From: William Knowles (wkC4I.ORG)
Date: Thu Mar 30 2000 - 23:57:41 CST

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http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/tech/2000/mar/30/033000707.html

JERUSALEM (AP) [3.30.2000] -- Hackers from around the world overcame
interrogations, censorship and an all-around bad image to hold
Israel's first hacker convention, wrapping up the two-day conference
Thursday without a glitch.

The 350-strong gathering was the first of its kind since the Yahoo!
and eBay commercial sites were crippled in February, reminding
companies across the globe of the dangers hackers can pose.

At the request of lawmakers, Israeli police had considered banning the
conference, but Attorney General Eliyakim Rubinstein gave the
go-ahead.

One of the original hackers, John Draper of Fremont, Calif., said the
hackers wanted to put a better face on the practice.

"A hacker is a person who is developing programs to make them better,"
Draper told The Associated Press. "They aren't the kind of people who
break into computer systems. That's a cracker."

Draper, known by the handle "Captain Crunch," helped launch the hacker
phenomenon. In 1971, he discovered that a toy whistle from a cereal
box reproduced the tone needed to open a free telephone line.

Aware of his fame, Israeli security agents at the Los Angeles airport
interrogated Draper for an hour, he said, and thoroughly searched his
computer equipment before allowing him on the plane.

"There were many attempts to silence us on this," organizers said in a
summary of the gathering, released on their Web site.

Police prevented the organizers from publishing one of the results of
the conference: a list of vulnerable Israeli commercial Web sites.

To compile the list, participants played "HackTheseSites" with sites
offered up by Israeli companies. The site owners were confident no one
could thwart them, but they were wrong.

When they weren't eating pizza or guzzling soda, the hackers sat bent
over their computer screens. They discovered that 28 percent of the
Israeli net is vulnerable -- about the same proportion as the rest of
the world, according to organizers.

Police were invited to attend the conference and even to speak, but
they turned down the offer, creating the game "Spot the Fed."

Participants were given the challenge of finding plainclothes
policemen among them. If a person pointed out as suspicious was in
fact a security official, the official was to get an "I am the FED"
T-shirt, and the spotter an "I spotted the FED" shirt. But none were
found out.

Israeli lawmaker and former Science Minister Michael Eitan accepted an
invitation to attend. He said that hacker games like those displayed
at the conference were meant more to entertain ambitious youngsters
than cause harm.

"I told them that as long as they all enjoy the freedom of the
Internet and don't abuse this freedom, and make the public support
police intervention, this will work," Eitan said in a telephone
interview.

Participants also got to speak to their guru -- convicted cyberbandit
Kevin Mitnick -- in a conference call. The 36-year-old American
bemoaned the strict probation terms that ban him from using a computer
or any hi-tech device.

Mitnick was released last year after serving five years in jail for
breaking into the computer systems of some of America's biggest
companies, including Motorola Inc., Novell Inc. and Sun Microsystems
Inc.

"He had a lot of sympathy in the room -- we all know not being able to
touch a computer is a worse punishment than even being in jail," said
Neora Shaul, a Tel Aviv computer programmer who helped coordinate the
conference.

--

On the Net: Conference organizers at http://www.neora.com
John Draper's site at http://www.webcrunchers.com
Hackers' site at http://www.y2hack.com

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