10 years after his epic MySpace hack, Samy Kamkar is trying to turn hackers into heroes

Samy Kamkar is in a dark room in Bally’s Casino in Las Vegas; the room is lit by blue lights and the glow of laptop screens. A DJ is spinning lyric-less music while hackers sit at round tables intermittently coding and chatting. This is the designated “chill-out room” at DEFCON, the annual hacking convention, but Kamkar is not feeling chill at the moment. He’s preparing to give a presentation to thousands of fellow hackers on how to “wirelessly steal cars,” and he’s still putting the finishing touches on his PowerPoint.