When we were kids, most of us were told by our parents that we can do whatever we set our minds to.  And we live by what they say, but often times there’s a contradiction when it comes to real life.  How many times do we hear parents shouting, “Don’t do that!” or “You can’t do that!”  So life can be quite confusing as a kid.  But parents who attended DefCon last week showed their support as they brought their children with them as DefCon Kids was launched for the first time at the annual event.

As we all know, DefCon is an adult oriented conference in that some aspects aren’t really good for kids, so they set up a warning at the DefCon Kids site,

“The DefCon Kids conference room will be situated in and around the adult DefCon, therefore you and your kids will be exposed to a wide assortment of people, lifestyles and philosophies. We are not trying to scare you off but please research past DefCon conferences and understand the environment that you are bringing your child into.”

The conference welcomed children and teenagers from ages 8-16.  Most of the speakers and presenters are respected members of the DefCon community but one speaker stood out the most, 10-year old Cyfi.  CyFi is said to be from parents who are both DefCon stalwarts.  Cyfi is a pseudonym as the real name of the child and her parents were kept private.  She is not new to the limelight as she is a member of ‘The American Show’- an underground art group based in San Francisco, and has been publicly speaking in galleries as she herself is an artist, her first showing at the age of four.

And as artists goes, they are easily bored with pop culture and mainstream events.  In CyFi’s case, she got tired of waiting for crops to grow in the games she liked to play on her mobile phone, so she decided to trick the game by manually tweaking the time on her device while it’s WiFi was disconnected, making things go faster.

In an interview with CNET, CyFi said, “It was hard to make progress in the game, because it took so long for things to grow. So I thought, ‘Why don’t I just change the time?”

She wrote a tutorial entitled “Apps — A Traveler of Both Time and Space; And What I Learned About Zero-Days and Responsible Disclosure.”  The following are some points in her tutorial.

“I love apps! In the app world, I can control both time and space.  The world of apps has obvious not thought about security, yet.  Here is an import lesson they can learn from a Girl Scout. I’ll show a new class of vulnerabilities I call TimeTraveler. By controlling time, you can do many things, such as grow pumkins instantly. This technique enables endless possibilities. I’ll show you how. Wanna play a game? Let’s find some zero-days! (Cuz it’s fun!).”

Another parent brought his 14-year old son to the convention because he believes in his son’s potential.  This is one cool dad that said,

“I see it in him — he feels like he belongs to a clan, to a group. I’m really proud … I can see he has the excitement in his eyes.”

The purpose of opening up DefCon to kids is not to create chaos on the web but actually hone them to become responsible hackers like Jeff Moss, the founder of DefCon who was also a hacker back then, and went by the handle “Dark Tangent.”  Moss used to break into phone systems to make free calls and is now a member of Homeland Security Advisory Council, which gives advice and recommendations to the federal government on matters related to national security.

So parents, learn how to stick to your words when you say “I believe in you.”  Your kid just might become one of those respected hackers, like Moss.