Def Con

The Basics:

Cost for the Average Attendee: $300

The legendary pinnacle of all the professional hacker conferences, this one is not suited for beginners. Sure, you can show up with cash in Las Vegas the day of the event and purchase a pass to attend, but that doesn’t make it a wise choice. Everyone who attends this event should be filled with a healthy dose of paranoia and concern about their personal data getting stolen. Even professional blue hat hackers walk in with trepidation and have regularly had their bank account, personal messages and identities stolen by attending. In the month of August there is no where else on earth that you are more likely to get hacked. In fact trying to hack your follow attendees is treated as sort of a game, where if your personal information gets nabbed you end up on the wall of sheep.

If you think leaving your electronic devices behind in your hotel is enough, we agree that it is a start, but you had better leave your ID and credit cards behind as well. Lest the hackers roaming around with RFID antenna readers swipe your details. If you absolutely need a device on you during the four day convention we recommend splurging on a cheap laptop that you can power wash as soon as you head home.

So far it sounds like walking into a snakes den just so you can play with the vipers, and that is partially true. But if you or the company you represent want to know about the emerging talents of hackers, this is the conference you must attend in order to find out what new poisons the vipers have evolved.

Our Review:

We sheepishly admit that none of our cybersecurity juniors have ever attended this conference, but Clyde has, and since they feel that a full review of this is unnecessary our recommendation comes down to this: if you understand the risks and have the required cash in hand to attend, do it.

Hopefully next year we will have the capital to send Soler or CyberSquire so that we can find out if either of them is careless enough to end up on the wall of sheep.