By Dr. Kenneth Geers Comodo Senior Research Scientist
Like most American students, I needed financial help for college. So in 1993, just prior to graduate school, I went to US Army Signals Intelligence training, which set the stage for a 20-year career as an analyst for NSA, NCIS, and NATO. I was fascinated with the connection between network security and national security, from the cracking of Enigma to quantum decryption, and I still am. As the recent DNC hack proves, even democracy itself can come under attack.
Also in 1993, as a mere teenager, Jeff Moss decided to organize a farewell party in Las Vegas for a hacker friend. Eventually, this gathering would grow into the largest hacker conference in the world, DEF CON. Jeff, aka Dark Tangent, did not stop there. In 1997, he created a conference for professional coders and hackers, Black Hat. Together, these events have had an extraordinary impact on the history of information security, drawing hundreds of thousands of attendees, and speakers ranging from Adobe e-book pirate Dmitry Sklyarov to ufologist Richard Thieme, Stanford lawyer Jennifer Granick, and NSA Director Keith Alexander (who argued that government and civilian hackers have more in common than they realize).
In 2001, I took my first trip to these two conferences. As an intelligence analyst, I was usually overwhelmed by the technical detail, so I decided to make my contribution on the national security side of things, discussing the “cyber dimension” of issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, Russia, IPv6, human rights, red teaming, government policy, malware infrastructure, and more.
Over the years, I have seen the DEF CON entry fee rise from $20 to $240, badges evolve from liquid-filled to liquid-cooled, and the party grow from the Simba and Nala-sized water hole at Alexis Park to the Eiffel Tower pool at Paris Las Vegas. Black Hat has grown up too, attracting so many infosec professionals that not even the mighty Caesars Palace can hold them.
In the future, the significance of these conferences (and others like them) will only grow. Today, there is an urgent need for greater investment and heightened understanding of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We are becoming digital societies, and are increasingly reliant on e-government. Toward this end, my part-time home, E-stonia, where every school child must learn computer coding, can help.
This year, there will again be a wide variety of compelling talks, from Dan Kaminsky’s keynote on the “Hidden Architecture” of the Internet, to the car hacking of Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, and computer security metrics by Mudge and Sarah Zatko. I will address the current state of cyber war, based on recent NATO Cyber Centre research on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. I hope to see you there. If you’d like to chat in person, please stop by the Comodo booth!
Kenneth Geers
Senior Research Scientist
COMODO
Kyiv, Ukraine
+380 63 013 5372
