[ISN] Defcon opens with a bang, contests, and intrigue

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10012516-83.html

By Elinor Mills
Security - News.com
August 8, 2008

Updated Saturday with change in price for "Buzzword Survivor" winners.

LAS VEGAS -- At the Defcon hacker conference, which opened on Friday, 
some of the biggest buzz was in the press room.

Three journalists who allegedly sniffed the network in the press room 
were ejected from Defcon's sister event, the Black Hat security 
conference, on Thursday. On Friday, the journalists, with Global 
Security Magazine in France, asked to hold a news conference at Defcon 
to tell their side of the story. But when the hour arrived, the men were 
nowhere to be seen.

A press liaison for Defcon said the men, Marc Brami, Dominique Jouniot, 
and Mauro Israel, had called and canceled shortly before the scheduled 
hour.

An FBI agent who was at the event to speak on the "Meet the Feds" panel 
said he had sent the information about the case to the local FBI office 
in Las Vegas.

"Because of the nature of this, involving (citizens) from another 
country, it might be sent to the Computer Crime and Intellectual 
Property Department at the Justice Department," James Finch, assistant 
director for the FBI's cyberdivision, told CNET News. "I would assume 
that we'd bring it to the State Department, too."

While the brouhaha was the topic of conversation in the press room, a 
world of software and hardware hacking and events was unfolding in the 
Riviera conference center all around.

In one popular two-hour session security researchers explained how to 
make a fake key out of a credit card that can open certain types of 
Medeco M3 locks.

Other sessions focused on the security issues with social networks, 
exploiting Google gadgets, and medical identity theft, among many other 
topics.

[...]


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