ICANN Appoints Renowned Hacker as Chief Security Officer

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), has named Jeff Moss, founder of the biggest computer hacker conference in the world, DEF CON, as its chief security officer and vice president.

In addition to founding DEF CON, a conference attended by over 10,000 people in 2010, Jeff Moss also created the Black Hat Briefings, a technical computer security conference attended by the world's top security researchers every year.

Moss has a BA in criminal justice from Gonzaga University and during his career he worked in the information system security division of Ernst & Young, LLP and was a director at Secure Computing Corporation, now part of McAfee.

In June 2009, Jeff Moss was appointed as one of the sixteen members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) which also includes Jared Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon University; Manny Diazm, mayor of Miami and president of the United States Conference of Mayors; Raymond Kelly, police commissioner of the City of New York; Sonny Perdue, governor of Georgia and others.

"I can think of no one with a greater understanding of the security threats facing Internet users and how best to defend against them than Jeff Moss," said [pdf] Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s President and Chief Executive Officer.

"He has the in-depth insider’s knowledge that can only come from fighting in the trenches of the on-going war against cyber threats," he added.

Moss is well respected in the information security community, not only in US, but also internationally, which fits well with ICANN's global mission.

"I’m looking forward to bringing my skill sets to ICANN. Its role in coordinating the global Internet addressing system means that it is positioned to become the leader in identifying and dealing with online threats to the Domain Name System that could affect two billion global Internet users," Moss commented.