Electronic music blares out of the four corners of the conference hall, a laser light show is in progress, massive video screens flash images at the crowd. Then the show begins - no its not the Eurovision - its the launch of a new hacker software at the Def Con hackers conference in Las Vegas this month.
The conference is perhaps the most unusual gathering in the computer industry calendar. Here nearly 4,000 hackers, crackers (malicious hackers), script kiddies (novices) and FBI, National Security Agency and Department of Defence meet to discuss the ethics, morality, and practicalities of hacking.
This year the conference was dominated by one of the hacking cultures super groups, the Cult of the Dead Cow, which released Back Orifice 2000 (a dig at Microsofts Back Office) - a backdoor program that enables hackers gain complete access to a victims computer. The program runs on Windows 95, 98 and Windows NT.
The software is sometimes called a Trojan Horse program because hackers need to dupe users into installing it on their machine usually by sending it as an e-mail attachment.
Trojan Horse programs are a real threat to computer systems because they do not exploit a defect in the operating system. Instead they exploit what the Cult of the Dead Cow calls a design flaw in most operating systems that enables installation software to have complete access to all aspects of the computer.
In the case of Back Orifice this enables the hacker to steal information from the computers hard-disk, or even delete the entire contents of the computer.
The problem has become more widespread because many computer users attach executables or small software programs to email messages. Often these little programs are jokes that show funny cartoons or dancing bears. However, users should not run these programs because they may have Back Orifice embedded in them.
In fact, since the Cult of the Dead Cow launched the first version of the software last year there have been 500,000 copies distributed on the Internet. One Australian computer security group reported last November that 1,400 Australian Internet accounts have been compromised by Back Orifice.
The solution, according to Microsoft, is not to accept e-mail sweeties form strangers. To update virus software programs. And to never install any software that does not come from a recognised source. "Back Orifices worst attribute is that it attacks the users not the technology," said Mr Jason Garms, lead product manager for Windows NT security.
The Cult of the Dead Cow disagrees. Its solution is to redesign the operating system so that software does not have complete access to all aspects of the computer system or design a utility that tells the user exactly what the software is doing to their computer.
"Microsoft is not the cause of the problem but they are the largest operating system in the world," said DilDog, the author of Back Orifice. "That is why we targeted their operating systems."
The cause of the problem, according to DilDog, is that the computer industry is still in its infancy and has not learned how to create secure systems as yet. Certainly, DilDog has a point. In an age where computer failure can knock billions off a company's share price (which happened to auction website Ebay recently) securing computers is of paramount importance.
Meanwhile, during the launch of the Back Orifice, several attendees played Def Con's oldest game the Spot the Fed (FBI officer) contest. The game goes something like this; a member of the crowd points at someone they suspect is with the FBI and shouts Fed. The accused then has to go on stage say what they do for a living. If the accused works as a law enforcement officer the spotter is awarded a "I spotted the Fed" T-shirt.
While the Cult of the Dead Cow members call themselves hackers and go by imaginative nicknames such as Oxblood and Grandmaster Ratte, they do not break into corporate computer systems. Rather they attack their own computers to find flaws in software programs. Once found they will then release computer programs to exploit those flaws giving malicious hackers the tools to attack systems.
Why? Because the members see themselves as new age computer security evangelists.
"We see companies like Microsoft as a threat to personal security," said Sir Dystic, co-author of Back Orifice. "And the only way to get them to own up is to write programs that exploit security weaknesses so that they are forced to address the problem."
Still, its all a matter of spin really. While the Cult of the Dead Cow will never make money from Back Orifice, it has become the most famous hacker group in the world.
Niall McKay is at Irish-times@niall.org
