When asked if the conference was considering additional safety measures such as requiring vaccination or canceling the event, the Black Hat media team declined to comment other than to refer The Record to the conference's website FAQ. The layout of the venues will make it “effectively impossible to avoid crowds of random tourists” he said, adding that the “risk of picking up a breakthrough infection” he might unwittingly pass on to others “just seems too great to ignore right now.”īoth conferences have taken steps to address the health situation.Īfter the local masking mandate was announced, Black Hat messaged attendees about the requirement at the event and said it would provide masks. “Although I'm fully vaccinated, I've decided to participate online this year,” Blaze told The Record. Several individual prominent researchers have also pulled out of planned trips to Las Vegas, including Tarah Wheeler, a fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center and the New American Foundation, as well as Matt Blaze, the longtime cryptography specialist and Georgetown Professor. Plus, he wrote, the pandemic had taught the company it could meet customers’ needs from almost anywhere in the world. Although he believes Black Hat will be “as safe as possible” the company “wanted to remove the risk on behalf of” employees, he added. "We are hearing from customers that they appreciate and respect our people-first approach,” Simzer told The Record in an emailed statement. Trend Micro’s Simzer is feeling good about his bet. Social distancing and the masking requirements were poorly enforced at McCarran International Airport, which many attendees will travel through before even making it to the conference sites, when this reporter traveled on Monday: trams in the airport and shuttles to rental car sites were packed full, with some travelers hostile to or seemingly unaware of the current masking rules. But another is that potential customers will recognize their decision as a sign of responsible risk-management behavior that could win over others similarly wary of the situation on the ground in Las Vegas.Īnd the risks in Las Vegas are significant: cases are skyrocketing around the city, where masks are now required for indoor public places regardless of vaccination status-a change that followed recently updated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance. ![]() One is that the potential risk to human health is not worth more than the dollar amount they might lose out on from that in-person networking. (Disclosure: Recorded Future, which owns The Record, is planning a limited in-person presence and an event that adheres to local restrictions in conjunction with Black Hat.)īlack Hat is among the biggest deal-making conferences of the year for the cybersecurity industry-a place where business agreements are often forged through in-person networking in hallways or over drinks at the conference’s many, many afterparties.īy pulling out of attending in-person, vendors are making a few different calculations. ![]() Days later he tweeted again-this time flagging that many logistics were still up in the air, even as the conferences are set to happen this week. “I can’t remember any year as complex and stressful as this one,” he tweeted in late July. ![]() ![]() Jeff Moss, the founder of both conferences also known by his handle Dark Tangent or DT, has also posted publicly about the difficulty of planning for the in-person events amidst the ongoing crisis. As of Monday night, DEF CON press lead Melanie Ensign told The Record that the plan remains to move ahead, but that organizers are monitoring the situation “day-to-day.” But the gamble on live events is now too much risk for many individual security researchers and some large vendors, who have pulled out of in-person attendance as Vegas became a hotspot of the highly transmissible Delta variant of the virus.īoth conferences have contingency plans for cancelling in-person events. This year, the conferences bet on the virus being contained enough to allow for safe in-person events while also planning for virtual versions. The Covid-19 pandemic pushed both conferences online last year. Researchers decide ‘Hacker Summer Camp’ is too risky as Covid-19 cases spikeĮvery summer for decades, thousands of hackers have made the pilgrimage to Las Vegas for Black Hat and DEF CON-back-to-back security conferences affectionately known as by attendees as “Hacker Summer Camp.”
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