Defcon was good. I was just there for a few hours on Sat night and Sunday morning, but I had a good time at the IO Active-sponsored party, which was a Freakshow circus theme.
And yes, since so many of my readers sent me snarky, quizzical emails on the topic… I will concede that it is a male-dominated uber-geek-fest. But that’s why it is awesome! Really. If you’ve never partied with geeks, you probably have no idea what I mean. I have partied with both “cool kids” and geeks and I think the geeks are almost always more fun when there is a large group and a lot of alcohol. There’s just less self consciousness with the geeks. I don’t mean to perpetuate stereotypes, but it seems to me that rather than the alcohol having the effect of inducing fighting and agression (as it does with the jocks) it tends to induce dancing in the geeks.
I would have liked to have seen more of the presentations… I caught a few minutes of some of the talks on Sunday, but I didn’t have a badge so things were a little difficult. Most of the presentations were completely above my head from a technical perspective, but I grasped some and would be interested in learning more.
I would have liked to have seen some of the more “hands on” demos. Not that I ever want to learn how to perpetrate one of these crimes. Instead, I look at it as research to better understand the scenarios so that we can protect against them. It also gives me some insight into the mind of the anarchical hacker. Too bad the Subway Hackers got blocked. The ideas and information is still out there — the court injunction was completely worthless as far as trying to stop the information
Labels: events