Black Hat Briefings - Antics and Disclosures

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 Automatic 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 of Black Hat 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 at Black Hat.

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 researcher Michael Lynn from speaking about a vulnerability that he said could let hackers virtually shut down the Internet. However in recent years, researchers have worked with vendors to resolve issues, and some vendors have challenged hackers to attack their products.