Black Hat USA 2014: Focus on Mobile

It's not widely known, but mobile service providers have a hidden and pervasive level of control over their customers' devices; someone with knowledge of these mechanisms could leverage them for cellular exploitation on a global scale. At Cellular Exploitation on a Global Scale: The Rise and Fall of the Control Protocol Mathew Solnik and Marc Blanchou will reveal the extent of their reverse engineering of these back doors, subtle flaws in how they're implemented, and how they achieved over-the-air (OTA) code execution on major cellular platforms and networks. They'll also release open-source tools to help assess and protect from these threats.

Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions are a mainstay in modern enterprise IT, giving security teams a way to control risks from mobile malware and the loss/theft of devices carrying corporate data. But who watches the watchmen? In Mobile Device Mismanagement Stephen Breen will assess the security qualities of these expensive, rarely studied systems, focusing on a number of vulnerabilities, common across different products, that have allowed Breen and associates to access sensitive information on MDM-secured devices. TrustZone is an industry-leading solution for security-critical tasks on ARM-based devices, claiming "100%" security in such tasks as managing secure boot, storing DRM keys, supporting mobile payments, and verifying the integrity of the live OS kernel. Come to Reflections on Trusting TrustZone for a deep dive into the inner workings of a major vendor's TrustZone kernel, where Dan Rosenberg will brief you on a new vulnerability and use it to permanently unlock a major vendor's Android phone bootloader.

Mobile Point-of-Sale (mPOS) systems allow small businesses and drug dealers to accept credit card payments using a smartphone. You won't be surprised to hear that mobile security experts Nils and Jon Butler have discovered a series of mPOS vulnerabilities that give them code execution through a variety of vectors. Come to their Briefing, Mission mPOSsible, to hear all about the weaknesses of current mPOS solutions and see live attack demos, including a malicious credit card that drops a remote root shell on the unsuspecting system.

Early-bird rates are available until June 2. Please visit Black Hat USA 2014's registration page to register.