Defcon 20: Skillz, thrills for the whole hacker family

This year's hacker show has something everyone, from hardware hacking and -day contests to con games and nerd-core rappers. Plus: Black Hat ropes in Apple to talk iOS security.

LAS VEGAS - You might not think that a hacker conference in Sin City the summer is the best place to take the kids. But if you want to learn some skills, know their digital rights and have fun, I can't think of any place better. Oh, and there's some stuff us big kids too.

Defcon, turns 20 this year, runs Friday through Sunday, following the more corporate Black Hat conference, the newsy parts of are tomorrow and Thursday.

Black Hat organizers had a rocky start their week with a security issue of own. One of their volunteers sent 7,500 attendees a suspicious e-mail that appeared be a phishing scam. The message asked recipients to confirm a new password supposedly had been requested and directed them a dicey-looking URL. "We have reviewed the server logs, we know user, host, and have spoken the volunteer who has emailed each of you this morning," Trey Ford, general manager of Black Hat, wrote a blog post, without saying exactly why it happened. "The email this morning wasn't an abuse of functionality by a volunteer who has spoken to."

And in a first, Apple is hosting a talk Black Hat to discuss security for its iOS mobile operating . It's a timely appearance: just last week, the iPad and iPhone maker offered developers a way protect themselves from a high-profile exploit that targeted Apple's in-app purchase system.

Defcon, meanwhile, will no have plenty of hair-raising sessions about scary security holes software and hardware we use every day and the tools released to help exploit . But there also will be Defcon Kids, at security researchers of the future will hone their chops protecting data in a digital age.

The Defcon Kids program, runs concurrently with Defcon and is now its second year, looks seriously interesting. There will be sessions how to break crypto code and how to work with electronics and circuit boards. There's a panel location data tracking in cell phones, a zero-day contest for finding previously unknown vulnerabilities, a lockpicking race, a Q&A session drones and 3D printing, and a session on "The Art of the Con" a live con game.

Attendees of Defcon Kids will learn about liability and other issues related design problems that allow locks and safes to be opened seconds, and there's a session called "Hacking your School's Network" in sci-fi author and Internet thinker Cory Doctorow will tell the kids that "the best way hack the network is to study it, document the in which it interferes with your schooling, use Freedom of Information requests to find what your school is paying for this junk, and publish and present that material." The ACLU is holding a session the NSA and the Constitution, and in the Department of Defense Crime Scene Investigation session, kids confront a simulated crime that they have to solve 15 minutes. Heady stuff for minors.

And there's plenty of fun the over-21 crowd too, including sessions on manner of security topics like backdoors in hardware and industrial control software, hacking aircraft tracking systems, "human augmentation" using medicine and technology and to hack a nation's transportation networks. There are also plenty of privacy- sessions and deep dives into the security architectures of iOS, Android, and Win 8.

For people want a more hands-on experience, there's an exploit-coding contest, a tamper-proof packaging contest, a Defcon art contest, capture the packet, lockpicking, social engineering contest and a beverage cooling contraption contest. For pleasure and good deeds you have the beard championship, with bone marrow and blood drives. The winners of the Defcon short story contest will announced, and people will be sharing anecdotes the Defcon documentary that's in the . And if you just want to get out of town, there's a two-hour bike ride the desert being organized.

Things kick into another gear night. After hours there will be the usual shmoozing drinks, goth dance parties, and DJs from nerdcore rappers Duo Core and Dale Chase to MC Frontalot and local boys gone big, The Crystal Method.

There is also a separate event, B-Sides, that runs tomorrow and Thursday and features some interesting sessions "How I Managed to Break into the InfoSec World with Only a Tweet and an Email" and "Dropping an Intelligent F-BOMB."


Adapted from: CNET, July 24, 2012.