Black Hat USA: T-Minus One Month And Counting

Black Hat is well-regarded for the depth and breadth of its content, as well as the "cool s#!%" factor of its Briefings. Today's trio of highlighted Briefings are a fine example of both of these traits, ranging widely in topic yet all sporting that certain cool factor that'll keep you engaged even as you're poring over the finer points of electronic esoterica.

If popular heist films are anything to go by (and let's be honest, they're not), then security cameras seem pretty easily fooled. Surprisingly, this is one detail Hollywood actually gets mostly right because, sure enough, today's popular surveillance cameras sport a range of striking vulnerabilities, which Craig Heffner will blast through in "Exploiting Network Surveillance Cameras Like a Hollywood Hacker." Cameras from D-Link, Trendnet, Cisco, IQInvision, Alinking, and 3SVision are all vulnerable. Come join Heffner for not only a proof-of-concept of a Hollywood-style freeze-and-modify attack, but also the debut of multiple 0-day exploits.

RFID is everywhere these days, from door locks to the badge you'll wear at Black Hat. Video game and movie producers should catch this talk, too: "RFID Hacking: Live Free or RFID Hard" should be your first stop for practical info on how RFID proximity badge systems actually work. You'll learn how to build your own RFID physical pen-test toolkit, how to weaponize commercial badge readers, and how to defend yourself from others' RFID-hacking efforts. The Briefing will be packed with demos, and 100 lucky attendees will receive a PCB that can make almost any commercial RFID reader steal badge info from up to three feet away.

Detecting mobile malware poses unique problems because the typical antivirus paradigm used in larger systems becomes impractical when saddled with the battery and CPU realities of typical handsets. Firmware OTA patches, cloud-based screening, and hardware security support all have notable drawbacks. In "Mobile Malware: Why the traditional AV paradigm is doomed, and how to use physics to detect undesirable routines," Markus Jakobsson will delve into the nitty-gritty of software-based attestation, which relies on the physics of the device (its bus speed, for example) to detect undesirable routines. It, too, has some drawbacks, but it may just be the best approach for mobile device anti-malware.

Another good use of physics, incidentally, is to carry airplanes through the air, such as when Black Hat attendees travel to Las Vegas. We're just about one month out now, so be sure all the numbers on your travel reservations add up to July 27-Aug. 1. Speaking of travel, the room block at Caesars is sold out, but Black Hat has negotiated additional blocks of discount rooms at Bellagio and Flamingo -- hotel details can be found here.