Hackers snub US government officials
THE annual Def Con hacking convention in the US has asked the federal government to stay away this year for the first time in its 21year history, saying Edward Snowden’s revelations have made some in the community uncomfortable about having government officials there.
“It would be best for everyone involved if the feds call a ‘time out’ and not attend this year,” Def Con founder Jeff Moss said in an announcement posted this week on the convention’s website.
More than 15 000 hackers, researchers, corporate security experts, privacy advocates, artists and others are expected to attend the Las Vegas convention that begins on August 2.
Moss, who is an adviser on cybersecurity to the Department of Homeland Security, told Reuters that it was “a tough call”, but that he believed the Def Con community needed time to make sense of the recent revelations about US surveillance programmes.
“The community is digesting things that the feds have had a decade to understand and come to terms with,” said Moss, who is known as The Dark Tangent in hacking circles. “A little bit of time and distance can be a healthy thing, especially when emotions are running high.”
He said that the move was not designed to create tension, but to defuse it. “We are not going on a witch-hunt or checking IDs and kicking people out,” he said.
In previous years, the conference has attracted officials from federal agencies such as the CIA, National Security Agency, FBI, Secret Service and all branches of the military.
Last year, General Keith Alexander, head of the National Security Agency, was a keynote speaker at the event, which is the world’s largest annual hacking conference. The audience was respectful, gave modest applause and asked about secret government snooping. Alexander denied that the agency had dossiers on millions of Americans, as some former employees had suggested before the Snowden case. “The people who would say we are doing that should know better,” Alexander said. “That is absolute nonsense.”
Alexander is scheduled to speak in Las Vegas on July 31 at Black Hat, a smaller, two-day hacking conference that was also founded by Moss. It costs about $2 000 (about R20 000) to attend and attracts a more corporate crowd than Def Con, which charges $180.
Moss said he believed Alexander would still speak at Black Hat and that his call for a “time out” only applied to Def Con.
Moss said he invited government officials to Def Con the first year because he thought they would come anyway. They politely declined then showed up incognito, he said. And they have attended every year since.
The gathering has become a fertile ground for recruiting. The US military, intelligence agencies and law enforcement typically compete with corporations to find new talent at Def Con.