everything looks perfect from far away

are not games. At this years DefCon (a hacker’s conference), NBC inserted a covert media journalist to capture hacker’s admitting to crimes and to out a federal undercover agent attending the conference. It is well known that federal/intelligence agents attend DefCon yearly to learn the latest and greatest intrusion techniques. They even have a contest titled, “Spot the Fed,” in which attendees point out who they think is a federal agent. I have known about this game for years (at least 10?), and it is not a surprise to the agents (usually). It is all “good natured,” according to the Wired article (which is true).

But her wanting to out a federal agent (presumably not through a guess) is bad news. The DefCon organizers set up a bait-and-switch game of Spot the Fed and invited her. After inviting her to a large hall for this game, the organizer said there was a twist, and that the new game was, “Spot the Undercover Reporter.” This sent her bolting out of the building. Sweet.

Don’t mess with hackers. 99% of them are not malicious. We like helping — especially our country.

Permalink to the Wired story.