The public will get a rare glimpse into the computer underground next month when some of the country's most talented hackers and crackers gather in Sydney for the inaugural Ruxcon conference.

Organisers say for too long the focus of computer security conferences has been on vendors peddling their products instead of sharing knowledge. The not-for-profit conference and convention will have demonstrations of offensive hacking techniques as well as how to combat them through presentations, technical competitions and interactive workshops.

The conference name is derived from the underground Swiss Army Knife neologism, "Rux", which can mean almost anything, used as a noun, verb or adjective depending on context, says organiser "Kdz''.

"It generally can be used much like 'rocks' but this is not always the case," Kdz says.

"Some examples: 'I'm going to rux up some food' is similar to 'I'm going to get some food' and 'This guy just got ruxt' is similar to 'This guy just got shutdown'."

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