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DAY-CON 2007
Dayton's first-ever international hackers convention gets under way on Saturday
CONVENTION ORGANIZER: 'We want to take the word 'hacker' back and return it to its original meaning, which means innovator.'
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
DAYTON — Rebuilt laptop — check!
Flash drive on lanyard — check!
Hacker Bryan Fite works on his multiple computer set-up at his Centerville home. Fite is not the hacker that steals your personal information, but keeps your information safe. Good-guy hackers from Europe and the United States will be at Dayton's first hackers convention — the Day-Con 2007 — on Saturday at the Crowne Plaza Downtown.Black T-shirt, khakis, bowling shoes — check, check and triple check!
Get ready for the first-ever international hackers convention in Dayton, dubbed Day-Con 2007, to be held Saturday at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.
Mind you, these are not the "hackers" of the TV and movie variety who wreak havoc on Pentagon and corporate computers. These are the good guys — Internet security experts, dot-com entrepreneurs and academicians — who will gather here to learn the latest software-cracking techniques and how to foil them.
"We want to take the word 'hacker' back and return it to its original meaning, which means innovator," said Bryan Fite (aka Angus Blitter), a global risk manager for a large publishing firm and an organizer of the convention. "Our goal is to educate people and to have a good time."
Serious fun. The attendees will get to see simulated attacks and defense techniques for protecting the computer networks that affect nearly every aspect of our lives, from our electrical utilities to our banking accounts. Today, with every computer assigned an Internet address, networks have become especially vulnerable to terrorist sabotage, Fite said. "You could literally bring down the country's power grid if you know what you're doing."
Speakers include Enno Rey and Simon Rich, owners of a security consulting firm based in Germany, and Sergey Bratus, a well-known Russian hacker who is now a researcher at Dartmouth's Institute for Security Technology Studies.
Why Dayton? "There are a lot of smart people in Dayton, and we have a long history of innovation," Fite said. "What were Orville and Wilbur Wright but hackers? They were bicycle repair guys who built an airplane."
Tickets to the convention are available through Wednesday. Visit www.day-con.org for information.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2437 or jdebrosse@DaytonDailyNews.com.
