


    "If you believe that, I've got some waterfront property in Florida to sell you," he said. "People who do real work don't bother with Defcon."


    Waterfront property in Florida? Hmm... like the whole state isn't one big waterfront property...

    RB
  • Over at VNU Use rs slam anti-virus vendors' attack on Unix security [vnunet.com]. Basically, some people who sell anti-virus software made some interesting claims about virii on Unix. The article quotes 80,000 different virii for Windows (that few?), and 1 for Unix in the last 15 years.

    Some people make arguments that the only reason for this is because Windows is more common/popular. Yeah... 80000x more common? I think not. Besides, there would be a certain presige in writing a Unix virus as they are so rare.

  • Yay, BO2K means that at last I will be able to 'remotely administer' my college's NT network... heheh... no seriously, though, anyone who was caught out last time deserves what they get. Too many people are happy to download something and run it only to find out it's a hard-disk trashing virus, or one which goes on to mail itself to every man and his dog. The worst part is that this gets blamed on every hacker the world over. WHY ?!?! IT'S YOUR FAULT FOR DOWNLOADING THE FSCKING THING IN THE FIRST PLACE !!! GET A LIFE AND STOP BLAMING OTHERS FOR YOUR OWN FAULTS... either that or you need some better friends...

  • Dammit (Score:3)

    by NodeZero ( 49835 ) on Friday July 09, 1999 @05:09AM (#1810865)
    I wanted to go to defcon 7, but nooooo i gotta work (tech support).

    user: "I cant clear my screen"

    tech: "How are you trying?"

    user: "I am turning it on and off"

    tech: "*gets his gun*"

    Need I say more? ;)

  • Server Error

    We are temporarily experiencing a server error. Wait a few moments, then press Reload or Refresh in your Web browser.

    If the problem persists, please try again later.

  • so what about hacker/cracker? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    /. sure howls every time the mass media uses the term "hacker" to mean someone who uses a computer destructively. Should we just give in?
  • Oh, come on, Tom. I'm sure you have more important things to do than spend your time correcting people.


    I, probably along with almost everyone else on /., appreciate all of the work that you have done and the time that you have contributed to many of the tools (and religions) that we use regularly--it truly is magnificent.


    But, come now! The impression of you that I get is that you prowl about the Usenet and apparently, Slashdot, ruthlessly correcting people. I got a semi-automated message from your address because one of my postings to the Usenet had something wrong with the headers. Do you _really_ care that much about my headers?

    I appologize for the ad hominem nature of my comments, but I, too, care very deeply about the English language. But I don't publicly correct people or spend significant amounts of time to create documents such as the one at the link in your comment. It just strikes me as petty and rude.

    Respectfully,
    awc
  • But, shouldn't the class/method call be: user.switchTo("linux"); ? It would make sense that the switchTo method is something that the user class can do, and he would have any number of options at his disposal. Linux being one.

    Anyhow...

    -awc
  • Because they're paying quality reporters to actually do the research and write quality articles about the scene they are trying to cover.

    I had dinner with Matt Richtel a couple of months ago (for a totally unrelated reason, I like to think I'm good at computers, but I'm not news or anything), and he is just a completely nice guy. From talking with him, I gathered that he really cares about computers, how they affect the world, and what goes on in the various sub-cultures that exist in our little digital world.

    All in all, it re-affirmed my faith that reporting can be done responsibly. That faith hasn't been betrayed by the NYT yet, giving me hope that they will continue their streak and (maybe, hopefully) influence some of the less responsible reporters out there.

    Cheers to that.

  • Wrong! A hacker is a skilled programmer. Hacking is simply coding. The word has lost its meaning. But that is what it means to me, and thousands of other true "Hackers"
    geach
  • I sent an email message to Richtel about this last time, when he explicitly jumbled crackers and hackers together.

    Maybe it had an effect, because this time he says "so-called crackers."

    As a hobbyist linguist, I can tell you that hacker will always be mis-used by some. It will never recover from the original mistake.

    In addition, while we're at it, "bug" is now being used to refer to viruses, particularly in the Melissa coverage. This is an unfortunate homonym, because as most everybody knows, virus does equal bug in the medical world, but virus does not equal bug in the computer world.

    World New York [worldnewyork.com]
  • If it is a cracker convention, why do all these computer industry professionals show up every year?

    esr said it best with
    "People who do real work don't bother with Defcon."

    ESR also said that the APSL 1.0 was Open Source.
  • This is kinda OT, but that thing about a job is in his sig, so I'm guessing it's serious.

    -Imperator
  • Coding is done by a coder, or a programmer. NOT
    a hacker. A hacker plays with someone elses code,
    and alters it to fit their needs. Hackers also alter computer hardware to fit their needs, just like they alter web sites and buildings. The keyword here is the means of altering something that someone else has already started to turn into what you want it to be/do.


    Being a coder/programmer does not make one a hacker off the bat. If you are handed source code from your boss and are asked to change it to fit company standards, he is effectively asking you to hack it, changing your role from a programmer (who would start from scratch) to a hack(er).

  • Dude, are you running for net.twit this year?

    Why don't you use that blood sponge in your head to argue about something vaguely important on Slashdot.

  • A friend of mine is going to DefCon. He works for a company that makes computer-security related products, but he's been into computer security since long before that job.

    He qualifies as a "hacker," and I'd say he even did when he broke ino some systems -- because his actions are done for learning purposes, not malice, and harmed no one.

    I don't know all that much about security, but personally I find it fascinating - the psychology and tactics of preventing break-ins must of needs parallel the psychology and tactics of breaking in.

    I think your characterization of attendees as all crackers is wrong. Are you trolling?

    Maybe you "can't imagine why people would meet for several days on this subject," but that says more about your imagination that it does the people who will be at DefCon.

    Maybe one day I'll know enough to justify going there myself.

    timothy
  • At the time, nearly 1/2 of Florida was Everglades, and probably 2/3 of the state qualified as swamp. So, yeah, lots of people were sold "waterfront" that was in fact entirely 6" deep in water and dozens of miles from any coast or river.
    -luge (a once and future floridian)
  • _Double_ oh come now.

    Was your post on-topic?

    Did anyone really care?

    Honest scholarship is one thing, but obsequiously petty nitpicking is another. There is a difference between constructive flaming and pointless harping. While I don't think that you've descended into pointless harping, constructive, that message was not.

    -awc
  • There isn't anything to fix. Back Orifice is a trojan that exploits the *user* not the OS as all trojans do. I would like to see cDc members arrested and prosecuted for terrorism. Put them to work doing something useful like road cleanup or making license plates.
  • Microsoft claims that Back Orifice 2000 does not exploit any security vulnerabilities in Windows 2000.

    Conversely, the Cult of the Dead Cow claims [cultdeadcow.com] that "Unfortunately for Microsoft, Back Orifice 2000 could bring pressure on the software leviathan to finally implement a security model in their Windows operating system. Failure to do so would leave customers vulnerable to malicious attacks from crackers using tools that exploit Windows' breezy defenses."

    I don't think the B02k installation procedure requires the recipient/installer to be root/Administrator for the payload to be delivered.

  • It definitely is a joke (and a very funny one, at that). The question is, whose joke is it? (could be a self-done publicity trick.)

    ---

  • or debugging windows source code ;)
  • don't think it was antionline, since the crackers did mention ao's "narq-o-matic" and such..
  • I must say I was rather amused to find that the Def Con 7 page [defcon.org] was hacked by a group who couldn't make it to defcon this year. Well I don't think any legal action will come of it ;->
  • From the Jargon file:

    :spelling flame: /n./ [Usenet] A posting ostentatiously correcting a previous article's spelling as a way of casting scorn on the point the article was trying to make, instead of actually responding to that point (compare {dictionary flame}). Of course, people who are more than usually slovenly spellers are prone to think *any* correction is a spelling flame. It's an amusing comment on human nature that spelling flames themselves often contain spelling errors.

    Hmmm. This doesn't really fit your posts. However, they *are* offtopic, unprovoked, and arrogant.

    Hey, most *linguists* I know aren't that uptight about language. The only people I know who vent out like this are either snobs, nationalists, or both. I hope you are the exception.

    I find it remarkably demoralizing that a work of serious scholarship about a topic in daily use should out of spite be branded a troll by an overzealous moderator.

    Last I checked scholarship about the daily use of language is just that: scholarship on the way users use the language. The work you cite *is* based serious scholarship (OED, Latin grammars), but it is not a descriptive work on the actual use of the English language; it is a prescriptive work, which in no way offers any justificaction for its recommendations.

    Hey, I _have_ seen language planners from a language academy make recommendations about such issues. The first example I recall, is a recommendation on the correct plural form for the spanish word 'travesti' for a reporter to use in an article on a newspaper with national circulation. The reporter had asked which of two alternate forms to use: one which was paradigmatically more correct, but hardly in use; other which was in common usage. The recommendation was the form in common usage.

    Next time, I suppose I should just flame rabidly rather than resort to honest scholarship so you would actually have something legitimate to whinge about.

    Well, you didn't flame rabidly. However, let's look at what you wrote:

    Egads! Not this `virii' nuttiness again. Please, please, please read the viruses document before you propagate this silly notion. I honestly believe you will find the article informative and convincing.

    Hmm. "Nuttiness", "silly notion". Those *are* condescending words, Mr. Christiansen.

    Oh well, I got better things to do, anyway. I'll just leave you with a riddle. What's the plural form of 'Elvis'?

    Yup, you guessed it: 'elvi'!

    (This was stolen from a Married with Children episode.)

    ---

  • Possibly, but it was open-sourced, and you were able to fix the code without resorting to vendor harassment :)
  • yep, some hackers did it.

    And shouldn't DEF CON feel special, they were good enough to be hacked. Wow, what an honor.

    No, really, it is interesting, and I think they should give a prize to the lucky winner(s) who did it. That would be cool.

  • What you are saying is that Linus is not a hacker because he started Linux from scratch. Hacking has nothing to do with the notion of beginning or continuing someone works. Hacking has nothing to do with vandalism. Hacking have got to do with a disposition of mind bended toward constructing things and sharing them. You can construct these things from scratch or modify the work of other hackers but this is still hacking.
  • How do they "Spot the Fed" anyway? Wouldnt the Fed probably just be a normal looking guy? I dont think they would send in a square-jawed, clean-shaven, charcoal-suit-wearin, earphone-listenin, ray-ban sportin guy/girl. (But I would wear that just to get a reaction :) )
  • Uh, I believe he was referring to the big real estate craze in florida during the time of the depression. Property sold like crazy at high rates and alot of people invested. Unfortunately, most of it was swamp (can you say Everglades? I dunno, coulda been) and alot of people lost alot of money.

    Groucho Marx made a film (w/ his bros. I suppose, never saw it) making fun of these people, but at the same time he was investing (and losing money!).

    kmj
    The only reason I keep my ms-dos partition is so I can mount it like the b*tch it is.

  • " ...they will stay out past their curfews, and, perhaps, they will have their first beer. "

    wow what a bunch of rebel kids... sounds more like teen football jocks to me.
  • or:
    l: cypherpunk
    p: cypherpunk

    --
    Dave Brooks (db@amorphous.org)
    http://www.amorphous.org
  • interesting claims about virii on Unix
    Egads! Not this `virii' nuttiness again. Please, please, please read the viruses document [perl.com] before you propagate this silly notion. I honestly believe you will find the article informative and convincing.

  • DefCon Underwater (Score:3)

    by Mad Browser ( 11442 ) on Friday July 09, 1999 @05:34AM (#1810929) Homepage
    Too bad Las Vegas is basically underwater right now...

    Soggy crackers... mmmmmm....
  • I was reading through CNet's News.Com site this morning, and decided to read an article titled "Windows NT virus feared." [news.com] To my surprise, it was about Defcon 7.0, specifically about CdC's Back Orifice 2000. Tim Clark [mailto] seems to think that Back Orifice 2000 is a virus *and* a trojan all at the same time. He even goes as far as comparing it to "Melissa" and "Worm.ExploreZip." This just seems to be the result of a lack of study and/or research on the subject.

    - coug_

  • Tech Support--
    Done that, been there.
    What amazed me even more than the ignorance of people was their willingness to be ignorant. All too often cries of "But I don't want to have to learn all this 'winders' stuff, I just want it to work!" I couldn't imagine going through life not wondering and thinking and tinkering with things.
  • hehehe... some enterprising soul hacked defcon to make in into admcon, with the antionline narqing facilities, etc.

    i think it'll stay up for a little while, these ppl do have a sense of humour.
  • well, i just proofread it, and i know everyones gonna freak when i said it was hacked in the body. but hey, at least i got it in the header?
  • There's a difference between trying to sound intelligent and actually succeeding. Just like there's a difference between sounding casual with speech ("sux," etc.) and sounding like a flaming moron.

    Of course, this is a flame and it deserves to be moderated down.

    _But_, I just want to point out that the AC's response--in defense of TC--is bitching at Luis for arguing in a method similar to (but significantly less pompous) than Tom's.

    -awc
  • My complaint doesn't have anything to do with Tom's pet peeve. It has to do with the sanctimoniously haughty attitude he chose to use while making his pet peeve known.

    My comment was further reinforced (in my mind) by his followup.

    I didn't comment because I recognized the name--I commented because I both recognized the name and was somewhat irked by the response. I don't know if he was always this pompous, or if it came about naturally through exposure, but it seems consistent with much of the content that I have seen come from him, and I found that interesting and somewhat amusing.

    Again, my personal feelings with regard to TC have no bearing on my respect for the amount of time and work that he has invested--work from which I know I have benefitted. And I do, most certainly, appreciate it.

    However, when position and title become an effective way to deflect criticism (I'm not saying that Tom did this in any way--I'm being vague and speculative here), any movement that has thus far claimed to be egalitarian and open-minded is, IMO, doomed to a quick descent into infighting and failure.

    Well. That was far more than my two bits.

    -awc

    Oh, and in response to the AC's attack on my site, sod off.
  • BO was from the start intended to be a trojan. The user is not alerted that the "tool" is installed on his/her system. They are never alterted that it has started sucessfully at boot. They aren't even told it's filename. No one using this tool ever tells the user that their system has this wonderful *cough* tool, or that they are using it. The original BO doesn't even run on NT, which is where this "tool" would generally be used more then 9x....

    Think about what you're saying..
  • Stop tring to act like BO actually breaks security. It runs as a background process. It accept connections on port 31337 I believe. It breaks almost as much security as a telnet daemon. The problem is it doesn't make ANY attempt to alert the user that it's running. Windows provides many methods for any application to do this. If you wanted to write an application/daemon in Linux that would be invisible, it would be just as easy. Sure you could run ps, but it's easy enough to make the process name appear to be "in.telnetd" or some such thing. And Windows has process viewers too..

    If the people at cDc were really interested in MS beefing up security, they would release the "exploits" BO uses to vendors, instead of every script kiddie in the world. When a exploit arises in Linux, the responsible person doesn't write a program to make it easier to run, s/he writes a patch for it. The people who write exploits are just as bad as script kiddies. Don't try to argue that.

    You can all argue that DefCon is not a cracker confrence, but who will believe you? Your best arguement is that "well we've changed the definition of hacker/cracker, so of course it isn't!!".. Sorry if this apears to be a flame, but some of the posts I've seen today are pretty rediculous..
  • I'm not sure if it's sadder that you really see this on AOL, or that everyone on Slashdot appears to think that this what everyone on AOL is like..

  • Well, if I wanted an undetectable remote-administration tool for an NT network, this sounds like a great tool. You pointed out attributes of BO2k: the user isn't alerted on boot or when the tool is running. These aren't necessarily bad things; it just depends on what you are using BO2k for. In some cases these would be features. The AC is right - this is a tool that can be used for good or evil. Using it for evil should be against the law, of course, but it is that attacker who is in the wrong, not the tools they use.

  • There isn't anything to fix.

    Well, for one thing anti-virus companies can probably come out with a detection method for BO2k more quickly if they have the source of the trojan available. This qualifies as a fix to me.

    In the larger sense, maybe Microsoft can come up with some fixes to their security system so that an attacker can't run an invisible trojan like this in the first place, or at least can't make it so undetectable. In this case also, BO2k source code is going to help rather than hurt.

    Back Orifice is a trojan that exploits the *user* not the OS as all trojans do.

    Well, in a sense all trojans have to exploit the user, right? By definition a trojan is non-self-propagating; the user has take action before the trojan can run on a system, as opposed to a virus or worm which are proactive in acquiring system resources. BO2k also seems to be exploiting the OS in the sense that the OS allows it to be made undetectable (by the user).

    I would like to see cDc members arrested and prosecuted for terrorism.

    I'm not sure that cDc are terrorists any more than people who manufacture fertilizer, fuel oil, or big trucks, for example (at least in this particular case - I'm not an expert on their past history). People who use BO2k to break into systems that don't belong to them should definitely feel the full penalty of the law, of course.

    But look at it this way - if cDc can write a trojan like this, then how do you know that a similar trojan doesn't already exist? If BO2k can do what they say it can on NT, then there's no way to be sure that other trojans aren't already doing the same things. I don't know that this is the case, but no one can prove that it isn't - remember, the security loophole that allows BO2k to run undetectably is already present; cDc didn't create it just so they could write BO2k. Hopefully all the coverage of BO2k will result in the quick release of security tools that will uncover it as well as other trojans of the same sort, and will also lead to Microsoft making some changes to their security model so that trojans like BO2k are less likely to run or are less likely to run undetectably.

  • Shit-fire, yes, speaking should be fun! :-)

    Did you ever try to something like "the data're in" rather than "the data's in"? Forget it!

  • It is "crackers" actually. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Notice, they are careful to make the correct distinction between "hackers" and "crackers".

    Well it doesn't seems so, as they say:

    We are not trying to teach you to learn how to hack in a weekend, but what we are trying to do is create an environment where you can hang out with people from all different backgrounds. All of them interested in the same thing, computer security.

    Underground+"computer security" equals pretty much crackers for me. Unless you are a cracker, "computer security" is rather boring (yes useful, necessary, but boring), and I can't imagine why people would meet for several days on this subject.

    Ok this won't be the only subject, but then this is very present.

    The texts, adds and links on the pages make that very clear, for instance, anyway:

    Hacking, Cracking, Phreaking, Interviews, Speakers, Hacker Jepoardy, Hacker Death Match, Babes of DEF CON, HNC Goes Wild in Las Vegas, Capture the Flag, DEF CON Social Engineering Contest.... also Watch the Dark Tangent fight to the death in Hacker Death Match!!

    But maybe I have missed the talk "The evolution of FreeBSD internals since 4.4BSD", in the program.

    It never cease to amaze me, how crackers, or crackers-alike, continuously claim they are "hackers", now even pretending doing the "cracker/hacker" distinction correctly.

  • I love it when they are _convinced_ that they know more than you.

    "If you know more than me, why the hell are you calling?"

    Fun Fun Fun, also is that true at the end of your response about looking ofr a job?

  • That was sort of funny, but I think ESR has a little bit of a double standard going on here. This article doesn't mention it, but the source for Back Orifice is supposed to be released as well. If BO2k is open-sourced as promised, then not only will there be more chances to collaborate to make it more destructive, but there will also be more chances for security-minded administrators (and shouldn't they all be?) to fix their systems before they are attacked, rather than waiting on Microsoft to figure out what the exploit is and issue a fix.

    Maybe ESR can argue that the effects of the BO2k release will be entirely negative (which I'm not sure I agree with), but he should be happy that at least the source is also going to be provided.

  • Uhh... Hemos (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Actually the NYT has covered DefCon before...

    Check: http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/08/cyber/ar ticles/02hacker.html
  • "Unless you are a cracker, "computer security" is rather boring (yes useful, necessary, but boring)"
    Actually, I find comp. security quite interesting. Then again, I'm one of those weirdos who likes studying things like the raw math behind crypto. I'm not a cracker, just a nerd/tweak/tinkerer/student/programmer with aspirations toward hackerdom.

  • Hacking, Cracking, Phreaking, Interviews, Speakers, Hacker Jepoardy, Hacker Death Match,
    Babes of DEF CON, HNC Goes Wild in Las Vegas, Capture the Flag, DEF CON Social
    Engineering Contest.... also Watch the Dark Tangent fight to the death in Hacker Death
    Match!!

    But maybe I have missed the talk "The evolution of FreeBSD internals since 4.4BSD", in the
    program.

    Along with:
    1. How to use BSD to set up a firewall/gateway,
    2. Overview of activities at the Nomad Mobile Research Centre,
    3. Macintosh Security,
    4. IPv6: Who/What/When/Where/How/Why,
    5. The United States Army. The ethics/morality/practicality/patriotism of hacking,

    ....and so on and so forth. I'd be there in a minute, if it wasn't for my current limited cashflow and the fact that I hate Vegas.

    K.
    -
    How come there's an "open source" entry in the
  • cypherpunks and cypherpunks

    K.
    -
    How come there's an "open source" entry in the
  • Sounds more like vandalism then hacking. Its about time you got caught up on the term.
  • It was ADM and you're both idiots.
  • Personally, I think ESR has really stepped over the g*****n line this time. I do "real work" and I was at DefCon. He needs to take his ego and stuff it back into his pants for awhile before he completely burns off all his reputation capital and screws over the Open Source Initiative altogether.
  • Actually, this year the feds wore large targets on their backs and hats with springie signs reading "FED"

    Actually, they were all clean-shaven, and wore nice watches and loafer shoes, usually khaki pants. Of course, so did the CEOs in attendance, and ex-cops...
  • Actually Bruce Schneier of blowfish/twofish was a returning speaker this year, giving a great Q&A session on crypto. A whole heck of a lot of CEOs, well-paid sysadmins, security consultants, feds (OK, but they *do* do work, just often not work we like) showed up to watch the fireworks. Most of the quality discussions I gathered took place behind closed doors, but nonetheless, I work, and I attended Defcon. Logic fails! I hope that this was a joke or was taken vastly out of context, etc.
  • Do your research. It was the group ADM, and it was a non-malicious hack (the defcon page was still intact, linked at the bottom). In fact, they poked quite a bit of fun at ao.
  • An idiot, you say? Maybe I should join ADM so I can be a 1337 idiot like you.

    I've never actually heard of ADM before (except in /etc/group) and have no reason to assume that they're not also some other group with a different name. My prior post wasn't talking about who they are. I was talking about who they aren't, and calling attention to the humorous AO stuff on the page.

    Oh, by the way, even if I am an idiot, that makes you someone who has nothing better to do than talk to idiots. :)

    -=The Comeback King,
  • "People who do real work don't bother with Defcon."

    Fetchmail and hyperbole - what's the pay like?

    K.
    -
    How come there's an "open source" entry in the
  • Underground+"computer security" equals pretty much crackers for me. Unless you are a cracker, "computer security" is rather boring (yes useful, necessary, but boring), and I can't imagine why people would meet for several days on this subject.

    Says you. I work for the ISS X-Force [iss.net], and I'm not bored.
  • I think you made a mistake in your code!!
    It should be more like that!

    #define unstable 1

    const int nt = unstable;

    if(nt) { switchTo.linux(); }

  • Indeed, but I respectfully disagree. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I used to correct people all the time on the use of "virii" and (sigh) "data". However I recently recgonized the fact that virii sounds dramatically keener than viruses. English has never been a static language -- words get added or altered on popular whims. Logically enough, as any language that stagnates goes kaput. Thus, I would advocate the unceasing usage of the word virii until the cows come home -- it sounds "neater" and if we keep using it, it becomes acceptable. And speaking should be FUN dagnabit!

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