Community Matters

I’m at DefCon in Las Vegas. One of the more interesting conferences, if I may say so. Cash only – no name on your tag – the organizers actually don’t want to know your name at all; that way even if someone were able to force them to release the list of attendees, they simply couldn’t do it. Neat.

And the things that you can learn here are interesting, too. Lockpicking. How to get into WEP protected wireless networks. Why the security model of web browsers is fundamentally flawed. How to detect if your ISP is routing fairly or whether they are doing traffic shaping. Lots of cool stuff.

Oh, and there’s an interesting warning on their web site. Yes, there’s a free wireless network. But it is not recommended to connect your computer to it, unless you are ok with hackers breaking into the computer and potentially installing software on it… very cute!

Overall it is clear that the sense security of most users of the internet (and of other technologies like Bluetooth or RFID) is completely unjustifiable. Thankfully the people here are the good guys. But of course that makes me wonder what the bad guys can do…