DEF CON, which began as a relatively small get-together for members of the IS underground, has grown in recent years to become the world's largest and most publicized annual gathering of the diverse groups that comprise Information Systems Security. But despite . . .
DEF CON, which began as a relatively small get-together for members of the IS underground, has grown in recent years to become the world's largest and most publicized annual gathering of the diverse groups that comprise Information Systems Security. But despite its growth and more-or-less-mainstream success (measured in numbers and news articles), DEF CON is first and foremost for hackers.

The term "hacker" carries a lot of baggage, and, popular belief to the contrary, many people who call themselves hackers don't break into other people's systems. (Okay, maybe occasionally the systems of people they know, but not anybody who'd mind.) Whether one defines hackers as "computer criminals" or as "those who push computers, networks and even society beyond their creators' imagined limits", the term still has connotations of not-quite-strict legality and nonconformance taken to extremes.

So a few years ago DEF CON's creator, the Dark Tangent (aka Jeff Moss), decided it might be useful to precede DEF CON with an event more friendly to corporate and other "button-down" info-sec types. With the help of some corporate sponsorship he created Black Hat Briefings.

The link for this article located at Linux Journal is no longer available.