God-1, the point of contact and organizer for the DC groups in Baltimore, Maryland. I'm Matt Hatt from Dallas or on the DC 214 group and I want to say that I think we're the first official group to have a scene or so. I'm Grifter, I organize the DC 801 group out of Salt Lake City. And I'm Dr. Chaos, organized the DC 404 group out of Atlanta. All right, so these are five of the best groups we've got and I think at last count while we were at like 88 or something like that. Yeah, 88 and we have DEF CON groups as far away as Tehran, Iran, right, Ankara, Turkey, Penang, Malaysia, and Tokyo and I think we just got one in Brisbane, Australia. Right, so we've got them all over the world. We got one in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Oh yeah, yeah. If you got a DEF CON group and I ran, you know you're pretty good, right? All right, so I'm going to start with Noid. What goals did you have in mind when you wanted to start a DEF CON group? When you started this, what was it that you were trying to accomplish? Well, I think initially for me on a personal level it was to alleviate boredom. I used to run the Los Angeles 2600 group and then after I moved to Washington I sort of fell out of things for a bit and found myself with a lot of free time on my hands. And I'd been to some of the different meetings, some of the lugs, some of the Unix user groups, the local 2600 and decided that you know we should do a DC 206, keep it small and just strictly focus not on talking about tech but focus specifically on doing things because as we all know if you get more than four or five hackers involved in a project nothing gets done. So if we keep the group really small we could pick a project each month and build stuff. And that was the plan was to actually build functional equipment which we've been somewhat successful at. All right, this one goes out to all the groups. What kind of projects, cool projects has your group worked on so far? So what are some of the coolest ones you've seen? Well we built a we built a GPS jammer. We actually have a radio and TV jammer we're building provided the guy here with the kit finds me at some point during the convention. Now what else? We built something else that was really cool. Oh, we reverse engineered an IDS appliance we'd come across. Found out that the processor that was actually processor actually was designed to support keyboard and video out they just hadn't put the stuff in so we had to sit down and do some micro drilling and we're able to turn the thing into a fully functional computer that's this big and can get mounted so we have a portable hotspot. Anyone else? We set up Silt Network that a lot of people have been using you know like IRC but actually secure and like just lots of different projects. The spa thing was that we presented on it like I mentioned here where it was all based on sorry it was all based on discussions we had there just. Okay. We bring content to DefCon. We haven't been very project based in Atlanta yet. We've talked a lot about projects but we've been kind of more thematically oriented. We do presentations. We have folks come talk about pertinent security topics pertinent hacking topics. Of course we do our meetings at a tequila bar so unless we get a consensus really early on we don't really know what projects are going to come about the next next meeting but we've we've had discussion around projects building components building devices you know we've we've talked about you know modifying wireless devices and we've gone into detail on the process of doing so. We haven't actually done any projects as part of the meetings yet. DC 410 you know it started out as a close group of friends started growing larger and larger we do presentations every week. We started organizing a CTF and basically from the ground up we're starting with you know basic tools and going all the way up teaching everyone how to use it showing them how to use it which has really been cool. We have speakers Chris Hurley comes a lot you know couple times Jack Holler has been there so we get some people that know their stuff coming and doing talks. So who are some of the cooler speakers that you guys have had there? Have you had any speakers at yours? We have we have talks every meeting so we you know meet once a month and we're lucky to have simple nomads so anytime we're searching for something simple nomad normally steps up and says I'll do a talk but we've also had some great other talks by other people like from CAU and other people from NMRC so I mean we've been really lucky to have some of the people in the Dallas area. Are there any questions out here yet? All right where would you like to see your group technically in a year? What are your goals for the future for your group? I personally for the DC 206 we're one of the groups that isn't doing focused talks with guest speakers and that's something I'd like to see a little bit more of because particularly up in the Seattle area we've got some really bright people like the ghetto hackers and then some other people that just don't really pop up on radar and some folks down in Portland. I know we've got a guy who wants to come up and talk about asterisks and we have another friend of ours who worked for Sourceforge so he knows Snort excuse me Sourcefire knows Snort inside and out so we want to have him come up and talk about it just seems to be logistics have been a problem for us the Snort guys got cancer so he's getting treated for he's getting chemo right now and the Portland guys availability is scattered because he's all over the place but a year from now I'd like to see us having each meeting with a focused speaker at the beginning and then a technical portion at the end of the meeting where we can apply what we've been taught like if the Snort guy comes in and talks for an hour you know we can then sit down with some Snort boxes and practice writing filters and things like that making our own signatures so because we got a pretty wide group of people that show up we've got some people that work in the industry we got some people that are just not in the industry but really smart technical people and we got a lot of people that show up that just want to learn new stuff so it's a chance for all of us to pick up something new very cool guys you know ours the one thing I would like to do is expand a little more maybe get some more people with deeper knowledge we do one of the things we hold our meeting at a college campus which is great because we have computers for everyone to use we have projectors whatnot and the college actually buys our pizza for our meetings figuring that the teacher that the professor that works there is getting all this knowledge by going to this group so you know I'll throw in $40 to feed these guys so hoping that he's gonna get more knowledge every month so basically the only downside with that is the fact that they advertise it there and we get people that show up once in a while and have absolutely no interest in computers whatsoever kind of like the scene whore he was talking about earlier they just want the pizza pretty much she have she in theory has interesting computers that's just the secondary interest vibrators don't count I'd like to see DC 214 get some more organized projects for the entire group I mean you know spa was cool but it was more of you know we had we had several discussions about it and then nomad and I actually you know did a lot of the work on it as well as druid helping out but I'd like to see us I mean like in the front row I've got seven of my guys right here but we're not really you know unfortunately we haven't really done anything with any of the contests that are going on I'd love to see us get involved in the contest so that next year you know we have one or two projects in there yeah I'm pretty much in the same boat I think it'd be nice to get a little bit more direction as far as projects go also nailing down a specific location where we'll meet currently we'll just meet whenever we can we'll get the most people together we have an IRC channel that everybody pretty much idols in and when the topic changes to DC 801 meeting here it's like sending up the bat signal and everybody comes running to wherever we you know spend a lot of time at I hop at like midnight one in the morning with printouts of all different things and a pen running over papers and stuff and then the next time we'll meet we'll meet at somebody's house and have a bunch of food and you know we'll work on little Defcon projects that we're working on and have you know like we do the Defcon movie channel so we'll have all the filler running on the TV in the background so we can watch and see you know what's jacked and what's not and just you know start to put things together the things that we've worked on you know and those those nights eating pancakes but basically I think that's the direction on projects and being able to focus on something and then release that to the community getting people to be able to get together all at once and I'm sure those of you in DC groups know how hard it is to have everyone who is working on a project be able to get together at the same time we have jobs lives lives whatever so I think just more focus and you can never have too much organization as far as getting your projects out there yeah I'd have to echo a lot of the same regarding organization I've actually been really proud of our group we have really good attendance and we've got a really good body of knowledge between all of the folks who come to the meetings we probably got an average of 25 to 35 people who come to the meetings each month lately we've we've had kind of a waning attendance because I've been a little bit slack on sending out meeting notices and meeting updates but overall we probably have a core of 15 who can you know guaranteed not going to miss a meeting and then we've got another 15 who generally always show up we've got a lot of smart people in the community in Atlanta you know it's it's truly an IT hub there and so echoing what Noid said you know we got a lot of security professionals we got a lot of tech geeks we got a lot of aspiring security professionals and aspiring hackers and that's been very good because everybody's hungry for knowledge everybody's got ideas about what they want to talk about what they want to do and I think really my goal would be to kind of just funnel that energy and and following the same path that we've gone so far I think we've seen a lot of good growth and development across the past year plus that we've been holding meetings we're very lucky with our venue the exception being that we're about to run out of space I kind of kid I'm not kidding in that we actually have our meetings at a tequila bar but they're closed on the one day during the month when we're doing our meetings we have complete run of the place we've got ceiling mounted projectors we've got free Wi-Fi and of course we have a bar for everybody to imbibe while they're there so we generally have a good time you know we've got a the age range and our attendees varies from I think the youngest attended we've got as 15 the oldest probably being 45 so it's pretty much across the the spectrum and again you know people come from everywhere I would like to increase attendance of course the problem with that is that we're gonna hit the walls on how many people we can contain in our existing venue and we're gonna have to find somewhere else that's as friendly and as hospitable with a big group of drunken hackers so so do you see a big desire do you see a lot of people looking for something like this I do I guess to go back a step one of the things that I would like to see more is a lot of the folks in our group I think they're very smart they got great ideas but they have a lot of hesitation to speaking they don't want to get up and do the presentations they you know we got a guy in the group who could probably do things with a wireless access point you know modifications to a wrt-54g that I couldn't dream of but he doesn't want to talk about it he'd rather write a presentation and give it for somebody else to get up and talk about the you know the project so I like to see the people in our group becoming more participatory I mean I think people do that they are looking for it they're looking for this opportunity to come and geek out with everybody else and talk security talk shop talk tech I'm hoping that more folks will will get up and kind of take part in the presentation process we've probably had five different speakers across the past year but it's a lot of the same people coming back up and doing presentations right right just out of curiosity how many out of the five groups here have that problem we do we will have you know someone like one of our guys oh I'm gonna write a presentation on this I'm like great call them up oh yeah I'm on my way there I'm on my way there never showed up and did the presentation and you know a lot of people we have people there that are on the government contractor I'm doing this blah blah blah I'm like talking about all this you know cool shit that they're doing and then by the time you're like you know why don't you step forward and do a presentation and benefit your knowledge of the rest of us so it's it's really it's really the only really problem that my group is having right now is to get the others motivated I think part of the thing that I've seen the difference between our DC meeting in our 2600 group is when we meet for 2600 and we give presentations somebody stands up in front of the whole group and they they just talk to everybody they present like they were presenting you know in a small forum where with the DC groups it's a it's a little like I don't know I just got done running on organized but it's a little more organized in the fact of like I don't know that they can feel comfortable that they're not going to be ridiculed they're not it's more of an informal setting like we it's not like I said if somebody's house or at I hop or whatever like that it's easier to talk around a table while you're eating you know breakfast with with friends than it is to get up and ran to an entire group of people so I don't know some of those guys who can't talk in front of the big groups can sit there and talk you know over you know eggs or something like that or I'm sure once they get shit-faced there they're willing to talk about whatever it is that they're talking you bring you actually bring up a good point we've heard the question over and over can you run a DCG in a 2600 is there a huge difference and what is it doesn't matter I mean what are your issues with running both because several of these people run both at the same time right we we try to work really hard to bring the folks from the local 2600 chapter to our meetings I think there's a there's a significantly different focus and it's probably almost the direct contrast of what grifter said at least in Atlanta the 2600 group it's very informal it's it's held at the food court in the local mall there's there's no real presentations it's not always topically oriented so it's more of just to get together hang out talk about whatever's on everybody's minds whereas with DC groups we've tried to really focus on kind of keeping what brings everybody to Vegas every year for black cat which is you know hey we got 30 people who come to a meeting 25 of them would love to see a topic on you know the latest attacks on e the latest attacks on wpa just you know tools for for improving or for attacking you know common hardware common software so by keeping kind of the presentation focus I think we've brought a really big group to the meetings I think we've got a lot of camaraderie with the folks that are doing 2600 meetings in Atlanta in fact the folks that pseudo organized the 2600 meetings commonly show up at our meetings I can't say that I'm always at the 2600 meetings but it's more of a scheduling issue for me okay you got a question then you're lucky he said every 2600 meeting he's been to in San Francisco sounds identical to what we're describing in the DC groups and my comment was then he's lucky I've only been to a couple of 2600 meetings in Dallas and I have nothing positive to say so I'm not going to say anything I hear comments who's got oh that's just the goons that's Humperding I have to agree I think if you've got a well organized 2600 chapter that's awesome and I think that's been kind of one of the goals with a lot of the DC groups has been to kind of fill a gap you know at the 2600 meetings I think in general like I said I speak only for Atlanta but they tend to be more of just a social gathering agreed you know there's a difference at least there's an inherent difference in in Salt Lake City and that's at the 2600 meetings there are a lot more people who are beginners who you know are new to it and they and what's that right that's right as there should be I'm not saying that there shouldn't be there's some younger individuals it's a little less mature of a setting where we have the stand-up and talk thing it's because if you don't they'll see something shiny and they'll go running off into a wall where yeah where the DC groups that we have tend to be the guys that know stuff and they come and they want to work on projects and they are project oriented so they can sit down and I mean that's one of the best things that's come out of these groups for us is that it's like I'm an idiot like there's not I don't know everything you know so it's like if I don't know something but I get a great idea I can turn to a group of guys and say hey make the magic happen and they're like all right well what are we gonna do and we sit down hash it out and then boom there's you know a new tool or something and that that's awesome but that's the thing at a 2600 meeting we don't have that we just haven't seen that project oriented attitude well opens a little bite size you know information and then and then they go where with the DC groups it's more of long-term projects where people work on something for six eight ten months so I don't know that's just how it is in Utah I don't know about San Francisco one of the things about Seattle I like is the fact that it's not a difference in focus per se between the Seattle 2600 and the DC 206 it's just a matter of difference in size we find that since our group is smaller it's easier to actually get projects done because people have tasks and there's not a lot of chatter and not a lot of you know the signal the noise kind of dials in a little bit more and because mostly I'd say 99% of the people at the DC 206 are regular attendees of the Seattle 2600 so yeah yes well no okay yes and no okay the DCG's have a very primary goal of continuing to learn about technology I mean we don't we don't give a damn about politics right we don't talk about it we're there to talk protocols and servers applications vulnerabilities whatever else well and that's fine he's he said everybody's different and everybody's got their own ideas totally agree with that the forum for DCG's is we're focusing it on technology not every hundred though for us we were just trying to we're have you read the magazine lately we were just trying to fill a gap you ever read you know you may have a very special 2600 congratulations we don't have 30 people who come to the the local 2600 meetings so what we were looking for was building camaraderie amongst a group of people who didn't come out to the 2600 meetings a lot of the folks that are in the professional security community in Atlanta wouldn't go hang out at the food court of the malls so there was no participation from people that have professional experience out doing penetration testing or you know doing product reviews with security products what we were looking for was building that camaraderie bringing together the same kids and the same folks that go to 2600 meetings but with the the suits that want to come out and hang out and see a presentation or do a presentation and focus more on some of the how-to's the understanding behind the scenes that you don't get it not every place has a 2600 meeting too so it is unfortunate it depends if you've been to some of the 2600 meetings I've been to I'd rather not have one quite honestly alright so that that's the goal this poor guy in the back has had his arm up to the point yeah you're gonna have to yell though because I'm way up here scavenger hunt sure I hate you okay kids stay in school it's a good thing you made him wait I don't remember how many points that's worth sorry guys yeah we're not saying that you don't have a great group what we're saying is we have had such experiences that we're not getting what we need to out of that and that's why we create the DCG I mean some some of the 2600 groups are really dialed in like the LA 2600 is tight San Francisco 20 fact there's actually a lot of crossover between the two kind of you know we made flyers they said oh we should make flyers too and you know set mailing lists up and stuff and there's a lot of crossover there but there are some places that have 2600 meetings and DEF CON meetings that suck so this is an attempt to so because some every once in a while I've been to a couple places where there's a 2600 group but nobody goes to it anymore because it's run by four or five guys that have known each other since high school and it's kind of a click and nobody's really welcome at it so they say you know we'll just go start our own thing and this is their own thing they can start or vice versa they could say you know our local DEF CON group sucks we're gonna start a 2600 meeting yeah I mean for us to be honest it wasn't really it's not a matter of competition we just wanted to do something that wasn't being done in Atlanta and I think we've achieved that with the DC group all right you know what you got good points let's have that discussion offline that's a beer conversation we should give him a microphone yeah what are the hardest things they had to deal with probably find a suitable meeting location our first two meetings were at a mall food court and you know no presenter presenters come but there's no you know projectors or anything it's loud you can't hear it security walked around us about four or five times asking us what the hell we were doing there so now we got our meeting location at the local college and you know we have pretty much everything we need to the whole school is closed we normally have them Saturday nights schools closed you know people highways drives down from Philadelphia we have people coming from out of state we got a couple drives guys that drive two three hours to come to the meetings we have computers for everybody we have you know a segmented network that we can do everything we want to with removable hard drives the possibilities are that would be the place that I would recommend if there's one in your area like a local community college or whatever try and get in there and they'll frequently let you have the rooms for free or for a small donation or sometimes the person who reserves the room needs to be a student but at the same time you know it's not terribly hard to find computer science students at the local university that want to hang out with like-minded people some of the biggest problems we had were the location thing we had trouble finding a location initially so we kept moving around which caused a lot of people to go I don't know where it's going to be this month I don't want to bother tracking it down finding the time to organize where it was going to be what we were going to talk about as well as updating the website so people knew that it was current and then we had a little bit of you know issue to where you know making friends at the different lugs the different Unix groups we actually have like a Unix user group a bunch of Linux user groups BSD group the 2600 and letting them know that you know we weren't in competition with them we weren't trying to pull people away from you oh you can't hang out with them anymore because you're with us and that we were actually more of a supplemental group where hey if you like what they talked about it the Seattle wireless meeting but want to hang out with four or five guys we can spend some time going more in depth with it you know and that's what we're here for and I think one of the biggest ways we overcame that was getting the mailing list set up getting the website set up advertising it so once people in their various lugs and things like that started seeing oh no I went to that it was cool they realized okay the meetings exist it's valid you're not going to waste your Sunday tracking down a location like you're trying to find a rave you know only to find nothing so that was one of the biggest the biggest problems we faced so in Dallas the biggest thing of course it was getting the word out that it was going on we were really lucky and had an excellent location right off unfortunately it's falling apart lately but that's a whole different story but the the other problem we had in the beginning was I was trying to give these guys too much control about what we did you give too many people too many options and everybody goes nuts so it's like we I finally end up saying no this is the day we're meeting on this is where we're gonna meet be there or don't it's up to you you know trying to give them okay so we want to meet on Wednesdays or Thursdays we want to meet on this day we want to meet here we want to meet there it just it didn't work you know it was basically setting down and just saying okay this is where we're gonna be this is when we're gonna meet you know this is who's presenting if you want to present great if not you know at least show up and I mean it's it's really works really well we have a hundred people on our mailing list and we usually have between 30 and 40 people show up every month so I'll go back to I mean like I said earlier and now we have been we're Salt Lake City or DC 801 was one of the pilot DC groups along with the Colorado Springs guys Russ called me up one day and said hey I just got off the phone with DT and we want to try doing this thing and you know we're gonna do it in Colorado Springs and we wanted you know no Salt Lakes interested and we said sure we didn't want to do it in the food court like 2600 is so it's like where like I said we're still we bounce around to different restaurants and things and we got laptops up on the tables and we get stuff done I agree as well someone has to take ownership of it like the too many chiefs just doesn't work out because everybody wants to say well my schedule doesn't work with that this doesn't work with that it's like okay well so the impromptu meetings have worked really well for us whether it be you know a couple weeks in advance or a couple hours and then whoever can be there can be there and we can fill in the other guys on the progress when they get there but somebody has to be able to say okay this is what we're doing and this is when we're meeting and where and then round everybody else up and a lot of us through you know not only our local 2600 meeting but through DC groups as well have become really good friends and and that's nice I mean you get to you get to meet people who it's like generally I don't like people but but yet you love gatherings because I'm an asshole but I like other assholes so or or really smart people so when you get you know it's nice to get a bunch of smart people together and know that you know all right these guys are intelligent you can have an intelligent conversation so you're not just gonna go to a barbecue and watch your friends set themselves on fire well you might watch your friends fire you haven't been to our meetings yet yeah but at the same time you might get something coded too so yeah for us I think it was entirely attendance you know venue was initially a little bit of a challenge but not much I think that the biggest challenge we had initially was turning five people into 10 into 15 and to be completely honest it was almost all word of mouth with us I basically harassed everybody I knew who's in the community until they came and I would call them relentlessly and say dude why aren't you at the meetings please come out and once people would come out they come out they have a good time they see a presentation I'd say bring somebody else and eventually that caught on by the time we hit 20 people we were 30 overnight and it's been pretty consistent since as long as I send out reminder emails so how many members was it to hit critical mass until it start growing on its own because that's the problem we have with a lot of the groups they can't get past that critical mass that they don't know how to get there three or four meetings we were probably only like five or six people and it was people that were you know mostly close friends of mine and folks that I knew and I'd say after the third or fourth meeting we kind of did an email blast we you know sent some stuff out to everybody that had signed up at the website we pretty much just kind of talked to everybody we knew we said hey come out come to a meeting I think we that was one of the first times we had like multiple presenters was our fourth fifth meeting and by that time we had a few other people catch on and again to be honest I was I was really kind of an annoying prick to everybody I just wouldn't leave them alone until they came to the meetings eventually they just wanted me to shut off so they came all right so if you if you had one word to describe the personality of your DCG what would it be drunk but it's fun alcoholics alcoholics all of the above that's not one word yes yes thirsty and I mean that multiple regards everybody's thirsty we're at a tequila bar but everybody's thirsty for knowledge to everybody wants something out of the meetings and I think at least 60% of the time they get it so right right and grifter yours is Mormon yeah actually ours is pretty dedicated we don't have people but the people that show up are consistent they come every month something we talked about last month for example they'll come back and be hey we talked about that last month and left off on it where were we so they're pretty dedicated and persistent about it very cool grip for what is your descriptive word I don't really have one but I'm actually out of the what yes but the actually I'm only one of like two Mormons so there's two of us out of like the other group so keep it gangster have any of you had any problems with law enforcement with the group other than more security no I've actually been doing my best to bring out a lot of the local law enforcement we've got we've got a pretty big IT security law enforcement community in Atlanta we've got you know the FBI the GBI we've got high-tech crime units with a lot of the local federal state agencies and I really been trying to encourage them to come partake in the process to be honest out of 30 people in our group I can guarantee that 20 of them would be absolutely they would die to have like you know a two-sided presentation have had some you know local law enforcement come out and talk about the forensic process and you know maybe the same thing from somebody who's unwilling to give their name at the beginning or into their presentation so I'm working really hard to kind of make sure that there's no discrimination law enforcement or otherwise right you know we want we want hacker kids we want security professionals we want cops we want feds now we've actually tried I've been trying to get a couple of field agents to come down and talk about forensics and yeah because we haven't had it but then again we meet in an office one of our members is owns a business so we actually have our own we use their board room which is sometimes a ping-pong table and you know so there's no interaction with law enforcement most were throwing things out the window which doesn't happen so but yeah I would I wouldn't mind having them come down and talk to us as far as I know we haven't had any show show up but you know I I don't ask for IDs yeah I can either confirm or deny any accusations at this particular point in time so chaos when the feds come out and the law enforcement stuff do you have any conflicts or any issues with the other attendees I don't think so and I've asked on multiple occasions and to be honest I honestly think that the significant majority of our group would really prefer that we do have some local law enforcement come out again I think most of the people that come to our meetings are if they're not in the info sec community they'd like to be you know they're they're really trying to get into security you know from one angle one angle or another but the bottom line is I think everybody would like that involvement they'd like that perspective in the meetings as well you know we talk about security as much as insecurity if not more but you know there there's no real there's no difference between the two so I said because it's sexy information security is so sexy it's a grifter that's just you buddy now but thanks I honestly believe that I know I haven't like taken a poll of the members or anything but I honestly believe there would be a lot less discussion if there was a openly fed at the meetings you know there there would be a lot less discussion about that some of the things we talk about yeah more as I'd be happy to see a little bit of it partially because I'd like to see the group exposed both sides being exposed to one another because where a lot of the problems with law enforcement seem to stem from is all of a sudden whatever agency or state local federal whatever suddenly says oh my god there's this hacker group that just popped up on radar in our backyard who are these guys what are they doing we need to get in there and whereas if we invite them down that's an easy way of saying look we're not up to anything you're welcome to come hang out at the meetings you know see look real life hackers they're not scary they're not plotting violent overthrow of the government and on top of that it also shows some of the guys that show up that see law enforcement you know they put their pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us you know in fact you know last time I talked to an FBI agent we sat around commiserating about our bosses the only difference is when he gets into work in the morning he puts his badge and his gun in his desk and I you know I don't so he keeps on him same lifestyles don't get me wrong I mean I think it would be really interesting just I feel that a lot of the discussion we do have would be we either wouldn't have the same discussions or the discussions wouldn't be as complete as they are now I wouldn't recommend it every meeting you know I mean I think the bottom line is hey what would this conference be if we if we didn't have vets here you know what I mean it there's there's it does something to the energy in the atmosphere and I think it also plays the Fed because they're not out in the open inviting them in and saying hey here's your local Fed let's talk about all the stuff it's a completely different atmosphere we play spot the Fed because they don't want us to know they're here yes we know because we're not stupid but they're too stupid to realize that yes ma'am oh no no I completely understand that and like I said it would be very interesting to have them there okay so what she said was that it would be good to have if a Fed came and presented and then have basically a counter argument presented working like the opposite did I understand that correctly right so what she's saying is you know you have a Fed come in do a presentation and then the next meeting you discuss in the meeting you know what was talked about and so that it's it's less pressure on those people and I agree on a one-off basis I think it would be great to have you know somebody from law enforcement come in do a presentation but if they're there and they're out all the time the overall discussion meeting to meeting I think would be a lot different than what it is now and I think that would hinder a lot of the discussions that we have don't get me wrong I think it would be really cool just not on a regular basis not like every single month yeah no on a regular basis you know because I mean it's kind of getting scary you know things like the DMCA Patriot Act or Patriot 2 now you know the whole reverse engineering thing would yeah exactly the fact that things that really frankly shouldn't be illegal have become such as reverse engineering yeah I could see it stifling innovation a little bit where it's like okay this guy is friendly enough but do I really want to show him how I hack the firmware on this particular piece of software because he might just turn around bring the hammer down on me you know so yeah I definitely wouldn't recommend like having them on a regular basis but it's always good to have them come in maybe for a one-off type thing because it's interesting to see you know what are they doing you know we'll show them what we're doing if they'll show us what they're doing so and you know like I said I have 30 40 people show up every month I don't know if any one of them is a fat or not I actually at my group makes fun of me because I do a standard disclaimer at the beginning of every meeting saying everything we're talking about is hypothetical everything we're showing here are things that we do on our own networks this is not anything where we're not taking out anyone else we're not doing anything illegal all of this is just for our own entertainment and I say that you know and everybody makes fun of me but it's like you know I don't know who these people are I mean I don't ask for IDs I don't ask where they work some of them I know some of them I don't so you know it's okay well this leads us into a fairly good discussion of we're not just a US based organization anymore I mean like no it said we've got how many outside of the country do we have Michelle like 15 20 groups all over the world including Iran and Saudi Arabia I mean to hold groups there you know you're under a lot of pressure and a lot of legal and political pressure do you guys ever consider yourselves lucky the does your group ever talk about things like that and do you utilize that freedom ours does and we do consider ourselves lucky in fact I correspond with the guy in Tehran from time to time just because I'm sort of fascinated with the you know wow what's it like running a hacker meeting in Tehran I mean this is a place that's you know we complain about things getting repressive here there are a hundred times further down the road than we are at the moment you know where I mean being a hacker in Iran can still get you executed so it's kind of got a different edge to it you know and you know I like interacting with the I talked to the Malaysia guys all the time and it's interesting to see the different backgrounds because like for example a lot of these places that are hosting these meetings aren't first world countries so it's interesting to see these guys have to do some sort of real real hardcore hacking when they're working on projects because these dudes got a hustle they don't just whip out the credit card and buy the parts kit they got to go dig through the junkyard and find the old abandoned APC to get the big piece of metal off it they wanted and you know happen to stumble across the satellite receiver while they're at it and you know so it's actually kind of almost more hardcore because these guys have really got a hustle to get their projects together they can't they don't have a radio shack on the corner they can go down to and get gear at or a fries so yeah I think we're pretty pretty lucky well I'd say you know everybody sitting in this room is lucky because they get to come to Defconn the actual conference there are emails that come across the different Defconn lists that are always like you know when is Defconn coming to Australia when is Defconn coming to Singapore when is Defconn coming here there or the other place Defconn's in Las Vegas and you're all here in Las Vegas so these guys connect to Defconn through these groups and it's like if Defconn bring a little bit of that to them then I mean we're not we're not doing too bad anything else guys I'll be honest I think we probably take it for granted most of the time and I think you got some excellent points Noid and you know I think it's something we all have to consider like you said you know hey we're lucky to be here and be able to do this and I think well you know one of the things that I would like to see especially from our own local group from the Atlanta group is more interaction with the other DC groups not just in the US but worldwide I think there's probably a lot that we could do and organize by working with one another what that is I don't really have any idea but it seems like there'd be a lot so I'd like to see some of that that communication between DC groups because I think we would all benefit from it and you know then regardless of whether where the DC group that's got five regular members or 30 regular members everybody would feel like they're part of a bigger regular meeting when you're interacting with you know the 303 group and you know 206 group you know on a regular basis so all right are there any other questions out from the audience yet all right so what's the most impressive thing you've ever learned at one of your meetings or video is great tequila I put them on the side that my friends are smarter than I am that's pretty impressive that I have friends actually I think one of the most impressive things I've learned is I think one of the most impressive things I've learned is we have a guy who crash who is constantly messing with the WRT 54g link sys wireless router firmware and I've seen that guy just do some pretty amazing stuff where first he was building nodes now he's got them like meshed so that's pretty impressive because I don't do a lot of firmware stuff so I'm kind of fascinated by that very cool you know I say in just that you know the most interesting thing I learned was that my friends are smarter than I am but I honestly mean that I think that I don't know it's just kind of nice to know that there are people out there who are brilliant who will sit down and listen to one another and you know get some things done so I mean that's the most interesting thing to me is that that people will come together and just throw out an idea and can make that happen that their brains are capable of just taking somebody's whim and making it a reality yeah likewise I think the most impressive thing I've learned is that there are 29 other people who want to come out once a month and talk about security and watch presentations and talk about hacking links as routers that's that's kind of cool to me very cool well thanks for coming to the talk these guys will be around for the rest of the weekend I got two books to give away okay and I also I got two copies of aggressive network self-defense a book that again my friends are smarter than I am put together a group of friends that we all put together this book on strikeback technology some of us will be signing it right after this in at the break point books table Johnny Long who's standing over here about to come up on stage will be over there shortly after his talk to do it I don't know how I want to give these away is somebody does someone have a weird accent yeah I guess we can give it to this guy here who's as cool as his hat is that's the best hat man so yeah all right yeah you can have it thanks man all right see you later thanks a lot


Throughout the years, ships that sailed the seas have proved a plentiful source of tales of the strange and the incredible, for it is only natural that men can sign for days on into limitless horizons of empty sky and water should be subject to visions and hallucinations. But how shall we explain the vision of Mr. Wellmott, which was confirmed by its own subject, someone who had been nowhere near the sea? The thing happened aboard the steamer City of Limerick on its last night out. For nine whole days, the vessel had been lashed by furious storms. As the ship lurched, enrolled, and threatened at each moment to go plunging forever beneath the waves, Mr. SR Wellmott thought much of the things he might never see again. His home in Bridgeport, Connecticut, his factory there, his children, and above all, his wife. On the tenth night, the sea at last grew calm, and Mr. Wellmott lay gratefully down on his bunk and prepared to sleep. As he lay there, he listened to the slow, regular, peaceful breathing of William Tate, who shared his cabin with him and slept in the berth over head. And then he saw her standing in the doorway, a woman who was unmistakably his wife. Margaret, Margaret, what are you doing here? But she did not answer. She came slowly toward him, and standing by his bed, bent and kissed him. Feeling her lips on his, feeling the touch of her hand on his cheek, he told himself that this was no dream. This was really happening. But then suddenly, she was gone, and there was nothing before him but the empty, moon-drenched cabin. In the morning, when he awoke, Mr. Wellmott knew, of course, that it must have been a dream. He laid for a moment, smiling at his own credulity, when from the berth above a voice inquired, All right, Wellmott, confess now, who was she? Who, who was who? The woman who came tip-toeing into this room and stood by your bed and kissed you. That afternoon, the city of Limerick docked at New York, and Mr. Wellmott took the night train to Bridgeport. He saved the question he had to ask his wife until he and she were alone. But even then, he had no opportunity to speak, for it was his wife who inquired. How is it dear that you didn't have a private cabin on the return voyage? What makes you think I didn't have one? Well, there was another man with you. He slept in the bunk above yours. But, but how could you know that? It was last night, dear. I couldn't sleep. We've been reading about the storms on the Atlantic, and I was terribly worried. Oh, I know this sounds absurd, but it's true. I seemed to be crossing the water and coming aboard your ship.  Here was an incident in which three different individuals participated, and which each independently confirmed. It's an incident incredible, but true.