our guest reporter from the washington post, joseph marx. mr. moss, remind us again, what is black hat and def con and how did they come about? fcon is the largest hacking conference in the world. black hat is one of the largest information security compasses, also held in las vegas. one is a university, and one is a party. one is focused on your professional career advancement, and the other is focused on being the soul of hackers and inspiring them. when did you found these? con is pretty old, it was founded about 1993, and about three or four years later, black hat started. they just grew organically. >> what is your background that you were able to do this? >> originally i thought i was going to be an fbi agent. instead i turned into a hacker. it was a hobby that turned into a career. i started by throwing a party for some of my friends going away on a few networks that belonged to. knew backeveryone i then who was online. the internet was brand-new. everybody started showing up. everything back then was invite only for hackers and i was the

our guest reporter from the washington post, joseph marx. mr. moss, remind us again, what is black hat and def con and how did they come about?

our guest report from the "washington post" is joseph marx. mr. moss, remind us again what is black hat and defcon, , and w did they come about? >> well, so defcon is a largest conference in the world -- hacking conference at will, about 30,000 attended in las vegas, pre-covid and a black hat is one of the largest security covers also held in las vegas. one is the university and one is more like a party. one is focused on your professional career advancement and the other one is eating the soul of hackers and aspiring. >> host: when did you found these? >> guest: defcon is pretty old. it was about 1993, at and about three or four years later black hat started, 1997 i believe. the secret was we did no advertising or marketing of the just group organically. >> host: what is your background that you are able to do this? >> guest: well, originally i thought i was going to be an fbi agent. instead i turn into a hacker, and it was a hobby like everything hobby that turned into a career. i started throwing a party for some of our friends who is going awa

. >> host: let's give joseph marx of "the washington post" involved in our conversation. >> jeff, one of the biggest proponents of def con is recently the voting village where hackers try to break into voting machines. how did that go this year virtually and what is your sense of the security of voting as we head toward the election? >> guest: that's a pretty broad topic but originally we conceived attacking voting machines because nobody knew, everybody knew that what was being published about them was wrong and everybody knew that manufacturers were very litigious and would go after anybody that tried to host them so those are some big red flags so the year before the voting villages started the mca digital [inaudible] had to carveout allowing you to attack and research voting technology without violating copyright laws so all of a sudden finally it was legal for us to look at the stuff and then the next question is how to get your hands on it if that is only sold to municipalities and we found a reclaimed repeat offender who had bought a bunch there were damaged when the ceiling co

he is joined by joseph marx.d we bes about security of the 2020 the against hackers from russia or elsewhere? trustm going to vote and the results. what is different in this election is the awareness goes much higher. the people that have been talking about these issues, they risk -- they are not terribly new, but now people are going to actually use them. for they would say it is too expensive. with hand marked, human we about -- readable ballots. some say it is readable because the machine walked it. theeff moss on communicators on c-span2. >> white house chief of staff mark meadows and chris coons appeared to talk about the federare

marx,joined by joseph washington post cybersecurity reporter. >> how confident or anxious should we bebout security of the 2020 vote against hackers from russia or elsewhere? >> i will vote, i will trust the result. what i think is different from this election from previous elections is the awareness is much higher. the people that have been , --ing about these issues and they are not terribly new, but now people are going to use them, whereas before people would say it is too expensive. now they will turn these audits into a spotlight. marked humanth and readable ballots. for a long time, manufacturers said it is human readable because the machine marks it, and the gold standard is hand marked. >> tonight at 8:00 eastern on the communicators on c-span2. ♪ this week, it is the republicans turn. starting today and for four days, the republican national convention. hear their vision for the future and for the next four years. watch president trump and vice president pence except their party's nomination for their reelection. live coverage of the republican national convention begins at 9