Jeff Moss

Blame this douche.

Sometimes the faggotry of the world is overwhelming. Apparently the gods we at ED worship to have not heard our unholy prayers and been appeased by our sublimely disturbing sacrifices, for despite the efforts to spread the lulz with the rest of the world there is a time where fail reigns supreme in even the normally awesome pleasure palaces of Las Vegas. We are talking of course, of Defcon and Black Hat, the hacker conferences when great hordes of pale, unwashed virgins gather together to celebrate how important and boring their work really is. The king faggot who started this godforsaken mess is Jeff "Dark Tangent" Moss. So kiddies, pray extra hard to Raptor Jesus for Jeff to get raped to death by uncircumcised, ethnically diverse construction workers during his next commute as penance.

Early Work

Jeff's hacking career can be characterized as uneventful and profitable. Being a former law student, we can call Jeff many things, but stupid is not one of them. He fully realized that he had no elite hacker skills like some other people had. All he could do is whistle funny and get free long distance. All whistling funny and getting free long distance gets you is a future of massaging underage boys. Jeff saw that his real opportunity was in somehow getting this pasty mass of hackers together, to share ideas and possibly unspeakable acts of nerd on nerd sex. In doing so, Jeff could become a legitimate hacker without worrying about annoying things like developing usable products or contributing in any discernible manner to the hacker community.

DefCon and Black Hat

In 1993, Jeff built this brilliant idea into DefCon, the "largest underground hacker conference in the world" or, as it is known in Las Vegas, "the best week for a hooker to take a vacation, unless she really likes the taste of smegma." This was in turn followed up in 1997 by the formation of the Black Hat Briefings, a conference for all the black-leather wearing security faggots who are too elitist to hang out with the LARPing fucksticks at DefCon. Some of the consequences of this faggotry include:

• Raven's announcement to the world that "zero day can happen to anyone" - "anyone" being code for "her" and "zero day" being code for "rape"
• Fucking Ciscogate
• Insanely boring contests to see if the hackers present can participate in the largest LAN or some utter tripe like that
• CTF Hacking
  • Scientifically proven to be up to 100% less exciting then it sounds. Hackers square off against each other to see who can properly secure their precious data while stealing the data of the opposing team. This is about as much fun as painting a wall, watching the paint dry, peeling it off the wall, and eating it before repeating the entire process.
• Endless, circular arguments about digital rights in the 20th century
• The yearly GNU circle jerk that keeps faggots like Alan Cox knee deep in stupid Carmen Sandiego hats
• Fund raisers for the EFF. What's the EFF you say? Fuck you.
• The public humiliation of Michelle Madigan
• The genuinely epic release of Back Orifice by the Cult of the Dead Cow
• The coincidental (yeah, right) bankruptcy of at least three of the casinos that hosted DefCon, including the outright implosion of two of these establishments

Jeff Moss Today

Jeff Moss sold Black Hat off to a New York based security company in 2005. It's estimated that Jeff made off with some $14M US in delicious loot. Jeff Moss shows the true glory of America, a country where if you write code you are destined for a life of borderline homelessness in your parents' basement but if you throw "parties" for "hackers" you can make millions of dollars while not actually doing anything at all. When not ordering tritium from Thailand, Jeff now does consultant work out of Seattle, where he is sought out by companies looking to add a touch of smug pretension to their projects.

See Also

• Ciscogate
• Defcon
• Hacker
• Security Faggots

Jeff Moss is part of a series on Softwarez Visit the Softwarez Portal for complete coverage.