Black Hat Briefings

Michael Lynn presenting a briefing in 2005

Black Hat Briefings is a computer security conference that brings together a variety of people interested in information security. Representatives of government agencies and corporations attend, along with hackers. The Briefings take place regularly in Las Vegas, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Abu Dhabi and, occasionally, Tokyo.^[1] An event dedicated to the Federal Agencies is organized in Washington, D.C.^[2]

History

Black Hat was founded in 1997 by Jeff Moss, who also founded DEF CON. Today, Moss is the Conference Chair of the Black Hat Review Board.^[3] These are considered the premier information security conferences in the world: Black Hat 2009 was attended by 4,000 people. Black Hat started as a single annual conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. and is now held in multiple locations around the world.^[4]

The conference

Black Hat is composed of two major sections, the Black Hat Briefings, and Black Hat Trainings. Training is offered by various computer security vendors, in effort to keep the conference vendor-neutral. The conference has hosted the National Security Agency's information assurance manager course, and various courses by Cisco Systems, Offensive Security, and others.^[5][6]

The Briefings are composed of tracks, covering various topics including reverse engineering, identity and privacy, and hacking. The briefings also contain keynote speeches from leading voices in the information security field, including Kevin Mitnick, Robert Lentz Chief Security Officer, United States Department of Defense; Michael Lynn; Amit Yoran, former Director of the National Cyber Security Division of the Department of Homeland Security;^[2][7] and General Keith B. Alexander, Director of the National Security Agency and commander of the United States Cyber Command.^[8]

Conference's topics

USA :

July - August 2009 : MCS-ATL vulnerabilities // attack against MD2 - Breaking SSL ... validation certificate ... ^[9]

July - August 2010 : Cloudcracker ... such as (wpacracker.com service)^[10]

July 27 - August 1st 2013 : Android hacking : application and root

New Conference goals

There is now more focus on tools that can be used or protected, so a new type of conferences called Black Hat Arsenal Briefings has been added for 2013.^[11]

Antics and disclosures

Black Hat is known for the antics of its hacker contingent, and the disclosures brought in its talks. Conference attendees have been known to hijack wireless connections of the hotels, hack hotel TV billing systems, and even hack the automated teller machine in a hotel lobby. In 2009, web sites belonging to a handful of security researchers and groups were hacked and passwords, private e-mails, IM chats, and sensitive documents were exposed on the vandalized site of Dan Kaminsky, days before the conference. During Black Hat 2009, a USB thumb drive that was passed around among attendees was found to be infected with the Conficker virus, and in 2008, three men were expelled for packet sniffing the press room local area network.^[12]

In the past, companies have attempted to ban researchers from disclosing vital information about their products. At Black Hat 2005, Cisco Systems tried to stop Michael Lynn from speaking about a vulnerability that he said could let hackers virtually shut down the Internet.^[2] However in recent years, researchers have worked with vendors to resolve issues, and some vendors have challenged hackers to attack their products.^{[13][14][15][16]}

See also

• Hacker conference
• Chaos Communication Congress
• Summercon
• Security Excellence Awards

References

External links

• Black Hat Inc. homepage