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Defense Department Eyes Hacker Con For New Recruits

Posted by Soulskill on from the conflict-of-beards dept.

alphadogg writes "The US Air Force has found an unlikely source of new recruits: the yearly Defcon hacking conference, which has been running since Thursday in Las Vegas. Col. Michael Convertino came to Defcon for the first time last year, and after finding about 60 good candidates for both enlisted and civilian positions, decided to come back again. Federal agencies have only recently begun embracing the hacker crowd. When US Department of Defense director of futures exploration Jim Christy hosted his first Defcon 'Meet the Fed' panel in 1999, he was one of two people onstage. At this week's Defcon, there may be several thousand federal employees in attendance, he said."

7 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. "during a discussion panel ... at blackhat" by Norsefire · · Score: 4, Funny

    Next year at Blackhat:

    - Moxie Marlinspike demonstrates how to pwn an F22-Raptor has it passes your datacenter

    - K Chen describes how an attacker can install malicious code into the firmware of the steering console in a M1A2

    - Joshua Abraham demonstrates several flaws in secret identities used by CIA agents

    - Marc Bevand disarms Russian missiles with an ATI Graphics card

    - Joe Grand now gets free parking in a Black Hawk

  2. Re:Drop and give me 20!!! by Registered+Coward+v2 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Have you seen most of the people who attend these conferences?

    Most of them can't do a single push-up, and you expect them to work in the military?

    It's the Air Force. No need to do pushups.

    Seriously, if the military needs certain skills they find ways to get people in. Not every job requires raw strength.

    Oh, and Go Navy.

    --
    I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
  3. Re:Drop and give me 20!!! by Norsefire · · Score: 3, Funny

    They're recruiting COD players for that.

  4. Re:Drop and give me 20!!! by ir · · Score: 1, Funny

    This just in: Military discovers "bunny hopping" as a valid evasive technique.

    --
    Irina Romanov
  5. Re:Isn't this an obvious way to recruit by metrix007 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I love that some people still try to reclaim the word hacker. In a story about DEFCON no less.

    --
    If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
  6. Re:Isn't this an obvious way to recruit by sdiz · · Score: 2, Funny

    9/11 one of the planes that hit the Pentagon hit the one of the offices of a Navy IT dept that was basicly an intel command.

    I guess you should have used AMD.

  7. Re:Isn't this an obvious way to recruit by michaelhood · · Score: 2, Funny

    The linux kernel wasn't written in a nights hacking in Linus' moms basement.

    Yes, it took many thousands of nights' hacking in Linus' mom's basement.