If only there were a YouTube version of this … (wait, wait. There is.)
A file photo shows the NBC peacock logo on the NBC studios building in Burbank, California. An undercover NBC television reporter Friday fled from outraged computer hackers that caught her spying on their Las Vegas gathering with a camera hidden in her handbag.
Dateline NBC associate producer Michelle Madigan was heckled and derided as she ran from DefCon, the world’s largest computer hackers conference, and raced away in a car.
“They sent a moderately attractive young lady with a purse cam whose mission was to first capture someone on film admitting to a felony, which is really not cool, and second to catch a fed on film,” said DefCon spokesman “Priest.”
“She was basically trying to do a slam piece.”
Priest and DefCon founder Jeff Moss, whose hacker name is Dark Tangent, lured Madigan to a packed conference room by putting out word they were going to have hackers finger federal agents in a game called “spot the fed.”
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I wonder if Madigan is still going to do her story on Dateline. It wouldn’t be a bad strategy to come up with something to adjust the initial spin. Perhaps she can borrow some footage from this guy:
Photo from Wired
Clearly, Madigan’s tactics went against the core nature of the DefCon event, which goes out of its way to protect the privacy of attendees and create a safe environment for sharing information about cybersecurity. Everyone has to pay $100 cash in order to get in. The participants include both Black Hats (whose jobs might be at risk) and federal agents (whose lives might be at risk), along with technologists interested in finding the critical holes in our network interactions. One thing is for sure—you don’t want to make this group mad:
Defcon organizers identified Madigan after being tipped off by her associates, who Priest declined to name. After the incident, Priest showed reporters a complete dossier on Madigan, which included a photograph, phone number, job title and social security number. He would not say how he obtained it.
From InfoWorld article on August 3, 2007
Steven Huff of Random Lunatic News had an outstanding and detailed post on the incident, including a link to a cached version of Madigan’s now-locked MySpace page and an update that references another story suggesting that there may still be four more hidden-camera reporters on site. More on this can be found at New Scientist, Wired, and InfoWorld.
