Hackers scare people. They make non-hackers uneasy. Often fueled by unrealistic hacker portrayals in television and film, people enter hyper paranoid mode when hackers are present.

This appears to be the case at Resorts World.

DEFCON has taken place in Las Vegas since the early 1990s. It's a convention for hackers to show off their devices, share information, and even engage in contests with one another. Most of the hackers in attendance are of the "white hat" variety -- generally good-hearted people who are simply interested in the topic of system security. Admittedly, there are some attendees who use their skills to either wreak havoc for fun, or in some cases, seek monetary gain or cause malicious harm.

As in all communities, the hackers at DEFCON are a diverse bunch, and their presence doesn't indicate evil any more than the presence of poker players at the WSOP.

It is reasonable for hotels to shore up system security and plug loopholes prior to the DEFCON convention. If there's a time when people will be probing around to see what they can do, it would be DEFCON.

However, some idiot managers at Resorts World decided to panic, and have now both pissed off the hacker community (never a good thing) and created somewhat of a PR nightmare.


On August 4, Resorts World put out a memo stating that they would be conducting unannounced, random room searches:

https://twitter.com/McGrewSecurity/status/1820206740392345686



But it got worse. Read on next post...