[ubuntu-my] Defense Deparment Eyes Hacker Con for New Recruits

[Mohamad Faizul]

The U.S. Air Force has found an unlikely source of new recruits: The
yearly Defcon hacking conference, which runs Thursday through Sunday
in Las Vegas.

Col. Michael Convertino came to Defcon for the first time last year,
and after finding about 60 good candidates for both enlisted and
civilian positions decided to come back again.

"The principal reason that I'm here is to recruit," said Convertino,
commander of the U.S. Air Force's 318th Information Operations Group,
speaking Thursday during a panel discussion at Defcon's sister
conference, Black Hat. "We have many empty jobs, empty slots that we
can't fill."

Federal agencies have only recently begun embracing the hacker crowd.
When U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) director of futures exploration
Jim Christy hosted his first Defcon "Meet the Fed" panel on 1999, he
was one of two people onstage. At this week's Defcon, there may be
several thousand federal employees in attendance, he said.

Federal government employees first started coming to Defcon to get
information and build relationships from the hacker community, Christy
said during an interview, but now it is becoming more acceptable to
find new recruits at the show, despite its reputation as a subversive
hacking conference. "The character of Defcon has changed over the
years," he said in an interview. "Ninety-five percent of the people
here are good guys."

Federal government employees first started coming to Defcon to get
information and build relationships from the hacker community, Christy
said during an interview, but now it is becoming more acceptable to
find new recruits at the show, despite its reputation as a subversive
hacking conference. "The character of Defcon has changed over the
years," he said in an interview. "Ninety-five percent of the people
here are good guys."

And federal agencies have changed too, particularly since the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, said Linton Wells II, the former
CIO of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), now a research professor
with the National Defense University in Washington D.C. "The federal
government has engaged with a lot of people they wouldn't have even
talked to before 9/11," he said.

Christy expects that a couple of hundred of this year's attendees will
be recruited by federal agencies, but no one is recruiting more
aggressively than the Air Force. "The Air Force has always been the
leader in this area," he said.

Convertino's efforts reflect a government-wide effort to step up
cyber-security recruiting. On Monday, the DoD co-sponsored an effort
to recruit 10,000 young computer through a series of cyber-contests,
known as the U.S. Cyber Challenge.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/169462/defense_deparment_eyes_hacker_con_for_new_recruits.html?tk=rss_news