Presentations of Blackhat Europe 2008

Sunday

The media archive for Blackhat Europe 2008 is now online. There were some very interesting talks. Too bad I couldn't make it. Let's give you some titles:

Spam-Evolution Aseem "@" Jakhar, Technical Lead, IBM Internet Security Systems
Malware on the Net - Behind the Scenes Iftach Ian Amit, Director of Security Research, Finjan
Bad Sushi - Beating Phishers at Their Own Game Nitesh Dhanjani, Senior Manager and Leader of Application Security Services, Ernst & Young LLP Billy Rios,Microsoft
0-Day Patch -Exposing Vendors (In)Security Performance Stefan Frei, ETH Zurich, Communications Systems Group Bernard Tellenbach, ETH Zurich, Communications Systems Group
Developments in Cisco IOS Forensics Felix "FX" Lindner, Recurity Labs GmbH
The Fundamentals of Physical Security Deviant Ollam, The Open Organization of Lockpickers
Attacking Anti-Virus Feng Xue (a.k.a Sowhat), Technical Lead, Nevis Labs

I had a quick look through some of these. Attacking Anti-Virus was interesting but not that new (hack.lu). Last week, I was surprised that this vector is begin used in attacks/pentesting. I'm wondering that even with a get-out-of-jail card (permission), this will be legal to perform in Belgium.

0-day Patch is a novel way to determine the security of an operating system. They don't just count the number of holes and how critical they are, but also determine what they call the zero-day patch rate. They used at many independent sources including Secunia, Milw0rm, The Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB), National Vulnerability Database (NVD) and CVE.
The end conclusion is that Apple is having a hard time to keep up with the vulnerabilities and the increased interest in their platform.
During the CanSecWest conference, a fully patched Vista, Linux and Leopard were the targets in a hacking contest. During the first day, no 0-day exploits were allowed. During the second day, the rules were more relaxed and in just a few minutes, the first to fall was the Macbook Air due to a flaw in Safari. On the last day, also the Vista laptop was hacked through a vulnerability in Adobe Flash.
So which one is the most secure? No one is perfect and Operating systems aren’t any more secure than the idiot using it. Use your common sense.

Happy reading!!!

Related articles:

Bonus: You can also view the presentations from Source Boson 2008 on Blip.tv here.