Sunday, August 14, 2011

I cannot sleep at night because I just got back from Black Hat


I've attended the Black Hat Security conference in Las Vegas for many, many years now. It is by far the best security event each year and this year was no exception. Each year seems to go something like this for me:
I attend the conference and get educated on all the new attack vectors, exploits, and general mayhem happening in the digital world. I come home afraid of my digital shadow. Throughout the year I pay attention to all the work that is done to close the holes we heard about. I start to feel better about the fate of our digital world; things are looking up! I attend the next years Black Hat Conference. I learn about the new digital Armageddon. I get scared again. Rinse and repeat. I am convinced I'm part of some sick psych experiment. Why do I go you ask? Well, I guess it is like going to a NASCAR event. You go for the thrills and the crashes!
Here is a brief glimpse of the messages that were delivered by the various researchers speaking at Black Hat this year. This is my attempt to try and distill a one hour presentation to a one sentence take away. I highly recommend that you don't take these at face value, they are meant to raise awareness for further study. I recommend you explore the research further so you have all of the facts and the complete picture. (Some of these have already been fixed, Phew):

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