GeekNews.org: A mini-report from Defcon Day One

[ Thanks to mjd for
this link. ]

“The first talk I attended “meet the fed panel” was pretty cool.
It was a typical talk that you would expect from the feds. On the
issue of strong encryption it was the classic child porn argument,
on the issue of releasing the source to Carnivore the response was
that is not the way the feds work, have a nice day. Dave Gerrold
from CERT mentioned that people should report when they find
exploits to CERT instead of passing them around hacking circles.
Then it finished with a recruitment spiel along the lines of “we
have the coolest tools come work for us.”

“The other talk with feds I attended was by a gentleman from
the CIA. He did not use his real name. He was incredibly cool.
Some of the most amazing things he said were, make sure to use the
longest keys possible (an obvious guideline, but one I didn’t
expect from a fed), consider using an obscure algorithm that hasn’t
been examined in as much detail (something I never thought of).
He answered a bunch of questions from the audience with a
frankness I really wasn’t expecting. It shows that not all feds are
the same.”

“The exhibitor section is of a pretty good size. OpenCola had
the coolest presentation, they had a guy playing AC/DC on an
accordion. One booth had a bunch of older sparcs available. I may
break down and buy one before I leave.”

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Story