Category: Def Con

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Inside the Vegas nightclub that launched its own cryptocurrency

sudshr47 August 16, 2018

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It’s 11:15 p.m. on a Friday night and a man in a white button-down shirt named Joey just ordered me a shot of Fireball. It’s a little hard to hear him over the music blasting from the other side of the velvet ropes, but the club’s director of services leans in close to make sure I can hear him. 

“Excellence and hospitality in the crypto world,” Joey says in response to my request that he describe just what, exactly, is going on here. 

I’m sitting on a spacious couch in a private club, inside of another nightclub, inside of a casino, and we’re discussing Las Vegas’s first cryptocurrency nightclub: MORE Las Vegas. Launched in April by Peter Klamka — a man known for, among other things, his involvement with The Legends Room gentlemen’s club which allowed patrons to tip performers in bitcoin — the nightclub comes with all the trappings of a typical VIP Vegas destination. There’s the $250,000 bottles of champagne, high-heeled cocktail waitresses, and view of the Bellagio fountains that’s to die for.  Read more…

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Cryptocurrency-rich make magic internet money rain in Vegas

sudshr47 August 14, 2018

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It was late Saturday night at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and an extremely stoned man was trying to bribe his way into the city’s hottest cryptocurrency party — and it wasn’t working. 

To get to that point, he’d have already waited in a line for 30 minutes just to ride the elevator up to room 6116 in the hotel’s Forum Tower. It was clear he was past ready to start celebrating — this was Saturday night at the DEF CON hacker convention, after all — and someone else was footing the bill. 

That would be Monero, the popular privacy-focused cryptocurrency that’s been on a wild ride since it was released in 2014. It had skyrocketed in value from around $1 in the summer of 2016 to a high of almost $500 in January of this year, before falling back to about $80 today — making a host of early adopters incredibly wealthy in the process.   Read more…

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Hacking the websites responsible for election information is so easy an 11 year-old did it

sudshr47 August 12, 2018

It’s time to talk about election security. Over the weekend at Def Con, the annual hacker convention in Las Vegas to discuss some of the latest and greatest (or scariest) trends in the wild world of hacking, a pair of election security hacking demonstrations set up for adults and kids alike offered up some frightening […]

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Dozens of Vegas slots went offline simultaneously during a hacker convention

sudshr47 August 12, 2018

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The casino is “pretty certain” it wasn’t hacked. 

The annual DEF CON hacking convention returned once again to Las Vegas this weekend, and with it came the typical good-natured mischief that’s bound to happen when thousands of cybersecurity professionals congregate in one spot. Early Saturday morning at the Linq casino, however, looked to be something else entirely.  

It was around 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. and DEF CON attendee Matt Anderson was hanging out at the Linq — a casino just across the street from Caesars Palace, the convention’s host — when it happened: Dozens of slot machines went down, all at once.  Read more…

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Hackers can seize practically all your online accounts, and it’s your voicemail’s fault

sudshr47 August 10, 2018

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Who would have thought that, in the end, it would be the humble voicemail that would do us all in?

Your Google, Microsoft, Apple, WhatsApp, and even Signal accounts all have an Achilles’ heel — the same one, in fact. And it turns out that if you’re not careful, a hacker could use that weakness to take over your online identity. 

Or so claims self-described “security geek” Martin Vigo. Speaking to an enthusiastic collection of hackers and security researchers at the annual DEF CON convention in Las Vegas, Vigo explained how he managed to reset passwords for a wide-ranging set of online accounts by taking advantage of the weakest link in the security chain: your voicemail. Read more…

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The hackers just arrived, and they’re already breaking Vegas

sudshr47 August 10, 2018

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It’s 107 degrees outside, and a disturbing number of people charging down the sidewalk are wearing black jeans. 

That seemingly incongruous fashion choice, more than the blinking digital badges swinging from the necks of every mohawk-sporting passerby, clues the confused tourists into the reality that this week in Las Vegas is different. Yes, this week is DEF CON, and the hackers are very much in town.

And you better believe they’re already breaking Vegas. 

Thursday was the official start of the 26th annual DEF CON hacker convention, this year spread out between Caesars Palace and The Flamingo. As typical, the first day of the four-day affair started slowly — the hacking villages where people practice remotely hijacking cars and breaking into voting machines are still getting set up, and the few opening talks cover decidedly non-technical tricks like how to lose your police tail.  Read more…

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