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Hacker Jeff Moss Sworn Into Homeland Security Advisory Council
Wolfgang Kandek writes "Hacker Jeff Moss, founder of computer security conferences DEFCON and Black Hat, has been sworn in as one of the new members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) of the DHS. Moss, who goes by the handle 'the Dark Tangent' says he was surprised to be asked to join the council and that he was nominated to bring an 'outside perspective' to its meetings. He said, 'I know there is a new-found emphasis on cybersecurity, and they're looking to diversify the members and to have alternative viewpoints. I think they needed a skeptical outsider's view because that has been missing.'"
Either he resigns in disgust or becomes assimilated.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
That Obama chap keeps making some inspired decisions - we could do with someone like him over here (UK) to bring a bit of change.
This is actually a great step forward. Why not have some of the best hackers review our current practices?
Seriously. I have no doubt that Jeff has the chops and the "perspective" that has definitely been "missing". I watched the eyes of Richard Clarke and his entourage glaze over at a "town hall" meeting with the "President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board" (or whatever they called it then) in Portland about 8 or 9 years ago, as some very smart security folks told them what was coming and what needed to be done. Honestly, I don't know if they just couldn't grasp the issues or if they were more interested in political play, but the message was quite plain; "the government" was going to be no help in securing things. Political inertia being what it is, I doubt that much as changed, the current administration's well-meaning efforts notwithstanding. Jeff is in for a frustrating ride, I fear.
I have used Linux and Unix systems for over a decade now. What boggles my mind me is why a [Linux/Unix] "encrypted password" stored in /etc/security/passwd cannot easily be "reverse engineered."
If a known algorithm produces the encrypted password, why can't that algorithm be "reversed" to produce the original password in the first place? Algorithms follow a set of logical instructions.
Even in open source systems, encrypted passwords are not easy to crack. Why?
Could a slashdotter post some "simple to understand code" that produces output I cannot reverse engineer?
That Jeff is a pretty cool, I met him once and he's not one of the arrogant hacker types who wear black lipstick and snort coke. A real down to earth geek you can talk to.
I think she just watched the 1993 SciFi movie "Demolition Man" with Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes:
"Send a maniac to capture a maniac".
While I understand the gut PR logic, I fail to understand how it translates into anything but "We're thinking outside the box" political cover. I think Janet Napolitano is anxious to be seen looking open minded after the "Veterans are possible terrorists" memorandum that leaked out.
I wonder how the rules of "Spot The Fed" will change now that DEFCON is somewhat run by a fed????
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
I guess I'll give the perspective here of a very small (yet dedicated) section of the hacker community. I have retired from hacking, but the hacker community still interests me, and I feel a responsibility with some others in guiding it.
As far as myself, I was on H/P sub-boards of BBSs in the early/mid 1980s, and did use the Feature Group B (950-XXXX) codes they posted to phreak, but I put that aside because I did not begin to seriously hack (and phreak) until 1989, and I retired in 1996, the day I began working for an ISP. I personally have met many members of LoD, MoD, BoW, l0ck and so forth, have gone to many cons and 2600 meetings, have gone on trashing runs, talked to them on "confs" (conference calls), on BBSs, IRC etc.
Perhaps I'll search for more original links later, but Gweeds speech at H2K2 in July 2002 is what was really the clarion call of the white hat backlash. That speech was great, and expressed what I felt for a long time but hadn't heard anyone else say.
This web page is dedicated to the white hat backlash as well.
Actually, the anti-whitehat movement in my mind has itself already split. There are the older people like me, Gweeds and some others who primarily want to delineate this line between hacking and the security industry. They are two separate things, in fact, they are against each other - the security community arrests and jails hackers. The idea that there can be a grey hat who is between white hat and black hat is ridiculous, you are either a hacker, or you are working for the security industry and law enforcement. I think even a lot of anti-hacker people would agree with us on that one.
Most of us are older, most of us don't hack any more, and the people in this movement or tendency that Gweeds became a spokesman for I have noticed are also in the anarchist movement. After all, Gweeds talked about anarchism a lot, I have been involved in the anarchist movement, and I know others of our mindset (some who I feel have expressed sympathetic sentiments are in the cDc).
I myself more than most of this group are in a political plain at the cross-section of anarchism and Marxism. So being one more of a dialectic bent, I think the progression of what has happened - people hacked until the mid 1990s, in the mid 1990s many hackers entered the security industry and the hacking movement died out to a large degree, then Gweeds made his speech in 2002 and the hacking movement is still moribund, but has some more self-awareness now anyhow. The rise and fall of IT with the dot-coms caused a chain of reactions. Perhaps the rise and fall of IT within FIRE (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate) will have some reaction as well.
I think what is more important is I think the expression of the "hacker ethic" has always been bullshit. Whether it was what the Mentor said, or that Phrack or 2600 talked about. 2600 has said things like "Companies should be glad we're hacking as we're showing them holes before the bad guys do" which sounds ridiculous to me from a hacker perspective, and I'm sure sounds ridiculous to law enforcement and companies being hacked. Gweeds, and some of the people who picked up the torch of what he said have refined that.
I myself think another criticism has to be made, not just of the white hats, but of the crowd which I'll call the 4chan/Anonymous crowd. I think what they're doing is a new development, is sort of in the spirit of hacking, but misses the boat in a few ways.
I spot the fed... (pointing to DT)
I'll take the bait. The phrase "poacher turned gamekeeper" refers to someone who now protects the interests they previously attacked. Jeff Moss never (in public knowledge) attacked the security of the United States. He has exposed weaknesses in various security systems, but that's often considered helpful. It would be more like a naturalist with a BA in Criminal Justice turned gamekeeper.
It's not just you. Slashdot is broken in several ways.
A lot of the people who comment on Slashdot are broken, also.
Many moons ago, after a 2600 meeting, a bunch of us converged at a coffee shop. Dark Tangent & his friends were there. He had a laptop with a webcam attached to it(supposedly recording). Yet he raised a stink when someone else tried to take a picture of him. Do as I say, not as I do?
This almost makes me believe that the government is serious about cyber-security.
Now, next, add a Constitutional Rights specialist from the EFF or ACLU and I might have an honest-to-goodness heart attack.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Kevin Mitnick and Adrian Lamo do not seem to like the idea of Moss getting the nod. Mitnick prefers Bruce Schneier while Lamo believes Moss is a suit, "the reality is he's as corporate as hiring someone out of Microsoft."
I wonder what the reaction in the tech community would have been had the 2 above gotten the call instead.
It's a trap!
Escape Pod Films: Sketch Comedy and Web Series
function f(int x) { return x/x; }
Find the original value of x, when given f(x) == 1. To get you started, x is not 3853, 178470 or -8956583566.
This is actually, in a funny kind of way, a good illustration of an aspect of hash functions. In a non-reversible hash function, a certain amount of information gets destroyed. The above algorithm is a trivial example in which all information gets destroyed, and thus every single number is a collision.
Part of what makes a good hash function is throwing away just enough information to make it irreversible, but preserving enough to make it meaningful.
Judas!
What's next? Theo de Raadt as the cybersecurity czar? Geez .
It's going to be a lot easier at the next Defcon. Or, is he just going wear an "I am the fed" t-shirt for the whole conference?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Of course Jeff Moss was invited into the Homeland Security Advisory Committee, he has been organizing events for over ten years to collect information about hackers in the computer underground. Anyone who goes to DEFCON or Black Hat is immediately "on the radar" of every three letter agency here and abroad. He's an FBI stooge, always has been, always will be.
Jeff Moss initially got started as an FBI informant working with members of the "Legion of Doom"; his FBI handler was named Dick Brandis, a former polygrapher for the Pittsburgh PA Federal Bureau of Investigation. Brandis eventually ended up resigning from the Pittsburgh FBI for taking classified government information home with him and establishing his own network of hackers that Moss et al would get into compromising positions and then blackmail for information and unpublished exploits.
Isn't it an oxymoron: "hacker" and "Homeland Security Advisory Council" in one sentence. How about : A well known criminal John Doe joined the police force
OutputLogic
In the original 2nd amendment way, Every able-minded hacker is now in the hacker militia, it is now okay to hack computers in foreign countries... ;)
You can have your god back when you are old enough to handle the responsibility.
Having been at Defcon 1 and seen how far things have come, I have nothing but respect for DT and what he has done. It's funny how times change. To have gone from an environment where people were paranoid about "the Feds" even knowing who was attending the conference, to having the organizer of the conference working for the Feds, is a real change. He has the contacts and the insider knowledge of what the threats are. The government made a smart choice by hiring him. Now, DT... since my tax dollars are going into your pocket, how about a free admission to the next con? -Phax
Because apparently, these days, you cant be an up and up citizen with good character and integrity. You have to either not pay your taxes, be a bigoted racist, a hate-mongering preacher, a domestic terrorist, etc or you wont get the nod for a good job.
Hacker=Criminal=Terrorist. Feed him his ballz for dinner, he's scum.
My peace of mind does not depend on
'nuff said.
Hey that's a good idea. So someone could make a list of scary liquids that won't fit in quart bags, people with scary names or skin, countries using science to produce subatomic energy for cooking and heating, countries that dare to make defensive weapons because it's the only protection against some other country that invades anyone with oil but no real weapons, countries that don't play well with international corporations... and then get officials to either support defenses against the list or take responsible for whatever happens. Pure genius, though it sounds similar to tactics used in ancient history.
In January, Moss gave a keynote presentation at the DoD Cyber Crime Conference. I wonder if his presence there helped put him into this new position. It really made him public to the government there :)
Will he now be insisting that we call him "The Plague" and referring to his assistants as "hapless Techno-Weenies"?
I applaud Obama, he has the right mind frame for getting cyber threats under wraps.
Fight fire with fire....so get a hacker on board, to level the playing field.
(Just make sure to always keep him either so terrified of not cooperating by suggesting his family might be on grave danger because he is now consorting with the gov. that they need supervision, and they will provide it just as long as he keeps on the up and up...
which to me is not always the best, or keep him always interested in doing more and giving incentives he has to work for or towards)
He wants his own team, then let him choose it (like a cyber commando team leader), then allow them to have incentives too,
however, you would need 2 teams, both of which are supposed to think the other is rogue ops, and might turn , so we need to keep them supervised. Also not too much of left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, because you could go over board with impeding progress....but in the end...a good move.