{"id":56883,"date":"2013-08-07T22:36:45","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T21:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/surveillance-drones-and-uncle-sam-hackers-take-on-all-at-defcon-21\/56883\/"},"modified":"2013-08-07T22:36:45","modified_gmt":"2013-08-07T21:36:45","slug":"surveillance-drones-and-uncle-sam-hackers-take-on-all-at-defcon-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/surveillance-drones-and-uncle-sam-hackers-take-on-all-at-defcon-21\/","title":{"rendered":"Surveillance drones and Uncle Sam: Hackers take on all at DefCon 21"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n

Around 15,000 hackers and security experts descended on Las Vegas for the twenty-first annual DefCon last week to discuss the latest and greatest exploits and vulnerabilities targeting seemingly anything and everything.<\/p>\n

\n Sure, computers can be hacked. But what about telephones,
\n televisions and even digital cameras? At DefCon, hackers learn
\n how to wage attacks on just about everything and, just as
\n importantly, how to prevent them.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThere was a session on how to hack into those self-driving
\n cars. People hacking into ATMS, hacking into pacemakers, hacking
\n into refrigerators. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a limit to what some of
\n these, with the creativity and the skills they have, I don\u2019t
\n think there\u2019s any limit to what they can reverse engineers,\u201d<\/i>
\n said Vince in the Bay, a podcaster and convicted cyber-criminal
\n who attended his first DefCon this year.\n<\/p>\n

\n But it\u2019s not just breaking into boring systems and servers at
\n DefCon, either. Zoz is an Australian computer scientist whose
\n life revolves around robots. Sometimes he builds them, but at
\n DefCon he discusses ways to break them. If there\u2019s a system that
\n can be tinkered or toyed with, at DefCon they\u2019ll do it.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThis year I came to give a talk about hacking driverless
\n vehicles, because I\u2019m really into autonomous robots, I\u2019m involved
\n in autonomous robot competitions, and I felt like now we are on
\n the cusp of shared use acceptance of driverless vehicles on the
\n road, shared airspace with UAVs, and so it\u2019s time to think about
\n adversarial relationships and how we make these systems
\n bulletproof,\u201d<\/i> Zoz told RT.\n<\/p>\n

\n Zoz has been at DefCon as either an attendee or presenter going
\n back to the 1990s, and this year a few thousand people packed a
\n conference room to watch him show how drones and driverless cars
\n alike can \u00a0be compromised with just a couple of tricks. Like
\n almost everyone at DefCon, though, Zoz says he hacks for good \u2013
\n not for bad.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe people here at DefCon are my people. They are people who
\n are curious and want to learn. They come here to find out how
\n things work and how they can use it best and make it sometimes
\n make things do things that they weren\u2019t supposed to do in a good
\n way often, to improvise and adapt, and to learn from each other
\n and show off what they\u2019ve done. \u00a0So this is primarily a
\n conference where people come to learn things and to engage in
\n their curiosity, so that\u2019s what I like about it so much. Because
\n if you have something that you\u2019re interested in, chances are
\n there are people here who are going to be interested in it too,\u201d
\n he said.<\/i>\n<\/p>\n

\n In addition to hacking household appliances, UAVs and all sorts
\n of other electronic gizmos and gadgets, security experts of all
\n levels come to DefCon to discuss exploits and vulnerabilities for
\n everything imaginable.\n<\/p>\n

\n John Draper, also known as Captain Crunch, started compromising
\n computer systems in the 1960s when he used a homemade device
\n called a blue-box to make free phone calls around the world\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe real reason behind my experimenting around with the
\n system was to learn the system and understand how it works, much
\n like today with how people are breaking into computers<\/i>,\u201d
\n Draper told ABC News\u2019 Sam Donaldson some 30 years ago.\n<\/p>\n

\n Draper went on to show a few guys named Steve and Steve how to
\n hack phones too, and eventually they moved on to make millions,
\n then billions, off of their own endeavors. But while you won\u2019t
\n find the CEO of Apple Computers walking around DefCon in
\n 100-degree heat, Draper still shows up to discuss his sordid
\n past, where his sheer curiosity kept him usually close to
\n trouble. He says he never wanted to hack for harm, though, and
\n relied on hacks and exploits to explore systems that were still
\n in their infancy\u2013and to have a little fun.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cBack in the mid-70s, we found this number by accident, an 800
\n number, because we were scanning for numbers, and it went into
\n the White House. It was the White House\/CIA crisis hotline
\n number,\u201d<\/i> Draper told RT.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cSo we sat on that White House line for a while and learned
\n that President Nixon\u2019s name was Olympus, so a couple weeks later
\n I wrote down that and we were at a party and so we called the
\n White House number and we asked for Olympus. And a person who
\n sure the hell sounded like Nixon came on the line and we said,
\n \u2018Sir, we have a national crisis on our hands. Sir, we are out of
\n toilet paper.\u2019 And we hung up! So we were the first people to
\n prank Nixon!\u201d<\/i>\n<\/p>\n

\n Of course, hacking phone lines and prank calling the president
\n are child\u2019s play compared to compromising drones and exploiting
\n holes in household appliances. In one DefCon presentation,
\n attendees learned how to hack hi-tech toys made for toddlers; in
\n another, digital cameras. Perhaps the scariest hack of all,
\n however, is one being done by Uncle Sam that\u2019s compromising our
\n personal conversations.\n<\/p>\n

\n Chris Soghoian is the Principal Technologist and Senior Policy
\n Analyst at the ACLU\u2019s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, and
\n he spoke a number of times at DefCon this year about issues that
\n aren\u2019t of interest to only hackers. Civil libertarians like
\n Soghoian have long assumed the government was getting
\n communications from anyone they wanted, but only recent
\n revelations made by NSA leaked Edward Snowden have uncovered the
\n tip of that iceberg. Now, Soghoian says, he hopes people start to
\n speak up.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThey\u2019ve been doing this for a while, but they\u2019ve kept it
\n under wraps. And I think it\u2019s time that we have public debate
\n about whether law enforcement agencies should be in this
\n business, whether we want local cops or the FBI to have the
\n capability to hack into any computer, anyone\u2019s smart phone. If
\n cybersecurity is a national concern\u2013which I think it should
\n be\u2013then I don\u2019t really think these tools should be floating
\n around. I think we should be prioritizing cybersecurity, and it\u2019s
\n just not a debate we\u2019ve had,\u201d<\/i> Sogoihan said.\n<\/p>\n

\n But just weeks after Snowden gave the world a glimpse at what the
\n government is actually doing, that discussion is one that might
\n finally be on the verge of making it mainstream.\n<\/p>\n

Republished from: RT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Around 15,000 hackers and security experts descended on Las Vegas for the twenty-first annual DefCon last week to discuss the latest and greatest exploits and vulnerabilities targeting seemingly anything and everything. Sure, computers can be hacked. But what about telephones, televisions and even digital cameras? At DefCon, hackers learn how to wage attacks on just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-56883","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}