 Welcome to the annual DEF CON Convention. This meeting was held in exciting Las Vegas, Nevada from July 9th through the 11th, 1999. This is video tape number 20. Hackers and the media, a love-hate thing. My name is Michael Martinez. I am a technology reporter for ABCNews.com. That's the online version of the news network. Yes, mainstream media has found you guys, and we're not going to let go at this point. For the past year and a half, I've had the distinct pleasure of covering the hacker community. It's not to say that it's always been a laugh, but I've learned more as I've done the beat, and it's been a lot of fun. And I'm here, mostly out of enlightened self-interest, to talk a little bit about who we are, what we do, and to try to give you guys some hints for when the next Clueless reporter comes up and says, hey man, what's it like to be a hacker? You may not have read all my stories on ABCNews.com, mostly because they're not written for you guys. I hate saying that, but when I write, it is for average folks. I'm trying to explain this stuff basically to your mom and your grandma. And sometimes it's a little hard, and definitely sometimes things get lost in translation. I had a PowerPoint presentation, but I think the Cult of the Dead cow set up a lot of stuff, so I don't want to mess with it too much. Apparently it's going to be a heck of a show. I feel like the opening act. Covering an underground community, such as you guys, is tough. It is tough to find you out there, unless you're at a conference like this. It's tough to know who is a credible hacker, who is somebody who just hangs out in IRC with a funky name. So there are ways we can help each other. One of the biggest complaints I get is that we don't get anything right. One of the biggest complaints I have is, well, where do I find the information? So I want to start with a story. Last month in the wake of that Explorer zip worm, which was a lot of fun, I got an email from a reader. I get a lot of reader email. I like having that conversation with the reader, because you don't get that in newspapers or television or anything else. The readers can tell you exactly what they want, you know, exactly what they think of you. Sometimes that's good, sometimes not. But this one was interesting. He wrote after the worm story, how is it that your reporters don't get it? Isn't it obvious that this virus writer is punishing users of Microsoft software? Probably because he hates Microsoft. The only thing I can say about people who report on viruses is, duh, followed by a lot of h's. The reader might be right. I don't know why the person who wrote Explorer zip wrote that virus. And to expect that I would is kind of difficult. If the virus writer would love to come forward, I'd love to get him for an interview. We don't know why. And that's one of the things that I think sometimes when dealing with you folks doesn't get understood. We have rules. There's stuff that we have to do. We have to get the other side of the story. When something like a back orifice comes out, we have to talk to people who are going to get affected by it and who are going to get royally screwed. That's going to make you guys look a little bad, especially when you get out there and use it. So anyway, next time you guys deal with us, we'll give you a little information here. So that would be a little less painful. So who covers hacking? For the longest time you had folks in the tech press. You had CNET, ZDNet, Wired, TechWeb. Obviously, your own publications like 2600, Hacker News Network, and Attrition. I've been skewered by HNN and Attrition in the past. It keeps me honest. And recently, I would say probably in the last two years, you've had mainstream press. You're talking about me, abcnews.com. You're talking about some of the folks that I've met here at this conference. And you'd be surprised. 60 Minutes is here. The Wall Street Journal. New York Times Magazine. Millions and millions of people are going to be hearing about you. Sometimes some of them for the first time. But the scary thing is we're not going to go away. Now that everybody is getting more wired into the internet and to everything else, mainstream reporters are going to get into it and are going to notice the next time a mill site goes down. They're going to notice the next time the Keyblur Alps pull something. Got some elves here today? And the scary thing is that these mainstream reporters are not tech press. A little bit of my background, I've only been covering technology for a year and a half. Before that, I was covering politics for the Associated Press in Albany, New York. I figured if I can handle New York politics, this is not too bad. If I can handle Al DiMato on a bad day. So they're generalists. And the knowledge of technology is scattershot. You're going to get reporters who are very, very knowledgeable. I know some of my colleagues here are extremely knowledgeable. You're going to get reporters who the only reason they're a tech writer at their particular publication or television station is because they can surf the web really, really well. That's it. And then there are the preconceptions. Especially for reporters tackling this for the first time, their perception of a hacker is war games. Maybe the Matrix. I actually saw that last night in the hotel. And with those preconceptions in mind, they may not even realize that they can contact a hacking group. They might not realize that there is a Cult of the Dead Cow website with a press at cultdeadcow.com. And the initial reporting is going to be very, very one-sided. The resources aren't out there. Where do I find some hackers? I remember the first time I had to cover a story like that. I went to the web and I actually printed out some search engine results, which will probably surprise you. Probably shock you. So while some of them did say sex, absolutely. Probably some hacker who really just wanted to have a really good sexy image. I don't know. Some of the hacking sites on Yahoo, for example, that have come up with a search. What's that? A hacker. Pretty simple. You get the Hacker's Defense Fund. You get some Kevin Mitnick sites. You get the Happy Hacker. You get Antony Online. Actually, in this one, you don't get attrition.org. You don't get Hacker News Network. You don't get Cult of the Dead Cow. You don't get the loft. You don't get these things. And for a reporter who's doing this for the first time, where are you going to go? Antony Online, an archive of hacking-related materials, everything from file archives to its very own zine. Well, that sounds good. I'm not going to comment on what that site has been up to lately. But I know that it's kind of waned in popularity, as seen by this little wanted poster here. So, obviously finding you guys is tough. Then the next problem is how do I confirm who they are? And how good they are. Say I'm a reporter who actually knows about IRC, and I go to Pound Hack Freak or Pound Hack or something. And I get somebody who uses a lot of threes when he spells. And I think, ooh, that's kind of funky. Maybe he's a hacker. Maybe he's a script kitty who has maybe two wares on his hard drive. I don't know. How do I confirm you guys? How do I know who you are? And what your skill level is and whether or not you guys are a credible source for the story I'm working on. And then finally, where do I go to get a counterpoint to balance whatever hacking comment I get? And again, that's just as hit and miss. Obviously, if I'm covering a story on a site that's been hacked, I'm going to go to the person whose site was hacked. And I'm going to say, how did it feel? And they're going to say it sucked. What did you do wrong? I don't know. We're still working on it. The counterpoint will be there. That's not the hard part. It's just getting your guys, your viewpoints, your ethics, your idea of what happened and why into the stories. So say I actually find that. Say I actually have my facts straight. Say I didn't go to anti-online or anything else like that. There's still a lot of room for error. Something called the editing process, which I hate. In print, the story goes from the reporter who did all the fact gathering and the writing to the editor. The editor changes things. It goes from the editor back to the reporter, then back to the editor a couple of times, depending on how good the reporter was the first time. And then it goes to the fact checker. Then it goes to the copy editor. Then it goes to the layout editor. And at each stage, this story has changed. And it's kind of like that game of telephone when you were a kid and you pass a phrase around whispering in your ear. By the end, and I've seen it happen, you're going to get something that can look really different from what you intended. And in broadcast, of course, there's all that, plus then you add video, graphics, sound mixing, additional writing for the stand-up, additional writing for the anchor. You can see why this may be just a little difficult to get the facts straight sometimes. So why are we covering hacking? Why do we do all this stuff to make money? That's a very good answer. Hacking is, to reporters and to the public, it is a cool topic. It is sexy. It will sell papers. You didn't think of yourselves as sexy, did you? It's true. Well, yes, you are, sir. It all is almost guaranteed readership. I look at the site stats for my stories and whenever I hit something on hacking, you know, I get 50% more hits on these stories just because people are like, ooh, it's dangerous. It's my computer in trouble. The next time I play Quake, am I going to have an erased hard drive? Who knows? Plus, you have people calling themselves hackers. Whether or not you guys consider them hackers, they're going in, they're defacing websites. They're calling themselves hackers. They're calling what they do hacks. And we've got to cover it when you hit a big site. When you hit the New York Times, you know, jeez, I've got to call those folks up because that's huge. When you hit government sites, when you hit senate.gov, well, I mean, I've got to stand up and do a story. So, that of course leads to certain preconceptions of what you guys think of us. What do you guys think of the media? When you read stories. Oh, jeez. Well, all right, let me rephrase that. Because he really, he doesn't hack a lot. Well, not on computers. More of a slash or an ill. What do you guys think of reporting that is done on hackers? What are the big problems there? Isn't ABC the one owned by Disney? Yes. We are all going to answer it to the mouse. Yes. I will let you know that in my case and of course in, for example, other news sites owned by large companies like MSNBC. They are, we are editorially independent. I have never, ever gotten a call from anybody other than an editor saying this is not a good story or this is a good story or you need to do this or you don't need to do this. There is no one out there telling us what to cover, how to cover it. If there was, I would walk. Because I'm not doing this for the money. That's for sure. I think graduate seminars and adjourn was important. He often talked about it. It's just enough to be owned by these big guys to influence people. Do I spin the story this way? If anything else. If anything else, at least from the reporters I've talked to, for example MSNBC, I have found their coverage of Microsoft anti-trust trial excellent. And I think when you're dealing with that, I wrote a review of the Go Network for example. The new little portal, family friendly Disney portal. And in the review it kind of slammed it. I thought when you have Yahoo and AOL and everybody else in that market is not worth it. If anything, I find that reporters actually go after stuff more because it's the parent company. Because in a way we're a little like you guys in that we really like to tweak people. And if I could twist and tails at Disney, no pun there. If I can go and be brutally honest about these things, I will. What else do you think? Think about recent stories about hacking. What was your reaction? You could change something about the way you reported like GH, that whole take down stuff. What would you do different about the way you reported that? What would I do different about GH? It's tough. I know you guys for example are really big on First Amendment rights. Freedom of speech, information must be free that whole nine yards. So why are you hacking somebody's freedom of speech? Because they're stupid. That's your opinion, sir. Just because they're stupid doesn't mean they don't have the right to do stuff. You're faced with that quandary. And when I report on your hack, I know what you're trying to say. I'm not stupid. I've been following this for a while. I know you did it for a reason. And in my story, I'm going to say that reason. But when you put it up against someone's basic right to say what they want and any website on any publication anywhere, it's not going to look good. There are a couple things. Actually, this goes ahead in my speech, but I'm just winging this here. There are a couple things that are going to get you bad press, no matter what you do. For example, hacking a site. You've taken off somebody's site. You're causing them loss of their right to free speech. You're causing them loss of revenue in some cases. You're interfering with their business. And unless you can go ahead and show, for example, give a better reason besides they're stupid, that's not going to fly with a lot of mainstream folks. That's not going to fly with your mom. You're going to lack upside the head. Politically motivated hacks. It's a very good question. Is hacktivism a form of social expression? It's a good question. I would report it as such. Absolutely. If that's the reason and you're hacking in the name of the Chiapas or anything else, then yeah, I would definitely report it that way. On the other hand, I do have a responsibility to get the other side of the story. I do have to go to whoever you hacked. And I have to let them say, this really sucked. We weren't, you know, especially on a hack, for instance, like say you go in and hack my site to complain about something completely unrelated to it. And don't try that, please. You know, when you go in and do that, you hacked me. And I'm like, I didn't do this. I didn't oppress Mexicans. I didn't do any of that stuff. And that's fine. I mean, you know, if you are going to do this, and I don't condone it in any way, shape or form, you know, personally, and it's certainly not the views of ABC slash Disney. You know, I would say pick your target. If you're going to hacktivism and go in and get somebody for that reason, you know, choose your targets. I think it involves the fact that you don't really report it because you start getting commentary. Isn't your job really just to report? My job is just to report. If any reporter comes up and tells you that their reporting is 100% unbiased, you may feel free to kick them. Actually, I can't advocate violence either. That's bad. Don't kick them. But you feel free to tell them off that's your first amendment, right? Anybody, you know, I can't go to a story and say I'm completely unbiased. I may not care. My job is to report to news, and I'm going to do that the best way possible. I'm going to go and say, you know, this is one side of the story. This is the other side. This is the other side. But who's going to chose the sides of the story? You know, I'm doing that based on my own experience, based on what I think is good. That's a bias right there. So what you may perceive as a bias in a large bit of mainstream media can equal out to, as I was saying earlier, ignorance. We don't know where to go. So we go to the best place we can under the deadlines that we can. Or just the fact that I think person A is a better source than person B. That may create a bias right there. Once you start talking down this road, it's a slippery slope because there is no such thing as a completely 100% of bias story. That's my own personal opinion. And, well, you know, there you go. The side to go to the corporate side, they all have public relations representing them, and we're just, you know, bunch of people who speak for ourselves. That's right. And that comes to an interesting thing which you may want to consider. And again, I'm not in the business of recommending what you guys do. But there could definitely be a better clearinghouse, a better way of contacting you, a better way of finding you, a better way of someone saying, this is a credible source, this is not. And some of those things exist, but they don't exactly advertise. Not like the person who's hacked, who is part of Mega Corporation A and who has 200 PR flunkies. And of course, then again, we also have, and I lost my track place here, we also have our own misconceptions and biases about hackers. It happens. They're hard to find. We can't confirm those credible sources. When we deal with them, they give us attitude like you wouldn't believe. And sometimes, you know, we're very independent. We're very independent-minded. We don't even like our own editors. And when some 15-year-old decides to flame us, I'm not happy about that, man. Oh, no, I don't feel singled out at all. I know that for every five flames I get, the other guy's getting at least that many. A lot of the times, you folks, when I'm talking with you, we'll assume that I have as much knowledge as you do. I'm not a hacker. I don't know how to get into a TCP IP stack. I'm not even sure if I'm saying that right. Once a story is written, you guys, if you don't like it, will flame me back to the Stone Age. I will get emails sometimes that are longer than the original story. And I'm a little less inclined to read them, because I'm like, why are you doing this to me? You know, I like the give and take between me and my readers. I really do. I think they bring up good points. I think they give valid criticism. And if I drop the ball, I will tell them, because it's not like I don't make mistakes. I just try to make them twice. But when I get an email that basically says, you know, you suck. I'm not interested in learning more about that person. Now, with hackers, I actually have responded occasionally to the you sucks if there is a little bit of truth that I perceive that this person may know something about the subject. And that is how I have built relationships with many of the people at this conference by responding back and saying, you know, let's talk about this further, because you may know your stuff. And then in the future, I've built, you know, I build up a relationship and can go to them as credible sources after I've talked with them repeatedly, learned who they are, et cetera. I actually have a couple of tips for you. How to get the story straight when dealing with mainstream media. Somebody from some, you know, daily newspaper in Virginia gives you a call or, you know, sends you an email. You, for whatever reason, have been targeted as a hacker. And the media wants to pick your brain. So what can you do? I think the first thing you can do is stress that not all of you go around defacing webpages. That is not like your primary concern as a hacker. If it is, say so. Be prepared for the rest of your friends and neighbors to take down your server. Reference the report to reputable information sources online and off. You know, somebody goes and says, I've been talking with so and so about hacking and I want to get your opinion. And if you believe that the person they've been talking with has no clue, you need to tell them. You need to say, this is not a credible source. This person doesn't know about hacking. They couldn't hack their way out of a paper bag. Don't do it. Go to someone else that you feel is very credible. Point the reporter in the right direction. On the other hand, don't give out email or phone numbers to people who may not want that information spread around the media. But if you know of people who are credible, who are smart, who know about hacking and would be willing to talk to reporters, you need to reference them to us. It just helps immensely, helps get the story straight and that helps both of us. Discuss a little bit why you guys hack. Why you do what you do. I think it's an interesting perspective that doesn't get talked about a lot. We have, again, our own preconceptions of the 16-year-old wearing black t-shirts in a darkened room when the sun is out and all they're doing is playing on a computer for 24 hours straight. That actually may be some of you. I don't know. I do see some black t-shirts here and they look wonderful. It could be white. Yours is a very nice one, too. But the thing of it is obviously we have that preconceived notion and by talking about who you are and what you do, if you can help break that, you'll help the reporter give a fuller story and a better story. Tell them what you're proudest of as long as it's legal. That does bring up another point, which is don't do anything that's going to get you busted, okay? I have seen stories that a reporter says, hey, I hooked up with these guys and I went on IRC with them while they were hacking and it was so cool and this is what they did and then you can bet that within 48 hours of that story being published, the FBI called that reporter and said, we need to know everything and no matter what a reporter tells you, when you're dealing with something that could perceive to be illegal, they have to. The protection of anonymity and the protections that we can afford you only apply to our stories. When you all do something wrong and the reporter knocks on my door and says, we need to know about it and if they're the police, I have to tell them. There's no legal reason why I can't. The protection of sources only goes so far. So don't do anything that gets you busted. It's common sense. You were here yesterday when Kevin Poulsen and Jennifer Granick were talking about your rights. The same thing goes with us. You can give as much proof of your identity as you feel comfortable with but if you feel that I would endanger you in other ways, don't tell us anything that you perhaps don't try to exaggerate your knowledge. I have talked to people who are a little more, now that I know, they are a little more than script kiddies at the time, they came off to me as hackers and I was dumb and didn't know any better. And that not only hurts my readers because I am trying to provide them the best information possible, but if you fake your knowledge and you give incorrect information to a reporter and that gets into print, that gets trashed and your colleagues are going to find out and they are going to kill you at least metaphorically. Don't give the reporter wares. Don't give them tools. Don't give them URLs. Don't give them email addresses that you wouldn't publish. When giving feedback, give feedback. Give lots of feedback. Make it smart. Feedback. Don't write 2,000 words. I am not going to read it. I am not going to read some diatribe. But if you have something smart to say, say it professionally and move on. What can the community as a whole do to get better press? Again, some sort of clearinghouse would be nice. Some sort of way to let us know who is good and who is not. Conventions like this are great for that. Do a better job of explaining the why. We know the how you do these things. We know the where, the when. But the why is the stickiest thing that we have trouble with and you'll probably agree that that's where the preconceptions come from. The next time a reporter says why did you release back horror of this to 15,000 people? You should have an answer for it and hopefully be a really good one. That is one of the areas where you will still get bad press. I understand creating an exploit to show that there is a security problem. That's admirable, in my opinion. To put it out there for other people to see, that's great. Microsoft will hear about it. I've already heard about back over 2,000 and they are, I'm sure somebody is here from them. I don't see them. You from Microsoft, sir? No, but I like it in the deep. Well then you need to get out more, man. They're here and I can understand that and I can understand why you've done it but when you make it open source and you put it out to everybody in the audience the perception is that it just looks mean. Isn't it better to release buggy operating systems? Well, very well. I need you to get some flaws from that. I'm not going to debate whether or not it is morally acceptable to put out a buggy operating system. I have my own personal opinions and in the interest of continuing a hopefully unbiased reporting tradition I'm going to stay that way and I'm not going to comment on it. It is. If you can point out flaws and security of people, I think it's an admirable thing and you're helping people but then distributing to someone if I gave a gun to everybody in this room I'm taking a chance to that and I don't... You were at the shoot this morning, weren't you? I am taking a chance that one of you is going to get ripped enough to use that gun on somebody else. I am putting a weapon of destruction in your hands and I'm just going to cross my fingers that it doesn't get used in a bad way and cost people their rights to free speech, their right to commerce that sort of thing, their life in the case of the gun. I was more addressing the wares but those are very sticky issues and sometimes when I talk to hackers I don't think that whole thing has been thought through unless I get, well Microsoft shouldn't put out buggy software and then I can obviously go to somebody using the buggy software and saying, I bought it in good faith why do these people hate me? I just want to run my website just in a brief conclusion that I do want to answer all your questions we can work together you guys complain that we don't get it we complain that you don't let us because we don't know enough about you we don't know where to find you half the time especially if we're starting out on the beat for the first time like I did just by opening things up a little more being forthright being honest being smart about things we can get better stories you guys can look better in those stories and we can get something approaching the truth I don't know what that might be but we can get pretty close it's just a question of being honest with us and we will do our best to be honest with you guys alright questions and this man has held his arm up for like five minutes now typically just respond to stories that happen actually occur or you do investigate them all right now speaking for myself, I do investigate on my own I have to be fairly comfortable with that beat to be doing it I did do a story back in February that had nothing to do with a hack but had very much to do with hacker culture whatever you'd like to turn that as and a lot of the stories that I'm going to produce out of here I am writing about DEF CON it's up on the site now www.abcnews.com give me hits it is about the culture here we do respond and we have to respond to a lot of hacks but hopefully that gives us enough information to help us dig deeper do you typically focus on individual or domestic group hacks or do you also do like company espionage as far as the malicious hack it is fairly common knowledge that most of them do come from the inside of companies and we've reported that you know whenever there is a computer security issue that is big enough to warrant www.abcnews.com doing it to warrant the mainstream press doing it then fine if somebody's little site gets hacked I mean I'm sorry I've got a lot to do that's the other thing about reporters covering this beat we don't do it full time I've got a microsoft antitrust trial I've got to deal with I've got, I've got microsoft to deal with there's a lot of stuff I do as a technology reporter this is a small part of it and you're going to find reporters very busy on it okay yeah you're putting me in a hellish position there it gets into all sorts of legal ethical moral issues if somebody says so and so site is going to be hacked on July 12th what do I do that hasn't happened to me yet thank god I don't want it to happen to me if you know something that's going to happen don't tell me because I don't know how I would have to react my responsibility as a citizen and I'm sure our folks from the feds and law enforcement would agree with me my responsibility as a citizen may override my professional and corporate interest in putting out a story I mean we're in it to make money we're in it to gain readers and make money you know if you tell me about something I may very well have to go and tell somebody otherwise you know I could get into trouble and I don't want that over here a lot of the people that are here for the show make a semantic distinction between the term cracker or copper crackers crackers, cracker, script kiddies, yes but in the mainstream media we don't see a whole lot of business distinction if you don't talk about being a bad guy why is that? that's because in a lot of ways what you guys use internally as a community to describe your various levels of niceness if you will sometimes do not apply to the rest of the world especially when your own people who are doing malicious stuff are still calling themselves hackers you know I cracked open a website I'm a hacker I downloaded the wares and I used it and I feel very good about myself I'm a hacker when we see that confusion within your ranks it's simplicity's sake that we go with hacker I try to use it as much as possible I say malicious hacker known in the community as cracker in my stories and that takes up a lot of space and it's likely to cut it you know it's been called hacking ever since war games it's part of the larger culture and that's why is it factually incorrect for you guys that is a factually mistake and I've gotten flamed on hacker vs cracker ad nauseam why aren't you as a conduit to the general public to play and send the record and we do and a lot of the more recent stories that I've published and again I'm speaking for myself at this point I cannot speak for the rest of the press you know we put in this distinction I took the definitions right out of Eric Raymond's cracker jargon file and that is a great resource by the way to point a reporter to you put the distinction up and you use it but you know you've got me but you've got every other place to convince you've got my own editors to convince making a semantic change like that in not only language but culture is a huge effort and you just got to continue to send those mails continue to say it's cracker damn it not hacker and maybe the change will happen but I'll tell you right now it's not going to happen overnight it's too ingrained in the larger culture which hacker gives a lot of media it certainly does those who are hacking the web pages they're doing it so they can be a media force and do you feel like do you feel that you're getting into what they want to happen I'm not pleased when somebody goes and especially after having covered this community for a while I'm not pleased when a big website gets hit and I have to cover it but I have an obligation right in that story this is not considered normal hacker culture this is considered weird and odd and not good but I still have to especially when you pick a target I just can't ignore rumors of eBay getting hacked God that's one of the top 10 sites on the web I'm going to have to of course now all the kiddies here know which sites that I'm going to have to cover I mean they're doing it they feel they have to because there's an exploit I know why the Cult of the Dead Cow is releasing back orifice I've talked with them last year I'm going to talk with them after their light show you said is there any difference to publish God in China or in other countries you know it gets back to the argument why do you tell bad news all the time do you cover murder will somebody else go and murder you know I think the greater good in letting someone know that something like a back orifice is out there far outweighs the fact that somebody may read about it download it and use it I would rather warn as many readers as possible about this thing's potential and talk about the reasoning behind it and talk to Microsoft about why indeed build functionality into this that can be exploited you know that to me is more important than somebody coming up and reading it or trying to copycat it I hope that answers your question you sir yeah you seem to be sort of making a suggestion that the only sort of shift towards the hacking community so to speak to help you form the germless you don't have to do a thing but you know you don't have PR flags and you don't have to deal with us but quite frankly we're here and we're going to publish stories that sounds crappy that sounds like we're being mean and I apologize in advance but we're going to do it anyway because the public interest is out there and because things like back orifice is being released sites are being hacked and if you guys want to clear your good name if you will you're going to have to help us get some of this information you know we dig we dig a lot we dig hard we try to find you as best we can but it's really hard man you guys know how to hide my actual question is why is it that when you ever happen you sort of would like hackers to tell you more about their community and shift that on to hackers for example if you were covering politics you wouldn't expect you know I would like more hackers to talk about their community because in some ways and again this is a personal opinion has nothing to do with ABC slash Disney in some ways what you guys do is very cool and it helps people point out the problems in Microsoft software or anybody else's software you know it's a different situation to equate covering an underground community like you guys to covering Congress where everybody's out in the open some of them I heard that it's a very different thing and again you know the more you can help us the better the stories will be the better your image will be and everybody walks away happy go ahead why do we have more poids that I don't want to hack hackers why do I are you asking me do I want to learn how to hack why do you do services hire hackers kind of like what Kevin was able to do it's a very good question basically what new services are looking for and I'm not going to this is again my opinion I can't speak for every new service anybody to cover hacking we are conduits and translators the idea is that we take information we break it down to something that everybody can understand and we publish it and that is a skill as much as hacking is a skill if you can find somebody who can do both then more power to you because that's very cool but the fact is it's very tough to do and I will certainly admit there is a preconceived notion that hackers are bad you know there are still some security companies out there that won't hire anybody who says they are a hacker which kind of blows my mind but in much the same way there's some perception that we're hiring a fox to cover the chicken coop so you've been raising your hand a lot can you go ahead do you see behind the scenes of the physical source like no one heard it depends on the story we we are a joint venture between ABC and Infoseek ABC is owned by Disney and Disney owns 43% of Infoseek we're all going to get married at some point we do our own thing though we are the 24 hour new service for ABC we don't have a cable station which we did so we do a lot more stuff than they have the resources to we do co-operate on stories and if it's considered big enough they will call me or I will call them and we will work on it together but it doesn't happen as often as you would think you in the back yeah why does it mean it keeps labeling people like that's all around the world and that's what it means I can't even begin to defend that one man I can't I cannot in their specific instances of some media getting some things wrong but that goes back to the preconceptions that exist and that are alive and well today I can't even defend that one man I can't I cannot in their specific instances of some media getting some things wrong I can't in their specific instances of some media getting some things wrong I can't I can't I can't I can't I can't I can't I can't I can't I can't I can't I can't I can't all right actually we're getting pretty close to where the next speaker needs to get up here so I'm going to go thank you very much you've been great