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."

Comments

Isn't this an obvious way to recruit

[ta bu shi da yu]

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...

Re:Isn't this an obvious way to recruit

[russotto]

Seriously, these events attract at lot of smart, independent thinking people who love technology. What better place to recruit people?

Emphasis mine. Civilian positions are one thing, but it seems to me if you put a smart and independent thinking person through the military's recruit-crusher, you're either going to get a non-independent-thinking person, a smart and independent thinking person who has been faking non-independent thinking and hates the military for it, or a corpse.

Hackers & discipline... probably not the best combination ever.

Re:Isn't this an obvious way to recruit

[Darth_brooks]

Hackers & discipline... probably not the best combination ever.

Score -1: So wrong it hurts to read.

The best hackers i know of are the ones who *are* disciplined. Go to sourceforge and look at the overwhelming number of half assed, dead projects the clutter up the works. The best open source projects are the ones that have taken years of hard work to reach maturity. That's real discipline.

The linux kernel wasn't written in a nights hacking in Linus' moms basement. It takes years of dedication and hard work to get to the level of "holy freaking crap, that guy is amazing" hacking. Simply knocking around around in perl does not a hacker make. For ever 10 hackers out there that won't put up with the bullshit that military service brings, there are probably one or two who will go that extra mile. Kudos to the air force for figuring that out.

Re:Isn't this an obvious way to recruit

[TheRaven64]

Depends on the task. Strict discipline is needed in some parts of the military because if you hesitate when following an order, it can cost lives. This isn't the case for a lot of support services. Hackers recruited by this kind of process are going to be doing things like penetration testing on the DoD networks, designing ways of compromising enemy systems without detection, and so on. This kind of thing doesn't have anything like the same requirements as a front-line soldier. It's been a while since I worked with the military, but they're generally willing to put up with a lot of eccentricities if they don't threaten lives. If they weren't, they'd have a serious shortage of senior officers...

Re:Isn't this an obvious way to recruit

[biryokumaru]

You obviously aren't in the military. Trust me, there is no mind-crushing mentality in any branch save possibly the marines. In fact, most good supervisors encourage lateral thinking from junior level enlisted men, and I don't know a single Master Chief (I'm Navy) who hasn't told that story of the Seaman who saved the day by saying something didn't seem right.

Independent thinking, smart people are exactly the type of folk we want in the military, not brain-dead puppets. The military does a heck of a lot more than serve as cannon fodder in the middle east.

Re:Isn't this an obvious way to recruit

[Runaway1956]

"it seems to me if you put a smart and independent thinking person through the military's recruit-crusher, you're either going to get a non-independent-thinking person, a smart and independent thinking person who has been faking non-independent thinking and hates the military for it, or a corpse."

And, may I ask how many years you served, and in what branch?

In my 8 years of service, I was never made aware that I should think some sort of "group think". In fact, those people who were advanced most rapidly generally though "outside the box". My own meritorious advancement to E-5 was a result of having both balls and brains. (lest anyone asks, I never had brawn - just plenty of balls) That is to say, I saw the situation differently than my leaders, and I took some initiative to accomplish the mission.

The day the military begins hammering independent thought out of men's heads, the military will most definitely fail.

To be perfectly honest, your statement is pretty insulting to veterans. It suggests that men and women who complete one or more tours of duty successfully are either mindless puppets, or dishonest people. If that is what you really mean, then maybe you should look around you. Wherever you live, there are good men and women around you who are veterans and are very successful. Maybe your boss? Maybe HIS boss?

Re:Isn't this an obvious way to recruit

[Eil]

Civilian positions are one thing, but it seems to me if you put a smart and independent thinking person through the military's recruit-crusher, you're either going to get a non-independent-thinking person, a smart and independent thinking person who has been faking non-independent thinking and hates the military for it, or a corpse.

Hackers & discipline... probably not the best combination ever.

Be careful not to overgeneralize. Not all geeks/hackers are anti-authority by nature. Many of those that are learn to get over it as they mature. To get very far in the real world, you have to be willing to accept that other people (often daft ones) will get to boss you around once in awhile. If you want to succeed, you have to learn to take it in stride. By all means, stand up for what you believe in, but don't think that being a belligerent idealist will win you many friends in any field or environment.

While I wouldn't necessarily call myself a hacker, I am a pretty independent geek and despite that I enjoyed most of my time in the active duty military. Granted, I worked on autopilots rather than PCs, but if I could hack it, I think any geek can. Plus, the discipline that the military provides is exactly what a lot of young hackers need to turn their raw skills and knowledge into a career that can propel them into positions where they can call the shots and do what's needed for the security of the nation's infrastructure.

The fact that the DoD is starting to see hackers as resources rather than adversaries is extremely encouraging and should be applauded. Just a decade or two ago, this was the stuff of science fiction.

Re:Isn't this an obvious way to recruit

[xxuserxx]

I was an IT in the navy for 6 years and I still encountered high stress. I was on a DDG so the crew was around 300. We had a lot of colatteral duties requiring me to take up arms from a 9mm to .50 cal mounted big ass gun. Also General Quarters requires everyone to be in a critical thinking life or death situation. Its very rare that you will never be put in danger. 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. Your a target just for being in the military.

Re:Isn't this an obvious way to recruit

[metrix007]

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

"during a discussion panel ... at blackhat"

[Norsefire]

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

Re:"during a discussion panel ... at blackhat"

[TheRaven64]

If you signed such a form, you obviously didn't read it. It is not a contract, and it does not have any legal weight as a contract. All that the form says is that you are aware that you are bound by existing laws which protect official secrets. If you don't sign, you are still bound by exactly the same laws, but if you do (and you generally need to, although they forgot to have me sign mine for a couple of months) then you can't claim ignorance of the law in court (which isn't a defence, but may lead to a reduced sentence).

Re:Drop and give me 20!!!

[Norsefire]

They're recruiting COD players for that.

Re:Good recruits?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

How sad I am that I should fear my own government.

I am American. I am American. I am America.

So much for "spot the fed".

[jcr]

I guess in the next year or two, it will be "spot the non-fed."

-jcr

Except your story doesnt really work

[voss]

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

Re:Except your story doesnt really work

[koolfy]

After a great war, civilians who lost their families, houses and so are willing to build their country back, live in peace and forget about war, forever.

Germans could want a WWII, only because WWI did not affected German civilians the way WWII did, most of WWI happened outside German soil, and on France's one. People in Germany felt frustrated when their government gave up on a war civilians didn't even see with their eyes, they could not conceive a war can be lost abroad one's country, and wanted revenge to political restrictions made by the "winners" of that war they did not see they were loosing.
That's how Hitler could hit people with his hate speech, otherwise, people would have slap his face with ruins of their house shouting "didn't we suffered enough ??" ;)
Now, France and Germany are strong friends, and really not willing to get into a war again.

There is this famous french popular quote, after WWI : "Plus jamais ca." ("never again."), I think we all feel the same across the world, after a real war.

The US keeps voting YES to wars because they never had to feel bombs above their heads, nor their parents.
Though it's a terrible tragedy in human history, WTC was nothing compared to a war on one's soil.

only exceptions are people weak against religious/political/media manipulation, and that's mostly an education level problem, the US weren't at war against Afghanistan, or Irak as far as I know, they were at war with a minority of religious terrorists, a dictator, and the people the dictator had under control. I don't think intellectuals and non-manipulated civilians and farmers ever wanted a fight against world's no.1 army...

I don't know about Vietnam, but the USAÂdid a really good job helping Japan after the war, I have been told in school that US people sent in Japan after the war felt terrible about what war did to the country and did their best, for the good of Japanese people. Really.


Please if you disagree, don't mod me down : I'm young, and still have much to learn, instead reply and feed me with the facts I don't know... AC, I'm looking at you.

This years Defcon: Not good

[thenextstevejobs]

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.

Security is very discouraging.

[Animats]

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.

• Microsoft has the mindset that anything executable that comes near their operating system should immediately be executed. CDs and DVDs autorun. USB devices autorun. Active-X controls autorun. Universal Plug and Play stuff autoruns. Yes, they now have some "security controls" on this, which sometimes actually work.
• Remote update. Not only is patch downloading a lousy way to prevent security problems, the download process itself introduces a huge backdoor. With every two-bit application now supporting remote update, it's easy to find an attack vector.
• Overly powerful "install" mechanisms. Apple had it approximately right in the original MacOS; an application was one file with a resource fork. Delete one file and the app was gone. Now, installers expect to run with administrator privileges and blither all over the machine.
• Crappy security models. We know what works - mandatory security with integrity levels. The trouble is that most apps whine when made to work under those restrictions.
• Thirty years of buffer overflows. The fundamental problem is that the C and C++ concept of arrays is broken. The language has no idea how big an array is. That's defective by design. The C++ crowd tries to paper over the problem with templates, but the mold always comes through the wallpaper. Most of the newer languages come with a gonzo interpretive system underneath, which makes them slow, overly complex, or both.

That's just part of the list. I don't see a determined effort to fix the underlying problems. Given that, it's hopeless.

Re:What hacker?

[lidocaineus]

Uh, 99% of most military computing systems are terrible in terms of computing power. Any of the big projects (of which there are not that many that are even interesting) will have maybe a handful of people that can do anything outside of a set working template of "fill in the blanks for your query" type interfaces. The military portrayed in movies does not exist.

Re:This years Defcon: SERIOUSLY Not good

[q2a]

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?

Re:Discipline vs patriotism

[Narnie]

From my enlistment w/ the military, I found that in the wartime situation, enlisted freethinkers were the most beneficial to the military and often helped the unit the most and were most rewarded. Conversely, during the peace time, the enlisted followers/conformist were most often rewarded because they were least bored and had the least amount of issues with adhering to the regulations, SOP, and ROE. Of course, this leads to an interesting dichotomy of the enlisted ranks--those senior NCOs who demanded strict adherence to orders (because they expect conformists), and those NCOs that would let a few minor things slide if you could get shit done.

Sure, freethinkers who can conform to regulations are the ideal, but many times the junior ranks are beaten with the "conform stick" enough that the freethinkers leave the military before they advance to a rank that encourages creativity.

Re:What hacker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Echelon? That is a real, live, working system. Any hacker out there that DOESN'T start salivating at the mere thought of an opportunity to play with that can turn in their membership card at the door.

An ethical hacker would puke, not salivate, at the prospect of working on such a project as Echelon.
--
DK