Here's what you can buy at the world's biggest hacker conference
Welcome to Def Con 24, the annual hacker conference that brings security pros, hackers, and federal agents all under one roof.
This year's conference was its biggest yet, with more than 22,000 in attendance.
Since there is no pre-registration and almost everything is handled in cash, the organizers eventually ran out of the super-cool badges they give to attendees. Luckily, I got mine.
The vendor village this year featured everyone from t-shirt vendors to shops selling tools to make hacking easier. It's important to note that, while a lot of this stuff can be used for nefarious purposes, it's often used by white hat hackers to protect systems from the bad guys.
At this table, they're selling key loggers that secretly record every single keystroke entered into a computer. Penetration testing firms use these and other tools to test companies on their security so they won't get hacked in the future.
Another company called Hak5 sells plenty of penetration testing gear, like the WiFi Pineapple — a wireless router that can intercept all traffic passing through it, should a victim connect to it.
Hak5 also has this USB Rubber Ducky, which looks just like a regular thumb drive. Once plugged into a computer, it automatically loads whatever is on it, and it usually won't be picked up by antivirus protection.
One vendor was selling computers new and old.
And very, very old. This bad boy from Nuclear Data, Inc. was later sold to someone at the con. Computers from this company were mainly used by power plants and research labs to measure radioactivity.
Source: Chicago Tribune
There were also server racks on sale ...
... which included this one. Google, did you misplace a server? Actually, this looks like a Google Search Appliance. Companies bought these things and plugged them into their local networks to let employees search internal resources just like they'd search the web. Google finally phased it out earlier this year.
There were also medical devices for sale. With plenty of old devices in use that usually offer little security, hospitals are wide open to cyberattacks, according to a recent report.
Source: Tech Insider
This sign offered up touch screen kiosks that a hacker could hook up to a Raspberry Pi, a cheap mini-computer. Something like a fake touch screen signup for a hotel rewards program could be thrown together, for instance.
It wouldn't be a hacker event without t-shirts.
And more t-shirts.
Not surprisingly, this parody of the Pokémon Go logo was a big hit. "Gotta hack 'em all," or, as attendees of Def Con say, "drink all the booze, hack all the things."
Here are a few more.
There were also lots of books and manuals on sale, for those who want to learn more in the computer security field.
Books ranged in topics from advanced hacking tools and methods to expert advice on "social engineering," a skill used to get people to give up information like passwords or personal details. It's also referred to as "human hacking."
The non-profit TOOOL, or The Open Organization of Lockpickers, was on hand selling lock pick sets, in addition to teaching the basic skills. Hacking computers is all about finding weaknesses and exploiting them, and that is the basis of lock-picking, albeit in a physical object.
And of course, some vendors were just there to spread their message or get support from the community. The table from Human Rights Watch was asking hackers to donate USB flash drives that they can wipe and then later smuggle into North Korea.
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