The world’s largest annual hacker convention – Unearth attends DEF CON®21
Unearth Technologies attended the DEF CON®21 Hacking Conference at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas, NV.
The DEF CON Conference experience is like no other on the security conference calendar and is one of the world’s largest annual hacker conventions. Started back in 1993 by the Dark Tangent (also known as Jeff Moss who also founded Black Hat), DEF CON is the world’s longest running and largest underground hacking conference. The conference gets inundated by hackers, corporate security professionals, government agencies, security researchers and students (12,000 attendees this year) from around the world. They all attend DEF CON to absorb cutting edge hacking research from some of the most brilliant minds in the world. Plus DEF CON is known for it’s contests that allow participants to test their hacking skills.
The conference is quite an “eye-opener”, seeing participants who enjoy the opportunity to get insight into software, computer architecture, phone phreaking, hardware modification, and anything else that can be “hacked.” There are a range of speakers discussing computer and hacking related topics, plus social events (e.g. Wargames).
There are some other things and contests you don’t see everyday, like lock-picking, robotic-related contests, Capture the Flag (CTF). CTF is one of the well-known contests where hacking teams attempt to attack and defend computers and networks using certain software and network structures.
DEF CON definitely feels like the “hackers” conference of choice and Unearth enjoys the opportunity to participate in these types of events to get a better understanding of the challenges our customers face.
