Faces and People at the Black Hat Briefings

At the Black Hat Briefings, a conference held every year in the oppressive Las Vegas summer heat, some of the best and brightest minds in computer security come together to share new ideas, demonstrate new hacking tools, and of course network and socialize. Rather than post a blog entry about the conference itself, I thought I?d give the PC World audience a tiny window into some of the faces and personalities who make Black Hat such a unique event. Read on to see some of the photos I?ve taken.

Interspecies Communication

Erd?s, a two-year-old green iguana, could be seen resting on the shoulders of Sonia Len, a Black Hat attendee. Named after a European mathematician whose pioneering work in the stody of prime numbers contributed to the modern science of cryptography and cryptanalysis, the three foot long iguana was only one of several colorful characters at the conference.

Vulnerability Finder

Yuji Ukai, a software engineer who works for eEye Digital Security, discovered the weakness in Windows' LSASS component which led, indirectly, to the creation of the Sasser worm. Ukai says he only looks for vulnerabilities "for fun" in his spare time, and spends most of his workdays coding one of eEye's products, a software program called Retina that protects corporations from hacking attempts.

Security Pirate

Security expert Simple Nomad dressed up as a pirate for the annual "Hacker Court" presentation at Black Hat. Every year, a team of real computer security investigators, federal prosecutors, cybercriminal defense attorneys, and even an actual federal district court judge put on a mock cybercrime trial for the attendees. The trial, in which witnesses are called to testify, and prosecutors present evidence, puts the audience of roughly 250 people in the position of jury. Simple Nomad portrayed the defendant in this year's trial, in which the government prosecutor attempted to prove that the notorious pirate Jack Hack had been using his Wi-Fi-equipped boat, the Bl4ck P3rl, to secretly connect to U.S. Navy installations and steal data, using insecure wireless access points installed in private homes along the Potomac River.

Royal Book Signing

Caesar and Cleopatra oversee the book signing for Stealing the Network: How to Own a Continent at the Blackhat gala reception Wednesday night. The actors portraying the historical figures regally strolled through the reception, graciously allowing attendees to photograph them as they surveyed the security soir?e.

Guard Your Phones

Adam Laurie (left) and Martin Herfurt show off their mobile phones after their presentation titled BlueSnarfing, where they demonstrated how they could easily hack into certain kinds of Bluetooth-enabled cellphones and steal data or even turn the phone into a roaming bug, listening in on anything the phone's microphone could pick up. In their presentation, Laurie told the audience that once he and Herfurt had determined that some of the most popular models of cellphones were vulnerable, they attempted to alert the manufacturers of mobile phone handsets to the problem, but received a chilly reception from some companies.

Hacker Philosopher

Richard Thieme, author of the new book Islands in the Clickstream: Reflections on Life in a Virtual World, is greeted by Stanford law professor and cybercriminal defense attorney Jennifer Granick. Thieme, a former priest and regular Blackhat attendee, "teaches hackers to think like philosophers," according to Sol Tzvi, a Microsoft security expert. Granick presented a session Wednesday titled "Legal Liability and Security Incident Investigation," which gave a legal overview to the techniques security experts might use to investigate a suspected cybercrime. Attendance in Granick's session was so great, some attendees near the back of the room where the talk was held nearly came to blows when more people tried to crowd into the room, which was already filled beyond capacity. More photos are available for perusal.

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