Hamma Time

DEFCON 2007 is underway this weekend in Las Vegas, NV a perfect opportunity for Dateline NBC to try and up its undercover reporting series, unfortunately for them this time they were the ones who were uncovered. Dateline reporter Michelle Madigan was revealed as she was hiding in the audience among other hackers and DEFCON staff announced a game called “Spot the undercover reporter” turns out, they really knew who she was all along.

Too bad. They knew when her plane took off. They knew when her plane landed. They knew when she picked up her non-press attendee pass (human in the vernacular). They followed her around. They knew when she walked into the ladies room to wire up, camera and sound. She knew that the camera was not allowed but did it anyway, and told a goon that she was doing so.
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Oopsie.. looks like when you are attempting to pull off an operation like this you should make sure you aren’t dealing with people smarter than you. Their tactics may work against dumbass criminals and pedophiles but it isn’t going to work when you are dealing with a smarter crowd, as she found out the hard way. She was chased out the door by around 150 DEFCON attendees who were shouting questions at her as she made her way to the exit, she promptly entered her car hidden camera and all and tried to go out the wrong way.. having to back up again and be harassed by the contingency following her.

Looks like Dateline wasted some cash on that run and they won’t be getting their “Story” after all. I’m sure Joe-Bob somewhere in America would have been appalled at what the “Hackers” were up to. But when push comes to shove most of these guys do nothing illegal and actually help companies to resolve security holes before they get out into the general public. Recent iPhone flaws that were discovered were patched up in short order by Apple among countless other situations where hackers have helped keep the average oblivious computer user safe.

Hey at least they sent a semi hot reporter! So here’s to Dateline for getting owned I wonder if Chris Hansen was going to be involved in this story? Check out more coverage on Google News and also the Youtube video of the chase..

Update: Wired Threat Level has a ton more information and photos here.

Hamma Rants, Technology