23 ms·

When DEF CON partners with the U.S. Army

213 points by OgsyedIE 1y ago

sylens 1y ago
Defcon is no longer a counterculture conference, and arguably hasn't been for a while. It's a place for security professionals to go to hang out in Vegas for a few days on their company's dime, or to extend their stay after Black Hat. The conference has gotten too big for its own good. It now inhabits the Las Vegas Convention Center, which is less convenient than when it was in one of the hotels (or multiple hotels clustered together). The one positive of the LVCC is that it has a ton of room but there are still issues with things like sound equipment that plague the villages and their talks/workshops.
- ramesh31 1y ago
  >Defcon is no longer a counterculture conference, and arguably hasn't been for a while. This happens to literally every convention ever, not surprising at all. The broader question is is something like the original spirit of DefCon even still possible? The industry (and the stakes) are so much higher now that it seems impossible.
  - sylens 1y ago
    It is but you have to intentionally keep it small and limit tickets. I think one of the issues that Defcon has is that they just don't cap tickets; historically they could not, because you could only buy a badge with cash so there was no way of predicting how many people would show up.
    - woodruffw 1y ago
      I don't think it's really a matter of limited attendance. Smaller hacker conferences in the US are not much different in terms of baseline acceptance of government/defense presence. It's more of a cultural thing, and not a new one. (That's not to say that there aren't conferences that are explicitly anti-MIC, because there are. But if you just sample by size, I suspect you'll find no correlation there.)
      - immibis 1y ago
        I've heard that toorcamp is the only US attempt to mirror a European hacker camp and that it doesn't work because the culture is just too different. Speaking of culture, RIPE NCC allows individuals to have ASNs, with or without a case of Club Mate.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - tptacek 1y ago
      There are plenty of quieter, smaller conferences.
  - CalRobert 1y ago
    Maybe What Hackers Yearn or CCC?
  - sneak 1y ago
    > This happens to literally every convention ever, not surprising at all. The CCC would never. Europe, for all its authoritarianism and infringements of human rights (even in relatively liberal places like Germany) still seems to be trying to not backslide into full-on military-industrial complex like the US is/has.
    - lenerdenator 1y ago
      If you honestly think that they're not either backsliding into the full-on military-industrial complex or benefiting from the American military-industrial complex, I have some nice ocean-front property in Kansas City to sell you. EDIT: If you don't believe me, ask the USMC about their nice new H&K service rifles. Did we need to do that? No, we could have thrown a nice piston upper on M16 lowers, but that doesn't keep the bier flowing in Oberndorf am Neckar. Or ask someone in the Pentagon about their partners at BAE.
      - wkat4242 1y ago
        Well yes we have military industry and back room deals but the industry here doesn't have the big lobby clout the MIC has in the US.
    - sugarpimpdorsey 1y ago
      That's easy to do when you have the US on speed dial.
      - okasaki 1y ago
        To do what? Blow up our pipelines? Use us as staging for bullshit invasions?
      - orwin 1y ago
        I mean, in the last 50 years, US called Italy, Germany more than the reverse. And if you don't count logistical units, US has France on speed dial, not the reverse. The one time France asked the US something military-wise, Obama refused.
  - AndrewKemendo 1y ago
    CCC might be able to survive because it’s European and multi lingual
    - sunaookami 1y ago
      CCC is not counterculture for ~10 years now. They have also become way too big and the vast majority of presentations are (extremely left-leaning) politics.
      - shazbotter 1y ago
        Hacker culture has always been left leaning, lol. Open source is a grand anarchist experiment. You expect hackers to be like, "we love capitalism! We love strong hierarchies!"? Don't be daft.
        tekla 1y ago
        > Hacker culture has always been left leaning No it hasn't. It started as counterculture. 90's hacker ethos might as well make you a fascist these days.
        immibis 1y ago
        Example please
        shazbotter 1y ago
        I was using computers in the 80s, Usenet by the late 80s. The hacker ethos back then was about as far from fascism as one might imagine.
        int_19h 1y ago
        > We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. Hacker's Manifesto (1986)
  - ajsnigrutin 1y ago
    You do 10 things at a small conference, everyone says "we need more of X{0}..X{9}", you have more things next year, more people, everyone wants more of whatever, more people, more problems with more people (security, cost, sponsors,..), more attention of mainstream media, more people next year, more push for politics, more people, more issues with more people, etc., and in the end, you get a boring business conference like many others. I'm pretty sure that each of the niches could make their own conference now, at some small venue where a 100, 200, 500 people would come... SNES hacking and development? Sure, a small, really nice conference... but then someone would want NES too, and N64, and sega, and PS1, and corporate sponsors, and you end up with E3 instead of 50 retro developers and 150 curious people doing interesting stuff.
- ferguess_k 1y ago
  Would CCC and Recon be better? TBH I never understand why people (not companies) need to go to Vegas. It's expensive, corrupting and hot during the summers. Montreal is a much affordable place.
  - sugarpimpdorsey 1y ago
    Something something discreet hookers and a company credit card.
    - ferguess_k 1y ago
      I thought they are more into techs.
  - ecshafer 1y ago
    Vegas (and Orlando) are probably the two cheapest places to travel to in North America. Hotels and flights are both plentiful and cheap. Before Covid you could get like $60 a night hotels on the strip and $150 flights.
    - ferguess_k 1y ago
      Ah I don't about know about that, thought it is extra expensive. Guess summer is actually the low season due to weather?
      - Fomite 1y ago
        Getting people to Vegas is heavily subsidized under the assumption that while they are there they will spend rather freely.
      - chupasaurus 1y ago
        The summer is a "dead" season for that specific reason.
      - woodruffw 1y ago
        Strictly speaking, I don't think Vegas has a low season. It's cheap to visit and stay in because they bilk you on everything else.
- tedivm 1y ago
  Once they scared off the people running the Sky Talks, which were always awesome, and messed with groups like the lockpicking folks ability to fundraise, I think the idea of it being a hacker con really died and it turned into just another corporate convention.
  - px43 1y ago
    Skytalks happened this year and was better attended than ever. Getting a seat was extremely competitive, people lined up for several hours for a single talk token. I would have loved to go to some, but unfortunately there was a ton of other stuff I wanted to see so I didn't have time to stand in line. They were a side conference to a side conference, but the structure let them run things the way they wanted, which is important.
  - jayess 1y ago
    That Skytalks still requires masking is absurd. I saw the organizers at DEFCON walking around with no masks. The last skytalks at DEFCON a couple of years ago was pretty bad anyways, really disappointing.
  - ghostpepper 1y ago
    what happened with the lock pick village?
    - busterarm 1y ago
      Nothing DEFCON-related that I know of. A few years back TOOOL's co-founder resigned and (unrelated) they were defrauded & had 20k stolen from them, but neither of those had to do with DEFCON.
    - tedivm 1y ago
      From my understanding they were told they were no longer allowed to fundraise in the village, which meant they could not afford to continue coming.
  - nebula8804 1y ago
    Scared them off? Is there any documentation of that? My understanding is that the split was amicable. SkyTalks has immunocompromised people on staff and they chose to voluntarily leave defcon because they wanted to continue masking mandates while Defcon did not. Bsides welcomed them with support in their conference(helping with Token Drops and scheduling) and Skytalks occupies a space that is physically separated from Bsides(as in a different hotel on its top floor). SkyTalks are as awesome as they always were, I'd argue its even better since now you dont have to sacrifice other things at defcon to see skytalks. You can now have dedicated time for skytalks.
- colechristensen 1y ago
  I went, while I enjoyed myself this year I feel it's gotten too big and too disorganized. Also I went to a couple of talks that would seemingly have been bread and butter talks for defcon that were very sparsely attended and I just wondered where everybody was. This might just be FOMO with the organizers. It's probably time for DefCon to drop in person registrations, get smaller, and return to a hotel. Villages and village talks need to be better curated and basically the focus needs to be tightened up.
  - busterarm 1y ago
    DEFCON talks are for watching on Youtube when they get uploaded weeks/months from now. It's always been about contests/challenges and partying. It's a con of cons.
    - colechristensen 1y ago
      Talk attendance was much higher the last time I went, but that might have been 10 years ago.
- px43 1y ago
  This was my 23rd DEFCON, and was just as counterculture as it was decades ago if you know where to go, and don't get distracted by the big pretty signs. DEFCON has always been about feds, policymakers, corpos, kids, and straight up black hat criminals partying together and shaping the future of infosec. The author of the article decided to wander down the Military Industrial Complex track, and seems to be complaining that it had too much Army stuff. I didn't see any of that this year, because that's not what interests me. I met up with a large number of cipherpunks and activists that I don't get to see very often, and had some extremly productive conversations regarding various projects we're working on for the next year.
  - busterarm 1y ago
    As a longtime attendee myself, this is absolutely true. Also, DEFCON and DT specifically have not shifted anywhere. A large demographic of attendees shifted hard to the left, mirroring our culture in general. They are also not "counterculture" as these are mainstream/televised points of view. I had to stop dealing with certain parts/people of DEFCON and infosec in general because of this intense noise. That's not pegging myself as being on the right, it's just that my DEFCON experience has always been about expanding my worldview and fun... this very loud and influential group isn't about either of those things.
    - mattmanser 1y ago
      No where else in the world would describe anything in American politics as going hard left. All of your politics and news has been swinging hard right for over a decade.
    - StefanBatory 1y ago
      If you don't mind, I have a genuine question. (as in, I'm not looking for a fight and I won't comment furthermore even if I can't agree.) But genuinely, what do you define by saying that American culture has shifted hard to the left and what do you define by left. I am really not looking into fight, but that's not a take I've heard often and I want to hear you out.
- dogleash 1y ago
  Defcon went fed when Jeff Moss went fed. But the crowd size has done way more to change the vibe. The 30% crowd post-covid year was a short return to old defcon.
  - tptacek 1y ago
    This implies that you believed Moss was somehow a black hat before he got involved with Homeland Security Advisory Council, which is pretty funny. People just make these things up and state them confidently.
    - wkat4242 1y ago
      Being white hat is a very different thing to being aligned with the government. Especially with all the secret spying they do which many white hats don't agree with because most of them are also strong privacy advocates. The whole white hat hacker community was very upset about the Snowden revelations. And I don't think that lost trust every returned.
      - tptacek 1y ago
        It is absolutely not the case that "the whole white hat hacker community was very upset about the Snowden revelations", but Moss himself was upset as well, so I don't know what that has to do with anything.
        wkat4242 1y ago
        It was here in Europe. At the OHM2013 event there were some government contractors (Fox-IT in particular) and the atmosphere was very grim apparently. Tents got damaged and they had to pull out. Fox-IT was founded by a former AIVD employee which is the Dutch NSA basically. I remember a friend sending me a job ad from some new cyber team in the military. And I really had to laugh, no way would I ever work somewhere where I'd have to mindlessly obey orders I might disagree with. Or wear a uniform. Or go like "yes sir" to someone who is probably dumber than me. And really pretty much everyone in the hacker community has an anarchist streak like that. You can tell by the way people behave, how they structure things without strong leaders etc. Everyone just helps at these events where they want, nobody tells them to do anything. This is also why I love these events. No wonder the army can't fill those teams lol. If they want people like us they have to adapt to us. But I understand in the US this may be different because patriotism seems to be big there.
- anonfordays 1y ago
  >Defcon is no longer a counterculture conference Being in tech and partnering with the US Army on 2025 is counterculture.
  - GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
    this is an extremely creative use of the word "counterculture"
    - anonfordays 1y ago
      How so?
- giantg2 1y ago
  "still issues with things like sound equipment" For the $500 entry fee you would think they could provide earphones and someone would hack together an app that would let you listen through those earphones based on some sort of proximity detection. No doubt the first year someone would find a vulnerability in it and would need parallel deployment to the existing infrastructure, but still.
  - tekla 1y ago
    Cool, whats your handle so I can suggest your name to organizers to set it up for them
    - giantg2 1y ago
      I'd be open to working on it if they actually want to pursue it and want to provide contact info for whatever subgroup handles the comms/networking.
      - tekla 1y ago
        Join their discord or forums and whatever and get crackin https://defcon.org/html/links/get-involved.html https://defcon.org/html/links/get-involved.html
  - spydum 1y ago
    Would be a great idea, except they couldn't even operate WiFi with any stability (to which I heard was a LVCC problem, but I don't know that for sure).
    - giantg2 1y ago
      Doesn't have to be wifi. There are many different ways to communicate. It's a matter of finding the best one. Unfortunately, the largest drawback is the potential for malicious/mischievous actors to interrupt them given the crowd. Something as simple as FM transmission, like at a drive-in, could be an option.
- tptacek 1y ago
  I was at Defcon in the 1990s and it was never a counterculture conference. It has always been Nerd Spring Break Daytona Beach.
  - prettyblocks 1y ago
    Felt like counter culture to me when I went to my first one (DC11). I remember punk kids selling manuals and lineman sets they stole out of the back of telco trucks outside the entrance of Alexis Park.
- lmeyerov 1y ago
  if you s/counterculture/maker/g , so less about anti and more about doing, i'm with the others -- it's just bigger, with some individual subcommunities having ossified while new topics have opened their own new shiny & vibrant communities ex: ai village was a new weird thing just a small number years ago, but now that ai is the #1 topic at blackhat (commercial side), it even has its own big event that overshadows blackhat proper . imo that's a success story for defcon fostering doers.
- brunoqc 1y ago
  Doesn't everything counterculture ends up absorbed by the capitalism system eventually? I think I learned that from Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space, or maybe from a youtube video about it.
- abullinan 1y ago
  >> It's a place for security professionals to go to hang out in Vegas for a few days on their company's dime, or to extend their stay after Black Hat. That is me! :) I do not know where the counterculture hangs out at DC, because I have never been a cool kid, just a brainy weird kid among the brainy weird kids, even as an adult! But there are often quite a few insightful papers at DEF CON. I didn’t go this year, I think my managers are on to me. :)
cess11 1y ago
It's not exactly new. Mudge is the current CIO of DARPA, and other people around the L0pht went on similar trajectories. Feds openly participating in DEFCON is itself a rather old flashpoint. Way back in the times of hippies and yippies many were subsequently recruited by the empire. While he was troubled in other ways Abbie Hoffmann was, as far as I know, a notable exception.
cushychicken 1y ago
Is it really surprising that DEF CON went where the money was? Most cybersecurity work in the US, by volume, rolls up to one of about five organizations - all of whom are US government entities. Most cybersecurity work has nothing to do with keeping Russian bot farms out of outdated WordPress installs.
stickfigure 1y ago
I can't help but think that Putin and Xi must feel very happy about the Western strain of extreme pacifism that encourages smart hackers to eschew military applications entirely. European hackers in particular can just look east to get a glimpse of the future. The world has changed.
- mathandstuff 1y ago
  The issue isn't software developers working with the military. It is a matter of offensive U.S. military operations and the associated self-serving geopolitics being treated as countercultural.
- sebstefan 1y ago
  >Western strain of extreme pacifism that encourages smart hackers to eschew military applications entirely Not what people are saying. There would be little noise if there were talks at defcon about Ukrainian cyberwarfare or hacking Russian military infrastructure. This is about the united states military industrial complex. Can you even point out a military that did more harm to the world at large in the last 50 years? How many dead? How many human right violations? The head of the NSA as well, post-snowden? Come on.
  - ecshafer 1y ago
    Who do you think are the ones actually supporting Ukrainian cybersecurity and hacking Russian military? Ill give you a hint they are the ones sitting in office parks in maryland writing software for the NSA and DOD.
    - sebstefan 1y ago
      It doesn't erase the last 50 years Broken clocks, all that. State of the clock pending what's going to come out in the news about Orange guy's meeting with Putin where they are discussing the surrender of Ukrainian territories without Ukraine's opinion.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
shazbotter 1y ago
Damn, DEF CON used to be a real one. It's a damn shame to see this happen to a group of hackers. I'm sure other venues and community events will take up the mantle given time, but it's still a bummer to see an event that used to be so fiercely independent out here cheering on the feds.
HamsterDan 1y ago
[flagged]
- esseph 1y ago
  Hacker culture is and has always been anti-fascist and anti-capitalist by nature, at least the version that grew in the west. It was an offshoot of hippie culture in the 60s, grew in the 80s phreaking scene, and highly entangled with open source in the early to mid 90s.
  - ixtli 1y ago
    Exactly: we live in a capitalist society which has been in decline into fascism for generations which makes the counter culture the opposite of those things. I get the sense that because people can think of a few examples of mercenary security people or a few white supremacist groups that "hack" that this is somehow a refutation. It's not. You know about these people because 1) they usually are mean and suck and 2) they are outliers. As you say: the phreaking / hacking / hobbist subcultures have always been collectivist by nature and the product of those subcultures will always chafe at the profit motive.
    - ThrowawayR2 1y ago
      The considerable number of libertarians and anarchists among the old-school hackers would probably be rather surprised to hear themselves described as collectivist.
      - GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
        anarchism as a philosophy is obsessed with non-hierarchical collectivism. same with libertarianism, at least by the common definition of the term outside the united states (it often carries a leftist sentiment in other places).
      - ixtli 1y ago
        Not sure you know very many anarchists.
theginger 1y ago
The x files def con was always a defense conference
OrvalWintermute 1y ago
There are two key truths: Hackerdom has always had a relationship with Defense, Intelligence & LE. Most hackers are deeply benevolent and care greatly about the world, and insecurity at large, mostly fostered by Business. Building relationships with defense & intel are often the best avenues towards moving towards a more secure future, working within the system for positive change. Our way of life, and our freedoms are not secure with imminent threats on the horizon. Please, disabuse yourself of the notion that Mainland China is not weaponizing their hackerdom against us simultaneously.
brohee 1y ago
Hammond didn't protest during a talk but clearly after its end if https://www.reddit.com/r/Defcon/comments/1mlaw4s/jeremy_hammond_forcefully_removed_from_defcon/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Defcon/comments/1mlaw4s/jeremy_hamm... is to be believed. And removed by venue guards not DefCon goons. And he seems really well loved, as evidenced by https://www.reddit.com/r/Defcon/comments/1mlaw4s/comment/n7pien7/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Defcon/comments/1mlaw4s/comment/n7p...
- tptacek 1y ago
  Hammond is very well loved by the kind of people who think that Stratfor was a shadowy mercenary private CIA, and not a glorified Substack.
qwertytyyuu 1y ago
Whelp might as well just only go to black hat now
- DaSHacka 1y ago
  If you have $3000 for a ticket, sure. Though I must say, it's stange to go to the certified fed conference because the "non-fed" option is "too pro-fed" now.
JohnMakin 1y ago
[flagged]
- saintjavelina 1y ago
  Even the parts supplying Ukraine?
  - 420official 1y ago
    If all we did was supply arms to our allies who are under attack without making egregious profit off of it, then yeah I think folks would feel better about the MIC, but as you're well aware we are only granting small shipments of weapons along with big demands including currently asking Ukraine to give up it's land to russia. We also have a long history of giving weapons to sow chaos around the world leading directly to things like isis and others. Arguably worse than that, we're now using these military weapons to suppress liberty in American cities.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - saintjavelina 1y ago
      [flagged]
- dang 1y ago
  Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here. You can unsupport the US military industrial complex without that.
mi100hael 1y ago
When I went to Defcon a few years back, one of the speakers started his talk by saying: "When I first started coming to Defcon, it was full of hackers and we played spot-the-fed. Now you're all feds and we play spot-the-hacker."
- ganoushoreilly 1y ago
  I think many would be surprised how many people 20+ years ago were feds.. or became feds
dogman144 1y ago
Not a new topic - few years ago, the Jen Easterly-era CISA made a hard recruiting pitch at defcon. Patriotism and service-messaging one might recognize from their own time in the military. What was surprising was the intense applause from a hacker con to this pitch. Given what was to come, also notably absent discussion from the audience or speaker about how working for CISA did or did not mean working for DHS. Assurances of firm segmentation on this aspect from speakers after the formal talk ended were similarly a bit weak. Not that anything was inherently bad about her recruiting pitch, but for a hackercon, it was a bit close to the flagpole. And notably that CISA crew is “no longer at CISA” and under prosecution, or intense social pressure, or otherwise. Feels worth evaluating!
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- tucnak 1y ago
  Spooks have been doing keynotes for a few years now. The so-called hackers are on toes, because deep down they wish to be daddy'd up to get to do some silly, secret-type shit. Contrary to the past, when spooks despised computer people (that's how cypherpunk came about.) On the other hand, Clearances are not what they used to be, too; every fart having to do with computers, analysis, collection is classed TS by default.
carom 1y ago
The top two winning teams of that xTech AI pitch competition were not even AI solutions. It just seemed like a vehicle for the Army to now be able to award those companies non competitive contracts.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
motohagiography 1y ago
at some point someone is going to discover the history that the hacker subculture was intelligence influenced all the way down. it has never not been within a degree of separation at every angle from the IC. it's fine, hackers were probably one of the few constructive successes to come out of it ever. Personally, I suspect the hacker project was on the scale of what the US did during the cold war with abstract expressionist art[1] and literary magazines[2]. As a funnel for getting great, principled talent into the IC, we should be happy and grateful there were people to balance what was coming out of the colleges. Just because the classified world values hacker skills doesn't mean people shouldn't. I'd say the opposite. There is absolutely a secret world that is accessible on a need to know basis, and it hides everywhere in plain sight for those with the skills to see it. All you have to do is be the among the very best at what you do, in whatever field you are in, and you will encounter it. Saying the Army undermines the subculture that was defcon misses the point. The message of hacking was, develop elite skills and others will find you. not only has this not changed, it is more true than ever. [1]https://www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/did-you-know/la-cia-y-el-expresionismo-abstracto https://www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/did-you-know/la-cia-y-e... [2]https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p037t501 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p037t501
- rsync 1y ago
  "... the hacker subculture was intelligence influenced all the way down ..." Oh stop. There was zero intelligence at any of the five CuervoCons ...
taviso 1y ago
In 2022, Google TAG were awarded a "lamest vendor" award at defcon for fixing a Chrome vulnerability they discovered was being exploited in the wild... without asking for permission from the NSA first. That was the turning point for me.
- tsujamin 1y ago
  A Pwnie for "unilaterally shutting down a counterterrorism operation”
- leoh 1y ago
  I think this award was satire, not to defend defcon, but yeah
- wkat4242 1y ago
  Ok that's weird indeed. Here at European hacker events this action would be applauded. Getting permission from spy agencies before fixing something would be a surefire way to get lamest vendor, lol. Most there don't trust government. And besides security holes can be used by all sides so it's imperative to fix them asap.

213 points by OgsyedIE 1y ago

Defcon is no longer a counterculture conference, and arguably hasn't been for a while. It's a place for security professionals to go to hang out in Vegas for a few days on their company's dime, or to extend their stay after Black Hat. The conference has gotten too big for its own good. It now inhabits the Las Vegas Convention Center, which is less convenient than when it was in one of the hotels (or multiple hotels clustered together). The one positive of the LVCC is that it has a ton of room but there are still issues with things like sound equipment that plague the villages and their talks/workshops.

ramesh31 1y ago
>Defcon is no longer a counterculture conference, and arguably hasn't been for a while. This happens to literally every convention ever, not surprising at all. The broader question is is something like the original spirit of DefCon even still possible? The industry (and the stakes) are so much higher now that it seems impossible.
- sylens 1y ago
  It is but you have to intentionally keep it small and limit tickets. I think one of the issues that Defcon has is that they just don't cap tickets; historically they could not, because you could only buy a badge with cash so there was no way of predicting how many people would show up.
  - woodruffw 1y ago
    I don't think it's really a matter of limited attendance. Smaller hacker conferences in the US are not much different in terms of baseline acceptance of government/defense presence. It's more of a cultural thing, and not a new one. (That's not to say that there aren't conferences that are explicitly anti-MIC, because there are. But if you just sample by size, I suspect you'll find no correlation there.)
    - immibis 1y ago
      I've heard that toorcamp is the only US attempt to mirror a European hacker camp and that it doesn't work because the culture is just too different. Speaking of culture, RIPE NCC allows individuals to have ASNs, with or without a case of Club Mate.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - tptacek 1y ago
    There are plenty of quieter, smaller conferences.
- CalRobert 1y ago
  Maybe What Hackers Yearn or CCC?
- sneak 1y ago
  > This happens to literally every convention ever, not surprising at all. The CCC would never. Europe, for all its authoritarianism and infringements of human rights (even in relatively liberal places like Germany) still seems to be trying to not backslide into full-on military-industrial complex like the US is/has.
  - lenerdenator 1y ago
    If you honestly think that they're not either backsliding into the full-on military-industrial complex or benefiting from the American military-industrial complex, I have some nice ocean-front property in Kansas City to sell you. EDIT: If you don't believe me, ask the USMC about their nice new H&K service rifles. Did we need to do that? No, we could have thrown a nice piston upper on M16 lowers, but that doesn't keep the bier flowing in Oberndorf am Neckar. Or ask someone in the Pentagon about their partners at BAE.
    - wkat4242 1y ago
      Well yes we have military industry and back room deals but the industry here doesn't have the big lobby clout the MIC has in the US.
  - sugarpimpdorsey 1y ago
    That's easy to do when you have the US on speed dial.
    - okasaki 1y ago
      To do what? Blow up our pipelines? Use us as staging for bullshit invasions?
    - orwin 1y ago
      I mean, in the last 50 years, US called Italy, Germany more than the reverse. And if you don't count logistical units, US has France on speed dial, not the reverse. The one time France asked the US something military-wise, Obama refused.
- AndrewKemendo 1y ago
  CCC might be able to survive because it’s European and multi lingual
  - sunaookami 1y ago
    CCC is not counterculture for ~10 years now. They have also become way too big and the vast majority of presentations are (extremely left-leaning) politics.
    - shazbotter 1y ago
      Hacker culture has always been left leaning, lol. Open source is a grand anarchist experiment. You expect hackers to be like, "we love capitalism! We love strong hierarchies!"? Don't be daft.
      - tekla 1y ago
        > Hacker culture has always been left leaning No it hasn't. It started as counterculture. 90's hacker ethos might as well make you a fascist these days.
        immibis 1y ago
        Example please
        shazbotter 1y ago
        I was using computers in the 80s, Usenet by the late 80s. The hacker ethos back then was about as far from fascism as one might imagine.
        int_19h 1y ago
        > We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. Hacker's Manifesto (1986)
- ajsnigrutin 1y ago
  You do 10 things at a small conference, everyone says "we need more of X{0}..X{9}", you have more things next year, more people, everyone wants more of whatever, more people, more problems with more people (security, cost, sponsors,..), more attention of mainstream media, more people next year, more push for politics, more people, more issues with more people, etc., and in the end, you get a boring business conference like many others. I'm pretty sure that each of the niches could make their own conference now, at some small venue where a 100, 200, 500 people would come... SNES hacking and development? Sure, a small, really nice conference... but then someone would want NES too, and N64, and sega, and PS1, and corporate sponsors, and you end up with E3 instead of 50 retro developers and 150 curious people doing interesting stuff.
ferguess_k 1y ago
Would CCC and Recon be better? TBH I never understand why people (not companies) need to go to Vegas. It's expensive, corrupting and hot during the summers. Montreal is a much affordable place.
- sugarpimpdorsey 1y ago
  Something something discreet hookers and a company credit card.
  - ferguess_k 1y ago
    I thought they are more into techs.
- ecshafer 1y ago
  Vegas (and Orlando) are probably the two cheapest places to travel to in North America. Hotels and flights are both plentiful and cheap. Before Covid you could get like $60 a night hotels on the strip and $150 flights.
  - ferguess_k 1y ago
    Ah I don't about know about that, thought it is extra expensive. Guess summer is actually the low season due to weather?
    - Fomite 1y ago
      Getting people to Vegas is heavily subsidized under the assumption that while they are there they will spend rather freely.
    - chupasaurus 1y ago
      The summer is a "dead" season for that specific reason.
    - woodruffw 1y ago
      Strictly speaking, I don't think Vegas has a low season. It's cheap to visit and stay in because they bilk you on everything else.
tedivm 1y ago
Once they scared off the people running the Sky Talks, which were always awesome, and messed with groups like the lockpicking folks ability to fundraise, I think the idea of it being a hacker con really died and it turned into just another corporate convention.
- px43 1y ago
  Skytalks happened this year and was better attended than ever. Getting a seat was extremely competitive, people lined up for several hours for a single talk token. I would have loved to go to some, but unfortunately there was a ton of other stuff I wanted to see so I didn't have time to stand in line. They were a side conference to a side conference, but the structure let them run things the way they wanted, which is important.
- jayess 1y ago
  That Skytalks still requires masking is absurd. I saw the organizers at DEFCON walking around with no masks. The last skytalks at DEFCON a couple of years ago was pretty bad anyways, really disappointing.
- ghostpepper 1y ago
  what happened with the lock pick village?
  - busterarm 1y ago
    Nothing DEFCON-related that I know of. A few years back TOOOL's co-founder resigned and (unrelated) they were defrauded & had 20k stolen from them, but neither of those had to do with DEFCON.
  - tedivm 1y ago
    From my understanding they were told they were no longer allowed to fundraise in the village, which meant they could not afford to continue coming.
- nebula8804 1y ago
  Scared them off? Is there any documentation of that? My understanding is that the split was amicable. SkyTalks has immunocompromised people on staff and they chose to voluntarily leave defcon because they wanted to continue masking mandates while Defcon did not. Bsides welcomed them with support in their conference(helping with Token Drops and scheduling) and Skytalks occupies a space that is physically separated from Bsides(as in a different hotel on its top floor). SkyTalks are as awesome as they always were, I'd argue its even better since now you dont have to sacrifice other things at defcon to see skytalks. You can now have dedicated time for skytalks.
colechristensen 1y ago
I went, while I enjoyed myself this year I feel it's gotten too big and too disorganized. Also I went to a couple of talks that would seemingly have been bread and butter talks for defcon that were very sparsely attended and I just wondered where everybody was. This might just be FOMO with the organizers. It's probably time for DefCon to drop in person registrations, get smaller, and return to a hotel. Villages and village talks need to be better curated and basically the focus needs to be tightened up.
- busterarm 1y ago
  DEFCON talks are for watching on Youtube when they get uploaded weeks/months from now. It's always been about contests/challenges and partying. It's a con of cons.
  - colechristensen 1y ago
    Talk attendance was much higher the last time I went, but that might have been 10 years ago.
px43 1y ago
This was my 23rd DEFCON, and was just as counterculture as it was decades ago if you know where to go, and don't get distracted by the big pretty signs. DEFCON has always been about feds, policymakers, corpos, kids, and straight up black hat criminals partying together and shaping the future of infosec. The author of the article decided to wander down the Military Industrial Complex track, and seems to be complaining that it had too much Army stuff. I didn't see any of that this year, because that's not what interests me. I met up with a large number of cipherpunks and activists that I don't get to see very often, and had some extremly productive conversations regarding various projects we're working on for the next year.
- busterarm 1y ago
  As a longtime attendee myself, this is absolutely true. Also, DEFCON and DT specifically have not shifted anywhere. A large demographic of attendees shifted hard to the left, mirroring our culture in general. They are also not "counterculture" as these are mainstream/televised points of view. I had to stop dealing with certain parts/people of DEFCON and infosec in general because of this intense noise. That's not pegging myself as being on the right, it's just that my DEFCON experience has always been about expanding my worldview and fun... this very loud and influential group isn't about either of those things.
  - mattmanser 1y ago
    No where else in the world would describe anything in American politics as going hard left. All of your politics and news has been swinging hard right for over a decade.
  - StefanBatory 1y ago
    If you don't mind, I have a genuine question. (as in, I'm not looking for a fight and I won't comment furthermore even if I can't agree.) But genuinely, what do you define by saying that American culture has shifted hard to the left and what do you define by left. I am really not looking into fight, but that's not a take I've heard often and I want to hear you out.
dogleash 1y ago
Defcon went fed when Jeff Moss went fed. But the crowd size has done way more to change the vibe. The 30% crowd post-covid year was a short return to old defcon.
- tptacek 1y ago
  This implies that you believed Moss was somehow a black hat before he got involved with Homeland Security Advisory Council, which is pretty funny. People just make these things up and state them confidently.
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    Being white hat is a very different thing to being aligned with the government. Especially with all the secret spying they do which many white hats don't agree with because most of them are also strong privacy advocates. The whole white hat hacker community was very upset about the Snowden revelations. And I don't think that lost trust every returned.
    - tptacek 1y ago
      It is absolutely not the case that "the whole white hat hacker community was very upset about the Snowden revelations", but Moss himself was upset as well, so I don't know what that has to do with anything.
      - wkat4242 1y ago
        It was here in Europe. At the OHM2013 event there were some government contractors (Fox-IT in particular) and the atmosphere was very grim apparently. Tents got damaged and they had to pull out. Fox-IT was founded by a former AIVD employee which is the Dutch NSA basically. I remember a friend sending me a job ad from some new cyber team in the military. And I really had to laugh, no way would I ever work somewhere where I'd have to mindlessly obey orders I might disagree with. Or wear a uniform. Or go like "yes sir" to someone who is probably dumber than me. And really pretty much everyone in the hacker community has an anarchist streak like that. You can tell by the way people behave, how they structure things without strong leaders etc. Everyone just helps at these events where they want, nobody tells them to do anything. This is also why I love these events. No wonder the army can't fill those teams lol. If they want people like us they have to adapt to us. But I understand in the US this may be different because patriotism seems to be big there.
anonfordays 1y ago
>Defcon is no longer a counterculture conference Being in tech and partnering with the US Army on 2025 is counterculture.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
  this is an extremely creative use of the word "counterculture"
  - anonfordays 1y ago
    How so?
giantg2 1y ago
"still issues with things like sound equipment" For the $500 entry fee you would think they could provide earphones and someone would hack together an app that would let you listen through those earphones based on some sort of proximity detection. No doubt the first year someone would find a vulnerability in it and would need parallel deployment to the existing infrastructure, but still.
- tekla 1y ago
  Cool, whats your handle so I can suggest your name to organizers to set it up for them
  - giantg2 1y ago
    I'd be open to working on it if they actually want to pursue it and want to provide contact info for whatever subgroup handles the comms/networking.
    - tekla 1y ago
      Join their discord or forums and whatever and get crackin https://defcon.org/html/links/get-involved.html https://defcon.org/html/links/get-involved.html
- spydum 1y ago
  Would be a great idea, except they couldn't even operate WiFi with any stability (to which I heard was a LVCC problem, but I don't know that for sure).
  - giantg2 1y ago
    Doesn't have to be wifi. There are many different ways to communicate. It's a matter of finding the best one. Unfortunately, the largest drawback is the potential for malicious/mischievous actors to interrupt them given the crowd. Something as simple as FM transmission, like at a drive-in, could be an option.
tptacek 1y ago
I was at Defcon in the 1990s and it was never a counterculture conference. It has always been Nerd Spring Break Daytona Beach.
- prettyblocks 1y ago
  Felt like counter culture to me when I went to my first one (DC11). I remember punk kids selling manuals and lineman sets they stole out of the back of telco trucks outside the entrance of Alexis Park.
lmeyerov 1y ago
if you s/counterculture/maker/g , so less about anti and more about doing, i'm with the others -- it's just bigger, with some individual subcommunities having ossified while new topics have opened their own new shiny & vibrant communities ex: ai village was a new weird thing just a small number years ago, but now that ai is the #1 topic at blackhat (commercial side), it even has its own big event that overshadows blackhat proper . imo that's a success story for defcon fostering doers.
brunoqc 1y ago
Doesn't everything counterculture ends up absorbed by the capitalism system eventually? I think I learned that from Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space, or maybe from a youtube video about it.
abullinan 1y ago
>> It's a place for security professionals to go to hang out in Vegas for a few days on their company's dime, or to extend their stay after Black Hat. That is me! :) I do not know where the counterculture hangs out at DC, because I have never been a cool kid, just a brainy weird kid among the brainy weird kids, even as an adult! But there are often quite a few insightful papers at DEF CON. I didn’t go this year, I think my managers are on to me. :)

cess11 1y ago

It's not exactly new. Mudge is the current CIO of DARPA, and other people around the L0pht went on similar trajectories. Feds openly participating in DEFCON is itself a rather old flashpoint. Way back in the times of hippies and yippies many were subsequently recruited by the empire. While he was troubled in other ways Abbie Hoffmann was, as far as I know, a notable exception.

cushychicken 1y ago

Is it really surprising that DEF CON went where the money was? Most cybersecurity work in the US, by volume, rolls up to one of about five organizations - all of whom are US government entities. Most cybersecurity work has nothing to do with keeping Russian bot farms out of outdated WordPress installs.

stickfigure 1y ago

I can't help but think that Putin and Xi must feel very happy about the Western strain of extreme pacifism that encourages smart hackers to eschew military applications entirely. European hackers in particular can just look east to get a glimpse of the future. The world has changed.

mathandstuff 1y ago
The issue isn't software developers working with the military. It is a matter of offensive U.S. military operations and the associated self-serving geopolitics being treated as countercultural.
sebstefan 1y ago
>Western strain of extreme pacifism that encourages smart hackers to eschew military applications entirely Not what people are saying. There would be little noise if there were talks at defcon about Ukrainian cyberwarfare or hacking Russian military infrastructure. This is about the united states military industrial complex. Can you even point out a military that did more harm to the world at large in the last 50 years? How many dead? How many human right violations? The head of the NSA as well, post-snowden? Come on.
- ecshafer 1y ago
  Who do you think are the ones actually supporting Ukrainian cybersecurity and hacking Russian military? Ill give you a hint they are the ones sitting in office parks in maryland writing software for the NSA and DOD.
  - sebstefan 1y ago
    It doesn't erase the last 50 years Broken clocks, all that. State of the clock pending what's going to come out in the news about Orange guy's meeting with Putin where they are discussing the surrender of Ukrainian territories without Ukraine's opinion.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

shazbotter 1y ago

Damn, DEF CON used to be a real one. It's a damn shame to see this happen to a group of hackers. I'm sure other venues and community events will take up the mantle given time, but it's still a bummer to see an event that used to be so fiercely independent out here cheering on the feds.

HamsterDan 1y ago

[flagged]

esseph 1y ago
Hacker culture is and has always been anti-fascist and anti-capitalist by nature, at least the version that grew in the west. It was an offshoot of hippie culture in the 60s, grew in the 80s phreaking scene, and highly entangled with open source in the early to mid 90s.
- ixtli 1y ago
  Exactly: we live in a capitalist society which has been in decline into fascism for generations which makes the counter culture the opposite of those things. I get the sense that because people can think of a few examples of mercenary security people or a few white supremacist groups that "hack" that this is somehow a refutation. It's not. You know about these people because 1) they usually are mean and suck and 2) they are outliers. As you say: the phreaking / hacking / hobbist subcultures have always been collectivist by nature and the product of those subcultures will always chafe at the profit motive.
  - ThrowawayR2 1y ago
    The considerable number of libertarians and anarchists among the old-school hackers would probably be rather surprised to hear themselves described as collectivist.
    - GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
      anarchism as a philosophy is obsessed with non-hierarchical collectivism. same with libertarianism, at least by the common definition of the term outside the united states (it often carries a leftist sentiment in other places).
    - ixtli 1y ago
      Not sure you know very many anarchists.

theginger 1y ago

The x files def con was always a defense conference

OrvalWintermute 1y ago

There are two key truths: Hackerdom has always had a relationship with Defense, Intelligence & LE. Most hackers are deeply benevolent and care greatly about the world, and insecurity at large, mostly fostered by Business. Building relationships with defense & intel are often the best avenues towards moving towards a more secure future, working within the system for positive change. Our way of life, and our freedoms are not secure with imminent threats on the horizon. Please, disabuse yourself of the notion that Mainland China is not weaponizing their hackerdom against us simultaneously.

brohee 1y ago

Hammond didn't protest during a talk but clearly after its end if https://www.reddit.com/r/Defcon/comments/1mlaw4s/jeremy_hammond_forcefully_removed_from_defcon/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Defcon/comments/1mlaw4s/jeremy_hamm... is to be believed. And removed by venue guards not DefCon goons. And he seems really well loved, as evidenced by https://www.reddit.com/r/Defcon/comments/1mlaw4s/comment/n7pien7/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Defcon/comments/1mlaw4s/comment/n7p...

tptacek 1y ago
Hammond is very well loved by the kind of people who think that Stratfor was a shadowy mercenary private CIA, and not a glorified Substack.

qwertytyyuu 1y ago

Whelp might as well just only go to black hat now

DaSHacka 1y ago
If you have $3000 for a ticket, sure. Though I must say, it's stange to go to the certified fed conference because the "non-fed" option is "too pro-fed" now.

JohnMakin 1y ago

[flagged]

saintjavelina 1y ago
Even the parts supplying Ukraine?
- 420official 1y ago
  If all we did was supply arms to our allies who are under attack without making egregious profit off of it, then yeah I think folks would feel better about the MIC, but as you're well aware we are only granting small shipments of weapons along with big demands including currently asking Ukraine to give up it's land to russia. We also have a long history of giving weapons to sow chaos around the world leading directly to things like isis and others. Arguably worse than that, we're now using these military weapons to suppress liberty in American cities.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - saintjavelina 1y ago
    [flagged]
dang 1y ago
Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here. You can unsupport the US military industrial complex without that.

mi100hael 1y ago

When I went to Defcon a few years back, one of the speakers started his talk by saying: "When I first started coming to Defcon, it was full of hackers and we played spot-the-fed. Now you're all feds and we play spot-the-hacker."

ganoushoreilly 1y ago
I think many would be surprised how many people 20+ years ago were feds.. or became feds

dogman144 1y ago

Not a new topic - few years ago, the Jen Easterly-era CISA made a hard recruiting pitch at defcon. Patriotism and service-messaging one might recognize from their own time in the military. What was surprising was the intense applause from a hacker con to this pitch. Given what was to come, also notably absent discussion from the audience or speaker about how working for CISA did or did not mean working for DHS. Assurances of firm segmentation on this aspect from speakers after the formal talk ended were similarly a bit weak. Not that anything was inherently bad about her recruiting pitch, but for a hackercon, it was a bit close to the flagpole. And notably that CISA crew is “no longer at CISA” and under prosecution, or intense social pressure, or otherwise. Feels worth evaluating!

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
tucnak 1y ago
Spooks have been doing keynotes for a few years now. The so-called hackers are on toes, because deep down they wish to be daddy'd up to get to do some silly, secret-type shit. Contrary to the past, when spooks despised computer people (that's how cypherpunk came about.) On the other hand, Clearances are not what they used to be, too; every fart having to do with computers, analysis, collection is classed TS by default.

carom 1y ago

The top two winning teams of that xTech AI pitch competition were not even AI solutions. It just seemed like a vehicle for the Army to now be able to award those companies non competitive contracts.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

motohagiography 1y ago

at some point someone is going to discover the history that the hacker subculture was intelligence influenced all the way down. it has never not been within a degree of separation at every angle from the IC. it's fine, hackers were probably one of the few constructive successes to come out of it ever. Personally, I suspect the hacker project was on the scale of what the US did during the cold war with abstract expressionist art[1] and literary magazines[2]. As a funnel for getting great, principled talent into the IC, we should be happy and grateful there were people to balance what was coming out of the colleges. Just because the classified world values hacker skills doesn't mean people shouldn't. I'd say the opposite. There is absolutely a secret world that is accessible on a need to know basis, and it hides everywhere in plain sight for those with the skills to see it. All you have to do is be the among the very best at what you do, in whatever field you are in, and you will encounter it. Saying the Army undermines the subculture that was defcon misses the point. The message of hacking was, develop elite skills and others will find you. not only has this not changed, it is more true than ever. [1]https://www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/did-you-know/la-cia-y-el-expresionismo-abstracto https://www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/did-you-know/la-cia-y-e... [2]https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p037t501 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p037t501

rsync 1y ago
"... the hacker subculture was intelligence influenced all the way down ..." Oh stop. There was zero intelligence at any of the five CuervoCons ...

taviso 1y ago

In 2022, Google TAG were awarded a "lamest vendor" award at defcon for fixing a Chrome vulnerability they discovered was being exploited in the wild... without asking for permission from the NSA first. That was the turning point for me.

tsujamin 1y ago
A Pwnie for "unilaterally shutting down a counterterrorism operation”
leoh 1y ago
I think this award was satire, not to defend defcon, but yeah
wkat4242 1y ago
Ok that's weird indeed. Here at European hacker events this action would be applauded. Getting permission from spy agencies before fixing something would be a surefire way to get lamest vendor, lol. Most there don't trust government. And besides security holes can be used by all sides so it's imperative to fix them asap.