But... it's cybersecurity. What is a "brief visual and non-intrusive room inspection" even looking for? Anonymous masks? Green terminals with scrolling text? People shouting "enhance" and/or "I'm in"?
Possibly they’re looking for people assembling their sniper rifles, or trying to ensure that no hotel room gets gutted to become some group’s command HQ with 50 amps of electronics with no shielding sprouting from the wall sockets and clean (de)soldering stations set up alongside an electron microscope?
I know what’s gone on in those hotel rooms in past years, and a lot of it is stuff I wouldn’t want to have to deal with as a hotelier.
Answering machines, scrabble boards, camouflage laptops, rollerblades.
Captain Crunch whistles.
I've heard you can bankrupt financial institutions with one of those.
For those who missed the joke: Payphone hackers (often called phreakers) discovered that a toy whistle from Captain Crunch cereal boxes could easily be modified to play the specific tone that payphones listened for to indicate that a coin had been inserted. Basically, the phone company didn’t know when a coin has been put in, without some sort of signal from the pay phone. And typically, the only lines run to the phone were the actual phone line. So the pay phone would play a specific 2600Hz tone, indicating that a coin was inserted.
Using this toy whistle, you could essentially use payphones for free, and it was entirely untraceable until the company emptied the phone and counted the coins in the collection bin. In an era when cellphones were only for millionaires and were the size of literal bricks the world was almost entirely dependent on pay phones unless you were at home. So this was a major discovery for phreaks, who quickly began experimenting to see what other tones may be used to send signals.
Naturally, the phone companies panicked, and quickly had the cereal company pull the toys from future boxes.
It didn’t need modification, it was naturally the right pitch.
I like to say enhance before opening the full file from a thumbnail in feh when showing my wife pictures. She hates it and I will not stop
How can an inspection be non-intrusive if it consists of physically entering a guest's room? As an aside, I was hoping I could attend this year but my company said there wasn't enough budget 🙄. Whenever I attend Defcon or Blackhat, I stay in hotels not directly within the vicinity of the con because of all the shenanigans.
Las Vegas always has their SWAT team on standby during Defcon, in case they need to shoot the internet.
How long until the CEO of this hotel gets an email to his personal email address containing a .zip of all of their customer's PII?
How long until the manager of this hotel gets exposed for putting cameras in the hotel room bathrooms?
Hotel clerk: Sir, is that dangerous equipment you're setting up?
Hacker: It's just a WiFi coconut, a rubber duck, a flipper zero, and a few IMSI catchers.
Clerk: Okay then. So, carry on I guess?
“Sir, you dropped your honeypot!”
"scheduled" - We're telling you when we're coming, hide yo' shit!
OTOH - WTF do they think they're looking for? I don't expect hotel staff to know a nefarious device from a multi-port USB hub.
"Hey, that laptop's not running Windows.....[calls in SWAT team]"
Would be great to find out that this wasn’t a real notice, someone just social-engineered hotel letterhead from three different hotels and printed up something inflammatory to catch the community’s attention.
They put the fake ATMs in the lobby and the "free wifi" on balloons in the vendor hall anyway.
Also, if you vend or buy anything there, stick to cash.
Heh, I remember that. I still have my defcon 17 Human badge somewhere.
For anyone else curious which hotels are affected by this measure:
They appear to be starting this before the event, so something has them spooked (could just be the con full of spooks). Also with the volume of technical know-how that is going to be in attendance I think
There is no way someone wont spot funny bususiness if a group or indivudal is trying to pull something.
If a visual inspection is all their doing (unlikely) then this amounts to nothing more that security theatre. If they are being more invasive the attendees will know (its DEF CON for fuck sake).
This may just prompt the attendees to book at another resort next year and hurt the hotel in the long run, seeing as this is very close to the opening of the con I dont see many groups changing their booking in time.
If I learned this after I had booked, I would be expecting a refund as well as compensation for missing the conference if I couldn't find alternative accommodation.
If they are being more invasive the attendees will know
With this announcement, I fully expect every DefCon room to be running their own security cameras.
They did know announcing this ahead of time is just begging to have their system hacked and taken down, right?
Yeah, OK, time to hack their schedule.
Look on your list, you've already been in here today.
This is just a tutorial level.
I think they started doing room checks in Vegas after that one guy sniped the music festival. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting
Well, I found the CTF targets.
have past attendees done something to make administration feel this is necessary?
Well I was once at a dinner there, where someone had to leave to bail out a friend who found an open traffic box and started playing. We’re not angels.
But honestly they should shut up about this and only search the rooms of suspected foreign agents, and with due process.
brief visual and non-intrusive room inspections daily [...] Rooms with a privacy sign will be included as part of the inspection process
The contradictions in this phrasing are giving me a headache.
Also: this is DEF CON. The first mistake was telling them you were coming.
People in here speculating about them looking for "hacker shit" and I'm assuming it's sex trafficking shit.
It's probably guns. That guy who shot all those people at the music festival in Vegas snuck a small arsenal into his room and they didn't notice until the shooting.
If that were the case, why not do this for every conference? Same question for sex trafficking. Are hackers more violent or sexually exploitative than every other subculture?
"Evil maid" becomes more than a metaphor.
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