Walking through the hallways of Las Vegas casinos, sitting in the city’s taxis, and speaking to the staff of various businesses, there was a distinct feeling throughout this year’s DEF CON hacking conference: paranoia.
Resorts World, one of the hotels housing a chunk of this year’s hackers, searched rooms daily looking for specific “hacking tools.” Drivers of the Vegas Loop, which ferried attendees to and from the Las Vegas Convention Center, were told by their employer to not bring their personal devices to work in case they got hacked. And casinos kicking DEF CON out after years of hosting the conference sent a clear message: we don’t want you here anymore.
I have covered hacking for ten years and attended the DEF CON and Black Hat security conferences many times; not as many as some veterans I spoke to who have gone to eighteen or even twenty DEF CONs, but enough to feel a definite shift this year. Hackers were no longer seen as a novelty coming into town. They were seen as a threat to peoples’ peace and livelihoods.