When Will DEFCON Stop Being A Massive Sexist Cringe-Fest?
If DEFCON will make changes to make federal employees feel more comfortable, why won’t they do the same for women?
It was late on the second night of the infamous DEFCON tech-security conference in 2011. I had been able to score a second badge to get in that year, and had invited my wife (who isn’t in infosec) to come to one of the events that happens once the lights of the main rooms at DEFCON go dark.
A friend of ours was DJing that night getting ready for his set inside the room we were waiting in line to get into when two of the physical security personnel (people the DEFCON organizers call “goons”) approached us.
“Hey guys,” he said to us. “Are you having a good time?”
“Sure!” I said. “It’s been fun so far.” I replied.
“How are you doing on your bribe card?” He asked.
“Oh, not great so far…” I replied.
DEFCON is known for the games available for the attendees to play. Games like “spot the fed” where the goal is to call out government employees who are attending the conference are enjoyed by participants who usually win a shirt, or some other form of swag in reward of their effort.
Another is a game called the “DEFCON goon bribe card” that involves doing favors for the goons. It’s a little like a scavenger hunt where attendees are encouraged (although not required) to do little favors for the goons, and in turn will be given favor by the goons at some point during the event.
The “Bribe Card” is a punch card of sorts. I only had one hole punched in mine; the “cold drink” space on the card(I had given a bottle of water from my hotel fridge to a goon). One of the goons now standing in front of us turned to my wife and said to her, “Well, if you want to help him out, we could punch ‘boobs’ for you.”
One of these volunteer security guards had literally just solicited to see my wife’s breasts right in front of me in exchange for a hole in my bribe card.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t an isolated event. As it turns out, DEFCON has been a notorious and aggressive ‘boys club’ for a long time. Not long ago, I had voiced these concerns publicly, when a fellow-infosec-er brought one of the female organizers of the convention in to make a comment on the incident I described with my wife:
Of course it isn’t Nikita’s fault that the convention has such a male-centric bent to it and that this type of behavior on the part of the attendees and staff is tolerated by others. Obviously it makes her and the other organizers uncomfortable enough to stop it when they see it, but at what point exactly will the annual gathering of the cringe-producers stop?
A year after my experience, Valerie Aurora (@vaurorapub) published a blogpost chronicling sexual harassment at DEFCON 20 in 2012. As her post points out, the harassment was so bad at DEFCON 19 that a “Red/Yellow card project” was created as a modest way to temper the rampant harassment problem. To their credit, DEFCON organizers offered to fund the printing of the cards, but the use of the cards had stopped by 2013 with apparently little impact on the culture of the convention at all.
Being in the midst of the 2016 DEFCON season, the problem doesn’t appear to have abetted much, if at all.
Not only are stories like this a grotesque mix of weird, desperate and creepy, this unholy mixture of pubescent horniness is eventually going to start driving women away, if it hasn’t already taken a toll as it is.
According to a 2015 study regarding women in the information security field done by Frost And Sullivan, nearly half of the security professionals in the field are female.
With tons of tech companies pushing to bring women into the fold, it’s time for the attendees and organizers of DEFCON to similarly start to take this problem a little more seriously.
This year, DEFCON is running a special event alongside the main show geared toward women dubbed “Tiarac0n”. The stated mission of Tiarac0n is to advance the careers of women in infosec and while it’s another solid effort to help support the ladies, the issue of sex harassment at main DEFCON is going to have to be a specific focus eventually.
I know that the people who bear the responsibility for this gross behavior are in the minority at the con, but even though their numbers are small, their impact on the enjoyment of the event is huge. By and large, DEFCON is a place for a lot of people from many different backgrounds joined together by a common interest and curiosity for technology to let loose and have a good time. This includes women!
As a matter of fact, there are a number of badass girls out there going to the cons and adding value to the overall community. These are women who put up with a lot of nonsense they shouldn’t have to still show up anyway. Women who would be sorely missed if they decided eventually to opt-out of attending exciting conventions like DEFCON, especially if it was over something dumb like sexual harassment.
I remember DEFCON as being a con built with fun in mind, and every year DEFCON brings something new and creative to the table to achieve that end. The girls want to be there and of course, we will continue to go to the conference in droves. Many of us will do so without raising a huge fuss over some of the questionable shit we see. But we also shouldn’t have to spend the whole time worrying that we’re going to be involved in an awkward situation for us because frankly, having a room full of dudes talking about the exact dick sizes of different porn stars has a way of fucking up that fun and relaxation the organizers are trying to create.
At the end of the day, it’s up to the organizers to make sure that the conference maintains that level of fun for as many of their participants as possible. It falls to their feet to iron out these wrinkles so that they don’t get a bad reputation, but for some people it may already be too late.
