 I think what's changed in the last 20 years is we're at the verge of the fulfillment of the promise of 20 years ago. So 20 years ago people were saying computers are going to be everywhere and they're going to do everything. And we're at a moment now where everything we do involves the internet and computers. And we're just before the moment where everything we do will require the internet and computers. That's kind of the David Brin transparent society thing, the idea that instead of worrying about one big brother that's got kind of centralized surveillance, it's kind of everyone surveilling everybody all the time. In the old days, who really had the computing power and the resources, right? It was a handful of entities. Now it's everywhere. I mean, the opportunities are more abundant, so that has probably shifted the way some folks operate a little bit. It's happening, kind of whether we like it or not. So I think our only real choice is to try to find ways to work with it and make it work out. The nature of the computer security space, the industry, technology, the ubiquitous of computers have all drastically changed over the last 20 years. Where InfoSec used to be a problem that affected a tiny domain of human experience, now InfoSec affects every corner of human experience. When we started DEFCON, there was no World Wide Web. Most people didn't have a home computer, and the computers they did have were far less powerful than the phones in all of our pockets today. I think DEFCON is what it's going to become. It's a very large, semi-corporate event that has hackers come, it's got Capture the Flag, there's a social engineering contest going on right now where there's someone sitting in an isolation booth trying to call companies and get secret information. But on top of that, you've got a lot of people who are much more corporate who want to see it, who've heard about it and want to be there. And the hackers put on the show for them. And that's how you get 10,000 people here. So I'm Dead Addict. I'm a senior staff member at DEFCON, and I've been senior staff member since DEFCON began. And for the past decade or so, I've been working on the press team, helping try to foster a better understanding of the hacker and security community to the rest of the world. It's a real community that is built around some shared values, and it's a community where people are really sort of being themselves in a way that may seem unusual to some folks, but there's so many really wonderful people that I've met here. People who, they see an issue, they see something that is wrong, whether it's a bug or a system, and they want to solve that problem. And a lot of tinkerers who want to see what things can be done in different ways. Of course, I still say, you know, don't get on the open Wi-Fi. There's still people coming here who are hackers, who have a hacker persona and also have a day job. So they don't want those two to mix. They don't want their employees to know they're here. You've still got people who don't want to be identified. There are people that use technology for criminal ends, and the hacking community as a whole doesn't consider those people hackers. So hacking is a way of thinking. It's a way of perceiving the world. Looking at the world as a series of systems that work in a certain way, but don't have to work that way. On the one hand, there has always been and will always be a totally legitimate series of activities that are about exploration, the acquisition of knowledge, the discovery and eventual repair of security flaws, and the intellectual exercise of understanding systems, breaking them and putting them back together. On the other hand, I think that the opportunity to be a highly automated vandal has never existed in the way that it does today. I come to DEFCON because there's a very interesting culture here. It started out originally with a culture of let's break things, to now I think more like we know we can break things, but how do we make things better? The spirit of fight the man is very much alive, and I think a big part of it is that the world is just becoming more and more corporate. I've seen a big change in Vegas. Vegas is now corporate, so I think that only adds to that mentality of the big man kind of getting richer. People who break security are by definition rule breakers, so you need rule breakers on the side of the people building the systems or they're no good. About a decade plus ago, every major corporation that was involved in software and hardware stated publicly, we do not hire hackers, we do not hire these people. And the truth of the matter was, I had friends in all of these places, so they were either ignorant or lying. But now, all these same companies have active outreach programs. They're recruiting at these events. People here, a lot of them have grown up. So back then, it's all hackers. Here, it's really more computer security professionals coming to hang out with hackers. And you know, hacking is almost the side show here. This is much more legit. The NSA is exhibiting at DEFCON. You know, in the beginning, we had a spot the fed contest. In this room, this room right here, is the talent our nation needs to secure cyberspace. And there's some issues that we have in cyberspace when you look at it. You folks understand cyber security. You know that we can protect the networks and have civil liberties and privacy. And you can help us get there. As far as the intelligence community, the FBI, they started coming to DEFCON a number of years ago and started appearing on panels. And we have a meet the fed panel. And essentially what they do is recruit. They look for the best of the people that come here to help governments solve its security problems. You know, there are some things that I'm working my way through to understand cyber security. I want to walk through those with you and see what we can do together to help secure cyberspace. I think he's here asking for help. I think that that's an admission that they're having trouble solving problems. So he's asking for your help. But that's an admission that they have internally, they have problems solving these issues. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, by the way. He's looking for talent. The NSA needs people who think like hackers. Whether they call themselves hackers or not, I don't care. I mean, what's the term, 25 years to 30 years old? It's gone through a lot of iterations. It's been vilified. It's been rehabilitated. Now you've got white hat, black hat, gray hat. I don't even know what these terms mean anymore. Well, personally, I'm thrilled that the security community has grown as large as it has. And I think it's crucial for the global infrastructure that the community continue to grow and continue to be embedded in large corporations, helping with securing architectures and infrastructures. It shows there's a growing interest in security research and in playing with technology. That if you have a piece of technology, what can you do with it? That's a really important aspect of technology, feeling that you can own it, that it doesn't run you, you run it. It's human behavior that nobody wants to be told that things are bad or things are broken. So you kind of have to find the right level of how far you go at any given time. And that's going to be harder because technology is going to change faster. We're going to see more and more complex infrastructures. I think we're going to see more infrastructures that do not follow any standards or industry best practices. So really applying the right level of expertise and the right level of pressure at the right time is going to continue to be an art, but perhaps increasingly be one. And I hope that DEF CON can help the folks to exchange information or experience where that level is and how that works. The things that right now are really in the hands of just a few people are rapidly approaching the hands of people who lack either the emotional maturity or the sense of responsibility or the good sense overall to use that stuff wisely. I also believe that end users shouldn't have to care about security. You do have to care about security, but I would really consider that a failing of the software and hardware industry of the computing industry that they have to make very difficult decisions and have to buy third party products to help protect them that don't work that well. And that shouldn't be the case. As a community in the software industry and as a security community, we should be making technologies that are secure by default because my mother is never going to be able to make the right decision.