Def Con Hackers On Whether They'd Work For the NSA

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Def Con Hackers On Whether They'd Work For the NSA

Posted by timothy on Tuesday August 6, 2013 @05:46AM from the well-wouldja? dept.

Daniel_Stuckey writes "Premier hacker conference Def Con, which just wrapped up its 21st year, played host to security professionals who all had very different opinions on what the NSA is up to. In fact, the only thing everyone could agree on is that the PRISM revelations came as no surprise. Even if it isn't news to this crowd, it is still a significant development in the general climate of government surveillance and national security. And at Def Con, where government recruitment was hampered this year by conference founder Jeff Moss's requesting that feds stay away, it seemed like a good idea to walk around asking people if they would still want to work for the NSA."

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The only reason worth working for the NSA by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-06 05:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

Is continuing Edward Snowden's great work.
1. Re:The only reason worth working for the NSA by Sabriel · 2013-08-06 11:39 · Score: 2
  
  Idle thought: I wonder if / how many internal factions tripped over each other on this one.
Terrified, I'm sure... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-08-06 05:55 · Score: 5, Interesting

"Hey, you, geek. We've got cash, huge fucking computers, and it's totally legal* to hack whoever you want. You in?"
I'm inclined to guess that, between the people who love toys or have mortgages and the people who think that the NSA is A-OK(tm), they aren't too worried(plus, if your area of expertise or interest is something related to data mining, the NSA might count as honest work compared to, say, Facebook)...
1. Re:Terrified, I'm sure... by Mitchell314 · 2013-08-06 06:26 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Yeah, it's one thing to be righteously fighting for principles against the Man, but it's a whole different ball game when you got mouths to feed. Or an fresh, empty resume to build. Or a mountain of loans to pay. Then you can't be so picky when trying to secure a decent source of income.
  
  --
  I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
2. Re:Terrified, I'm sure... by dj245 · 2013-08-06 07:08 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Yeah, it's one thing to be righteously fighting for principles against the Man, but it's a whole different ball game when you got mouths to feed. Or an fresh, empty resume to build. Or a mountain of loans to pay. Then you can't be so picky when trying to secure a decent source of income.
  I would disagree. There are so many hoops to jump through to work for an agency like NASA or a 3-letter agency that if I was in desperate need of a job, I would put them on the bottom of the list. Government hiring decisions take forever. Background checks take time. Work conditions are somewhat restrictive.
  
  Working for a for-profit company is the path of least resistance. Hiring processes may be slow, but they are much faster than the government. If you add salary+benefits, government jobs *might* pay a little better, but maybe not. It is a wash in my line of work. I can't say about who would be more likely to hire a fresh graduate, but if I was really stuck, there are plenty of companies out there with lowball salaries which would put *something* on my resume before moving on.
  
  --
  Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
3. Re:Terrified, I'm sure... by g0bshiTe · 2013-08-06 07:15 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Funny you should say that, that's the position Facebook is hiring for.
  
  --
  I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
4. Re:Terrified, I'm sure... by PeeAitchPee · 2013-08-06 07:45 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Those of us who breed responsibly and only buy shit we can afford have very little sympathy for this point of view. And there's no reason to whore yourself out these days for evil in order to fill an empty resume -- this isn't post-Dot Com nuclear winter, not in the tech sector anyway. In summary, what you describe is the very reason our country is fucked up at this point. Folks who are willing to rationalize evil and immoral deeds for personal gain, at the expense of everyone else and our Constitutional rights, ABSOLUTELY are the problem.
5. Re:Terrified, I'm sure... by shadowofwind · 2013-08-06 09:59 · Score: 2
  
  OK, I'm with you. I'm not willing to do surveillance work. I have 'breeded responsibly', with the qualification that it takes ~16 years to raise a child, and few people have jobs that can be trusted that far into the future. I have extensive MS level education in math, CS, and EE, and many years of experience with C, C++, C#, and Python. I've tended to specialize in algorithm development and speed performance optimization. I've been employed in San Jose for several years, but my house and family are in San Diego. I have had no success finding non-surveillance work there, in part because I lack experience in video game and mobile development. Moving my wife and kids to San Jose doesn't work either, because my current job is just barely tenable, my wife can't find work here, and it costs a fortune to raise a family here. I think I could find 'evil' employment in San Diego fairly easily though.
  I don't have much respect for 'play it safe' cowards either. But despite all the moral posturing on slashdot, pretty much everyone I've ever met sells out when it comes to making an actual personal sacrifice for the sake of doing what's right. And that determines what the employment climate is, which as I see it can make it fairly hard for honest people to find a way to make a living.
6. Re:Terrified, I'm sure... by bdwebb · 2013-08-06 12:58 · Score: 2
  
  How do your degrees and certifications play a role in the availability of surveillance-specific work to you? If anything, surveillance is mostly unrelated to your fields except through a very tenuous connection between your disciplines and requirements for individuals in the surveillance industry. Unless the specific use of your algorithm development skills to this point has been in surveillance and therefore all of your job experience is surveillance related (i.e. the development of cryptographic algorithms), I don't know how you would be able to find only surveillance-specific work related to what you do.
  
  FYI - I have ~25 friends living in SD who are all in tech industries, many of whom actually share education and programming skills with you, and 3 of whom also specialize in algorithm development (mostly dealing with the medical field or compression and optimization) and while they did have difficulty finding jobs specifically dealing with algorithm development, they were easily able to find other jobs in the tech sector related to their various expertise. I'm not saying it is hunky-dory for everyone living down there, but I'm saying that tech-related employment in San Diego is pretty good to my knowledge, especially recently. Don't get me wrong...I don't think you're lying, I just know people who would likely disagree.
  
  With regard to moral posturing and selling out, I have found in my own experience that you're exactly correct. Most people will act in self interest and disregard what's right...unfortunately those of us who choose the less evil path end up treading the more difficult sometimes. I've done this myself and while it wasn't easy, I'm better off than those I know who did sell out because I stuck to my principles and found employment with a company with principles similar to mine. Stick to it...you'll find what you're looking for.
7. Re:Terrified, I'm sure... by bzipitidoo · 2013-08-06 12:59 · Score: 2
  
  pretty much everyone I've ever met sells out when it comes to making an actual personal sacrifice for the sake of doing what's right
  Too right! But understand, management is to blame for most of that. They deliberately put people in untenable situations, and sometimes it can be for such stupidly petty crap. If you have any kind of reputation as a star hacker, or an advanced degree or some such, they may demand that you put your personal stamp of approval on some equipment, software, or project that is absolute junk. They don't put it so nakedly of course, they will instead tell you to examine the material, and mention that it would be good that it be approved, perhaps dropping hints of what might happen if you were to reject it. They want it approved, for political reasons, never mind that it doesn't work. They want you to help grease the gravy train they're setting up for friends back home in their congress person's district. And if they're so unprincipled that they'd do that, they sure as heck won't scruple to lean hard on you. Also, they want results, meaning, positive results, not negative results, so they can look good too. If you won't play along but you do like to keep your head down and stay quiet, they may just put the words they want into your mouth!
  
  I don't have much respect for 'play it safe' cowards either.
  Work for these guys, and you may eventually face that hard choice that looks like a) play along, and you get to keep your job, or b) take a stand, and kiss your job and your career bye-bye. They want you to sweat over the possibility that you won't just lose your job, but that you will end up with such a black mark on your record that you will never be able to find another job in your field. It can be much worse even than that. How'd you like to be facing a long prison sentence? Thanks to them being backed by the force of the state, that's no idle threat. Or, how about life as a fugitive, seeking asylum from other nations, as Snowden has had to do? You'd like to think you would do the right thing and call those sort of jerks on their threats, but until you've really faced that situation, faced that kind of fear, you can't know what it's like and what you'd really do. And you may not have just yourself to think about. What if you have children who will suffer if you end up unemployed for a long time? Now what do you do? Cowardly, you say? Compared to all that, playing along with some little petty nothing begins to look extremely pragmatic. But that path also has its perils. Play along, and if another groups calls them on their boondoggle, and they aren't able to justify it, they may call on you to do so. What do you do then? Lie, and hope it works? Fess up? But you don't have to face an inquisition to lose big in this. Before things ever reach that point, it is likely way too late. Just the fact that your name is associated with junk is enough to ruin your reputation. No matter what you do, it won't be a good outcome for you.
  Once your reputation is "spent", you are of no more value to them, and they will discard you like a used piece of toilet paper. This is what happens to many contractors. I've seen some pretty high turnover in defense contracting.
  
  --
  Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
8. Re:Terrified, I'm sure... by shadowofwind · 2013-08-06 14:31 · Score: 2
  
  I agree that management is at the center of the problem since they have the most power, but as with any other corrupt system there's blame from the top to the bottom.
  I would have chosen my 'no respect for cowards' wording a little bit differently if I had more time when I posted earlier. What I meant was I agree with the sentiment of the parent poster, but that since nearly everyone sells out it makes it a lot harder for the few who do try to take a stand on something. I might have more compassion for sell-outs than my words implied. But in the end we all pay for it.
Yes by shuz · 2013-08-06 05:59 · Score: 4, Interesting

Despite opinions on ethics for or against, the NSA is still widely considered to have interesting technologies to play with and viewed as leaders in computer system security development. I'm in IT because I love problem solving and the adrenaline rush of having to solve difficult problems under pressure. The responsibility of my job comes first. The only ethical dilemma for me is if someone with authority were to ask me to let a system fail to prove some kind of point.

--
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
1. Re:Yes by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-08-06 06:19 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
  That's not my department, says Wernher von Braun."
2. Re:Yes by spacepimp · 2013-08-06 06:24 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  You are legally obliged in working for the NSA to put the US Constitution first. Any work requirement that asks you to violate the constitution is illegal. So you would willfully be violating your primary objective by "putting your job first".
3. Re:Yes by HornWumpus · 2013-08-06 06:36 · Score: 2
  
  'We aim for the stars'...'sometimes we hit London'.
  
  --
  John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
4. Re:Yes by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-08-06 06:44 · Score: 2
  
  Ironically enough, Tom Lehrer was actually an NSA mathematician, in the mid '50s; before doing the work for which he became better known...
5. Re:Yes by nbauman · 2013-08-06 07:03 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Despite opinions on ethics for or against, the NSA is still widely considered to have interesting technologies to play with and viewed as leaders in computer system security development. I'm in IT because I love problem solving and the adrenaline rush of having to solve difficult problems under pressure. The responsibility of my job comes first. The only ethical dilemma for me is if someone with authority were to ask me to let a system fail to prove some kind of point.
  With all due respect to Godwin, this ethical debate started during the cold war when everybody was thinking about the Nazis in WWII.
  I aim at the stars, says Werner von Braun.
  The rockets go up, and where they come down,
  that's not my department, says Werner von Braun.
  Sometimes I miss, I hit England.
  But I aim at the stars, says Werner von Braun.
  After they thought about WWII, a lot of scientists decided that it was wrong to just be a scientist and work on an interesting technical problem that can kill people at the end.
  In particular, the top people who worked on nuclear weapons did some calculations and realized that they had constructed a machine that could destroy humanity. The people who worked on the intercontinental ballistics missiles developed some of the most advanced, cost-is-no-object integrated circuit chips, and every other technology.
  Most good engineers will think out the end purpose of the work they're doing. They worked during WWII to save their country. During the cold war, they were working to destroy their country. I appreciate the adrenalin rush of problem-solving too, but you have to resist it if it's leading towards turning New York and Moscow into Hiroshima.
  During the 1960s, a lot of people thought that the Vietnam war was horribly wrong (and after 3 million Vietnamese were killed in a country that now makes our sneakers, you can see their point). If you're an engineer, then on some level you want to contribute to society. Killing 3 million people in a stupid war is going in the opposite direction.
  You wouldn't kill prisoners of war in order to solve an interesting scientific problem, would you? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment Why is that different from helping to kill 3 million Vietnamese in exchange for working on an interesting technical problem?
  Of course, maybe you're totally immoral. Maybe you want to be like Abdul Qadeer Khan, who sold the Pakistani nuclear weapons secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya. I'm not sure what to say to those people.
6. Re:Yes by nbauman · 2013-08-06 09:41 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  OK, look at it in context. We killed 3 million Vietnamese because the war hawks told us that if Vietnam fell to Communism, all the other southeast countries will fall to Communism, like dominoes. Vietnam fell to Communism. The dominoes didn't fall. They were wrong. 3 million lives destroyed for nothing. The war contractors made billions. Sound familiar? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_war
Good Will Hunting 1997 says it for me by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-06 06:01 · Score: 4, Insightful

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrOZllbNarw
Depends by SirGarlon · 2013-08-06 06:05 · Score: 5, Interesting

Work for the NSA, doing what? The NSA does more than one thing. I'd be more than happy to work on developing next-generation crypto algorithms, for example. There is probably some work at the NSA that's compatible with my view of the law and common decency -- and much that is not.

--
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
1. Re:Depends by gl4ss · 2013-08-06 06:59 · Score: 2
  
  the only way you'll get to work on next-generation crypto algos is by doing them. but if you work for nsa they'll never see the light of day and you'll be tried in secret court if you publish, only if you can provide an algo with a known vulnurability that is not obvious enough to get spotted in peer review will your work get out.
  sounds like fun & games??
  
  --
  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Re:Maybe by chill · 2013-08-06 06:11 · Score: 5, Funny

...heavy bureaucracy, political infighting, mediocre employees. It's just unattractive all around.
How is that different from the private sector?

--
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Re:I'd do it... by fustakrakich · 2013-08-06 06:13 · Score: 2

The NSA does introspection?

--
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Re:Maybe by __aaeihw9960 · 2013-08-06 06:25 · Score: 2

Having worked in both the private and public sector, I have to say that this stereotype is no longer true. It is just as damned near impossible to fire a long-term employee in both sectors. Also, the same type of spineless management exist in both, allowing new employees to fuck off quite a bit. This 'government jobs are super cushy' meme needs to go away. It might be true, but it's no more true (in this one person's experience) than in the private sector.
Like most things, it boils down to who you work for, not where you work.
(And private sector employees don't have their friends and family scrutinizing everything they do because "my taxes pay you". . . . . . So there's that)
Re:Ask them if they ARE WORKING for NSA by greghodg · 2013-08-06 06:34 · Score: 2

"No one was surprised" is such an elitist and immature statement. Millions of people across the country were VERY surprised by this. There's a big difference between believing in something and having proof of something. "Oh, that doesn't surprise me" is the equivalent of "I told you so!" after the facts are revealed. And its a worthless statement anyway, because it doesn't make one bit of difference if anyone was surprised. It doesn't change what's going on.
Re:I'd do it... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-08-06 06:40 · Score: 4, Interesting

The NSA does introspection?
If the recent reports that they can search a substantial percentage of the planet's internet activity; but not their own mailserver are accurate, I'd be inclined to go with "Apparently not".