Vegas smells like cigarettes and garbage. Skip the long lines and absurd Vegas expenses and watch the talks from YouTube.
72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
31–40 of 46 posts
Re: 72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
#32TL;DR: author did some gambling in casinos and got drunk in strip clubs, barely attended any talks because he doesn't understand the jargon, almost got pwnd by connecting to the wrong WiFi. Not really worth the time to read.
Things like this make me wonder if paid writers for (in this case) Motherboard ever know what the fuck they're talking about. As an active DEF CON attendee and seeing the press coverage over the years, I can start to "see the matrix" of how to lazily assemble a news story. He even links to the Hacker Manifesto FFS. I thought VICE was aiming higher than this kind of trash. It makes me distrust reporters. Do they just…
>Do they just turn off the "I'm a noob" angle, assume the standard authoritative tone they always use and cover other topics with just as flimsy of an understanding?
Yes. See [Murray] Gell-Mann Amnesia:
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
― Michael Crichton
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...
Re: 72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
#33There ought to be a way, at the OS level, to configure a machine so no network traffic goes in or out over an unsecured link except for the VPN application's traffic. Then, if you configure secure links to be WPA at work, WPA at home, and your VPN, there should be little risk to joining an open network to bring up a VPN.
The OpenVPN client on android has something like this. See "Seamless Tunnel" in the preferences. I've used it at DefCon on the secure network in the past.
Re: 72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Things like this make me wonder if paid writers for (in this case) Motherboard ever know what the fuck they're talking about. As an active DEF CON attendee and seeing the press coverage over the years, I can start to "see the matrix" of how to lazily assemble a news story. He even links to the Hacker Manifesto FFS. I thought VICE was aiming higher than this kind of trash. It makes me distrust reporters. Do they just…
>Do they just turn off the "I'm a noob" angle, assume the standard authoritative tone they always use and cover other topics with just as flimsy of an understanding? Yes. See [Murray] Gell-Mann Amnesia: “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the jour…
Rather ironically, you can get the same effect reading Michael Crichton ;-)
Re: 72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
#35I see Defcon doesn't have quite as stringent a media policy as HOPE, which booted Vice in response to blatant violation of the signed-consent requirement.
Re: 72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
#36First I've heard of demonsaw. I can't tell from quickly perusing the website. Is it open source? Has anyone tried it?
Re: 72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
#37He should have gone to BlackHat if he wanted to see anything really interesting. Def Con is mostly a big party with life style talks and people talking about old stuff. Thats not to say there isn't neat stuff to do at Def Con (I've seen plenty of neat talks) but its mostly a big party. There's nothing really scary going on there.
rather the inverse, I'm not scared of getting pwned when I go to blackhat, in Defcon people are just acting crazy.
Re: 72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
#38TL;DR: author did some gambling in casinos and got drunk in strip clubs, barely attended any talks because he doesn't understand the jargon, almost got pwnd by connecting to the wrong WiFi. Not really worth the time to read.
I have never been to def con so to me it was still an interesting read on an outsiders take on what def con is.
Re: 72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I went to HOPE a few weeks ago, after having been to such things before, but not for a few years. I had exactly the same impression - mostly a lifestyle / social / political thing, pretty light on in the way of talks with actual technical detail. Kind of like TED talks - well presented, entertaining, but not really actionable. In years gone by, I went to some excellent events, with talks on really specific, useful th…
What talks did you attend at HOPE? There were tons of hard technical presentations. The two guys who cracked the Iridium satellite network in particular were amazing, going into deep detail on the techniques and methods used to decode the frequencies. The talk on medical device hacking was also awesome - I mean they showed you how to get on a radiology machine and other exploits. And after I saw the talk on hacking y…
Iridium satellite network Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvKaC4pNvck
Re: 72 Hours of Pwnage: A Paranoid N00b Goes to Def Con
#40Vegas smells like cigarettes and garbage. Skip the long lines and absurd Vegas expenses and watch the talks from YouTube.
Or still suffer Vegas, but do all of the contests at DEF CON instead of the talks.