Black Hat Press Coverage

Homeland Security Secretary Appoints Jeff Moss, founder of Black Hat and DEFCON, to the Homeland Security Advisory Council Moss to provide recommendations directly to Secretary Napolitano on Homeland Security Issues

Seattle, Wash. — June 8, 2009 — Black Hat, the world’s leading family of information security events, today announced that Secretary Napolitano has appointed Jeff Moss, the founder of Black Hat and DEFCON, to the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC).  Complete press release.

EFF Launches Coder's Rights Project at Black Hat USA 2008

LAS VEGAS 2008 - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launches its Coders' Rights Project — a new initiative to protect programmers and developers from legal threats hampering their cutting-edge research. Complete story at EFF.org

Online social networking sites are hacker playgrounds

LAS VEGAS (AFP) — Computer security researchers on Thursday warned that online social networking websites are playgrounds for hackers who can easily take advantage of people's trust. Complete AFP story

Internet flaw a boon to hackers

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AFP) — Computer security professionals crammed into a Las Vegas ballroom on Wednesday for the first public briefing on an Internet flaw that lets hackers hijack traffic on the World Wide Web. Complete AFP story

The sky isn't falling: a look at a new Vista security bypass

One of the papers presented at the Black Hat USA 2008 security conference was an analysis a number of the protection mechanisms built into Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 that are designed to make it harder to convert software bugs into security flaws. How to Impress Girls with Browser Memory Protection Bypasses, authored by security researchers Mark Dowd at IBM and Alexander Sotirov at VMware, presented a number of attacks against Vista's various security features in isolation, and then attacks that could disable multiple protections all together. Put together, the result is that Vista's mitigation mechanisms are circumvented, making buggy software exploitable. Complete story at Ars Technica

Intel patches BIOS security flaw

One of the more interesting demonstrations at Black Hat this year was Johanna Rutkowska's discovery of a flaw in the BIOS of certain Intel motherboards that could be used to "bluepill" the Xen hypervisor. Complete story at Ars Technica

Black Hat Experts Predict the Hot Security Topics for 2009

On the opening day of the BlackHat 2008 conference, Symantec did an anonymous survey of the attendees to discover exactly what they thought would be the hot security topics in the upcoming year. Complete story at Blogcritics

PC World

DNS Holes, Web 2.0 Flaws Draw Interest at Black Hat

The size and scope of security problems is growing to be so large that security experts are having more difficulty than ever protecting end users from emerging threats. That was evident in the Black Hat Briefings security conference that opened Wednesday. Complete story at PC World

Patch on way for Net security flaw

Security researchers say they have discovered an enormous flaw that could let hackers steer most people using corporate computer networks to malicious Web sites of their own devising. Complete story at Seattle Times