My head a Splode
Marv is back from DEFCON.
Over all it was a good experience. The first night I was there I made about $300 at the tables. I won $200 playing blackjack and then I made another $100 when I got in on an $1100 bet on black at the roulette table. It was a great night that first night. I donated $100 to the EFF (see http://www.eff.org/ for details on this organization).
At the con, I managed to hit about 10 talks and all were informative, if not overly entertaining. Of note were the Estonian Cyber War talk and the Cyber Warfare 2007 panel. A NBC Dateline reporter was outed as a mole, trying to entrap someone into being a "hacker for hire". At least two ATM's were crashed, and an internet kiosk was pwned and sitting at the DOS prompt. The Dark Tangent's talk on CiscoGate (a recap of the events surrounding the Mike Lynn/ISS/Cisco scandal from the 2005 BlackHat convention) was hilarious, ever more so since I have insider information from the Cisco perspective of that event.
The rest of the time in Vegas, outside of the con, was negative. I almost got in a fight with a bouncer at a bar inside Treasure Island, I did get in an argument with a cabbie at the Riviera which resulted in me storming off and walking the 1.5 miles in 105F heat to the Stratosphere.
Things learned:
1. Stay at the hotel where the convention is located
2. Don't take personal vehicle, cabs are fine (limos are better)
3. Don't eat anywhere that has a restrictive dress code unless you know it before hand and bother to dress for it. The staff will treat you like garbage and ignore your needs.
4. Don't go to Circus Circus when you hate children.
Over all it was a good experience. The first night I was there I made about $300 at the tables. I won $200 playing blackjack and then I made another $100 when I got in on an $1100 bet on black at the roulette table. It was a great night that first night. I donated $100 to the EFF (see http://www.eff.org/ for details on this organization).
At the con, I managed to hit about 10 talks and all were informative, if not overly entertaining. Of note were the Estonian Cyber War talk and the Cyber Warfare 2007 panel. A NBC Dateline reporter was outed as a mole, trying to entrap someone into being a "hacker for hire". At least two ATM's were crashed, and an internet kiosk was pwned and sitting at the DOS prompt. The Dark Tangent's talk on CiscoGate (a recap of the events surrounding the Mike Lynn/ISS/Cisco scandal from the 2005 BlackHat convention) was hilarious, ever more so since I have insider information from the Cisco perspective of that event.
The rest of the time in Vegas, outside of the con, was negative. I almost got in a fight with a bouncer at a bar inside Treasure Island, I did get in an argument with a cabbie at the Riviera which resulted in me storming off and walking the 1.5 miles in 105F heat to the Stratosphere.
Things learned:
1. Stay at the hotel where the convention is located
2. Don't take personal vehicle, cabs are fine (limos are better)
3. Don't eat anywhere that has a restrictive dress code unless you know it before hand and bother to dress for it. The staff will treat you like garbage and ignore your needs.
4. Don't go to Circus Circus when you hate children.