Internet group hires hacker as security chief

A hacker who goes by the name Dark Tangent has been hired to oversee security for ICANN, the not-for-profit that manages the globe's Internet addresses.

Jeff Moss.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said today that it has hired hacker Jeff Moss as its chief security officer.

Moss is founder of Def Con, the world's largest conference for hackers, which meets in Las Vegas each summer. He also founded Black Hat, a smaller hacking conference that targets businesses. 

He also serves as a member of the Obama Administration's Homeland Security Advisory Council and has worked in Australia for Secure Computing Corporation.

"He has the in-depth insider's knowledge that can only come from fighting in the trenches of the ongoing war against cyber threats," ICANN Chief Executive Rod Beckstrom said in a statement.

"The global threats to the Internet's Domain Name System are in essence the digital cold war of the new millennium," said Merlin Hay, a member of the British House of Lords and Chairman of the Information Society Alliance. "To win this war we need someone like Jeff Moss who understands the hacker's mindset and with the international experience to grasp that today's online attacks can come from just about anywhere on the planet."

(Reporting by Jim Finkle. Editing by Robert MacMillan).