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Government Security United States

Lawmakers, Intelligence Officials Welcomed To This Year's Def Con Conference (cnn.com) 31

"Multiple members of congress, dozens of congressional staffers and members of the intelligence community are gathering in Las Vegas this weekend to rub shoulders with hackers at Def Con," reports CNN: Washington's embrace of the hacking community comes amid heightened awareness of the threat of cyber attacks in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election and lawmakers realizing they need to get to grips with technology, Phil Stupak, one of the organizers of Def Con's A.I. Village told CNN Business before the conference began... Hackers here are also demonstrating potential vulnerabilities in voting machines used by Americans. The convention's election village includes a room full of voting equipment where hackers can let loose...

It will likely be the largest presence the government has had since before 2013, when, in the wake of NSA analyst Edward Snowden's leaks, Def Con founder Jeff Moss formally requested "the feds call a 'time-out' and not attend Def Con this year." But that has since smoothed over. "I think the record presence of both representative and administration reflect the reality that technology and security are built into our society," Moss told CNN Business.

"We are trying to break down the barriers between the people in tech who know what they're doing and the people in Congress who know how to take that knowledge to make laws," said Stupak, who is also a fellow at Cyber Policy Initiative at the University of Chicago.

Speaking at Def Con this year was the top cybersecurity official for America's Department of Homeland Security, who stressed the importance of backup paper ballots, as well as "auditability."

Also attending Def Con is Senator Ron Wyden, who emphasized another important election safeguard to CNN: that no voting equipment should be connected to the internet.
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Lawmakers, Intelligence Officials Welcomed To This Year's Def Con Conference

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  • DefCon is smart (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BarbaraHudson ( 3785311 ) <barbara.jane.hud ... minus physicist> on Saturday August 10, 2019 @11:39AM (#59074040) Journal
    They understand that there's value in keeping your friends close, and your enemies closer. Should be interesting to see what gets leaked.
    • your information [wapnigeria.com.ng] is welcomed, and you equally made a very good attempt. thank you for the great knowledge you ipacted on me
    • They understand that there's value in keeping your friends close, and your enemies closer. Should be interesting to see what gets leaked.

      The truth about Defcon most people "grew up". They are all on the same side now. The making money for a living side.

      • The truth about Defcon most people "grew up". They are all on the same side now. The making money for a living side.

        I thought the employed grown-ups all went to Black Hat.

    • "They understand that there's value in keeping your friends close, and your enemies closer. "

      And nowaday they 'have the best people'.

    • There are so many people at DEFCON now that attempting to keep them out would be impossible.
  • Why aren't they here anymore?

    Goodbye, Slashdot.

    • by epyT-R ( 613989 )

      Perhaps the editors have decided their narratives are too important to be sullied with inconvenient counterarguments. The implications made in the headlines/summaries of the posted articles suggest the possibility. That, or maybe they're trying to shut down apk and ascii art spam.

      Neither reason is an excuse to kill anon posts.

    • It's a hostile takeover. The "safe space" idiots are here.
    • APK, ASCII art spam, goatse posts with the random wording, the constant anonymous attacks against select people on here ... we don't need this shit.

      Besides, everything you could post before as AC, you can still post as a pseudonymous account.

      If it's permanent, I say goodbye and good riddance to AC's.

      • My only concern is that the human-garbage doing all that crapflooding will now have extra free time. Where will they go to make other people unhappy? We will see.

        • My only concern is that the human-garbage doing all that crapflooding will now have extra free time. Where will they go to make other people unhappy? We will see.

          Hopefully a therapist :-) Nah, even I'm not that naive.

        • Let then go crying back to 8chan or whatever :-P

      • You sound like someone hurt your feelings.

        I say good riddance slashdot, and good riddance to scum who thinks they know what everyone else needs.

        • I've been here since just after this site got started (different username back then), and the signal-to-noise ratio here has always been mediocre at best, but meaningful discussions weren't too difficult. These days, it's in the toilet, because the owners have made very little effort to curtail the garbage (assuming this AC issue is just a bug).

          You know as well as I do that because of modern data mining, "AC" is no more anonymous than "fooblargh4736473", but a gibberish username like that at least provides

      • by epyT-R ( 613989 )

        Coward. You could just filter them out if you chose. There are plenty of alternatives if you want ideologically curated discussion.

    • Whipslash hasn’t actually changed anything. It turns out Jeffrey Epstein spent a LOT of time posting anonymously to Slashdot.

    • The weird thing is that the UI elements for anonymous posting are still there. You just can't post. If you're going to remove anon posting, that seems like a hella bass-ackward way to do it. Why TF would you not just wait until the work was done entirely before committing and releasing? Of, if you have a PHB pushing you to get it out ASAP and you only have time to do one or the other; why TF wouldn't you remove the UI *FIRST* for the sake of the user experience; and clean up the supporting backend code

    • Iâ(TM)m glad theyâ(TM)re gone. Now youâ(TM)ll have more time to yell at clouds.
  • finding members of Congress who have even an inkling of how tech works. I mean, above and beyond the Internet being a series of tubes and all.
    • by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      That demographic is dying off/retiring. Hell, it's only been in general use since the mid 90s. I'm 60, and have aunts and uncles in their 70s who are pretty literate when it comes to online issues, but I'd call them exceptions (uncle use to work at MIT/Lincoln Labs).

  • ....the game should be changed to "spot the co-conspirator."
  • Washington's embrace of the hacking community comes amid heightened awareness of the threat of cyber attacks in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election

    Was that the election where the Russians helped Trump get elected through Facebook posts?

    Speaking at Def Con this year was the top cybersecurity official for America's Department of Homeland Security, who stressed the importance of backup paper ballots, as well as "auditability."

    The DHS cannot be serious about securi

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