Feds asked to avoid Def Con hacker meeting

Federal agents have been asked to stay away from one of the world’s biggest hacker gatherings.

Revelations about the scale of US government spying meant emotions in the hacking world were “running high”, said organisers of the Def Con convention.

As a result, federal agents should take a “timeout” from Def Con this year.

The main Def Con event takes place in Las Vegas from 1 August and will see 15,000 hackers debate security topics and demonstrate their coding prowess.

Freely mix

The request was posted to the main Def Con webpage by Jeff Moss, the founder of the hacking conference.

In the past, he said, the convention had been an “open nexus” where government security staffers and law enforcement agents could freely mix and share ideas with the other hackers, researchers and security professionals that attended.

SOURCE: bbc.co.uk