Well, last year at Black Hat, journalists were in fact targeted - by other journalists. Yes there was a 'Wall of Sheep' for the general attendee population, tracking those that sent passwords in the clear too. So I shouldn't be too surprised that my peers may have IT security insecurity feelings.

I'm not one of them - likely for two very specific reasons.

1) I run Linux. Yes I know Linux can be attacked too, but it doesn't present the same broad attack surface that Windows PCs provide.

2) Prior to attending Black Hat (or any conference for that matter), I'll run my own mini pen-test over the course of a few days of regular usage to ensure that I've haven't got open ports running and that I'm not unknowingly passing passwords in the clear.

So my suggestion to my peers (if in fact you are feeling insecure), is not too worry too much. There is nothing wrong about bringing up security concerns to your network admins. Changing passwords is often not any harder than making a cup of coffee. And hey there are a lot of great free and open source tools out there that can help you to audit your security.

Do hackers target journalists? Maybe. But they also target everyone else too. It's not personal, it's (usually) about money.