
The event's attendance nearly doubled the second year, and has enjoyed continued success. Though intended to be a one-time event, Moss received overwhelmingly positive feedback from attendees, and decided to host the event for a second year at their urging. The official name of the conference includes a space in-between DEF and CON. Any variation of the spelling, other than "DEF CON", could be considered an infringement of the DEF CON brand. However, to a lesser extent, CON also stands for convention and DEF is taken from the letters on the number 3 on a telephone keypad, a reference to phreakers. In the movie, Las Vegas was selected as a nuclear target, and since the event was being hosted in Las Vegas, it occurred to Jeff Moss to name the convention DEF CON. Armed Forces defense readiness condition (DEFCON).
#DEFCON ONE MENTALITY MOVIE#
The term DEF CON comes from the movie WarGames, referencing the U.S. Hacker friends from far and wide got together and laid the foundation for DEF CON, with roughly 100 people in attendance.


Jeff decided to invite all his hacker friends to go to Las Vegas with him and have the party with them instead. However, his friend's father left early, taking his friend along, so Jeff was left alone with the entire party planned. The party was planned for Las Vegas a few days before his friend was to leave the United States, because his father had accepted employment out of the country.

History ĭEF CON was founded in 1993, by then 18-year-old Jeff Moss as a farewell party for his friend, a fellow hacker and member of "Platinum Net", a FidoNet protocol based hacking network from Canada. CTF has been emulated at other hacking conferences as well as in academic and military contexts (as red team exercises).įederal law enforcement agents from the FBI, DoD, United States Postal Inspection Service, DHS (via CISA) and other agencies regularly attend DEF CON.
#DEFCON ONE MENTALITY SOFTWARE#
Capture the Flag (CTF) is perhaps the best known of these contests and is a hacking competition where teams of hackers attempt to attack and defend computers and networks using software and network structures. Other contests, past and present, include lockpicking, robotics-related contests, art, slogan, coffee wars, scavenger hunt, and Capture the Flag. Contests held during the event are extremely varied and can range from creating the longest Wi-Fi connection to finding the most effective way to cool a beer in the Nevada heat. The event consists of several tracks of speakers about computer- and hacking-related subjects, as well as cyber-security challenges and competitions (known as hacking wargames). The first DEF CON took place in June 1993 and today many attendees at DEF CON include computer security professionals, journalists, lawyers, federal government employees, security researchers, students, and hackers with a general interest in software, computer architecture, hardware modification, conference badges, and anything else that can be "hacked". But there is no reason to panic yet," Alperovitch wrote.DEF CON (also written as DEFCON, Defcon or DC) is a hacker convention held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada. There are five levels, from DEFCON 1 to 5.ĭEFCON 5 is the lowest state of readiness, while DEFCON 1 is the maximum state of readiness, which means that nuclear war is starting or has already begun.Īccording to US Today, Russia also has its own version of DEFCON, although the levels of that system are unclear.ĭmitry Alperovitch, founder of The Alperovitch Institute for Cybersecurity Studies at Johns Hopkins University and former chief technology officer of the Cyber Security Group, said on Twitter that Russia has four levels of alert from nuclear war.

What is DEFCON?ĭEFCON - Defense Ready Condition, is a system used by the Pentagon to mark the level of nuclear war threats facing the United States, which then determines readiness for a potential response. Already this morning, when the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia began, that level of danger was lowered by one and now it is "DEFCON 3", which has also been declared only a few times so far. It is a site of analysts from open sources, as well as those connected with the American army.Īs Jutarnji reminds us, the level of danger "one step away from the nuclear war" is actually the "DEFCON 2" level, and it has been declared only twice so far, during the Cuban crisis. officials, for security reasons, never publicly state the degree of danger the country is in, but that assessment was stated on the website "". However, as Jutarnji list reports, such information has not been officially confirmed, because U.S.
