“This research was presented on the DEFCON Main Stage, which means it went through peer review by technical experts before selection.” Oh. Well then!

That statement just makes me wonder about their submission truthfulness even more.

Also like… program committees are made up of humans and sometimes humans fuck up

My second defcon I was sitting in a .net session getting more and more annoyed but someone else stood up and pointed out all the flaws and it amused me so much.

My advice for people who are applying to big conference for abstracts are: imagine that your reviewer is under a deadline of less than twelve hours and they are deeply deeply angry. Write to impress that person, but write the talk you'd be proud to give.

Clown Sterling www.schneier.com/blog/archive...

Oh is this separate from the two AI-slop talks that made it to the DEFCON main stage?

oh no

bsky.app/profile/redt...

Crown Sterling will have its revenge on Las Vegas.

"we didn't have tomatoes thrown at us, I'll call that a win!"

I'm sorry I'm new to this stuff. Didn't we used to call this theft or fraud? Sure reads like it. Everything is just a game?

The game is don’t get caught until after major funding preferably after going public. A common startup theme basically involves fraud on at least one level. And quite a few people believe more in the faking it and less in the making it.

at least for transactionalists

I mean, when I spotted the flaw in the first two or three sentences describing the attack, it says something. I'm not really a security expert (I just play one on TV), but I can't understand how this was accepted as a mainstage presentation at blackhat

"It rather involved being on the other side of the airtight hatchway"

'if I have physical access to your machine and it's logged in'...

If I am you I have access to all of your stufff

reaches into pocket: I can take out my OWN WALLET!

Somehow DEFCON rejected my talk on the illusion of free will.

Black Hat could have scheduled right after the update on Time Crystals

If anything, they proved the effectiveness of passkeys because it is a SUPER red flag to have your passkey suddenly stop working and the best they can do is stop it from working.

To be fair most users won’t notice

True. They did just get social engineered into installing malware.

I saw *three* talks that were all the same type of thing - "but if I totally compromise your machine and have your root password - LOOK WHAT HORRIBLE THINGS I CAN DO!" I skipped this one, but if I had seen it that would've been four.