
DEF CON and Stack Overflow: What Our Traffic Says About Cybersecurity - susam
https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/08/08/def-con-stack-overflow-traffic-data-trends/?cb=1
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albertzeyer
> DEF CON 27, arguably the world’s best known hacker convention.

I would say that the CCC hacker conventions (esp the CCC congress always in
December) are somewhat more famous (but that probably depends on cultural
background), of a similar size, and "better" (depending on what aspects you
want to compare it). But it's not really a competition anyway.

Related to that, there is the CCC camp 2019
([https://events.ccc.de/camp/2019/](https://events.ccc.de/camp/2019/)) (in
Berlin) starting very soon. Probably there will be live streams. And btw, a
while ago, you could buy a combi-ticket for both DEFCON and CCC camp,
including the flight ticket, for either 1337$ or 1337€.

If you have never been to such an event, I can really recommend to go to it.
Actually I can only speak for the CCC and the Dutch events; I heard that the
community and mood is much more friendly and open on CCC-like events, compared
to DEFCON, and also the focus is much more widespread, e.g. it's also kind of
an art event, similar to Burning Man.

That trends shown in the traffic graphics are really interesting. It seems
JavaScript are less interesting to hackers, and Python is more. What hackers
are using today is often what the remaining technical world will use tomorrow.
In a similar way, I observed that around 10 years ago, Apple hardware became
very dominant on such hacker events (I feel like maybe 80% of the computers
(of course I don't have exact numbers on that)). But in the recent years, that
totally vanished. It's very clearly the minority now. Apple does not produce
the preferred hardware for hackers anymore.

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strictnein
Disagree with your assessment that CCC is more well known than DEFCON. Maybe
in Europe that's the case? DEFCON has 2x the attendees. This would be tough to
fully figure out who's right, but just doesn't seem to be the case, imo.

Also, there's a lot more going on at DEFCON than just hacking. There's art,
music, gatherings of all types, etc.

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albertzeyer
Hm, maybe in USA DEFCON is more well known. I was aware while writing this
that this is probably debatable (but I was disagreeing with the assessment
that DEFCON is clearly the best known, as said in the article). (Also, I'm
clearly seeing now that it is indeed very debatable, as the votes for this
comment go up and down all the time.)

W.r.t. attendees, I am not sure. CCC has multiple events per year, and is also
a club with many members. The biggest of their events it the CCC congress
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Communication_Congress](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Communication_Congress))
which has attendees in a similar order, maybe slightly less, but that is only
one of multiple events.

I have heard from people attending both events (DEFCON and CCC) that CCC is
much more diverse in topics and what's happening at the events.

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luckylion
> I have heard from people attending both events (DEFCON and CCC) that CCC is
> much more diverse in topics and what's happening at the events.

Yeah, I think the CCC events, at least recently, got very far into the
mainstream and politics and strayed quite a bit from their roots, adding more
and more that seemed intent of encouraging newcomers vs being interesting for
those that have been involved longer. That's a valid direction, of course, but
it feels less like a hacker convention and more like a general mainstream
somewhat-tech-related convention, like re:publica with a few tech talks thrown
in and set in december.

~~~
albertzeyer
I was at the last CCC congress, and actually this was also debated there (i.e.
what topics the CCC should cover, and how/whether that has changed). Actually
some people said that it has become too diverse now. Some also claimed that it
has become too political, but if you look back to the roots, it actually was
always political. In any case, I think you cannot say that technical topics
became too short. It just became bigger, and there is more of everything.

~~~
luckylion
For me personally, the technical parts just fell off. Where defcon has the
really interesting stuff, CCC has talks how you can send SMS with an RPI, an
USB dongle and ready made software that are okay for a beginner's tutorial but
that I find lacking for this kind of event. I've watched maybe a hand full of
talks from the last CCC, but I always find myself running out of time instead
of talks when I look at defcon (they've massively increased the amount of
talks with the different villages lately), and the quality is much higher.

Back in the days, politics came into play where technology meets the real
world and politics are involved, now it felt more like a party's youth
organization's online-convention. But I gather that's what the majority of CCC
members want, and it's fine by me, there's obviously a demand for that kind of
event, they are quickly outgrowing their locations, it's just no longer
anything I really care for.

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raesene2
Shame they didn’t include traffic to security.stackexchange.com . I would have
thought that would show a more noticeable change. Also would be interesting to
see what tags there show the biggest increases

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logronoide
I would like to see that traffic series from Las Vegas starting in July when
the Microsoft Ready & Inspire happens just to compare...

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jedberg
Like the author I too am shocked at how few people were using VPNs.

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ShakataGaNai
I think the author is making a big ASSumption here. Why is it that an IP that
geolocates to Las Vegas isn't using a VPN? Would you say the same about San
Francisco or LA? Of course not. There are VPN end points in Las Vegas.

I'm writing this from Defcon, over a VPN, to an endpoint in Las Vegas. All the
benefits of a VPN without a huge latency penalty.

~~~
alasdair_
>I think the author is making a big ASSumption here. Why is it that an IP that
geolocates to Las Vegas isn't using a VPN?

Good point. I'm typing this while at DEFCON and my VPN provider (Private
Internet Access) defaulted to the Las Vegas endpoint.

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jcims
That's a bold strategy cotton...I think I would have waited till _after_ DEF
CON to run this article haha.

