NSA Wants to Hire Hackers at DefCon

[Esotera]

Awesome to see that one government is finally getting the right idea, although this probably happens quietly in most agencies like these.

I wonder how many of these enlisted hackers are going to be anons?

Very few. The better hackers are generally less well known, and very few anons can actually hack.

 

[Aeshi]

I'm going to give them the benefit of a doubt and pray that by "Hire" they mean "Gas"

Otherwise they're just another bunch of morons who think you can reason with these people.

 

[TheAmazingHobo]

While it'd be cool to have people that usually fight "the system", fight the anti-system, I seriously seriously doubt that these people will fight for the good that the NSA has in mind. The very nature of organization that the NSA represents is an affront to the digital freedom that these people enjoy and unintentionally (or intentionally) advocate for.
Either way, I imagine the NSA will have semi-good hackers on their payroll, fighting hardcore hackers that live off of their parents/UI cheques, who devote themselves to a digital freedom no matter what the cost.

Okay, this is getting a bit silly.
The "hardcore hackers" are not those 18 year old goons sitting in their parents basement, setting up shitty ddos attacks with one hand while masturbating with the other.
The guys who are actually valuable, who actually know something about network security, exploitation and social engineering, who can actually do stuff that is much more interesting and menancing than blocking a site for a day or two, those guys usually have jobs, university degrees and, quite often, R&D gigs.
The NSA is NOT going to hire anon, in much the same way they won´t hire shadowrun cosplayers to do their human intelligence.

 

[Jfswift]

..about time they did this. We need more talented people on the digital frontline.

 

[Bloodstain]

I WANT.
Working at the NSA sounds awesome.

 

[enzilewulf]

Well Geeky nerds with Geeky nerds I guess.

 

[Bloodstain]

I wonder how many of these enlisted hackers are going to be anons?

Anons can't hack. They use DDoS attacks. Any child could do this.

 

[rickynumber24]

So...

A bunch of suits from an agency that doesn't exist is going to meet to a bunch of paranoid anti-government geeks, asking them to come away with them in their black helicopters.

I can see no possible way this can go wrong.

You're thinking of the BlackHat convention. DefCon's full of feds and hackers alike, and has actually toned down on the anti-scene punks in recent years. Sort of become respectable.
Also to the article's author, knowing people who regularly attend DefCon, the ZeroCool reference is enough to get any "hacker" ostracized from the community immediately. According to "real" hackers, that movie is an atrocity at worst and a comedic parody at best.

Black Hat is kind of respectable, too, from what I gather. For one thing, anyone going has to get past the $1000+ price tag which makes it more of a professional development conference than some sort of underground convention. (Actually, the one person I know who lectured at Black Hat talked about serious stuff at Black Hat and frivolous stuff at DEFCON.)

What I'm wondering is how NSA agents recruiting at Defcon will influence the "spot a fed" program. I think only the first person to identify the particular fed gets the T-shirt, though, so it probably won't make much of a difference.

 

[Strazdas]

this is nothing new. i knew a guy who hacked into banks server and that bank hired him as security chief. another guy hacked into pentagon (this one i didnt knew personally, but hes form my city) and got hired by FBI or some other similar agency. the problem is, the actual GOOD hackers dont go to such conventions. they will get those low to average hackers that will be good workers for them, but they still wont be the best cyber warriors team out there.
all in all, true hackers wont go to NSA but will now have a pretty strong counterpoint from them.

Anons can't hack. They use DDoS attacks. Any child could do this.

Right and your going to tell us DDoS attacks steals data too right? All it does is overlaod thier servers making it easier but they still got to hack in. and frankly, i wonder why DDos works anyway with current technology, one must have thousands of zombie pcs to pull this off nowadays or the servers will simply block the traffic instantly.

 

[Asehujiko]

I'm going to give them the benefit of a doubt and pray that by "Hire" they mean "Gas"

Otherwise they're just another bunch of morons who think you can reason with these people.

I agree. We should murder everybody who you have no idea about what they do and who they are purely because you associate their name with something negative.

 

[rickynumber24]

I'm going to give them the benefit of a doubt and pray that by "Hire" they mean "Gas"

Otherwise they're just another bunch of morons who think you can reason with these people.

... and we should have "gassed" Frank Abagnale Jr., who gave us most of the modern developments in check unforgeability, too, just because he spent his teenage years posing as an off-duty airline pilot and cashing phony checks.

The thing about people who're good at breaking security is... they usually know a lot about security. At some point, they'll have an urge to settle down and stop being outlaws. Why not hire them to use their knowledge to make it harder for the next guy like them?