The best of Black Hat and Def Con 2013 – The Verge

Cracking suicide: hackers try to engineer a cure for depression

2013-08-14T11:15:05-04:00

Hacker Depression

It was a late night in May. Renderman, the computer hacker notorious for discovering that outdated air traffic control software could be used to reroute planes mid-flight, was feeling shitty. The stress of digging himself out of debt he'd accumulated during years of underemployment was compounded by the feeling of being trapped in a job he hated. He was forgetful and couldn't focus on anything. "Depression has sapped my motivation and lust for life," he later wrote. "I can't remember the last time I worked on a project … it's like I'm a ghost in my own life. Just existing but with no form … I'm most definitely not myself."Feeling slightly bu …

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Watch this: ‘Def Con: The Documentary’ covers two decades of a giant hacker meetup

2013-08-10T22:25:05-04:00

Def Con 21 logo

Jason Scott, the well-known digital archivist with archive.org who has previously produced a documentary on bulletin board systems, has turned his attention to Def Con - the Vegas convention that now attracts thousands of hackers (and would-be hackers) each year. Def Con: The Documentary sits down with a number of individuals who've been involved with the event from the start, including "The Dark Tangent" himself, Def Con founder Jeff Moss.

Def Con is familiar territory for Scott, who is a longtime attendee and frequent speaker at the conference - and naturally, assembling the narrative of how the world's largest hacker convention got its s …

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After Snowden leaks, feds lose their hacker cred at Def Con

2013-08-08T11:22:46-04:00

High-Five the Fed @ Def Con 21

"I haven't sensed this level of tension in the community since the crypto wars in the late '90s," said Jeff Moss, aka "The Dark Tangent," remembering when the US government nearly outlawed strong cryptography. He was addressing the audience at Black Hat, the computer security conference he founded almost two decades ago. The tension surrounded the speaker he was introducing: General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency.

It was the second time Alexander's presence caused a ruckus at a Las Vegas hacker convention. Last year, hecklers briefly taunted the general during his keynote address at Def Con, Moss' more casual comp …

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Dating coach shows how to get classified military intel using social engineering

2013-08-04T13:00:05-04:00

Jordan Harbinger (STOCK)

Jordan Harbinger, a professional social engineer, gave a talk at Def Con about how to get defense contractors to give up sensitive information.

About 1.4 million people in the US have a "top secret" security clearance. But what happens when an attractive man or woman friends them on Facebook, asking for career advice and wondering what they're working on?

Jordan Harbinger, a dating coach based in Los Angeles, wanted to give a talk at the hacker convention Def Con. He was in his living room chatting with two clients who happen to work for a massive defense corporation that contracts with the US military when the pair started blabbing about th …

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Bitcoin suitcase eats your pocket change, spits out digital currency

2013-08-03T12:30:01-04:00

Bitcoin suitcase

Unless you're one of its many evangelists, you probably still don't own any Bitcoins, the math-based digital currency that's all the rage among hackers, free market libertarians, and crypto-anarchists alike. A group of tinkerers at the Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas is trying to fix that with a suitcase vending machine that eats your old-fashioned metal coins and spits out digital ones.

"Most people know about Bitcoin, but they don't have it."

Friday evening, a hacker called Garbage was milling around outside of the Rio convention center showing off the invention to fellow Bitcoin enthusiasts. "Most people know about Bitcoin, but th …

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What is Facebook doing at a hacker convention in Vegas?

2013-08-02T09:00:04-04:00

Blackhat 2013 stock

If you're a fly-by-night computer hacker who prefers IRC to Instagram and goes by your handle instead of your real name, a company like Facebook is basically The Man. But the social network is back at Def Con, the long-running hacker convention that draws 15,000 attendees to the Las Vegas desert every summer, for the seventh year in a row. Other internet companies tend to gravitate toward the corporate sister conference Black Hat, maybe sending a small number of employees to Def Con. But Facebook actually hosts events, sponsors parties, and makes major announcements here.

"I think we do a different kind of engagement at conferences like thi …

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Edward Snowden is now a gimmick to sell security software

2013-08-01T14:20:04-04:00

Snowden advertisement

"Is your organization Edward Snowden-proof?"

That's the kind of line cybersecurity software makers have been pushing in the months since contractor Edward Snowden published internal data from the National Security Agency. Snowden's leaks were damaging to the government, but the private sector also took the lesson to heart. Most large companies have some kind of sensitive data, and Snowden is their worst nightmare: the high-level techie gone rogue.

Insider attacks account for about 20 percent of cyberattacks, according to industry reports, including a 2011 survey conducted by CSO Magazine. Though they may be rarer than threats from outside …

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NSA director heckled as he pleads with hackers to ‘put the facts on the table’

2013-07-31T16:23:36-04:00

NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander

In a timely appearance, National Security Agency director General Keith Alexander took the stage today at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas hoping to "put the facts on the table" about recent revelations regarding his agency's various surveillance programs.

"This is perhaps one of the biggest issues facing our country today," said Alexander, claiming that he would "answer every question to the fullest extent possible." But the talk served largely as an overview of what we've already learned about the NSA's programs following disclosures from Edward Snowden. Alexander defended the agency by repeating that the metadata program wh …

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The top 10 new reasons to be afraid of hackers

2013-07-31T09:40:04-04:00

Def Con logo

Thousands of computer hackers are heading to Las Vegas this week for Black Hat and Def Con, back-to-back information security conventions where attendees are warned not to send passwords over Wi-Fi or use the ATMs due to a surge in digital mischief-making.

It's traditional for these skilled programmers to unveil their greatest exploits at the conventions, prompting a wave of press attention as seemingly-secure parts of our daily lives are turned against their users. Here's how to hack an iPhone within one minute of plugging it in to a tampered charger. Here's how to "trivially" gain access to surveillance cameras in homes, banks, prisons, a …

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Def Con founder asks feds to skip hacker conference, citing high tensions after NSA leaks

2013-07-11T09:01:11-04:00

Def Con logo

Def Con, the world's largest hacking conference, has a long history of being a kind of "neutral zone" where computer miscreants casually mingle with federal agents - oftentimes unwittingly. But founder Jeff Moss (aka "The Dark Tangent") took to Def Con's website yesterday to ask that feds avoid the conference this year, saying that recent events involving government surveillance programs have created high tensions in the hacker community.

"recent revelations have made many in the community uncomfortable about this relationship."

"When it comes to sharing and socializing with feds, recent revelations have made many in the community uncomforta …

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