Again, this year Dr. "Scuba" Steve Gary attended DEF CON 32, the world's largest hacker conference. He attends every year to keep abreast of the latest innovations in the hacker community.
But what exactly is DEF CON? "Originally started in 1993, it was a meant to be a party for member of "Platinum Net", a Fido protocol based hacking network out of Canada. As the main U.S. hub I was helping the Platinum Net organizer (I forget his name) plan a closing party for all the member BBS systems and their users. He was going to shut down the network when his dad took a new job and had to move away. We talking about where we might hold it, when all of a sudden he left early and disappeared. I was just planning a party for a network that was shut down, except for my U.S. nodes. I decided what the hell, I'll invite the members of all the other networks my BBS (A Dark Tangent System) system was a part of including Cyber Crime International (CCI), Hit Net, Tired of Protection (ToP), and like 8 others I can't remember. Why not invite everyone on #hack? Good idea!"
When asked about his experience, Dr. Scuba has said:
"I particularly like the villages, areas with hands-on activities. There were over 20 villages again this year. Some of the villages included AI, Blue Team, Car Hacking, Social Engineering Community, Industrial Control Systems (ICS), Internet of Things (IoT), Quantum, Red Team, and Voting Machine Hacking, to name a few. As an example, this year the Car Hacking village had a semi-truck for participants to hack. No surprise, every car that is introduced at DEF CON is hacked. The Capture the Flag (CTF) competition is probably the pinnacle event. This year twelve finalist hacker teams from around the world competed in the CTF to be the 31337 hacker team in the world. This year DARPA hosted an AI Cyber Challenge. The presentations (talks) are always good too, but there are too many to list here. One talk that stood out was the "Fireside chat and AMA with The Dark Tangent and Jen Easterly." Jeff "The Dark Tangent" Moss, founder of DEF CON, and Jen Easterly, Director of Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), made the suggestion that in the cybersecurity industry we should change the word "vulnerability" to "product defect." By changing the term from vulnerability to product defect we can hold the manufacturers of software and hardware accountable, plus companies have ways to deal with defects in manufacturing as opposed to ambiguous vulnerabilities. The Military Cyber Professionals Association (MCPA), of which Scuba is Tampa Chapter President, hosted the Arcade Party with a DJ Friday night, a DEF CON favorite, again this year. The conference badges are always really cool. This year's badge possessed a video game of the DEF CON conference. "Would you like to play a game?""