They're a brash, fun-loving lot who revel in their notoriety as two-time champions of Capture the Flag, the Daytona 500 of the computer underground. They also enjoy a measure of renown as hosts of a celebrated bacchanal-a combination trivia contest and Animal House-style beer blast-at Def Con, the annual hacker convention. In their civilian lives, however, these self-taught technophiles make a mint locking down servers and designing hard-to-crack networks.
Publicly, Corporate America expresses nothing but scorn for the denizens of this wired-world counterculture. Yet the Ghetto Hackers and their ilk are coveted-if controversial-players in the battle against cybercrime. While most of the major security firms insist on a hacker-free work force, even flaunting their purity in sales pitches, a host of smaller shops are scrambling to enlist the assistance of Eller and his associates. They reason that hacker talent of their high caliber is too precious to ignore.
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