For those who think that breaking codes is simply a practice of mathematics and computer algorithms, they’ve never blackmailed anyone before. After countless years in the NSA, I’ve had the chance to witness some highly “unorthodox” way of getting the information that I wanted without tapping a line or breaking a code. I’ve also seen some ridiculously stupid attempts that have failed miserably. All I know is that if you want to understand how truly paranoid you should be, I have plenty of stories for you. I feel like I should start around World War II. But then there’s always the tales about methods used to gather intelligence during the cold war. So, that’s why I’m coming to Vegas again. Get the smokes and whiskey ready.

From my point of view DoS have always been useless, stupid and non-lethal attacks. Of course there had been 7th and 8th of February 2000, but after all it was kind of limited issue. I had to change my mind when I started to work for new types of customers, mainly telcos and big (huge) Internet companies. I discovered that they don't really care about intrusions, confidentiality, integrity or whatever. Their major concern is DoS. DoS kill their infrastructure. DoS kill their business. It was time for me to get updated.

Surprisingly techniques used today are not new. But PIV and broadband access for millions of users have considerably increased their power. They have been turned into mass extortion weapons, and while I was thinking this was just a legend I had to face my first blackmail case. A dirty blackmail DoS story... Now I grew up and I'm not so self-assured.