Hackers Developing Anti-Censorship Software At the conference, human rights workers urged hackers to do what they could to use technology to advance human rights.
Patrick Ball, deputy director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (news - web sites) and its Science and Human Rights Action Network, said encryption had helped his group save lives and bring human rights abusers to justice.
``Hacking is finding things out. It is knowledge, especially when things are hidden, obscure and important,'' Ball said.
The Cult of the Dead Cow is known for making a splash at DefCon. In 1999, the group released Back Orifice, which can be used by malicious hackers to gain unauthorized access to PCs running Windows 95 or Windows 98 (news - web sites).