Exaggerating their skill-set, claiming to have skills when they don't. Yes, it could be the Dunning–Kruger effect in action but more than not I think there is

Exaggerating their skill-set, claiming to have skills when they don't. Yes, it could be the Dunning–Kruger effect in action but more than not I think there is careful plotting involved to deceive. It's actually odd if you think about it a bit. I've been going to DEFCON for the last 11 years, have done the CTF thing, the speaking thing, etc., and it strikes me in many ways as a tale of two cities. You've got your highly skilled and technical security professionals who are talking and sharing but then you have all of the roadies, the fans, the people who watched Hackers and want that lifestyle. We don't see this in any other technical field that I'm aware of - I mean I'm pretty sure there aren't blue-haired database administrator wannabe's showing up to DBCon, are there? What ends up happening is that people like the idea. They want to be a "hacker" but want it as a day job but don't have the technical skill so they must figure out ways to social engineer their way into the field. The folks at Attrition tend to cover it a bit more when it comes to "security rockstars": http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/ http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/