U of C prof heads to Vegas for huge hackers conference

Tom Keenan will be surrounded by 15,000 of the world’s best computer hackers in two weeks.

The University of Calgary professor will be speaking at DEF CON, which brings together professional and amateur computer security experts every year — this year in Las Vegas.

Keenan, who teaches Environmental Design, will discuss “open data” at the conference.

“All the world governments are deciding that they have data that’s very valuable, that they kept to themselves, that would be useful if they made public,” said Keenan.

While Keenan isn’t against the idea of the so-called open data movement, he does believe governments should tread carefully when making information available to the public.

“One of the points I’m making is, you can’t get it back. Once you put data out there, somebody will scoop it up and it’s gone,” he said.

Maybe even worse than that, he said any number of conclusions can potentially be drawn from data released by the government.

“There is all kinds of stuff that gets published, and people don’t think about the future. We’re going to have very good data analysis to draw all kinds of inferences,” he said.

At DEF CON, Keenan is hoping to point out some of these potential security breaches. DEF CON runs for four days starting Aug. 1. Keenan said everyone is anonymous and it attracts a variety of people.

“You’ll see a lot of mohawks, a lot

Cities kind of have to think like DEF CON PROFESSOR TOM KEENAN DAVID FRASER

of purple hair. Basically, no suit and ties,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter what you look like, who you are, if you’re a professor or a bum.”

During the four days, it’s a virtual free-for-all as participants demonstrate their hacking skills.

“The prevailing etiquette at DEF CON is to do things that you’re not supposed to be able to do,” said Keenan, who once saw someone demonstrate how you could avoid paying transit fees almost anywhere in the world by adding unlimited hours to passes.

Revelations like that aren’t rare at DEF CON, and many security companies have a presence there so they can be aware of potential hacks.

“What’s happening actually is so much of hacking has been commercialized,” he said.

Usually, the U.S government has officials from the CIA and National Security Agency recruiting top-ofthe-line hackers. This year, one of the founders of DEF CON told the government it needed to take some time away from the conference because of controversy surrounding the NSA.

But that won’t stop them from unofficially attending, Keenan points out.

“You can bet your bottom dollar that in those 15,000 people there are going to be NSA people and CIA people just looking like everyone else,” he said.

“They want to learn what’s happening so they can try and fight it.”

Keenan isn’t concerned with any of that, though. He’s just hoping he can open the eyes of governments at all levels, including municipal, when it comes to the open data movement.

“Cities kind of have to think like DEF CON.”