It was the most condescending speech I've ever witnessed given to adults. It certainly didn't raise my opinion of the NSA. Once you see the video, you will agree.
It did seem half-aimed at children. Especially after the corny opening to introduce one of the Defcon Kids ("help grandpa find his arrow keys", or whatever he was going for).
Right. Defcon Kids. An actual con within DEFCON sponsored by the NSA and AT&T, among others. That alone is the creepiest thing I've seen all week, enough so that the first time I saw the posters I was absolutely sure they were some kind of vicious parody.
I think Defcon Kids is awesome - hacking is a very fun skill which, like programming in general, interested kids should be encouraged to learn.
That said, don't be dishonest. The media should not be calling someone who discovered they could make time-based events in games happen by changing the time a "hacking prodigy"[1], and the website of a hacking con, whose others should know better, should not be saying it "allow[s] for exploit code to run on servers"[2]. It devalues the real thing :)
Comments
It was the most condescending speech I've ever witnessed given to adults. It certainly didn't raise my opinion of the NSA. Once you see the video, you will agree.
It did seem half-aimed at children. Especially after the corny opening to introduce one of the Defcon Kids ("help grandpa find his arrow keys", or whatever he was going for).
Right. Defcon Kids. An actual con within DEFCON sponsored by the NSA and AT&T, among others. That alone is the creepiest thing I've seen all week, enough so that the first time I saw the posters I was absolutely sure they were some kind of vicious parody.
I think Defcon Kids is awesome - hacking is a very fun skill which, like programming in general, interested kids should be encouraged to learn.
That said, don't be dishonest. The media should not be calling someone who discovered they could make time-based events in games happen by changing the time a "hacking prodigy"[1], and the website of a hacking con, whose others should know better, should not be saying it "allow[s] for exploit code to run on servers"[2]. It devalues the real thing :)
[1] http://www.darkreading.com/blog/231300589/tween-hacker-s-tim... [2] http://www.defconkids.org/?page_id=505