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Dateline Las Vegas: hackers whack a mole hack (and outed-FSJ)
Monday's IT Blogwatch: in which an undercover NBC reporter gets busted at DEFCON 15. Not to mention Fake Steve Jobs revealed...
Robert McMillan reports:
Trust nobody. That's what organizers of the 15th annual DefCon hacking conference are telling attendees Friday, after being tipped off that the TV news program Dateline NBC has sent a producer with a hidden camera to investigate the show.Cameras of any kind are a strict no-no at the show, which bills itself as a gathering for hackers, both legitimate, and not-so-legitimate, and takes special steps to ensure the privacy of its attendees. The show keeps no list of attendees, except for press and speakers, and there's only one way to get in the door: paying $100 cash.
DefCon organizer Dark Tangent (a.k.a Jeff Moss) said that he's concerned that the show's producers may sensationalize what they see and undermine the show's goal of fostering a free exchange of ideas.
DefCon runs through Sunday at the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. [more]
Charlie Demerjian isn't in Kansas any more:
A LOT OF MAKEUP can make you prettier, but it won't make you smarter. Michelle Madigan, Associate Producer for Dateline NBC found this out the hard way at Defcon. According to sources at the show, she was there to do a piece called Hackers for Hire, with the goal of showing the criminal hacker underground and possibly outing an undercover fed. As Michelle was said to have said, "People in Kansas would be very interested in what is going on at Defcon".
...
The people from Defcon talked to her four times, two before the show, two on the scene, and offered her press credentials and the opportunity to officially talk to the people she wanted to talk to. Four times she declined. Too bad. They knew when her plane took off. They knew when her plane landed. They knew when she picked up her non-press attendee pass (human in the vernacular). They followed her around. They knew when she walked into the ladies room to wire up, camera and sound
...
Michelle was told that a fed would be outed in the largest room in the show, and off she went. Dark Tangent was on the stage, and had a lengthly preamble about undercover feds and the "spot the fed" contest. A fed was 'spotted', and I brought Winn Schwartau up on stage as a 'fed' ... For those of you who don't know, Winn is not a fed. Then there was a new contest announced, spot the undercover reporter who is violating the Defcon rules. She was offered the option of coming up on stage and getting a press badge, but instead, Michelle bolted for the door, pushing a goon out of the way
...
The moral of the story? Don't screw around with people who are smarter than you. I guess Dateline NBC hasn't learned this lesson. [more]
Paul Benjamin grumbles:
I live in Kansas (Salina) and I have know about Defcon for many years. I think her shallow opinion of people like me in the “fly over” country is part of her problem. Maybe if she had worked for a living in a few small market stations or papers she wouldn’t allow her editor to pull dumb crap like the defcon story.They should send her down to the minors for seasoning for a few years and fire her editor for being a bone head. [more]
Ken Fisher reels 'em in: [You're fired -Ed.]
Tip to aspiring undercover reporters: when you're given four chances to sign up as press, you're not really undercover anymore. Cut your losses and stop pretending already ... Lost in the cackles of laughter at the reporter's embarrassment is an account that is truly confusing and, at times, difficult to believe.
Press is truly welcome at DEFCON, but Madigan's attempt to break the rules was unacceptable, if at first understandable. Madigan was reportedly going to the show to report on a cat-and-mouse game between hackers and the undercover federal agents that keep an eye on them. Her goal was to find evidence of nefarious hacking going on by catching someone admitting to a felony on tape and to out a federal agent who was also attending the conference undercover.
...
DEFCON's organizers expressed displeasure at what Madigan was trying to do, saying that Dateline's sensationalist approach to news could harm the show's "open" atmosphere where hackers—and indeed government agents—come together in the spirit of communication. Without pinhole cameras. [more]
Pass the sunblock, Harry McCracken:
I'm on vacation at the moment, but I've been fascinated by the story, and feeling kind of personally invested in it. That's in part because Madigan did some reporting for PC World back in 2002, when she was a reporter for the Medill News Service of Northwestern University. But it's also because I've done undercover camera work for Dateline NBC myself
...
All I know about Madigan's mishap is what I've read in the blogosphere, so I'm hesitant to express any definitive opinion it it. It does sound like everything that could have gone wrong for her did go wrong--and that she may have made multiple mistakes that led to her own fiasco. (If reports of some of her actions are accurate, some of them were at odds with the practices we followed when I worked with Dateline producers in 2000.)
...
Like I say I'm reserving judgment. But I do think that one of the interesting things about this case is that it involved a reporter being sneaky (albeit unsuccessfully so) at a conference where sneakiness of various kinds was very much on the agenda ... I do kinda wonder how much of the outrage is on moral/ethical grounds, and how much of it is a reaction to her abject failure. [more]
Alchemist253 laughs:
Brilliant. Attempt to carry out what is basically technological espionage against some of the best technological espionage people in the world... real smart move. [more]
But aka-ed stands up for, "Simple freedom of the press":
should Journalists identify hemselves to the chef before eating at a restaurant under review? Reporters are representatives of their readers; I want MY reporters to be able to go anywhere without revealing their identity. When ABC's hidden cameras revealed that Food Lion was deliberately selling "iffy" meat, Food Lion sued on the basis of reporters falsifying employment applications. The courts eventually found in ABC's favor, as they should have! I'm sympathetic to hackers, but they deserve no special protection from the press. [more]
And redelm offers a legal angle:
Nevada (and most the rest) are One-Party Consent to Tape jurisdictions. So the NBC observer broke no law. And I rather doubt DEFCON can impose any boilerplate contractual terms on its attendees. Most would revolt! Few would agree the sky is blue. [more]
Tom Foremski has video:
Elizabeth Safran captures on video the outing of an undercover reporter from "Dateline" at the Defcon 15 security conference in Las Vegas. The reporter flees followed by a pack of citizen journalists trying to interview her! [more]
And Spikescape has stills:
Photos of the fleeing reporter ... http://amishrabbit.smugmug.com/gallery/3253654. [more]
Buffer overflow:
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Previously in IT Blogwatch
And finally... The end of an era
Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk.
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