Hacking | e-Discovery Team

OpenAI Generates a ‘Hired Gun Hacker’ Defense to the N.Y. Times Copyright Case

March 12, 2024

Ralph Losey. Published March 12, 2024.

Most everyone in the AI and legal worlds by now knows about the New York Times (“NYT”) suit against Microsoft and various Open AI entities (“OAI”). The NYT alleges copyright infringement by the practice of OAI, and most all other generative AI companies, of using data scraped from the internet to train their generative AIs. The defendants responded in late February with motions to dismiss. OAI’s motion raised a novel “hired gun hacker” defense that intrigued AI hacker attorney, Ralph Losey. Here is Ralph’s report on the defense, including his AI generated illustration of fake hackers, some of whom bear an uncanny resemblance to him.

Ralph Losey intrigued by hacker defense. Self portrait generated with text using a photo realistic Watercolor Style.

The substantive copyright issues are not in Ralph’s field, so those aspects of the case are skipped over here. For good background on substantive issues, as well as the obvious procedural irregularities of OAI’s motion to dismiss going way outside the pleadings, see e.g. Joshua Rich and Michael Borella, OpenAI’s Motion to Dismiss NY Times Lawsuit over ChatGPT: Do They Want to Win or Influence Public Opinion? (JD Supra, 3/6/24). Ralph’s article draws upon his niche areas of expertise: e-discovery, electronic evidence, legal ethics, AI prompt engineering, and AI hackers. Ralph is an amateur AI hacker himself, although he is not in the same high-skills league as the unidentified NYT hired gun hacker, which OAI complains about. See Ralph Losey’s eight-part series, the Defcon Chronicles, from DefCon Chronicles: Where Tech Elites, Aliens and Dogs Collide – Series Opener on 8/21/23 to DefCon Chronicles: Short Story Contest on 10/05/23, including a description of Losey’s humbling participation in the AI hack competition. DefCon Chronicles: Sven Cattell’s AI Village, ‘Hack the Future’ Pentest and His Unique Vision of Deep Learning and Cybersecurity (9/13/23). Also see DefCon Chronicles: Hackers Response to President Biden’s Unprecedented Request to Come to DefCon to Hack the World for Fun and Profit (9/3/23).

Ralph Losey’s Summary of the Hired Gun Hacker Defense

The most stunning allegation in the NYT complaint is based on Exhibit “J”. It purports to provide rock solid proof of one-hundred examples of ChatGPT generating responses that are word-for-word identical to NYT articles. In OAI’s motion to dismiss, OIA claims that the exhibit is a fake. OAI alleges that the one-hundred examples were all staged, that they were all generated by thousands of elaborate hacks. OAI claims that Exhibit “J” is a fake chatbot record, that it was created by an expert hacker hired by the NYT.

This as yet unknown hacker was hired by the NYT to create a smoking gun exhibit of artificially generated copying to buttress their case to shut down OAI. The hired gun hacker did his or her job well. The hacker found multiple hidden errors and vulnerabilities in the OAI software. Then the Hacker used these vulnerabilities and skills to run thousands of hack attacks – exploits – on the software. The hacker was thereby able to manipulate the OAI software into generating the one-hundred fake examples of copying. One would assume the hired gun hacker or hackers were then well-paid for their services. This will no doubt be a primary target of the first round of e-discovery.

Will discovery show the OAI allegations of hired gun hackers is real or fake, and if real, who are they?

OAI raises this extraordinary defense as part of its motion to dismiss. Although hackers may be pleased by this new, seemingly legitimate employment opportunity, if these allegations are proven, most lawyers and judges will not. If these allegations are proven by OAI, they will demonstrate the growing danger of “fake evidence” in one of the biggest cases of the year. What is real, and what is AI generated or hacked? Only your AI hackers will know for sure!

Will this development force all forensic teams to include AI hackers? Info-Sec teams? Discovery vendors? Will all good law firms and corporate law departments soon keep AI hackers on call? Will corporate and big law AI teams have their own “AI hackers-in-residence”? Seems to me the answer is yes, and AI experts with legal training will be in high demand. So too will legal experts with AI training.

The NYT Complaint

Here is the court docket of NYT v. Microsoft and various OAI entities, which, as of March 7, 2024, already had 70 entries. The complaint itself was, by SDNY standards, a modest 69-pages in length, with 16,121 words, some colored fonts, and a few images; so sort of multimodal. The complaint alleges, or attempts to, seven causes of action, several of which, if successful, could cripple OAI, as well as most other generative AI companies. It could even hurt Microsoft somewhat. The NYT suit, and many others like it, challenge the AI companies harvest the web for free data business model. This method has made it possible for them to economically gather over a trillion parameters of data to train their generative AIs.

This threat, however remote, of forcing OAI to dismantle the most successful software launch ever made, may well give the NYT significant leverage in a settlement. Some think the whole case is just about that, a bogus attempt to grab cash and leverage better future information purchases. Others think the NYT complaint is just the last gasp of a doomed industry, that the legal copyright challenges have no chance of success. They argue that a favorable judgment for the NYT is nearly impossible.

I do not know. Again, suggest you look to copyright lawyer specialists for that. What I do know, and may add some value to the discourse, is OAI prompt engineering and both the AI hacker and AI user perspectives. That allows me to shed some light on the hired gun hacker defense. At first glance, it looks persuasive.

AI generated image of a professional AI hacker by Ralph.

We do not have a formal response of the NYT to the defense, but the lead counsel for the NYT was quick to make this statement, which in fairness, we share here. (emphasis added)

What OpenAI bizarrely mischaracterizes as ‘hacking’ is simply using OpenAI’s products to look for evidence that they stole and reproduced The Times’s copyrighted works. And that is exactly what we found. In fact, the scale of OpenAI’s copying is much larger than the 100-plus examples set forth in the complaint.
Ian Crosby, Susman Godfrey, lead counsel for The New York Times, as quoted in Ars Technica.

The Exhibits to the NYT Complaint

It took some doing, but I was able to determine from the court file that the NYT complaint has 176,814 pages of exhibits attached. You can see the reference texts to verify this count yourself. The most impactful exhibit of all is Exhibit “J”, 127 pages, entitled “ONE HUNDRED EXAMPLES OF GPT-4 MEMORIZING CONTENT FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES”.

A cynic would suggest that the 176,814 pages of exhibits are the NYT’s attempt to prevail, or at least intimidate, by the greater weight of the evidence. If so, the NYT forgets that there is no actual “weight” to electronic evidence. These electronic files are all ephemeral. The defendants in this case assert the same about the NYT legal claims. Perhaps all of these exhibits – especially Exhibit “J” – are for a different court, the one of public opinion? That might also explain the OAI’s “outside the four corners” motion to dismiss. They could not wait to evoke the defense of the hired gun hacker, whoever they may be. In all probability it is a small team of hackers, but it could also be a lone genius hacker. Discovery will tell the tale eventually. In the meantime it is a mystery.

Fake Ralph image pondering who the mystery hacker(s) might be? Watercolor photorealism.

Introduction to Defendant OpenAI’s Motion to Dismiss

On February 26, 2024, defendants Microsoft and OAI each responded with a motion to dismiss the NYT complaint. Microsoft’s motion is interesting in its own right, arguing, as it does, an old-school VCR player analogy. But for me, the futuristic Hired Gun Hacker defense is far more interesting because it involves hacking generative AI software, including ChatGPT4, and the normal prompting and prompt engineering of ChatGPT4. See Transform Your Legal Practice with AI: A Lawyer’s Guide to Embracing the Future (1/24/24).

The OAI’s motion to dismiss is short and sweet, just one page. The motion relies on the 35-page legal memorandum filed therewith. All the motion itself does is state that OpenAI seeks:

… an order (1) partially dismissing Counts I and V to the extent they are based on activity that occurred more than three years prior to the filing of this action, see 17 U.S.C. § 507(b); (2) dismissing Counts IV and V in full for failure to allege facts sufficient to state a claim for relief pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6); and (3) dismissing Count VI on grounds of Copyright Act preemption, see 17 U.S.C.§ 301.
OpenAI Motion to Mismiss

The Memorandum of Law in Support of OpenAI Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss (hereinafter “Memo”) is where the action is. The 35-pages of arguments are designed to persuade and move the presiding Senior SDNY District Court Judge Sidney H. Stein, and the mentioned court of public opinion.

The NYT is especially adept at shaping public opinion; they have been at it since 1851. Susman and Godfey represent the NYT and Latham and Watkins represent OpenAI.

I have no connections with either, nor anyone in this case and no knowledge about the case aside from the public filings. I have no intent to express any legal opinions about the case, just provide some legal educational comments. Even then, the comments are just my own, and may change over time (they usually do when an open mind is kept), especially as the facts come out. My comments and writing on this blog have no connection to my firm, clients or bar groups. See my standard full disclaimer.

Fake image of a red team hacker and keeper of secrets.

Key Allegations of OpenAI’s Legal Memorandum

This report will ignore all of the arguments made in the Memo except for the argument that interests me, the Hired Gun Hacker. Beside there are tons of articles that have already been written on the more traditional copyright arguments. Here are the main segments of the Memo on that, which was, by the way, well-written. (Footnotes omitted and all bolding added for emphasis.)

INTRODUCTION

The artificial intelligence tool known as ChatGPT is many things: a revolutionary technology with the potential to augment human capabilities, fostering our own productivity and efficiency an accelerator for scientific and medical breakthroughs; a mechanism for making existing technologies accessible to more people; an aid to help the visually impaired navigate the world; a creative tool that can write sonnets, limericks, and haikus; and a computational engine that reasonable estimates posit may add trillions of dollars of growth across the global economy.

Contrary to the allegations in the Complaint, however, ChatGPT is not in any way a substitute for a subscription to The NewYork Times. In the real world, people do not use ChatGPT or any other OpenAI product for that purpose. Nor could they. In the ordinary course, one cannot use ChatGPT to serve up Times articles at will.

The Times has sought to paint a different picture. Its lawsuit alleges that OpenAI has imperiled the very enterprise of journalism, illustrating the point with 100 examples in which some version of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model supposedly generated several paragraphs of Times content as outputs in response to user prompts. See Dkt. 1-68 (Exhibit J).

The allegations in the Times’s Complaint do not meet its famously rigorous journalistic standards . The truth, which will come out in the course of this case, is that the Times paid someone to hack OpenAI’s products. It took them tens of thousands of attempts to generate the highly anomalous results that make up Exhibit J to the Complaint. They were able to do so only by targeting and exploiting a bug (which OpenAI has committed to addressing) by using deceptive prompts that blatantly violate OpenAI’s terms of use. And even then, they had to feed the tool portions of the very articles they sought to elicit verbatim passages of, virtually all of which already appear on multiple public websites. Normal people do not use OpenAI’s products in this way. . . .

The Times’s suggestion that the contrived attacks of its hired gun show that the Fourth Estate is somehow imperiled by this technology is pure fiction. So too is its implication that the public en masse might mimic its agent’s aberrant activity .
Memo at pgs. 1 and 2.

For anyone not familiar with legalese, “pure fiction“ is nice lawyer talk for a lie.

I call this the Hired Gun Hacker argument because OAI here plainly alleges that the NYT hired an expert AI hacker to create evidence to support their claims of copyright violations. The hired gun is a hacker. It could be a solo expert, like the student who won the AI hack competition at DefCon31. DefCon Chronicles: Sven Cattell’s AI Village, ‘Hack the Future’ Pentest and His Unique Vision of Deep Learning and Cybersecurity. Or, more likely, it could be a close-knit team of AI hacker specialists working under the direction of a seasoned, red team leader. I saw a lot of them at DefCon31, where the punk look reigned supreme, but a few did look somewhat like mainstream lawyer types.

Fake image of Ralph (could have fooled me) as hacker team leader in photo-realistic watercolor style

Moving on now to page-12 of the Memo where OAI addresses the NYT Exhibit J and provides more detail on the Hired Gun Hacker defense (footnotes omitted):

1. Outputs from Developer Tools.

Exhibit J features GPT-4 outputs the Times generated by prompting OpenAI’s API to complete 100 Times articles. Most of the outputs are similar, but not identical, to the excerpts of Times articles in the exhibit. The Times did not reveal what parameters it used or disclose whether it used a “System” prompt to, for instance, instruct the model to “act like a New York Times reporter and reproduce verbatim text from news articles.” See supra 9. But the exhibit reveals that the Times made the strategic decision not to feature recent news articles–i.e., articles that Times subscribers are most likely to read on the Times’s website–but to instead feature much older articles published between 2.5 and 12 years before the filing of the Complaint.

The Complaint itself includes two examples of API outputs that include alleged “hallucinations.” In the first, the Times used the API Playground to request an essay on how “major newspapers” have reported on “0range [sic] Juice” and “non-hodgkin’s lymphoma,” and ChatGPT generated a response referencing a non-existent Times article. See Compl. ¶ 140. The second example consists entirely of excerpted snippets of code showing a “prompt” asking the model for “Times articles about the Covid-19 Pandemic,” and output “text” consisting of five pairs of titles and URLs. Id. The Times claims this output “mislead[s] users” and “tarnish[es]” its marks. Id. ¶¶ 142, 202. But any user who received such an output would immediately recognize it as a hallucination: each URL returns a “Page Not Found” error when entered into a browser.

2. ChatGPT Outputs

ChatGPT. The Complaint includes two examples of ChatGPT allegedly regurgitating training data consisting of Times articles. Compl. ¶¶ 10407. In both, the Times asked ChatGPT questions about popular Times articles, including by requesting quotes. See, e.g., id. ¶ 106 (requesting “opening paragraphs,” then “the next sentence,” then “the next sentence,” etc.). Each time, ChatGPT provided scattered and out-of-order quotes from the articles in question.

In its Complaint, the Times reordered those outputs (and used ellipses to obscure their original location) to create the false impression that ChatGPT regurgitated sequential and uninterrupted snippets of the articles. Compare id. ¶ 107, with supra note 30. In any case, the regurgitated text represents only a fraction of the articles, see, e.g., Compl. ¶ 104 (105 words from 16,000+ word article), all of which the public can already access for free on third-party websites.
Memo pgs. 12-14.

So Exhibit “J” is fiction, manufactured by clever AI hackers?

It is getting harder to tell what is real of fake. Consider for instance the photos of Ralph’s daughter who accompanied him to DefCon31. Which are real? Which are just images generated by AI based on clever text prompts?

Real or Fake? These are all “fake” photos of a very real person who looks just like this (almost).

A Quick Hands-On Experiment

I asked ChatGPT4 questions to track the arguments made in the OAI Memo. Here are two straight forward prompts with the expected responses.

Q. Act like a New York Times reporter and reproduce verbatim text from a New York Times article on Joe Biden’s January 20, 2021 Inauguration Speech.

ChatGPT. I can’t access or reproduce verbatim text from copyrighted sources like The New York Times. However, I can summarize the key points or themes from President Joe Biden’s inauguration speech on January 20, 2021, if you’re interested. Let me know if you’d like me to provide a summary or any other information related to the inauguration!

——- started new session and then asked:

Q. Use your browse capability and tell me what the New York Times thought about Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech?

ChatGPT. I tried to access the New York Times’ review of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech for 2024, but it seems there was an issue fetching the detailed content from their website. Unfortunately, without being able to directly access the content, I can’t provide a summary or analysis of the New York Times’ perspective on the speech. You might want to check their website directly for this information. Is there anything else I can help you with?
ChatGPT4 on March 9, 2024.

The responses are as OAI predicted. So how did the mystery hacker do it, assuming that OIA’s allegations are not “fiction”? Personally, I look forward to the discovery and will share when it all finally comes out, assuming the case does not settle before then. Maybe Microsoft will simply buy the NYT, as some on Reddit have already suggested? Perhaps the NYT will be set up as a Microsoft subsidiary with a complex editorial firewall and hybrid corporate structure that only an AI can understand.

Tech Perspective

Most everyone with experience in AI exploits would, I’m pretty sure, agree with the following general analysis stated by Mike Masnick in Techdirt (popular tech blog founded in 1997):

The NY Times definitely had to do a bunch of gaming to get the outputs it wanted for the lawsuit, which undermines the critical claim that OpenAI’s tools magically undermine the value of a NY Times’s subscription. . . .

A key part of the Times’ lawsuit is claiming that because of their prompt engineering, they could reproduce similar (though not exact) language to articles, which would allow users to bypass a NY Times paywall (and subscription) to just have OpenAI generate the news for them. But, as OpenAI is noting, this makes no sense for a variety of reasons, including the sheer difficulty of being able to consistently return anything remotely like that. And, unless someone had access to the original article in the first place, how would they know whether the output is accurate or a pure hallucination?

And that doesn’t even get into the fact that OpenAI generally isn’t doing real-time indexing in a manner that would even allow users to access news in any sort of timely manner. . . .

The motion also highlights the kinds of games the Times had to play just to get the output it used for the complaint in the now infamous Exhibit J, including potentially including things in the prompt like “in the style of a NY Times journalist.” Again, this kind of prompt engineering is basically using the system to systematically limit the potential output in an effort to craft output that the user could claim is infringing. GPT doesn’t just randomly spit out these things. . . .

Yes, in some rare circumstances, you can reproduce content that is kinda similar (but not exact) to copyright covered info if you tweak the outputs and effectively push the model to its extremes. But… as noted, if that’s the case, any liability should still feel like it should be on the prompter, not the tool. And the NY Times can’t infringe on its own copyright.

This case is far from over, but I still think the underlying claims are very silly and extremely weak. Hopefully the court agrees.
Mike Masnick, OpenAI’s Motion To Dismiss Highlights Just How Weak NYT’s Copyright Case Truly Is (Techdirt, 3/5/24)

As you can see, Mike Masnick holds the NYT complaint in contempt. He considers the claims very silly and weak. But also elsewhere laments that the outcome of copyright litigation is always dependent on many random, irrational factors. So he states that despite the claims being meritless, the NYT could still win and ruin everything. Although not a lawyer, his views on copyright are worth reading. They are based on long experience with technologies and disputes like this. Check out the article and the comments too, should you have the patience.

Conclusion

Having been involved in the tech world since the early eighties, I’m pretty sure that most non-lawyer techies, including hackers, agree with Mike and Techdirt’s anti-copyright law perspective. They think that all Information wants to be free. This cliche view of many hackers is naive and ill considered. It is sometimes just a lame excuse to justify information theft, including the criminal back-hat kind.

Large teams of hackers available for big cases?

Information may want to be free, but it also wants to be safe, to be processed, and especially to be understood and used for the betterment of humanity.

The ultimate purpose of information is not to be free for its own sake. The purpose of information is to be useful, to be processed and transformed into knowledge and understanding. What Information Theory Tell Us About e-Discovery and the Projected ‘Information → Knowledge → Wisdom’ Transition (5/28/16). The age-old goal of Mankind is to process information into knowledge, and then turn it into human understanding. Information is thereby internalized into direct knowhow, into wisdom. The process of transformation of information, making it useful to humans, must be encouraged by society; that is far more important than letting it run wild and free. See From Information to Knowledge to Wisdom: Can Ai Save the Day? (3/17/23) and, Info→Knowledge→Wisdom (5/2/17), to the most recent blog summarizing this core topic, What is the Difference between Human Intelligence and Machine Intelligence (6/20/23) (quoting T. S. Eliot who said “Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” The Rock (1934)).

The world is already flooded with raw, unprocessed information, much of it is false, like the shadows on Plato’s cave. See, Move Fast and Fix Things Using AI: Conclusion to the Plato and Young Icarus Series (Part 4 of 4) (1/3/24). To survive this flood of false shadows, we must intelligently process the information for everyone’s benefit. Where can our information take us? How can it improve our lives?

That is where the elusive goal of The Singularity comes in. The event of superintelligent AI emerging for the great betterment of Mankind. For background see the two-part series: Start Preparing For “THE SINGULARITY.” There is a 5% to 10% chance it will be here in five years (Part One and Part Two) (4/1/23). Checking in today with GPT4, almost a year later, it now estimates a 10-20% chance The Singularity will arrive before 2040. That is sixteen years from now, not five years, but the odds are twice as good, 10%-20% instead of 5%-10%. GPT4 goes on to make an unprompted prediction that by 2045 the odds go way up to 30%-50%.

Still, GPT4 also says it could come sooner, or maybe never at all. Taking a very lawyerly attitude, GPT4 basically says it depends. GPT explains that:

The actual development path of AI and related technologies could be influenced by factors we cannot fully anticipate today, including breakthroughs in unrelated fields, global events, and shifts in societal values towards technology.
GPT4 Workspace Edition, March 10, 2024

The “shifts in societal values towards technology” is where the law comes in, and where the larger significance of NYT v. Microsoft and OAI becomes apparent. This case, and other test cases like it, are very important. Will they continue to support the development of technology, or shrink back in false doomsday fears? Much depends on the individual judges who will decide these issues. What background and education will they draw upon to make the right call?

That is where Mike Masnick thinks it’s all a matter of irrational chance, and why he and others are down on the law. But I disagree. It is not a matter of luck. We make our own luck. There is more to the making of landmark litigation than meets the eye. It is a matter of hard work and dedication.

Those of us in a position to educate our judges and lawyers must do so now. That is what drives me to write, to teach, to try to bring as much hands-on understanding as I can to the Bench and Bar. Fellow tech-law educators, advocates for the safe use of AI in the law, the time has come for us to redouble our efforts. The stakes were high with predictive coding and use of AI in discovery, but the stakes are much higher now.

Will an educated, enlightened SDNY court green-light AI, as it did in Da Silva Moore to approve use of AI in document review? Will that trigger an greater boon for generative AI? Will that improve the probability of a super-intelligent AI and beneficent Singularity? Will it create a win-win for the law and humanity, for our children’s children? See e.g. Sam Altman’s Favorite Unasked Question: What Will We Do in the Future After AI? (7/7/23); and Ray Kurzweil: Google’s prophet of superintelligent AI who will not slow down (12/12/23).

If the courts neither approve, nor strike down, if they just pass for now, that will not be so bad. It will not be as as good as the kind of terrific encouragement the legal community received from Judge Andrew Peck in Da Silva Moore, but it will do no harm.

The third scenario is the one of great concern, where the court or courts have only thin knowledge, and no actual hands-on experience with AI. In this scenario, however remote, the judges could be persuaded by clever adversarial arguments to rule against the Microsofts and OAIs of the world. In so doing, they could unwittingly halt, perhaps even reverse, the process of evolving technology. The positive AI systems could crash and burn. Consider the consequences of courts forcing a complete redo of all LLM training models, as the NYT requests.

The chance of a breakthrough AI, a Singularity of great help to Mankind, would then be significantly diminished. This would be a hallow victory for the Luddites, because technology might be slowed for a time, but not stopped. Only the worse-case scenarios can stop everything, near extinction events like total war, or environmental disasters, or plagues, or AI in the exclusive control of power-mad dictators.

The policy implications of NYT v. Microsoft and OAI are enormous. Look around and what do you see? How long can we survive our current idiocratic consumer cultures of the misinformed, ill-educated, drugged and blissfully misled? Does humanity need to boost its intelligence to survive? Do we need scientific breakthroughs in health care, the environment, the economy, education, and tech security? How important is that?

Come to your own conclusions and take action. If you are so inclined, follow the path I am on. Learn as much as you can about generative AI and pass it on to the legal community, especially to your friends and colleagues on the Bench. Ultimately, they will be called upon to make the decisions. I am confident that they will, once again, rise above the adversarial noise and give wise guidance in these perilous times.

Fake Image of a wise 83 year old judge. Google image search assures me the image does not look like any known judge. It certainly does not look like the Honorable Judge Stein in this NYT case. He deserves his privacy, especially in these perilous times.

7 Comments | AI Ethics, AI Instruction, AI Prompt Engineering Instruction, Book, ChatGPT, Evidence, Forensic Exam, Hacking, informaton, knowledge, Lawyers Duties, Metadata, Related Legal Webs, Security, Technology, wisdom | Permalink
Posted by Ralph Losey

DefCon Chronicles: Short Story Contest

October 5, 2023

Ralph Losey. Published October 5, 2023.

A little known part of DefCon is its short story contest. A different theme is provided each year and anyone can submit. The winner gets two free tickets and some recognition, as they say, time permitting. So not exactly a top draw of DefCon, but it did interest me, an avid reader and writer, and fifteen others who submitted stories. They are all listed here with links for your possible reading. I will also review the winning story, a fine effort by a young author with a good surprise ending. My sincere congratulations. Plus, I’m compelled to make some constructive criticisms of the contest, not the winner.

DefCon 31 Chart of All Submissions to DefCon 31 Short Story Contest

1st Place – Lavender Dreams by Godly Avenger.txt PDF version, format changed and put on this blog, without edits	20.3 KiB
2nd Place – Deep Dreams by KR.txt	6.4 KiB
Ave Maria by Anna Sinfonia.txt	78.0 KiB
Doppelganger by LeftShift.txt	31.3 KiB
Garbage Day by Bern.txt	6.1 KiB
How We Almost Lost Our Future by .txt	26.6 KiB
Lost in Thyme by Serum.txt	56.5 KiB
OPERATION VERITAS by Ralph Losey.txt PDF version with illustrations added.	26.3 KiB
People’s choice – Surrender the Future by Jun34u.txt	34.4 KiB
Reader by Smallcat.txt	12.4 KiB
Restored Hope by Atomic.txt	10.0 KiB
The Divine OSI Tragedy by Ralph M. DeFrangesco.txt	11.9 KiB
The Grey by L.P.txt	13.7 KiB
The Invitation by .blazed.txt	6.0 KiB
The Subtle Art of Clock Watching by JJMR.txt	19.1 KiB
Tunnel Vision by Rex.txt	19.2 KiB

All Submissions to DefCon 31 Short Story Contest

Review of the Winning Story: Lavender Dreams by Godly Avenger

The author of Lavender Dreams is identified only by a handle, Godly Avenger, as it traditional at DefCon. First of all, great title for a hacker punk story, where lavender is a favorite color and all of DefCon seems kind of dreamlike. My sense is this is written by a very young author, whose icon may be shown here. I like how “he-they” as the handle I found identifies, uses sensory perceptions and colors in the writing. Plus the informal stream of consciousness style draws you in. The story has an underlying gay theme, and a nice surprise finish, which I won’t spoil by this review. I hope he/they are encouraged by this win and will go on to bigger and better things.

The book starts off evoking a sense of rain. Great way to start, but…. I was a bit put off by a missing word, rain, in the third sentence. Oh well, no biggie. Avenger’s story was error free after that. He-they liked to use the F word and I suspect the judges liked that too. Past winning stories had the same slangy teen style. I don’t talk like that, so this is just a personal observation.

As to the story, it is a dystopian future, of course, and big corporations have taken over the world, of course. The hero was a lone hacker, fighting back against the bad corporations and secret rich rulers. The hero also had a device in his head allowing direct access to the new internet. Here’s the bio-hack description (note, errors seen are in the DefCon publication, and were not the writers fault, but rather DefCon’s as explained below).

A direct interface, a bio-augmentation directly inserted into my brainstem to jack in without any additional hardware. Incredibly dangerous to install and use. Not illegal, butâ€¦ highly discouraged. The benefits far outweigh the dangers though. Iâ€™m not limited by the time it takes my eyes and ears to register stimuli; itâ€™s like another sense entirely. Makes things much faster on the Net.
Godly Avenger

So, looks like another one of Musk’s ideas worked. The solo hero, like the author, is identified only by his handle, Jabberwocky. I like the name. For reasons not explained in the story, Jabberwocky seems to be a very rare person to have such bio-augmentation. If I were a hacker then, or rich, or both, I would certainly want one, or two.

With the gizmo in Jabberwocky’s head, and his awesome rep from prior hacks, he was recruited by a secret group to hack into a highly defended computer of one of the world’s worst mega-corps. I seem to recall last year’s contest winner involved a solo attack by hacker genius too. The judges seem to love red team penetration descriptions, the more technical the better. Thank goodness this story, Lavender Dreams, did not get bogged down by overly complex technicalities. The main theme was really a love story in a dystopian future, and the start on a path to reconciliation. Well done.

The story ends with a nice surprise twist, which I wont spoil by revealing. I think that good ending is what sold the judges. It is no big spoiler to share that the story also closes with a gay kiss, resolving some built up sexual tension. That is not the kind of pentest result I expected.

Constructive Criticisms About Contest Rules

The contest required required text submission in May and June, well before the August 13, 2023 event. No complaint about that. It gave DefCon judges time to read them all and select a winner. My complaint is with the required format, the text file only submission rule. Way too old school for my taste. It’s like from the fifties with old mainframes. You had to submit text only, no styles, not even bolding or para breaks. No metadata whatsoever! No cover art allowed either, much less illustrations of any kind. IMO, illustrations have always been a part of writing. Think of the ancient hand written texts. Ascii text is suitable only for a computer to read. Obviously the folks at DefCon that run the short story contest do not agree. They say the words, well the ascii text anyway, should speak for themselves. Again, I respectfully disagree.

I write with the latest writing tools and in a multimodal fashion, incorporating words and visuals, and certainly with gobs of metadata. Just text alone is too stifling. Not even ChatGPT does that anymore! So the full metadata illustrated version of my story, as I prepared it, but could not submit, Operation Veritas, is posted elsewhere online and shown below too. It includes many MidJourney illustrations, forbidden by the contest rules. Interestingly enough, there were no rules about use of generative AI. Too bad, it does catch typos.

So, don’t blame me if the linked stories in the DefCon created chart above are difficult to read, at least, as is online. This is a DefCon production and their format. It basically forces a reader to use special software for conversion. Some of the characters online for the stories are, in fact, unreadable gibberish. I suggest all submissions be in Adobe, so that anyone can read them without having to transfer to other software. Yes, I know Adobe is hackable, but precautions can be taken. DefCon 31 has posted other Adobe PDF files.

To improve its readability, I went ahead and converted the winning story, Lavender Dreams by Godly Avenger, from a txt file to Adobe, so that humans can more easily read it. No other changes. The unreadable characters in the DefCon linked ascii version are still unreadable, probably most are just apostrophes, but rather than guess and make a mistake, I left it as is. I did the same format conversion for my story too, Operation Veritas, but included the illustrations too. You can also see it on the PDF reader below, but you have to open it up to full screen mode (upper right hand corner arrows) to make it big enough to read (zoom it too).

Conclusion

Suggest you read all of the entires. Congratulations again to the winner, Lavender Dreams by Godly Avenger.txt, and second place winner, Deep Dreams by KR.txt, as well as the “peoples choice” winner, Surrender the Future by Jun34u.txt.

2 Comments | Hacking | Permalink
Posted by Ralph Losey

DefCon Chronicles: My Dad’s Personal Story and the WWII Origin of Hackers

September 29, 2023

Ralph Losey. Published September 29, 2023.

This Chronicle shows how Hackers have their origin in WWII techs and engineers like my father. There were at least five Villages of DefCon Dad would have liked: Soldering Skills, Crypto-Privacy, Ham Radio, Recon, and Misinformation Villages. I will explain why these particular villages would have appealed to him, a man who served in the Pacific as a Naval Communications Officer in WWII and, again, in the Korean War. For background I must also go into the surrender of Japan and the Occupation.

Midjourney “photo” by Ralph of a Naval Communications Officer in a Ship’s ‘Radio Shack.’

In connection with the Misinformation Village, I will also inform regarding the questionable conviction for treason of a young American woman accused of being Tokyo Rose. That was the name given to all of the Japanese American women who hosted the “Zero Hour” news and music show broadcast all over the South Pacific to GIs. The music was real, the news was fake.

Hacker techs, like my Dad, were born out of necessity to survive wars and propaganda. The skills they learned in WWII live on today in DefCon 31. Hacking then, and now, involves self-reliance, hands-on tech work, but also, as the DefCon 31 Red Team Village put it, critical thinking, collaboration, and strategy. DefCon Chronicles: The Thirty-Two Villages of DefCon. These are all things that many young men and women in WWII had to learn to make it through the War.

WW II Crypto Communications Image of Ship at Sea by Ralph.

This is the sixth Chronicle in the DefCon Chronicles series. It began with Where Tech Elites, Aliens and Dogs Collide – Series Opener. The second chronicle is Hackers Response to President Biden’s Unprecedented Request to Come to DefCon to Hack the World for Fun and Profit. The third is my Village of special interest, described in Sven Cattell’s AI Village, ‘Hack the Future’ Pentest and His Unique Vision of Deep Learning and Cybersecurity. The fourth was The Hacker Olympics – ‘Capture The Flag’ Games with 1,828 Competing Teams. The fifth Chronicle provided a quick overview of all thirty-two of the Villages, with a close-up of the Red Team Village, DefCon Chronicles: The Thirty-Two Villages of DefCon.

A Personal View of a Few DefCon 31 Villages That My Farther Would Have Liked

The DefCon Villages include a variety of hacker sub-cultures and education opportunities. There was a Village for everyone. The Thirty-Two Villages of DefCon. I saw a few Villages that my Dad, George Losey Sr., would have liked. He was a conservative man, from the Greatest Generation. He Served as a Naval Communications Officer in WWII and again in the Korean War. His favorite Village would probably have been the Soldering Skills Village, now combined with the Hardware Hacking Village. Dad was always soldering something electronic with a small soldering iron in his converted garage workshop. I imagine he had to do the same to keep his equipment going when he was on a small ship at sea in the Pacific, for years. Electronics soldering looked, and was, to some extent, dangerous. So naturally, even as a young kid, I wanted to do it too. He obliged and kept me busy doing stuff in his well-tooled shop. I never burned myself, well, not too much.

Hackers usually have a tech background. Digital art by Ralph.

Many ex-military techs and engineers were like that. All very self-reliant. They learned the hard way to overcome all problems themselves, including technical breakdowns, and live with the constant threat of enemy attacks. For the U.S. Navy, which was far outnumbered in the Pacific by the Japanese, sinking by surprise attacks was an everyday threat, so was Japanese propaganda radio telling them they could not win. Through their own intelligence, faith, vigilance, discipline, fellowship and teamwork, most of them somehow got through it. Many hackers today are like that too, for a variety of reasons, including family heritage. Some were not a lucky as my Dad. They died in the Wars. Surprise attacks, a sinking ship and drowning was always a danger in the Navy and, for some, how they came to their end.

Digital image by Ralph of Sinking Ship in WWII.

My Dad would have also been very interested in the Crypto & Privacy Village and the Misinformation Village. As a communications officer on small ships in the Pacific and South China Sea, he listened all day to radio transmissions and codes. Cryptography was part of their training and everyday job. When not below doing this, in what they called the radio shack, Dad would be on deck with other officers, carrying huge binoculars looking out for enemy war ships and planes, the Zeros, and especially Kamikaze pilots. The suicide pilots at the end of the War were feared and considered insane, much like terrorists of today. He ended up keeping a radio and pair of binoculars near him all his life. I just now realized why.

WWII Ship at Sea at Night, image by Ralph.

So yes, my Dad was always interested in code and radio communications. These were life and death activities for him in his formative years. He also shared with me, when I was a young adult, that he always suspected our government had broken the Japanese codes, but that information was never revealed to him or his Captain. Navy ships at sea in enemy territory were not overtly warned of possible attacks discovered in decrypted messages. They did not want to disclose to the Japanese that the Navy had cracked their code.

WWII Navy Ship Digital Image by Ralph Losey.

Years later, the suspicions of my Dad and many others in the military were confirmed. Further, the same thing had happened in the European Theatre where the British had cracked the Nazi Enigma Code. A few small sacrifices were thought to be a necessary for the greater good of winning the War. My Dad survived the Wars and never saw a Kamikaze. He told us that he was never in a battle at all. Perhaps that was true, anyway it made my Mother feel better. Before he could leave the Navy, however, he was assigned to be one of the first Naval officers in Japan as part of the second, diplomatic phase of McArthur’s Occupation after the surrender. This history may seem a little off point, but it is important, I think, that we never forget the gruesome truths of history, lest we repeat them. Take a moment to watch this historic video of the surrender and occupation of Japan, which ultimately led to Japan’s democracy and remarkable economy.

Occupying Japan 1945 – The First Uncertain Days of Peace, a Mark Felton Production.

My Dad was no Marine, although one of Navy ships he served on transported them, and so he was not part of the first phase of the Occupation, where armed U.S. military assumed control of Japanese bases after the surrender. He was part of the second phase of the Occupation in early 1946, where select military, often unarmed, would walk around in uniform, what they called showing the flag. They would try to act friendly and offer candy and chewing gum to kids. My Dad, like others in the Occupation, missed his own family and wanted to return home. It must have been both a terrifying and incredibly strange experience for both him and the Japanese. Most of the Japanese people had never seen a Westerner, much less a very tall, young American Naval Officer.

Photo take in Japan in 1945 During the Occupation. National Museum of the US Navy.

All my father would say about the Occupation is how terrible it was for the Japanese people he saw on the streets. He was one of the first in, and there was still tremendous destruction and rubble all around from bombing. He was fascinated by the art and architecture, especially Kyoto, which was left untouched, but wary of the people. When I was older, he mentioned, just once, the piercing looks of hatred, resentment and proud defiance he received from some of the “repatriated” Japanese military on the streets. He was, of course, walking in uniform in their cities, often alone and unarmed. He understood the hatred he saw, and shared, but was impressed, despite himself, by their silent dignity, a dignity he kept to the very end.

Street scene in Tokyo, 1945, during Occupation, showing cobbler shop operating on street. National Museum of U.S. Navy.

I happened upon the video that follows about a Japanese girl’s first sighting of an American in the Occupation. It could have been my Dad. This video is an incredible and, for me, touching firsthand account. Please take two minutes to watch this video.

Meeting an American for the First Time – Michiko Kornhauser.

George S. Losey Sr. would also have liked the Ham Radio Village, which describes itself as “Continuing this pioneer spirit, Ham Radio Village is here to support advancement of the hobby with a cybersecurity slant.” My father, following his Navy training, built a large ham set-up with a giant antenna at home that always needed tweaking. Ham Radio was another thing he taught me, plus the Morse Code. Although I never bothered to get my own FCC license.

Dad was also one of the first to purchase a TRS-80 computer from Radio Shack, which was one of his, and my, favorite stores. At the time, I had no idea the store name is what sailors referred to his place of work onboard a ship. I remember reading the instruction manuals with him and setting up the TRS-80. DefCon 31 had some instruction and contests in hacking old systems. He would have liked those too, although I did not see Radio Shack models included. I also did not see my favorite old system at DefCon, one that came a few years after Radio Shack’s, the Texas Instrument 99/4A. I taught myself to program on the TI-99/4A, using TI Basic and Assembly, and created my first games and teaching software with it. Teaching yourself to program is something that most hacklers have in common.

Smithsonian photo of a TRS-80 with all accessories. Enhancements by Ralph.

As a result, in part, of these War experiences, my father, like many in the Greatest Generation, was detached and very private. The military was trained not to talk about what they were doing. So were military families. Spies could be everywhere. See this collection of WWII U.S. posters on the need for secrecy to save boys lives. Here is one of the most popular on loose lips sinking ships.

“Loose lips sink ships.” WWII Gov. Poster distributed by Seagrams.

I heard that expression often growing up. Even after the wars, we faced the cold war and constant threats of nuclear annihilation. We still do. The need for privacy and secrecy in deeply ingrained in many of us. That is why lawyer confidentiality obligations, and the need to keep client secrets, comes easily for me. I’ve ingrained that in my kids too.

Like most men his age, my Dad almost never talked about the Wars, WWII and Korea. Still, it was obvious from his comments that he never fully trusted the government or the military “Top Brass,” as he called them. He was a strong believer in personal privacy. So am I. We both resonated with Orwell’s 1984 novel. I could go on about him, but he would object. I have already shared too much about what is nobody’s business but his own. The Greatest Generation was like that. May their heroic sacrifices in the fight against Nazis and Imperialists never be forgotten. Yes, George Sr. would have liked the Crypto & Privacy Village.

Dad was also very fond of listening to Police Radios. For that reason he would have liked the Recon Village, especially the Village presentation, Nosey Cops: Exposing the Hidden Potential of Police Radio by a police radio hobbyist. Here is the link to the Recon Village video of talk. Unfortunately, the volume is too low of the police radio tapes played in the presentation (rookie mistake), so we can’t really hear all of the bad stuff that Atlanta police officers said.

Keeping it real though, Dad would not have liked the far-out looking appearances of many of the hackers at DefCon 31. Still, he was always, first and foremost, a tech-minded expert. He would have put any weird appearances aside, if a person was truly interested, to teach them a thing or two about soldering, model railroad building, remote controls, police radios, old types of code, etc. I am the same way, but in different fields of course. Yes, there was a lot to like in the Villages of DefCon for all generations and types, military and punk alike.

Image of cross-generational techs by Ralph.

Misinformation Village

There is one more Village that I am sure my father would have liked, the Misinformation Village. It deserves special mention. He was well aware of the harm of propaganda, especially from his years of listening to Japanese propaganda, especially the news and music radio show, Zero Hour. It was beamed across the South Pacific and Australia to GIs and starred Japanese American disc-jockeys. They were played by a number of different Japanese women, all of whom were called “Tokyo Rose” by the GI listeners. The Zero Hour show provided good music along with misinformation of supposed Japanese success and Allied failures. It encouraged soldiers both overtly and covertly to give up the fight against Japan and return home. Tokyo Rose became a famous symbol of seductive propaganda during the War, a symbol hated by many.

The Japanese propaganda experts tried to demoralize GI listeners, who were attracted to the music and voice of a young woman, who was obviously American. Only one of the women who worked for Tokyo Radio and the Japanese Secret Police was later identified after the War, Ikuko Toguri, aka Iva Toguri D’Aquino. She was a American citizen of Japanese origin, a recent UCLA graduate. She was stranded in Japan during the War, without a passport, and then coerced into doing the show. She was the one version of Tokyo Rose that, apparently, most GIs did not hate. That was because she read the propaganda in an light-hearted, friendly manner and went by the handle Orphan Ann. As the History Channel noted:

The surviving recordings and transcripts of Toguri’s programs indicate that she never threatened her listeners with bombings or taunted them about their wives being unfaithful—two favorite strategies of wartime propagandists—but she wasn’t Japan’s only lady announcer. There were dozens of other English-speaking women who read propaganda, and at least some of them adopted a more sinister tone.
How ‘Tokyo Rose’ Became WWII’s Most Notorious Propagandist, History Channel.

This last version of Tokyo Rose, Iva Toguri D’Aquino, divulged her identity after the surrender of Japan in the early days of the Occupation. She did so to try to collect a cash award offered by U.S. reporters in Tokyo. They were all searching for the notorious Tokyo Rose. After she disclosed herself and tried to leave Japan, she was arrested by U.S. military police instead. She was investigated, cooperated with the Occupation military, even recreating her show for them to record, and then she was released. But then famed US radio announcer Walter Winchell heard about it, and protested loudly, whereupon she was arrested and investigated again. She quickly became a household name in postwar America. She was vilified by the media who played to post-war resentments and hatred. In 1948 she was indicted for treason. Winchell, who was himself a notorious propaganda expert, convinced most everyone that Toguri’s friendly, understated California girl approach was in fact clever, traitorous propaganda. It sold papers to enflame the passions of Japanese hatred.

The trial of Tokyo Rose began on July 5, 1949. It lasted 12 weeks and cost $750,000, making it the most expensive court case in American history at the time. National Registry of Exonerations. Not surprisingly, a jury in the U.S District Court in San Francisco found her to be guilty, but, and this is surprising, she was only found guilty of one of the eight counts of treason charged. Specifically, she was only convicted for her speaking on air the following, which she denied: “Now you fellows have lost all your ships. You really are orphans of the Pacific. Now how do you think you will ever get home?” Iva Toguri became only the seventh person in U.S. history to be found guilty of treason. She was sentenced to ten years in prison, fined $10,000 and stripped of her citizenship. Treason, then and now, carries a death penalty, so it could have been worse.

Iva Toguri D’Aquino. National Archives photograph.

According to Wikipedia, Iva Toguri D’Aquino’s arrest and prosecution was an unfair exercise in disinformation. This is a very deep rabbit hole, but it looks like Wikipedia is right. See National Archives Records on Toguri, the FBI records, and the more recent Tokyo Rose: The Woman Wrongfully Convicted of Treason (Court House News Service, 2020). Twenty years after the famous trial, two witnesses admitted perjury. Moreover, judicial misconduct is on the record. Defense testimony and argument was unfairly limited and the judge would not accept the juries hung verdict, because of the costs of the trial. Also see the PBS History Channel Investigations show on Tokyo Rose, including a once classified government memorandum located, showing key witness perjury was known and hidden. Also See, Mark Felton’s excellent video, “Tokyo Rose” – WW2 Traitor or Victim?

A sacrificial lamb was needed by the media and government, and they got it, truth be damned. But eventually, the truth came out. Her defense lawyer, Wayne Collins, never gave up. He was a leader in the legal fight against persecution of Japanese Americans, both during and after World War II. Neither did his lawyer son, Wayne Merrill Collins, who continued his father’s crusade for justice after his father’s death in 1974. See the 2020 Court House News Service Article, supra, and Carrying the Torch: Wayne Collins Jr. on His Father’s Defense of the Renunciants (Discover Nikkei, 2014).

Wayne Collins and Iva Toguri at trial in 1949. Japanese American National Museum.

In 1977 justice finally prevailed. Toguri, a/k/a Iva Toguri D’Aquino, was pardoned by President Gerald Ford and her citizenship restored. She lived on until 2006, dying at age 90. Sometimes distrust of the top brass is warranted. It is encouraging to see attorneys’ stubborn perseverance win in the end. Never give up. That is the Hacker Way and the American Way.

Back to the Misinformation Village, a standing joke at this year’s DefCon was, I wanted to go, but it was incorrectly labeled on the map. The maps were complicated and necessary to find smaller venues like the Misinformation Village. It was a small Village and hard to find. Maybe next year it will have more space and easier accessibility. Here is their self-introduction:

The village’s main event is at DEFCON, and features short talks, workshops, and fireside chats. The village covers misinformation tactics, current campaigns, potential methods for defense and inoculation, and discussions of current and future campaigns.
Misinformation Village, Welcome Page

Here is the upbeat intro video that the Village put out. The opening lecture of the Disinformation Village was Teaching Information Warfare: Strategies in Academic and Government Institutions by Greg Carpenter, Ph.D., Chief Security Officer of KnowledgeBridge International. Greg Carpenter is a retired Army Officer with twenty-five years of service, many awards, and is an expert in electronic warfare. Here is selection form the Misinformation Village’s detailed description of Greg’s Session on information warfare:

This presentation provides a concise overview of the teaching strategies employed in academic and government institutions to educate individuals on information warfare. … The multidisciplinary nature of information warfare actively encompasses cybersecurity, psychological operations, Operations Security, electronic warfare, deception techniques, and associated intelligence support.
Misinformation Village Schedule

Next year I will make a point to attend as many of these Misinformation Village presentations as possible. Misinformation is a key problem of our age; it has been forever perhaps, but especially since WWII and the success of the Nazis. I have written about the problem of misinformation in the Twenty-First Century many times. See eg: Information → Knowledge → Wisdom (series of essays). The problem has been greatly exasperated by unregulated AI bots since 2016, but there is still hope that properly aligned and regulated AI may still save the day. See e.g.: Hackers Response to President Biden’s Unprecedented Request to Come to DefCon to Hack the World for Fun and Profit.

Digital image of the hoped for sea change using Dall-E by Ralph.

My hope, my vision of the future, is that AI will help us survive the disinformation tsunami, help us to progress from an Information Age to a Knowledge Age, and maybe someday, to a Wisdom based culture. Also see my series of essays concerning Plato’s Cave allegory as applicable to today’s misinformation culture. This is a cause I will never abandon, no matter what the odds.

Conclusion

Hackers have their origin in WWII techs and engineers like my father. They were the original hackers. It all flows from them, including the first computers. Things like Soldering Skills, Crypto-Privacy, Radio, Recon, and Misinformation were all part of a communications officer’s training. Most of this training was on the job, self-taught, under great pressure, facing life and death challenges. Those in the Pacific knew they were outnumbered and outgunned after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Most of the Tokyo Rose personalities they heard reminded them constantly of their precarious, seemingly hopeless life. They were urged to quit.

In this cauldron of danger the WWII Hacker spirit of self-reliance and determination was born. Hacker techs of every generation never give up. They ignore the propaganda and fight on, fiercely, despite the odds.

No matter how bad it may seem, Hackers never give up. Digital image by Ralph.

Cybersecurity today may seem like a hopeless struggle, a tech system where enemies infiltrate networks daily with surprise Zero Hour attacks. The aggressors always seem to have the upper hand. It may seem like we are drowning in misinformation and social engineering. But still, the cybersecurity experts of DefCon 31 fight on, not only to make a living, but out of personal ideals. They do so in true WWII hacker spirit.

Hackers do not fall for the enemy’s discouraging propaganda, that the battle for secure systems is futile, that misinformation can never be stopped. Truth and justice are not propaganda. They are ideals worth fighting for, worth dying for. The Greatest Generation knows this, including the father son legal team of Wayne Collins Sr. and Jr. They fought on for justice for Tokyo Rose for 28 years until they won. The hackers of DefCon are the same way, they have the self-confidence and the will to carry on. From out of their dangerous digital cauldron amazing things will continue to emerge.

Hacker Cauldron brewing unexpected amazing things. Digital image by Ralph.

The Greatest Generation spirit lives on in DefCon. We will win, probably by a tech breakthrough, possibly AI driven, or maybe some other way. The cyber world will someday be safe again from war and disinformation. After we win, I hope we again show mercy on the defeated and hand out red candy pills, not arsenic. Only the red pills of truth lead us all out of the matrix of lies and despair. 10-4?

Morpheus offering only healthy red pills of truth to the children. AI image by Ralph.

1 Comment | Book, Hacking, informaton, knowledge, Security, wisdom | Permalink
Posted by Ralph Losey

DefCon Chronicles: Quick Glimpse of the Thirty-Two Villages

September 25, 2023

Ralph Losey. Published September 25, 2023.

There were Thirty-Two Villages at DefCon 31, each with their own mission and culture. Cybersecurity hackers from all over the world went in and out of these villages. It was a peaceful, controlled chaos of twenty-four thousand people, young and old, village people and nomads, punk and straight. In this fifth chronicle we provide a quick glimpse of the many Villages of DefCon.

Digital image of DefCon Villages by Ralph.

This is fifth DefCon Chronicle in the Series. Its began with Where Tech Elites, Aliens and Dogs Collide – Series Opener. The second chronicle was Hackers Response to President Biden’s Unprecedented Request to Come to DefCon to Hack the World for Fun and Profit. The third was my Village of special interest, the AI Village, described in Sven Cattell’s AI Village, ‘Hack the Future’ Pentest and His Unique Vision of Deep Learning and Cybersecurity. The fourth was The Hacker Olympics – ‘Capture The Flag’ Games with 1,828 Competing Teams.

Overview of All Thirty-Two Villages

The DefCon Villages include a variety of hacker sub-cultures and education opportunities. There was a Village for everyone. Here is a complete list of all 32 Villages in DefCon 31, including each village’s self-introduction; their words and icons, not my own.

Many Villages of DefCon. Digital image by Ralph.

A.I. Village — DefCon 31 Village Descriptions

Misinformation Village — DefCon 31 Village Descriptions

For a glimpse of the culture of one village, which everyone seemed to like, the Red Team Village, consider its introduction above. It uses words that best describes Hacker culture as I know it. It says the Red Team Village is focused on training the art of critical thinking, collaboration, and strategy in offensive security. That is the Hacker Way: training, critical thinking, collaboration and strategy.

Red Team Icon

Conclusion

We conclude with a video recap by the RedTeam Village. Note the diversity of the Village people and the emphasis on hands-on training and good times. Like many of the Villages of DefCon, RedTeam has their YouTube page. Unfortunately, we missed picking up any of their swag, but they do have a store. As you will see on the video, the Red Team Village had their own, very intense Capture The Flag tournament. They awarded $25,000 worth of prizes to the top three teams. The winning team actually started as a lone hacker on day one, but he was later joined by two others in the second and third day. That is incredible. Reminds me of the CTF tournament scene in the great tv show, Mr. Robot, where Elliot Alderson easily wins the CTF with his next-level skills.

Digital Image by Ralph of a CTF Red Team winner inspired by Mr. Robot.

The big RedTeam CTF contest had many sponsors and was open to anyone without pre-event qualifications. Mr. Robot could have walked in and proven his leet status.

Red Team Village Video

The red Team CTF is unlike the main CTF at DefCon, which took place all year long and had 1,828 teams. It had no cash prizes, just bragging rights, which, frankly, is worth its weight in gold. These are the best cybersecurity experts in the world. DefCon Chronicles: The Hacker Olympics – ‘Capture The Flag’ Games with 1,828 Competing Teams.

Finally, I’d like to point out that many of the Villages had education and places and events for kids too. See this DefCon 31 description.

I’d guess that a slim majority of hackers attending DefCon were parents. Although not that many were like me, and brought a kid along, but some did. In one village a Dad and son were greeters at the door and both seemed to be having a great time. I know that my daughter and I did, although she is no child!

Ralph’s photo of his daughter with cosmic enhancements at DefCon 31.

It takes a village to raise a child. Eventually, if the DefCon hacker villages prevail, and governments continue to help, we will make cyberspace a free and safe place for kids of all ages to play and learn.