DEFCON III flashback: why hacking sucks

My session at DEFCON III back in 1995 has lived on as an audio recording (.m4b). Just scroll down this page: DEFCON III Archive. The title was intentionally provocative:

The Party's Over: Why Hacking Sucks

The idea was to generate dialogue about the ethics of hacking, and I think I succeeded. In fact, the audio captures that quite well.

(Bear in mind that this was 1995 and I've been to events in 2019 where organizers seemed incapable of capturing audio this well.

As someone who had been working on the computer security problem since the 1980s, I have to say I learned a lot from this session and really appreciated everyone's input.

I was invited back the next year and I will post a link to that DEFCON IV session when I find it again. My topic was how to go from hacker to infosec professional, but like many early DEFCON talks it went in several other directions as well (steam trains?).

Here is a link to initiate the audio file download for the DEFCON III talk, and yes, it is safe to do so. The audio is about 49 minutes long and while the sound starts out rough, it gets better quickly. The file is 18.2MB and the filename is: DEF CON 3 Hacking Conference Presentation By Stephen Cobb - Why Hacking Sucks - Audio.m4b