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DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

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Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#241

Post by alephnerd »

p-e-w wrote: post #99
nodesocket wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doubtful, I'm sure it's related to the constant attacks against their infrastructure they must defend against (let's be honest, I'm sure Caesars is not defending successfully). The juice just ain't worth the squeeze. They have a business to run, and the risk of having a bunch of drunken and high hackers who happen to be the best in the world running amuck is not their idea of a good corporate event.

> the constant attacks against their infrastructure they must defend against (let's be honest, I'm sure Caesars is not defending successfully) If there's any place in the private sector where I'd expect security (including digital security) to be literally top notch, a casino would be it. And casinos don't fuck around. If they catch some "uber haxor" laying a finger on their networks, you can bet they'd have him arre…

You're getting flamed by accounts below but they're largely wrong.

Most casinos rent their gaming equipment from IGT, who directly manage most of these systems. IGT also has a fairly robust security team, having worked with them back when I was still a PM in the space.

Organizations like Caesar's aren't the greatest security wise, but that's largely because they have low margins because they are primarily property holding companies that are operating Casino/Gaming that they rent out from vendors like IGT.

This has been changing after MGM, but I don't think I can discuss it deeply.

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#242

Post by sylens »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #169
killjoywashere wrote: post #105

You know, why the fuck is DEFCON in August, in Vegas? Like, you know a nice place to visit in August? Kodiak, Alaska. Portsmouth, Maine. Sydney. List of places I would never want to visit in August? Vegas. Houston. Vegas. New Orleans. Vegas. Mumbai? Maybe. Baghdad? Definitely not. Also, Vegas. My friends in Christ, why, does anyone, think Vegas is a good idea in August?

The heat is really not that bad. I absolutely hate the heat, living in the midwest the summers are unbearable to me. Yes, it's hot, but you can still walk outside without becoming a sweaty mess because it's so dry. And you're probably not going to be walking outside very far, it's a very unfriendly place to walk outside of the prescribed separated paths on the strip.

The problem is that the con was now spread out over multiple casinos/hotels so the odds of having to walk outside at some point have increased, even with some of the hotels connected internally.

The fact that it js now at the convention center and likely all under one roof is an improvement, IMO

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#243

Post by alephnerd »

killjoywashere wrote: post #105

You know, why the fuck is DEFCON in August, in Vegas? Like, you know a nice place to visit in August? Kodiak, Alaska. Portsmouth, Maine. Sydney. List of places I would never want to visit in August? Vegas. Houston. Vegas. New Orleans. Vegas. Mumbai? Maybe. Baghdad? Definitely not. Also, Vegas. My friends in Christ, why, does anyone, think Vegas is a good idea in August?

Convention space and room blocks are fairly cheap to rent in Las Vegas.

No other city in North America has a similar amount of space or options for low cost block booking.

Also, plenty of DefCon attendees and sponsors are also attending BlackHat at around the same time, so it makes it easier to justify expensing most of the cost as an employee.

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#244

Post by RCitronsBroker »

wkat4242 wrote: post #232
RCitronsBroker wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you say that like a person informed enough to know what a white hat is lol. Let’s be real here, even the ethical hacker bunch can look VERY wonky and rowdy to an outsider, especially if you are as far removed as the hospitality industry. The only time they had to deal with hackers in the recent past was decidedly painful for them

If they hadn't hosted Def Con for the last 20 years I'd agree, but this community certainly isn't new to them.

being ambivalent towards a group, filling up your hotel, but otherwise alien to you, may be a little less polarizing than just having been forced to shell out $100M to a similar sounding demographic.

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#245

Post by alephnerd »

wodenokoto wrote: post #215
_cenw wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That settles it, DEF CON in Dubai, London or Amsterdam. I vote for Amsterdam. Frankfurt also has the most international destinations (just not volume). (Probably not Dubai, considering a few speakers would be thrown out at the border - or worse if they get though. It's also artificially inflated because it's almost all transit traffic). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_airports_by_in...

> It's also artificially inflated because it's almost all transit traffic Dubai is a center for large conferences and Expos. The row of High rise hotels along Sheik Zayed Road across from Dubai World Trade Center (the largest exhibition hall in Dubai) is astounding. Gitex, Gulfood and Arab Health are all conference that are largest in their class world wide. And while A lot of DXBs traffic is transfers, the city does…

> center for large conferences and Expos

Aimed largely at the MENA, SAARC, and a bit of the APJ market.

Most DefCon attendees are in North America, which makes the flight to the UAE hellishly long and expensive.

Most attendees are also expensing the trip, so a $700-900 round trip ticket plus an additional $500-700 for hotels makes Managers balk, as that's a major expense coming out of your yearly budget.

Also, DefCon sponsors largely showed up because it was occuring around the same time and same location as BlackHat

Source: travelled a lot for corporate tech conferences in my PM days.

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#246

Post by sgjohnson »

GuB-42 wrote: post #227
sgjohnson wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And card counters.

Do they still exist? They have closed most of the gaps previously exploited by card counters, and continuous shufflers are everywhere. I think the only ones who can make money are those playing poker and are really good at it. That's because they are playing against other players and not the bank. They still have to beat the rake. I'm not even sure comp players, that is those who play to get non-cash rewards like tra…

> And they are cheaters, but it is like saying thieves can make money.

Absolutely not. Using your brains to keep track of cards is not cheating in any way, shape or form. They are simply using all the available information and some pretty basic math to them to gain an advantage.

Calling card counters cheaters is like calling chess players with better knowledge of patterns than their opponents cheaters. They are not cheaters.

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#247

Post by alephnerd »

waihtis wrote: post #239
technick wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caesars was hacked by the same attackers that pwned Okta, and used the stolen keys and tokens to get into Caesars. It was nothing carried out by Defcon in any way. Anyone that takes this scene seriously knows Defcon is the place to be. Blackhat is a overpriced vendor circle jerk. The only way to make Blackhat relevant again is to kick out all of the vendors and if you can't do that, forbid them from collecting people…

> It was nothing carried out by Defcon in any way. You think insurance providers are capable of doing this level of analysis? They see "hacker conference" in which Defcon may still hold some notoriety in and decide it's a risk.

They are able to. I've worked with AXA and Chubbs before in this space.

I don't think this was done because of cyber insurance

They most likely got bumped to make space for a better paying corporate conference.

Most vendors are now running a Cisco Live/AWS Re:invent type conference, and they've increasingly consolidated on Las Vegas because venue booking and block room booking is much easier there than in any other city in North America.

Also, DefCon has become massive, so the RoI has most likely shrunk due to staffing overhead.

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#248

Post by lrvick »

nodesocket wrote: post #120
lrvick wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are actually very few people with pentesting skills at Defcon stronger than running burp suite, and fewer still of those that are blackhats. Those with skill can do very well for themselves legally, and know better than to risk their careers getting caught messing with casino systems. In practice the biggest abuse from Defcon to the venues is in the form of a subset of people constantly defacing casino property…

Not sure I agree with the idea there are very few world class hackers there. I've watched a few of the capture the flags and almost immediately they went over my head and I felt inadequate. lol.

The people you see on stage and competing in the CTFs are like 0.1% of the attendees.

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#249

Post by alephnerd »

Eji1700 wrote: post #145
metabagel wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put another way, they got a better offer

That’s the weird part. I doubt they’re using the space so this strikes me as “think of the money we’ll save on hours” bean counting

Companies/Vendors usually host corporate conferences around this time as well.

A large company has probably decided to move a conference to Caesar's during that period, and that got Defcon bumped. Especially because DefCon has become massive, so the RoI has shrunk due to staffing overhead.

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#250

Post by danpalmer »

tptacek wrote: post #140
busterarm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the more recent years that I did DEF CON I was with large groups of people going to high end restaurants and (ab)using the hotel bars. In fact the hotel bars were always packed. My suspicion is that Caesars is trying to do something like play with headcount. Late summer is not just a weak time for conferences but DEF CON needs a ton more space and a ton more human babysitting across that space than any other c…

Black Hat is a giant commercial conference run by a company that runs dozens and dozens of giant commercial conferences. No event venue is ever going to fuck with them.

Also Black Hat brings a lot of more-corporate, less-hacker types, who are probably likely to have much higher spend, possibly more gambling, and certainly dining expenses covered.
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