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Paranoid Penguin - DEFCON: One Penguin's Annual Odyssey

Issue 187

From Issue #187
November 2009

Nov 01, 2009  By Mick Bauer
 in
Thousands of hackers in the same Las Vegas hotel? Sounds like a party to Mick!
Conclusion

In all seriousness, DEFCON already is remarkably good, even incomparable. I can't over emphasize that for my friends and I who attended it, volunteered at it and presented at it, DEFCON 17 was a tremendous success—educational, thought-provoking, relevant, unpredictable, exhilarating at least as often as it was frustrating and, above all, fun.

In the words of Richard Thieme, who at the time wasn't sure whether he was quoting Simple Nomad or Bruce Potter, “For the system to work, it must never grow up and it must make us smile.” Here's to the scene's never growing up. I hope to see you at DEFCON 18!

Resources

The DEFCON Web Site (including links to presentation materials for DEFCON 17 and also for DEFCONs past): www.defcon.org

Moxie Marlinspike's Web Site (where you can get SSLstrip and Moxie's paper on Null Prefix Attacks): www.thoughtcrime.org/software.html

Jason Scott's Archive of Hacker Lore Dating from the Era of BBSes: www.textfiles.com

Mick Bauer (darth.elmo@wiremonkeys.org) is Network Security Architect for one of the US's largest banks. He is the author of the O'Reilly book Linux Server Security, 2nd edition (formerly called Building Secure Servers With Linux), an occasional presenter at information security conferences and composer of the “Network Engineering Polka”.

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