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Defense Department Eyes Hacker Con For New Recruits
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."
Seriously, these events attract at lot of smart, independent thinking people who love technology. What better place to recruit people? If it works at Universities, then it probably works better at DefCon.
I guess they were worried about the "independent thinking" before...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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
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.
They're recruiting COD players for that.
How sad I am that I should fear my own government.
I am American. I am American. I am America.
I guess in the next year or two, it will be "spot the non-fed."
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
While perhaps not the most disciplined troops in the group, Americans who hvae passed through the educational system and who have access to a television are well-versed in patriotism.
What the military doesn't need is free-thinkers. Hackers, by virtue of their status as hackers, are not necessarily free-thinkers. If they've passed through the American educational system, they've already been trained as much as the military needs. The American public school system is designed to train patriots. I wouldn't worry that these "hackers" are incompletely trained.
Pretty much every Al queda leader has come from a country weve never attacked, many of the countries are in fact our "allies"
The leaders of Al queda come from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, its not our wars that create our enemies its our support for repressive regimes.
In Vietnam a country where we waged a 15 year war, they welcome american tourists and even former american GI's. We dropped atomic
bombs on Japan and now we are their strongest ally.
The problems in Afghanistan have been there before the US arrived (for 30 years) and will be there after the US leaves
I drove all the way down to Vegas from SF Thursday, and by Friday evening I was ready to get out of there. I went to a few panels and was thoroughly underwhelmed. It was crowded, not exciting. Several people walked out of talks. I overheard some other people say "maybe tomorrow will be better". Well, I don't know because I sold my badge and bailed early.
Not to say that there couldn't have been some good smart people to hire there. But after the level of disappointingness Defcon had to offer, I'm no longer impressed. The atmosphere definitely did not inspire me to want to hire anybody.
Long live the BSD license
There is no real "government" to fight anymore; the Federal govt in the US is just the administrative arm of the corporate oligarchy. We're all screwed.
Caveat Utilitor
In fact, you're not far from reality, they use America's Army, for that...
Segmentation Fault in "Life, Universe and Everything" at line 42. Don't Panic.
Now what sort of hacker is going to enlist in the military? First of all he will make 1/10 th of what he can just using his existing skills. Second
of all he would likely be enlisted man and even if he was a officer he would have to put up with the incredible amount of crap that
comes with military service.
Then you have the same sort of issue with civilian govt service, who wants to put up with it. Half of these guys have no degree so the pay
scale does not benefit them either. On top of this it likely requires a TS clearance and how many of these people could actually obtain
the required clearance.
Got Code?
Security is very discouraging. I was in the field a long time ago and got fed up. It's just hopeless. The same problems come up over and over.
That's just part of the list. I don't see a determined effort to fix the underlying problems. Given that, it's hopeless.
I held in and was probably the one you heard, "maybe tomorrow will be better." Nope.
The words "sell out" came to mind. Remember the early burning-man days? Defcon was once a group that met for a "love of the craft" that has become a certification desktoper recruitment fest.
Sad really, maybe time to let this one go the way of E3 no?
Now what sort of hacker is going to enlist in the military?
An unemployed one. At least the U.S. military is hiring.
Of course, even if you go in for a technical job, you may be deployed to Iraq, wiring up CAT-5 cable and Cisco routers while dodging IEDs on your way to work.
Much military work today is about systems for sorting out who's enemy and who isn't. The days when everybody in front of you is enemy are over. (In recent decades, enemies who've tried stand-up battles against US troops were defeated within days.)