DEF CON
The first DEF CON took place in June 1993 and today many attendees at DEF CON include computer security professionals, journalists, lawyers, federal government employees, security researchers, students, and hackers with a general interest in software, computer architecture, hardware modification, conference badges, and anything else that can be "hacked".
The event consists of several tracks of speakers about computer and hacking-related subjects, as well as cyber-security challenges and competitions (known as hacking wargames).
Contests held during the event are extremely varied and can range from creating the longest Wi-Fi connection to finding the most effective way to cool a beer in the Nevada heat.
Federal law enforcement agents from the FBI, DoD, United States Postal Inspection Service, DHS (via CISA) and other agencies regularly attend DEF CON.
DEF CON was founded in 1993, by then 18-year-old Jeff Moss as a farewell party for his friend, a fellow hacker and member of "Platinum Net", a FidoNet protocol based hacking network from Canada.
[5] The party was planned for Las Vegas a few days before his friend was to leave the United States, because his father had accepted employment out of the country.
However, to a lesser extent, CON also stands for convention and DEF is taken from the letters on the number 3 on a telephone keypad, a reference to phreakers.
[9] The film follows the four days of the conference, events and people (attendees and staff), and covers history and philosophy behind DEF CON's success and unique experiences.
Villages may be considered mini conferences within the con, with many holding their own independent talks as well as hands-on activities such as CTFs, or labs.
In 2018 the vote hacking village gained media attention due to concerns about US election systems security vulnerabilities.
[22] In April 2017, a DEF CON Black Badge was featured in an exhibit[23] in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History entitled "Innovations in Defense: Artificial Intelligence and the Challenge of Cybersecurity".
[38] In 2002, the company Immunix took part in the game under the moniker "immunex",[39] to benchmark the security of their Linux-based operating system, with modifications including StackGuard, FormatGuard, OpenWall's non-executable stack, SubDomain (the ancestor of AppArmor), ...[40] Confident in their defense capabilities, they even opened access to their servers to other teams, and even spent some time taunting them.
[43] In 2008, the Sk3wl of Root team took advantage of a bug in the game (privilege dropping and forking were inverted), allowing them to have such a massive lead that they spent most of the CTF playing Guitar Hero.
[48] In 2016, the 15th edition of the CTF was done in partnership with the DARPA, as part of its Cyber Grand Challenge program, where teams wrote autonomous systems to play the game without any human interaction.
With its specifications released only 24 hours before the beginning of the CTF, it was designed with the explicit goals of both surprising the teams, and leveling the playing field by breaking all their tools.
[59][60] On March 12, 2013, during a United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing, Senator Ron Wyden quoted the 2012 DEF CON keynote speech and asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper if the U.S. conducted domestic surveillance; Clapper made statements saying that there was no intentional domestic surveillance.
Andy Greenberg of Forbes said that NSA officials, including Alexander, in the years 2012 and 2013 "publicly denied–often with carefully hedged words–participating in the kind of snooping on Americans that has since become nearly undeniable.
The findings were publicly released at an event sponsored by the Atlantic Council[72] and the paper went on to win an O'Reilly Defender Research Award.
[73] Marcus Hutchins, better known online by his handle MalwareTech, the 23-year-old British security researcher who was credited with stopping the WannaCry outbreak was arrested by the FBI at the airport preparing to leave the country after attending DEF CON over his alleged involvement with the Kronos banking trojan.
