Tip to aspiring undercover reporters: when you're given four chances to sign up as press, you're not really undercover anymore. Cut your losses and stop pretending already.

In a developing story that only keeps getting richer, an undercover reporter for Dateline NBC was outed Friday and embarrassed in front of hundreds of attendees at this year's DEFCON in Las Vegas.

As an associate producer of Dateline, Michelle Madigan tried to attend this year's DEFCON undercover, registering as a programmer and coming to the conference with a hidden camera set up in a shoulder bag. One small problem: she was never really undercover. From the moment Madigan got to the show, word was out among its organizers that she was a member of the press and that she knowingly intended to violate the rules prohibiting media from photographing or videotaping without approval.

Displeased with her intent, the organizers decided to give her several chances to get a legitimate press pass, the final chance coming after outing her in front of convention attendees in a mock-game of "spot the undercover reporter" (caught on video). Madigan fled, much to the delight of attendees who followed her out to the parking lot, mocking her along the way.

Hack job

Lost in the cackles of laughter at the reporter's embarrassment is an account that is truly confusing and, at times, difficult to believe.

Press is truly welcome at DEFCON, but Madigan's attempt to break the rules was unacceptable, if at first understandable. Madigan was reportedly going to the show to report on a cat-and-mouse game between hackers and the undercover federal agents that keep an eye on them. Her goal was to find evidence of nefarious hacking going on by catching someone admitting to a felony on tape and to out a federal agent who was also attending the conference undercover. According to the Register's report, she bragged to an informant that "the people in Kansas would be very interested in knowing what was happening at DEFCON." Organizers got the sense that Madigan was interested in doing a hack job on the show, and nothing else.

Her plan was foiled from the get-go, however, because DEFCON was tipped off to her presence before she even arrived—with the tip, according to ThreatLevel, coming from a mole at NBC. Organizers then attempted to convince her to get a press pass instead, but she declined on four separate occasions, setting the stage for her embarrassment later that day. To make matters worse, Madigan twice declined a press pass by phone before she arrived, long before organizers started warning attendees that an undercover reporter was in their midst.

Indeed, it was Madigan's insistence on staying undercover, even when it was clear that she was never truly undercover to begin with, that set up the embarrassing outing in front of the standing-room-only crowd in Vegas.

After she had already declined to get a press pass several times, organizers fooled her, leading her to believe that she could get video of a federal agent being outed on the conference hall floor. After directing her to the hall in advance of the event, the organizers then set their own plan into motion, which was to out Madigan, not a Fed. Duped, Madigan fled the scene.

Dateline has issued a general statement saying that it does not comment on its news-gathering practices. Attempts to contact Madigan have been unsuccessful, and it appears that she's even nuked her MySpace page.

DEFCON's organizers expressed displeasure at what Madigan was trying to do, saying that Dateline's sensationalist approach to news could harm the show's "open" atmosphere where hackers—and indeed government agents—come together in the spirit of communication. Without pinhole cameras.