Being white hat is a very different thing to being aligned with the government. Especially with all the secret spying they do which many white hats don't agree with because most of them are also strong privacy advocates. The whole white hat hacker community was very upset about the Snowden revelations. And I don't think that lost trust every returned.

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tptacek 8 hours ago | parent [-]

It is absolutely not the case that "the whole white hat hacker community was very upset about the Snowden revelations", but Moss himself was upset as well, so I don't know what that has to do with anything.

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wkat4242 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It was here in Europe. At the OHM2013 event there were some government contractors (Fox-IT in particular) and the atmosphere was very grim apparently. Tents got damaged and they had to pull out.

Fox-IT was founded by a former AIVD employee which is the Dutch NSA basically.

I remember a friend sending me a job ad from some new cyber team in the military. And I really had to laugh, no way would I ever work somewhere where I'd have to mindlessly obey orders I might disagree with. Or wear a uniform. Or go like "yes sir" to someone who is probably dumber than me.

And really pretty much everyone in the hacker community has an anarchist streak like that. You can tell by the way people behave, how they structure things without strong leaders etc. Everyone just helps at these events where they want, nobody tells them to do anything. This is also why I love these events. No wonder the army can't fill those teams lol. If they want people like us they have to adapt to us.

But I understand in the US this may be different because patriotism seems to be big there.

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tptacek 7 hours ago | parent [-]

The UK white hat scene is full of GCHQ people!

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wkat4242 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Really? Even at events like EMF? I'd be really surprised.

But yeah my view of the hacker scene is very much tailored by these events. I wouldn't even go to something like Black Hat - way too corporate. Even though I work in "cyber" myself.

	▲	tptacek 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I spoke at the 2nd Black Hat and was rewarded with a spot on Jeff Moss's hotel room couch because he forgot to obtain a hotel room for me; the firm I cofounded in 2005 (Matasano Security) was acquired by NCC Group, the largest "white hat" firm in the UK. I'd just say: "white hat" is a much more diverse community than most HN commenters intuitions about security people would indicate. There were a lot of white hat people that were made during Snowden --- at Snowden. Glem Greenwald didn't help matters much. (Obviously also a lot of white hat people pissed for the opposite reason! I'm only saying it's a diverse group.)