"You're going to have to come in and help us", said Gen. Keith Alexander, the Chief of U.S.'s very secretive spy agency, the National Security Agency (NSA) at the DefCon conference in Las Vegas on Friday.
The four-starred General denied that his organization was keeping files on "millions of Americans."
"The people who would say we are doing that should know better. That is absolute nonsense," he said referring to former employees of NSA who've gone to the media.
Gen. Alexander appealed to hackers to join the NSA in order to make the Internet secure. Jeff Moss, founder of DefCon said he was invited by Gen. Alexander to speak about the "spookiest, least known" organization in the world, so that hackers will be educated.
More than 10,000 hackers attended the event, with many of them at least interested about the top spy chief being there. Many others took to online forums to express their doubt about Gen. Alexander's intentions.
He was seen walking the hall and talking to hackers with hopes of them joining the NSA.
"Keep working on this. We need you in the future," Gen. Alexander said.
The spy chief came with a huge entourage of plain-clothes security men along with DefCon's own wearing red "goons" shirt. The NSA, which is controlled by the Pentagon, apart from electronic intelligence gathering, is in-charge of cyber security for the U.S. military.
It shares its findings with the FBI and with Department of Homeland Security and warns industries of threats. Gen. Alexander showed the companies that have been attacked by hackers with the intention of spying for the past two years.
"There are 10 times, almost 100 times more companies that don't know they've been hacked," he said.