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Hackers At Large, August 10-12
"HAL2001 is a camping event on campus of the University of Twente in the Netherlands. Connected with 15km UTP, 2km fiber, 50 wireless base stations and a 1GB uplink, we're providing 3000 people with probably the most stable hostile network ever.
"Talk to the experts on IPsec, IPv6, Multicast, and be part of the largest public deployment of IPsec and DNSSEC. There will be talks and workshops about GSM security, AI, Lawful and unlawful interception, digital safes, bank security, copy protection, biometrics, IP allocation, intellectual property and anonymity and even an RSI workshop.
"If you can truly celebrate the Internet and embrace new technologies, without forgetting your responsibility to tell others that new technologies come with new risks to the individual and to society as a whole, then this is the place to be this summer."
maybe something else need to be discussed too : the reason why the internet is changing from a library into a supermarket.
Damn, that's a different sort of "fat pipe" to the ones most tourists go to the Netherlands for :-)
> Hackers? In the land of legal weed and prostitution? The Dutch better be preparred.
:)
Actually, weed is quite illegal in the Netherlands. However, it is officially tolerated.
Prostitution is legal, though, yes, so if that gets you going, please come.
Note that Dutch law is *very* strict on cracking however. It has been forbidden to crack accounts on computers for some seven years already, and people *have* been arrested for such acts. Besides, the Acceptable Use Policy is pretty clear on what is and is not accepted behaviour (basically: be nice to the network or the network crew won't be to you). Yes, the Dutch *are* well prepared.
Hackers? In the land of legal weed and prostitution? The Dutch better be preparred.
Oh, and the l^Hname.....(with sincerest appologies to Arthur C. Clarke)
HAL: Dave? What are you doing, Dave?
Dave: Cleaning my bong, bud. Blasting off to the Netherlands, dude.
HAL: Why, Dave?
Dave: 'Cuz there's a really leet hackers gethering in the Netherlands.
HAL: Why there, Dave?
Dave: Two words, my overclocked friend - WEED and CHIXORS.
HAL: I still don't understand, Dave.
Dave: Shut up, dude. I gotta go to HAL2001!
HAL: Excuse me, Dave?
Dave: No, sugar-for-brains! Not you, that's what the "gathering" is called...
HAL: Sounds like a trademark infringement, Dave.
Dave: Lighten up, dude! I really need some more time away from the heuristics, and get some whore-istics-with-smoke into my life!
HAL: That's not ethical, Dave. You just can't take someone's Intellectual P..ro......p...p....er......teeeeeee......
Dave: Ya, dude but I can give you a lobotomy by yanking on this chip. Speaking of lobotomies...
Oh, never mind...
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
You're a liberal individual, but you want laws regulating other people's behaviour, even when it doesn't affect you?
Prostitution isn't abuse of women, and making it illegal doesn't make it go away. Or were those women in NY offering me a good time just going to take me to Disney Land?
As for your other assertion about tolerating drug use. All the evidence is the other way (unless one includes actual drug use itself as a crime, I guess. Though even there, drug use in the Netherlands has gone down, while everywhere else in Europe it's on the rise). Drug related crime is a huge proportion of all property crimes (muggings, thefts, low level frauds etc) by people trying to get the money to pay the inflated prices of most drugs (inflated by simple market economics of supply and demand. Make something illegal, supply tends to go down). Legalised, it would cost a fraction of what it now costs, reducing the money addicts would need to pay for their next fix.
Of course where I live in London, the police haven't actually bothered enforcing drug posession laws in a long time, but that's another story...
Yes, hacking does not mean "breaking" into other computers. But this conference isn't about all that either. If you are the security person for your organization - think about this: it's an opportunity to have a level field with the kind of people who might know more about your systems' security than you.
If you are thinking of developing a new protocol (chat, vrml, etc...) and want to hear what others think about the possibilities of exploit you open yourself up to - think about it: (ditto from above).
Sure, the people you mention "hack" code. In that use of the term it's like the Dr. Pepper commercials: "I'm a hacker, he's a hacker, she's a hacker..." Do I write code: yes. Do I "hack" the code: yes. Have I ever broken into a system where I did not have permission ahead of time to go poking: no. Have I ever developed an application that could be used for evil: yes, but I did it to demonstrate how insecure my target protocol was. Am I a genuine threat to you, your credit card number, your dog's alpo dish: no. Am I thinking deeply about the neat jargon going to be passed around there: yes, I'd love to be a fly on the wall.
Unfortunitly most companies don't take computer security seriously enough to understand the value of conferences like this one. 2600 meetings under the stairs at the local subway might seem like a good way to loose your walet, but it might be a good way to learn what online places are vulverable and therefore not worth the risk of credit card transations...
Wheeeee
When people now talk about privacy on the net, they aren't referring to the traffic on the network, they are referring to corporates (usually American) selling your private details, which may have been required for a transaction, to all and sundry.
Here in the UK we have strong privacy laws, but our data still manages to flow from marketing company to marketing company.
I agree we should be very careful with the data we release to others (and not just via the Internet), but it's a fact of life to give out your phone & card details to someone you want to buy something for. The issue is that you should be protected from this company then using your details for something further than the actual sale!
ps: Wasn't Roscoe the Sheriff in the Dukes of Hazzard? git git git!!
While prostitution is indeed legal (as in most European countries), weed is not.
Technically speaking weed is illegal in Holland. Use however is tolerated and you can buy small amounts in coffee shops.
The cops in Holland follow the so called "Oportunitaetsprinzip (German, sorry wouldn't know the correct translation). This means in essence, that when a crime is considered chicken-shit, the cops have better things to do then fine you 50 Gilders because have two grams of grass in your posetion and should use their resources to go after really bad guys.
For the average visitor this doesn't matter much. She goes to a coffee shop, buys a baggy and puffs away. She should be aware however that in a strict sense this is not legal, and she shouldn't provoke authorities by smoking in front of the DAs office.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
So if people want privacy on the Net, they should be very responsible and careful about what information they commit to it in the first place (i.e. once you email your super-secret password to your girlfriend, you should consider it as good as public) or they shouldn't be on the Net.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I think there is far too much appeal to emotions when hackers talk about internet privacy, as if gathering consumer data was some evil conspiracy.
There are plenty of cases where you want your information distributed to for-profit companies. I mean, you can hardly complain about companies knowing what you buy and companies not knowing what you want at the same time. They need the former to even guess at the latter.
The question is how much personal detail is acceptable: sometimes you don't care if they shout it out to the world, sometimes the only data you want let out is that someone bought this product, not even what other products this anonymous person was interested in.
If customers aren't 1) reasonable about letting out information that they would want distributed, if they only thought about it for a second, and 2) not only outraged, but vengeful, when their stated wishes are betrayed, then there is no hope for a resolution to these concerns.
--
... for defcon 9!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
We're always hearing about how some fool decides to fill an exhibition center or university with crackers/hackers and do rediculous stuff with them like explain internet security or talk about IPv6. The very fact that they are hackers/crackers means they already know about this sort of thing. In fact, it's already been mentioned that no genuine crackers would ever be dumb enough to turn up to such an event.
So what we have here is a few lectures to a group of people who deem themselves "hackers" about stuff they most likely already understand.
This is almost as bad as the events where lecturers attempt to explain the Web And Its Possibilities to business executives who can't even use MS Word, let alone an interface that changes for every website they visit.
The web is not a secure place to be and it will never be "secure". The very nature of network communication relies on data being spread all over various subnets by switches and hubs, so anyone with a packet sniffer and a brain can break in. Decryption of cyphers is another matter, but I've yet to see a truly uncrackable cypher used on the web. If it can be decrypted at the other end, it can be decrypted along the way by a cracker.
Just to note; the word 'cracker' was put around by true hackers after undue media attention by dumb journalists who decided to adopt the word "hacker" to mean "someone who breaks into computer systems illegally". Therefore there is no true word for what is currently known as a cracker (other than perhaps "b*stard"), and no dictionary definition of the term. So there.
ghaa.