News 

Speaking at the conference, Assistant Secretary of Defence Linton Wells defied scepticism and downright hostility from some of the assembled.

'Join us,' he said, 'if you want to work on cutting-edge problems, if you want to be part of the truly great issues of our time.'

As Reuters reports, the world of Defcon is far removed from the suited and booted environment of a government office, but in reality they are not too far apart.

Of course the US has always denied that it employs hackers to attack the computer system's of foreign governments, but it does offer to pay the tuition of students working in computer security if they agree to work for the state once they graduate.

The most controversial case of hacker recruitment involved the Netsky and Sasser author, Sven Jaschan, who the German security company Securepoint hired with the intention of training him to become a security programmer.