Inspired by the work of Richard Thieme, and in light of the Anonymous/LulzSec activity, coupled with the Protection of State Information Bill our government is attempting to push through and numerous corruption scandals, I've been doing much thinking on the role of hacktavism in a democracy.

To be clear, hacktavism, as I see it, would be the use of illegal hacking (penetrating computer or other systems) to bring to light crimes by either the government or private entities. I'm not claiming that to be the sole definition, just the one I'd like to discuss. In this piece, I'd like to speak about the pre-conditions necessary for such vigilantism, the risks associated with it, and some approaches that could be used.

To be clear, I have neither engaged in hactavism, nor do I speak for any group, or control any group. These are my opinions, and, as with most things in life, people tend to do what they like, whether I feel strongly about it or not :)

TBOY - The Best One Yet

ZaCon III has come and gone this last weekend. It was a blast, solid content including some exciting first timers and more than doubling the original research output, an extension to include a Fri night, and the first time we ran with volunteers. The fact that the con seems to be getting better each year is important for me.

"It looks a bit eclectic"

Friday night kicked off around 7 at an uber-chilled venue, described by Roelof as "what I always imagined ZaCon should be" which was pretty great. Despite a projector failure, and nowhere to put the backup one, Roelof and Marco both presented some really entertaining talks. It was a nice mix of entertaining (and freaky) OSint followed by some hardcore vuln research. The time on either side to meet and talk to people was fun as a change to the usual brain-bending long day that is ZaCon.