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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

#301

Post by raldi »

_cenw wrote: post #189
raldi wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out https://www.flightsfrom.com/explorer/LAS — particularly comparing its direct flights from all over the continental US to the same for other American cities.

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...

If we’re ignoring the second sentence of my reply, Anchorage would probably be the winner.

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

#302

Post by tptacek »

wkat4242 wrote: post #131
dash488 wrote: post #125

After the impact of the MGM hack this year Cesars probably revisited their insurance on getting compromised. After the auditors and lawyers looked at all the risks they came across DEF CON and said no because of the wording of how DEF CON is marketed. Their choice was probably to drop them or loose coverage. DEF CON is listed as a "hacker convention held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada." where Blackhat is "Black Hat is…

Black hat is just one giant bunch of sales pitches. No I haven't been there but I've had to sift through recordings that my boss (who did attend) wanted me to look at because he was too drunk himself to do a proper evaluation. It doesn't provide information, it just provides sales suits a chance to blow their hot air :P If I'd ever go there it would just be an excuse to go to vegas to see DEF CON as well :P I work in…

This isn't a hot take. It's just wrong.

Black Hat is peer reviewed and accepts a tiny fraction of submissions (tracks will accept 3-5 talks out of a typical pool of 20-50). Reviewers --- all of them vulnerability researchers --- barely have time to read outlines and look for any possible excuse to DQ a submission and move on to the next one, and the single most common DQ is "the presenter has a commercial interest in this topic, vendor talk, 1.0 rating".

There is also a giant vendor expo that runs alongside Black Hat, and vendors do whatever they can to stage events that look like Black Hat talks but are not. I submit that you have probably confused those for actual talks. Or: you watched the keynote? I don't understand what the keynote is for.

Here are the actual 2023 talks:

https://www.blackhat.com/us-23/briefings/schedule/index.html

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

#303

Post by tptacek »

busterarm wrote: post #300
tptacek wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trainings run days before Black Hat and are not part of the conference proper.

Clarification not needed -- the trainings are the only sensible reason to be there.

I don't know what to say to someone who thinks the Black Hat talk schedule and lobby conference isn't a reason to go, but a $5000 training course on "Active Directory Security Fundamentals" is. You do you, I guess.

I don't care if you go or not. I'm not trying to sell anybody on Black Hat. If you work in this field, you know what Black Hat is, and if you care about Security Summer Camp you're in the lobby bar at Mandalay. My only nit here is people claiming that the actual Black Hat conference is a vendor event (like RSA). It is not. Almost every good Defcon talk was a Black Hat submission (as you'd expect; it's the highest-status mainstream security conference, and it pays honoraria and travel expenses for speakers). There's a whole other conference, BSides, that started just to soak up the talks Black Hat doesn't accept.

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

#304

Post by ghaff »

p-e-w wrote: post #11

> This kind of no-notice cancellation of a contract is unheard of in the conference business. That's a big claim to make. Can someone with relevant experience confirm whether this is true?

In 20+ years of attending events events regularly I have never heard of a venue change on relatively short notice. In fact to the degree some conference moves from, say, SF to Vegas, they usually announce that at the previous year's conference.

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

#305

Post by spacebacon »

atcalan wrote: post #266
spacebacon wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest explanation is they don’t like hackers after their experience. So they push a bunch of hackers buttons with a last minute notice and prepare the honey pot to pen test their post ransom security posture and maybe in the process they find an amateur to pin it all on.

Cool. Drop kick a hornets nest in a zorb ball. What could go wrong? Not everyone attending DEFCON is getting 6 figures to red team, I suspect.

You are not wrong. Plenty of the attendees really don’t like bullies. It may be interesting.

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

#306

Post by jeltz »

IshKebab wrote: post #188
Eji1700 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegas makes a fuckload of money off everyone who thinks they’re smart but doesn’t understand statistics

Not just statistic. There are plenty of smart defcon people who understand statistics but don't understand that if you start winning they'll just kick you out.

I am very doubtful. Outside sports betting (where you can actually outsmart the house) we loved winning players when I worked in online gambling. Winning players are much more likely to return and lose more than they ever won.

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

#307

Post by ghaff »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #204
technick wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will need to dig up the archives from DC 27 when the deal with Caesars forum was officially announced, but if memory serves me correctly DT said it was a 5 or 10 year contract. So unless there was some verbaige in the contract that allows Caesars to cancel for any reason, they're going to be cutting DEFCON a check.

A 5-year contract starting at DC 27 would hold thru DC 31, so DC 32 fits the "not renewing" hypothesis.

Who knows? But a more likely hypothesis is that the organizers were betting that they could come to terms on a renewal and at the end of the day they couldn't.

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

#308

Post by jeltz »

andy800 wrote: post #275
hyperhopper wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linq bar turned into a 24hr party after the bomb threat last year

A bomb threat last year? Hmmm, I wonder why Caesars chose not to renew the contract.

Yeah, I think those things are more likely to be the issue. Tech people tend not to be shy with racking up huge bar tabs.

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

#309

Post by busterarm »

tptacek wrote: post #303
busterarm wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clarification not needed -- the trainings are the only sensible reason to be there.

I don't know what to say to someone who thinks the Black Hat talk schedule and lobby conference isn't a reason to go, but a $5000 training course on "Active Directory Security Fundamentals" is. You do you, I guess. I don't care if you go or not. I'm not trying to sell anybody on Black Hat. If you work in this field, you know what Black Hat is, and if you care about Security Summer Camp you're in the lobby bar at Mand…

Fair enough. BH as vendor event wasn't my axe to grind but the parent poster's. I was just complaining about the industry and the event in general as only having status-economy value.

e.g., the only reason I would go is if I needed to for industry certifications. Talks aren't a reason for me to go to anything (they'll be streamed eventually and I can filter them better). I'll agree the talks are better here than most other events

I guess if your employer is footing the bill, sure, fine, whatever.

Talks having no attendance value to me might be a personal thing, but you can blame Netflix and re:Invent 2017 for that. I sat through 4 different talks given by 4 different people that were supposed to talk about different parts of their architecture but were basically the same slides and staff engineers from 4 different departments claiming responsibility for the same parts of the system. Sure that has nothing to do with Infosec, but talks can be an epic waste of time and I'm much more suspicious of them these days.

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

#310

Post by jandrese »

mrandish wrote: post #4

I suspect Caesar's dropped DEF CON because the DEF CON attendees likely have a fairly low "avg revenue per attendee" yield because fewer of them gamble compared to the avg Vegas conference attendee. They also probably spend less on high-end restaurant dining and bar drinking inside the hotel. Since the pandemic Vegas has had a pretty strong resurgence in general and this may be a sign that Caesar's is doing well enou…

It might be interesting to see what is happening in Caesars during the week DEFCON was supposed to happen.
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