Hackers attending the DEF CON security conference are expressing growing frustration with the U.S. Government’s handling of cybersecurity and threats to democratic institutions, according to Jake Braun, a leading figure in the hacker community and former homeland security advisor.
Braun, co-founder of the DEF CON Voting Machine Hacking Village launched in 2017, told The Register that a pervasive sentiment of disillusionment has taken hold among attendees. “This community is so committed to these principles of human rights and freedom of speech and science, that that when we see people fuck with them – or when we see the people that we elect to preserve these things not doing their fucking job – we’re just like: ‘Fuck you guys,’” Braun said.
The discontent stems from what Braun describes as the government’s failure to address critical vulnerabilities in areas like election security, critical infrastructure, and the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence. He served as a homeland security and cyber advisor to both the Obama and Biden administrations, and as Acting Principal Deputy National Cyber Director in The White House from May 2023 to July 2024, according to his Wikipedia profile.
In response, Braun has spearheaded the “Franklin” project, launched at DEF CON in 2024. The initiative enlists volunteer hackers to bolster the security of critical infrastructure. In its first year, over 350 hackers dedicated their time to securing water facilities. The project is named after Benjamin Franklin, recognizing his historical role in establishing America’s first volunteer fire department and publishing the informative Poor Richard’s Almanack.
A key component of the Franklin project is the annual “Hackers’ Almanack,” a publication mirroring Franklin’s original effort, which compiles research and insights from the DEF CON community. The second volume, the DEF CON 33 Hackers’ Almanack, was released earlier this month. This year’s edition focuses on three major threats: cybercrime, artificial intelligence, and authoritarianism.
The Almanack highlights the accelerating power of AI for offensive cyber operations. Researchers at DEF CON 33 demonstrated that Anthropic’s AI coding tool, Claude, achieved a top three percent global ranking in the PicoCTF competition and successfully defended against attacks in the Collegiate Cyber Defense Challenge. Despite some limitations, Claude’s performance underscores the growing potential for AI to be weaponized in cyberspace, a concern that Braun says was a recurring theme in discussions leading up to the Almanack’s publication.
The report also details the successes of hackers actively combating cybercrime, including efforts to dismantle the Russian dark web marketplace Solaris and identify individuals behind large-scale phishing scams. The Almanack argues that current government efforts to combat ransomware and cybercrime are insufficient and calls for greater utilization of skilled white hat hackers through programs like the FBI’s Confidential Human Source (CHS) program.
Perhaps most urgently, the Almanack addresses the rise of authoritarianism and the need to protect data, communications, and cultural heritage from censorship and surveillance. It showcases initiatives like LambdaCalculus’s off-grid mesh network, PirateBox, and proposals for establishing similar networks in Taiwan to counter potential Chinese aggression. The Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (SUCHO) project, which preserved over 1,500 Ukrainian websites ahead of the Russian invasion, is also featured.
To counter these threats, the Almanack proposes the creation of a “Digital Arsenal of Democracy,” comprised of technologies like mesh networks, digital archives, and secure communication tools. Braun envisions this arsenal as a collaborative effort between the human rights and hacker communities, focused on developing and deploying technologies to safeguard fundamental freedoms worldwide. This builds on last year’s DEF CON theme of “access everywhere,” with a planned focus on “agency” – individual control over identity and data – at this summer’s conference.
Braun, who is also the Executive Director of the Cyber Policy Initiative at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and co-founder of Cambridge Global Advisors, believes the hacker community’s inherent commitment to freedom, transparency, and scientific inquiry will drive further research and innovation in these critical areas. He noted a “certain thing in the hacker mindset” that compels action when those principles are threatened.
