Resorts World Las Vegas, a hotel that is hosting attendees of the DEF CON hacking conference this week, will perform daily inspections of rooms including those displaying a privacy sign, according to a letter from the hotel given to guests. An information security professional posted a photo of the letter online. Members of the cybersecurity community have reacted with a mix of anger and disappointment on social media.
“Welcome, and thank you for choosing Resorts World Las Vegas. We are pleased that you have joined us, as you have chosen to stay with us for relaxation, fun and excitement!” the message, written on hotel letterhead, reads.
“As you may or may not know, a well-known hacking convention will be held in Las Vegas during your stay,” it adds. DEF CON runs from August 8 to 11, with many attendees already in the city for the separate Black Hat cybersecurity conference or other events. “We remain committed to our guests’ safety and understand the utmost importance of cybersecurity, as well.”
The letter then describes what staff at Resorts World Las Vegas will be doing: “In an effort to increase the safety of our guests, we will be conducting scheduled, brief visual and non-intrusive room inspections daily beginning Monday, August 5. Rooms with a privacy sign will be included as part of the inspection process.”
But… it’s cybersecurity. What is a “brief visual and non-intrusive room inspection” even looking for? Anonymous masks? Green terminals with scrolling text? People shouting “enhance” and/or “I’m in”?
Possibly they’re looking for people assembling their sniper rifles, or trying to ensure that no hotel room gets gutted to become some group’s command HQ with 50 amps of electronics with no shielding sprouting from the wall sockets and clean (de)soldering stations set up alongside an electron microscope?
I know what’s gone on in those hotel rooms in past years, and a lot of it is stuff I wouldn’t want to have to deal with as a hotelier.
Answering machines, scrabble boards, camouflage laptops, rollerblades.
Captain Crunch whistles.
I’ve heard you can bankrupt financial institutions with one of those.
He’s in a hoodie, take him out!
I like to say enhance before opening the full file from a thumbnail in feh when showing my wife pictures. She hates it and I will not stop
How can an inspection be non-intrusive if it consists of physically entering a guest’s room? As an aside, I was hoping I could attend this year but my company said there wasn’t enough budget 🙄. Whenever I attend Defcon or Blackhat, I stay in hotels not directly within the vicinity of the con because of all the shenanigans.
Non-Intrusive in that they enter the room, which is their property and they have the right to enter, but they aren’t going through your stuff.
Renters have rights.
They do, and you agree to whatever rights are outlined in the rental agreement when you check in and sign the forms.
There are rights you can’t give up even by signing them away.
On private property, you agree to the terms the property owner sets.
There are still rights you 100% cannot sign away regardless of what property you are on.
There are also rights people think they have on private property that they absolutely do not have. ;)
When you give someone the key to property you own for an exchange of money, you indeed lose that explicit right.
So, no. You are incorrect. It is their property, but they gave up the right to enter with less than 24 hrs notice when they sold the keys.
This is by definition, intrusive.
Spot the person who has never read a hotel rental agreement.
Spot the person who has a fundamental misundertanding of property rights.
Get fucked, my guy. I was polite, but youre returning fightin words.
Google the term “reasonable person” and quickly learn that any such agreement has no legal standing. It’s an agreement. It is not contractual. It is not enforcable.
Not the person you’re responding to… but consider your proposal that an unreasonable person Google the definition of a reasonable person. I imagine they won’t come to the correct conclusion.
Let’s break those contract down: contracts are enforceable. Unless, they interfere with other rights you have and those take priority. How? Well there’s things like conscionability and consideration.
Consideration means, both parties have to get something in return. It can literally be a corn of rice, but it has to be something.
Conscionability means there’s things too egregious to be enforceable through contract law.
For example I can’t sign a contract that I want to be killed by someone else. It gets very complicated, but in it’s most basic form, it is unconscionable to just chalk a death up to freedom, just because you found a contract of the victim stating they want to be killed. The investigation takes priority and a prosecution’s case could be brought in spite of any contract. This render such a contract void.
So what does this fall under? Well there’s a lot of rights that people that rent a property have and that they can enforce against them against the landlords. Some of those rights pierce the veil of the contract and therefore are enforceable in spite of the contract.
Now I am not sure about the rights in this particular situation but there is a solid chance this creates a legal claim against the hotel company.
My point is, both of you are right, but you are getting down voted right now because you are ignoring the the fact that contract law, although very broad, is not absolute, and especially in this case it might be unenforceable.
Obligatory IANAL.
As a parent, I have the right to enter my kids’ rooms anytime I want. If I don’t do it respectfully, it will definitely be intrusive.
The hotel does have their rights. When they abuse those rights, it becomes intrusive. Rights don’t really have anything to do with feeling that someone is being intrusive.
“scheduled” - We’re telling you when we’re coming, hide yo’ shit!
OTOH - WTF do they think they’re looking for? I don’t expect hotel staff to know a nefarious device from a multi-port USB hub.
“Hey, that laptop’s not running Windows…[calls in SWAT team]”
They appear to be starting this before the event, so something has them spooked (could just be the con full of spooks). Also with the volume of technical know-how that is going to be in attendance I think
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There is no way someone wont spot funny bususiness if a group or indivudal is trying to pull something.
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If a visual inspection is all their doing (unlikely) then this amounts to nothing more that security theatre. If they are being more invasive the attendees will know (its DEF CON for fuck sake).
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This may just prompt the attendees to book at another resort next year and hurt the hotel in the long run, seeing as this is very close to the opening of the con I dont see many groups changing their booking in time.
If I learned this after I had booked, I would be expecting a refund as well as compensation for missing the conference if I couldn’t find alternative accommodation.
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For anyone else curious which hotels are affected by this measure:
- Hilton Las Vegas
- Conrad Las Vegas
- Crockfords Las Vegas
Yeah, OK, time to hack their schedule.
Look on your list, you’ve already been in here today.
This is just a tutorial level.
People in here speculating about them looking for “hacker shit” and I’m assuming it’s sex trafficking shit.
It’s probably guns. That guy who shot all those people at the music festival in Vegas snuck a small arsenal into his room and they didn’t notice until the shooting.
If that were the case, why not do this for every conference? Same question for sex trafficking. Are hackers more violent or sexually exploitative than every other subculture?
Sure, if you’re a Boomer
They did know announcing this ahead of time is just begging to have their system hacked and taken down, right?
“Evil maid” becomes more than a metaphor.
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