Col. Michael Convertino came to Defcon for the first time last year, and after finding about 60 good candidates for both enlisted and civilian positions decided to come back again.

"The principal reason that I'm here is to recruit," said Convertino, commander of the U.S. Air Force's 318th Information Operations Group, speaking Thursday during a panel discussion at Defcon's sister conference, Black Hat. "We have many empty jobs, empty slots that we can't fill."

Federal agencies have only recently begun embracing the hacker crowd. When U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) director of futures exploration Jim Christy hosted his first Defcon "Meet the Fed" panel on 1999, he was one of two people onstage. At this week's Defcon, there may be several thousand federal employees in attendance, he said.

Federal government employees first started coming to Defcon to get information and build relationships from the hacker community, Christy said during an interview, but now it is becoming more acceptable to find new recruits at the show, despite its reputation as a subversive hacking conference. "The character of Defcon has changed over the years," he said in an interview. "Ninety-five percent of the people here are good guys."

And federal agencies have changed too, particularly since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, said Linton Wells II, the former CIO of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), now a research professor with the National Defense University in Washington D.C. "The federal government has engaged with a lot of people they wouldn't have even talked to before 9/11," he said.