NSA Wants to Hire Hackers at DefCon

Greg Tito

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Sep 29, 2005
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NSA Wants to Hire Hackers at DefCon



The National Security Agency descends on the Las Vegas hacker convention looking for fresh blood to turn into "cyber warriors."

DefCon is an annual gathering of hackers in Sin City which incongruously allows people who've only conversed in IRC chat rooms to meet face-to-face. The convention will cover all of the hot topics in hackerdom today, including panels on techniques and a fair amount of boasting of hacker exploits. The cost to attend is $150 cash - no credit cards or trackable currency allowed - but many hackers will walk away from DefCon with a fancy new job. High-tech corporations always have a presence trying to recruit the often intelligent hacker community to work for them, but perhaps the most intriguing story is that the oft-misunderstood government agency - the NSA - is also entreating former hackers to become cyber warriors in the fight against America's enemies online.

"Today it's cyber warriors that we're looking for, not rocket scientists," said Richard "Dickie" George from the NSA. "That's the race that we're in today. And we need the best and brightest to be ready to take on this cyber warrior status."

The joke that Washington tells about the NSA is that the acronym stands for "No Such Agency" for its secretive operations conducted to keep U.S. citizens safe. Many of the 30,000 employees (reportedly greater in number than both the CIA and the FBI) are already steeped in hacker culture, having previously crossed the legal line from entitlement into enforcement.

"When I walk down the hall there are people that I see every day and I never know what color their hair's going to be," George said. "And it's a bonus if they're wearing shoes. We've been in some sense a collection of geeks for a long, long time."

The NSA plans to hire 1,500 workers by the end of September, and another 1,500 next year most of which will become cyber warriors. I'm not sure if anyone who starts working for the NSA will start retaliating against the likes of Anonymous or the nameless criminals who downed Sony's PlayStation Network earlier this year, but I'd say that's probably a good place to start.

And also, please one of you just start walking around the NSA offices claiming that you are Zero Cool and you crashed 1507 computers in one day.

Source: Reuters [http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/02/idUSN1E7701KK20110802]

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Elementlmage

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Aug 14, 2009
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Hell yeah! They are finally getting the right idea!

Just remember to give them a Psych Eval that will make Secret Services agents cringe. You have to make sure their intentions are "pure." Please, for the love of God, don't skip this step!
 
Feb 13, 2008
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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.
 

Gindil

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Elementlmage said:
Hell yeah! They are finally getting the right idea!

Just remember to give them a Psych Eval that will make Secret Services agents cringe. You have to make sure their intentions are "pure." Please, for the love of God, don't skip this step!
Really bad timing, given that the GAO just came out to blast the government for not knowing what it's doing in cyberspace...
 

RagTagBand

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Jul 7, 2011
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Honestly i'm surprised that the "Hackers convention" isn't just an NSA Sting operation.
 

AngryMongoose

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Jan 18, 2010
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Pff, yeah, sure. They've pulled this shit before. Remember that guy who hacked the HL2 beta source code? He was offered a job too...
 

smudgey

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May 8, 2008
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The_root_of_all_evil said:
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.

Wonder if they'll actually get any takers....
 

Imperioratorex Caprae

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May 15, 2010
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The_root_of_all_evil said:
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.
 

Femaref

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May 4, 2008
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RagTagBand said:
Honestly i'm surprised that the "Hackers convention" isn't just an NSA Sting operation.
Might want to read up on the original meaning of the word hacker. The jargon files [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html] are a good read for that.
 

Yggdraz0r

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Jun 7, 2009
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It's a shame, I thought it was about this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyIHvlFmJnU

:(.
 

Not G. Ivingname

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Greg Tito said:
Well, most governments do hire hackers to try to fight hackers, or hire them to try to hack into the government systems, so they can "plug the leaks" as it were.

This kind of the thing is older than computer to. Vegas has a long history of hiring the people that cheated millions out of the casinos, because those are the guys that know the tricks best and know what to look for.
 

Roboto

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Nov 18, 2009
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The_root_of_all_evil said:
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.
The step in between meeting and helicopter that you may have omitted is the exchange of a wad of cash.

Money talks, and anti-security persons generally work for the highest bidder, especially when there was no bidder in the first place.
 

James Crook

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Jul 15, 2011
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smudgey said:
The_root_of_all_evil said:
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.

Wonder if they'll actually get any takers....
I was just about to post this.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Well I wonder too if anyone will actually show up for the applications XD
 

Jaime_Wolf

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Jul 17, 2009
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Greg Tito said:
"When I walk down the hall there are people that I see every day and I never know what color their hair's going to be," George said. "And it's a bonus if they're wearing shoes. We've been in some sense a collection of geeks for a long, long time."
Apparently the NSA is staffed by hackers from twenty-year-old movies.

Comforting.

(Wonder when DefCon will start taking cryptocurrency.)
 

Torrasque

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Aug 6, 2010
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Heh...
I am reading this while wearing my shirt that says:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/73/Laughing_man_logo.jpg/225px-Laughing_man_logo.jpg

Edit:
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.