DEF CON (also written as DEFCON or Defcon) is one of the world's largest annual hacker convention A Computer security conference, is a term that describes a convention for individuals involved in Computer Security. They generally serve as a meeting place for Systems and Network Administrators, Hackers, and computer security experts, held every year in Las Vegas The Las Vegas metropolitan area, also known as the Las Vegas-Paradise-Henderson Metropolitan Statistical Area, is a metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada, consisting of Clark County. A central part of the metropolitan area is the Las Vegas Valley, a 600 sq mi basin in which is located the metropolitan area's largest, Nevada Nevada is the seventh-largest state in area, and geographically covers the Mojave Desert in the south to the Great Basin in the north. It is the most arid state in the Union. Approximately 86% of the state's land is owned by the US federal government under various jurisdictions, both civilian and military. As of 2008, there were about 2.6 million. The first DEF CON took place in June 1993.

Many of the attendees at DEF CON include computer security Computer security is a branch of computer technology known as information security as applied to computers and networks. The objective of computer security includes protection of information and property from theft, corruption, or natural disaster, while allowing the information and property to remain accessible and productive to its intended professionals, journalists, lawyers, federal government employees, crackers A black hat is the villain or bad guy, especially in a western movie in which such a character would wear a black hat in contrast to the hero's white hat. The phrase is often used figuratively, especially in computing slang, where it refers to a hacker that breaks into networks or computers, or creates computer viruses, and hackers Today, mainstream usage mostly refers to computer criminals, due to the mass media usage of the word since the 1980s. This includes script kiddies, people breaking into computers using programs written by others, with very little knowledge about the way they work. This usage has become so predominant that a large segment of the general public is with a general interest in computer code In computer science, source code is any collection of statements or declarations written in some human-readable computer programming language. Source code is the means most often used by programmers to specify the actions to be performed by a computer and computer architecture In computer science and computer engineering, computer architecture or digital computer organization is the conceptual design and fundamental operational structure of a computer system. It is a blueprint and functional description of requirements and design implementations for the various parts of a computer, focusing largely on the way by which. The event consists of several tracks of speakers about computer- and hacking-related subjects, as well as social events and contests in everything from creating the longest Wi-Fi Wi-Fi is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance that manufacturers may use to brand certified products that belong to a class of wireless local area network (WLAN) devices based on the IEEE 802.11 standards, which is by far the most widespread WLAN class today. Because of the close relationship with its underlying standards, the term Wi-Fi is often connection and cracking computer systems to who can most effectively cool a beer in the Nevada heat. Other contests include lockpicking Lock picking is the skill of unlocking a lock by analyzing and manipulating the components of the lock device, without the original key. Although lock picking can be associated with criminal intent, it is an essential skill for a locksmith. Lock picking is the ideal way of opening a lock without the correct key, while not damaging the lock,, robotic-related contests, art, slogan, coffee wars, scavenger hunt and Capture the Flag. Capture the Flag (CTF) is perhaps the best known of these contests. It is a hacking competition where teams of hackers attempt to attack and defend computers and networks. CTF has been emulated at other hacking conferences as well as in academic and military contexts.

Conference founder Jeff Moss Jeff Moss, also known as Dark Tangent, is the founder of the Black Hat and DEF CON computer hacker conferences contends that the quality of submitted talks has diminished since DEF CON's inception.[1]

Since DEF CON 11, fundraisers have been conducted for the Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States. Its stated mission is to:. The first fundraiser was a dunk tank A dunk tank, also known as a dunking booth or dunking machine, is an attraction mainly used in funfairs, fundraisers, and personal parties. Basically, a dunk tank consists of a large tank of water, over which a seat is suspended. By striking a target, the seat will tip or fall into the tank of water, thus "dunking" whoever is sitting on and was an "official" event. In 2010, over 10,000 people attended DEF CON 18.

Contents

History

DEF CON was founded in 1992 by Jeff Moss Jeff Moss, also known as Dark Tangent, is the founder of the Black Hat and DEF CON computer hacker conferences as a farewell party for his friend and fellow hacker. The party was planned for Las Vegas a few days before his friend was to leave the United States, because his father had accepted employment out of the country. However, his friend's father left early, taking his friend along, so Jeff was left alone with the entire party planned. Jeff decided to invite all his hacker friends to go to Las Vegas with him and have the party with them instead. Hacker friends from far and wide got together and laid the foundation for DEF CON, with roughly 100 persons in attendance. The term DEF CON comes from the movie War Games WarGames is a 1983 American thriller film written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes and directed by John Badham. The film starred Matthew Broderick in his second major film role, and featured Ally Sheedy, Dabney Coleman, John Wood, and Barry Corbin, obviously alluding to the U.S. Armed Forces defense readiness condition A defense readiness condition is an alert posture used by the United States armed forces. The DEFCON system was developed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and implemented in November 1959 to provide a uniform readiness posture in the various unified and specified combatant commands. It prescribes five graduated levels of readiness (or statuses of (DEFCON). In the movie Las Vegas was selected as a nuclear target, and since the event was being hosted in Las Vegas, it occurred to Jeff Moss to name the convention DEFCON. However, to a lesser extent, CON stands for convention and DEF stands for the number 3 on a telephone, a reference to phone phreakers. DEF CON was planned to be a one-time event, a party for his friend, but he kept getting emails from people encouraging him to host again the next year. After a while, he was convinced to host the event again, and the attendance nearly doubled the second year.[2]

Noteworthy incidents

Federal law enforcement agents from the FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency. The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime. Its motto is "Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity",, DoD The United States Department of Defense is the U.S. federal department charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government relating directly to national security and the United States armed forces. The organization and functions of the DOD are set forth in Title 10 of the United States Code, United States Postal Inspection Service The United States Postal Inspection Service is the law enforcement arm of the United States Postal Service. Its jurisdiction is defined as "crimes that may adversely affect or fraudulently use the U.S. Mail, the postal system or postal employees." and other agencies regularly attend DEF CON, and are not required to wear identification badges.[3][4]

2001

On July 16, 2001, Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov Dmitry Sklyarov (born December 18, 1974) is a Russian computer programmer known for his 2001 arrest by American law enforcement over software copyright restrictions under the DMCA anti-circumvention provision was arrested the day after DEF CON for writing software to decrypt Adobe's Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ: ADBE) is an American computer software company headquartered in San Jose, California, USA. The company has historically focused upon the creation of multimedia and creativity software products, with a more-recent foray towards rich Internet application software development e-book An e-book is “a portable electronic device used to download and read books or magazines that are in digital form.” Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines the e-book as "an electronic version of a printed book," but e-books can and do exist format.

2005

On July 31, 2005, Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and sells consumer electronics, networking and communications technology and services. Headquartered in California, Cisco has more than 65,000 employees and annual revenue of US$36.11 billion as of 2009. The stock was added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average on June 8, 2009, used legal threats to suppress Mike Lynn from presenting at DEF CON about flaws he'd found in the Cisco IOS operating system used on routers.[5]

2007

In August 2007, Michelle Madigan, a reporter for Dateline NBC Dateline NBC, or Dateline, is a U.S. weekly television newsmagazine broadcast by NBC. It is similar in format to other television newsmagazines ABC's 20/20 and CBS's 60 Minutes, attempted to secretly record hackers admitting to crimes at the convention. After being outed by DEF CON founder Jeff Moss during an assembly, she was heckled and chased out of the convention by attendees for her use of covert audio and video recording equipment. DEF CON staff tried to get Madigan to obtain a press pass before the outing happened.[6] A DEF CON source at NBC had tipped off organizers to Madigan's plans.[4]

2008

Main article: Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority v. Anderson

MIT students Zack Anderson, RJ Ryan and Alessandro Chiesa were to present a session entitled "The Anatomy of a Subway Hack: Breaking Crypto RFIDS and Magstripes of Ticketing Systems". The presentation description included the phrase "Want free subway rides for life?" and promised to focus on the Boston T subway. However, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) sued the students and MIT in United States District Court in Massachusetts on August 8, claiming that the students violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) by delivering information to conference attendees that could be used to defraud the MBTA of transit fares.[7][8]

The court issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the students from disclosing the material for a period of ten days, despite the fact the material had already been disseminated to DefCon attendees at the start of the show.

In 2008's contest "Race to Zero", contestants submitted a version of given malware which was required to be undetectable by all of the antivirus engines in each round. The contest concept attracted much negative attention.[9][10]

List of venues

See also

References

  1. ^ HNS. "The Vulnerability Economy". Help Net Security. http://www.net-security.org/article.php?id=1157. Retrieved 2008-08-27.
  2. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg6bQMTjHCE
  3. ^ Welcome to DEF CON, the Largest Underground Hacking Convention in the World
  4. ^ a b Zetter, Kim (3 August 2007). ""Dateline Mole Allegedly at DefCon with Hidden Camera -- Updated: Mole Caught on Tape"". Wired Blog Network Wired News is an online technology news website, formerly known as HotWired, that split off from Wired magazine when the magazine was purchased by Condé Nast Publishing in the 1990s. Wired News was owned by Lycos not long after the split, until Condé Nast purchased Wired News on July 11, 2006. Competition from sites like The Drudge Report and. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/media-mole-at-d.html. Retrieved 2007-08-15.
  5. ^ Lamos, Rob (31 July 2005). ""Exploit writers team up to target Cisco routers"". Security Focus. http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11263. Retrieved 2004-07-31.
  6. ^ Cassel, David (4 August 2007). ""Transcript: Michelle Madigan's run from Defcon"". Tech.Blorge.com. http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/08/04/transcript-michelle-madigans-run-from-defcon/. Retrieved 2007-08-15.
  7. ^ [1]
  8. ^ http://cryptome.org/mbta-v-zack/01-complaint.pdf
  9. ^ "Race to Zero". http://www.racetozero.net/concept.html. Contest concept.
  10. ^ McMillan, Robert (April 2008). "Security Vendors Slam Defcon Virus Contest". IDG News Service. http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/145148/security_vendors_slam_defcon_virus_contest.html.

External links

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