Security Researcher Attacked While At Conference

New submitter fineous fingers writes "U.S. computer security researcher Georgia Weidman has revealed on her blog that a fellow speaker at the Confidence security conference in Krakow, Poland attempted to rape her. The attack occurred in her hotel room in the early morning hours of 28 May. Luckily, Georgia was able to fend her attacker off by clocking him in the head with a coffee mug. I was personally at this conference, but was staying at a different hotel and found out about it after the fact. It was Georgia herself that told me after she gave her fantastic talk on Leveraging Mobile Devices on Pentests. That she was able to give a flawless presentation later that day and had the courage to talk about the attack on her blog shows how awesome she really is."

Comments

Re:Swag attack!

[Nrrqshrr]

This isn't funny, I got mugged with a mug once, and it was horrible.

Re:Current evidence does not support reasonable do

[Mr. Slippery]

I'm having difficulty coming up with a rational explanation that doesn't include the stronger person being a predator who engineered a situation where they expected to face no consequences for their actions

There is no "rational" explanation here. Either the man is a rapist -- irrational behavior -- or the woman is a liar and an abuser -- irrational behavior. If we go looking for rationality in a situation where we know one or both persons involved behaved irrationally, we're going to have trouble.

It does happen that smaller women physically attack larger men. (Though I have no knowledge of the size or strength of the people involved here -- I'm assuming your characterization of Weidman as "physically weaker" is based on some knowledge.) And it does happen that women make false allegations of rape. Did these things happen here? I don't know. But either way it does point up an important real-world security rule: don't be alone and unobserved with someone you don't trust.