Pleasing the crowd at the Black Hat and Def Con computer security conferences that took place in Las Vegas last week is relatively easy: simply hop on stage and confidently show how to compromise, or "pwn," a system that no one has hacked into before (see "Mobile Payment Chips Could Let Hackers into Your Phone").
Notoriety, cash, and multiple offers of work can be the rewards for those who demonstrate truly novel attacks. But some speakers at this year's events say that the obsession with breaking into systems has gone too far, and are calling for their community to show more interest in advancing defense techniques, which don't have such cachet.

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