7/1/2023 0 Comments Hacker convention las vegas![]() ![]() 1-4 at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. providers such as Microsoft and Apple.ĭef Con takes place Aug. government agents to stay away this year, following the leak of documents revealing that the National Security Agency has a program that spies on the internet activities of foreign nationals overseas when they use U.S. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.One of the oldest and largest hacker conventions in the world has asked U.S. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. GREENE: That's NPR's Steve Henn, and he's covering two hacking conferences in Las Vegas.Ĭopyright © 2013 NPR. So, he's going to face a tough audience today. A lot of people in it are concerned that international clients are going to be afraid to store data in the United States if they feel that the NSA can just walk in and grab it. There's a real lack of trust right now between this industry and the intelligence community. And not only is he delivering a speech this morning, he spent yesterday meeting privately with a group of high-level security industry leaders. A lot of people didn't expect him to show up. It's pretty remarkable that he's come there, isn't it? And he's, of course, been taking a lot of heat for those revelations by former contractor Edward Snowden. And, Steve, really interesting keynote address coming at Black Hat, General Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency. That's one way to drive home you need to beef up your security. And if they break into your device and figure out who you are, your name goes up on a board to sort of shame you for having, you know, lax personal cyber-security hygiene. HENN: Well, you know, Black Hat really doesn't look that way, but at DEF CON - which, as I said, is a little bit wilder - there is something called the wall of sheep, where hackers will sit along a wall, and they will try to hack into the devices of attendees. ![]() GREENE: I'm imagining rows of people sitting at computers, trying out ways to break into government or corporate websites. And so this relationship is often fraught. GREENE: I've been in your computer system. One of the problems, though - especially in industries that aren't used to dealing with hackers - is they don't necessarily know how to handle someone who they've never heard of coming up and saying, hey, you know, we broke this, and people can get hurt. Usually, that means, you know, reaching out to the company, letting them know that something about their product might make people vulnerable to an attack, or having their identity stolen and giving them a chance to fix it. But the idea of ethical hacking is that you find a vulnerability in a product that lots of people use, and you disclose it responsibly. You know, lots and lots of people attend DEF CON. I mean, have any of these people who attend this conference done things that can be considered illegal? And that's an interesting question, because hacking is sometimes something that can run you afoul of the law. GREENE: And, Steve, you say ethical hackers. They both have ethical hackers showing off what they can do, but they still have really different feels to them. And that's when Black Hat was born, when they realized that the industry itself needed a convention also. The computer industry had woken up to the fact that security issues were big problems. Over the years, you know, computer security became an industry. Remember, a lot of these people spent hours communicating on sort of the proto-Internet. You know, they created this conference as a safe place for hackers of all stripes to get together and show off what they were working on and meet each other. And in the beginning, I'm told it was a pretty ragtag group, largely of kids. Feels more like a techie, hippie, libertarian festival. DEF CON's older and bigger and a little bit wilder. It's the security technology industry conference. People who go to this conference try to network and get business. ![]() HENN: Black Hat has kind of a corporate feel to it. What are they, and what's the difference between the two? So we have these conventions of hackers taking place. We called NPR's Steve Henn, who's in Las Vegas, checking out what's going on. Now, lest you just think these are just gatherings of computer geeks trying to break into your bank account or tap into your text messages, there is a lot more to these events. One is called DEF CON, and the other's called Black Hat. Thousands of computer hackers are in Las Vegas right now for two major hacker conventions this week. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |