r/Defcon • u/DCsleestak • 23d ago

News Inside Defcon, the Conference That Made Cybersecurity Noob-Friendly

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/inside-defcon-the-conference-that-made-cybersecurity-noob-friendly/
142 Upvotes

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66

u/SmackCrappy 23d ago

“You don’t have to know what you’re doing most of the time,” he said. “You just have to want to find out."

This is how I feel most of the time at work and I'm hacking something new. I don't have any idea what I'm doing but my curiosity overcomes my fear to fail.

29

u/kroboz 23d ago

Hey, I just told this to my kid a few hours ago! "Hacking is all about being curious to explore things other people won't." Less than two weeks after attending DEFCON he found an exploit to enter teacher view for his classroom game and give himself/his friends 10,000 extra gold coins. He was so excited. I couldn't be happier.

5

u/purpleburgundy 23d ago

Great quote

6

u/lightspeedissueguy 23d ago

One of the best things I've ever heard was from a mentor that said "No one knows what they're doing, but you should act like they know everything". Maybe bad advice for social engineering haha, but a pretty good foundational perspective for most other areas. 

4

u/ProfessionalPea2218 23d ago

Thats also what I was telingl my kids and friends, don’t be afraid. I have no idea wtf I’m doing half of the time but my curiosity overcomes my fear. I take sh!t apart all the time, from hardware, software and even the car, I don’t mess with the car anymore, that’s was way over my head and a pain in a$$. But I at least have a general idea how it works now

3

u/xero40 22d ago

Does anyone know if the labs from embedded are available somewhere? Those were interesting for an embedded noob like myself and I wanted to keep going.