Black Hat Conference background:

●     A computer security conference that has a unique blend of gov’t officials, corporate IT leaders and hackers in attendance.

●     Black Hat was founded in 1997

●     Ran in Las Vegas from Jul 24th to the 29th

●     Made famous by the antics of their hacker attendees.

○     Past conquests:  Local wireless services, hotel billing services, and even the lobby ATM.

●     Also famous for exposing faults in popular software.  Sometimes without the prior knowledge of the software’s developers.  Most commonly browsers and operating systems.

TOP STORY

Mozilla finds security flaw in Black Hat’s pay-per-view Video Stream

●     The stream cost $395 per head for viewing. Ouch.

●     Ironic, since Mozilla has been a frequent target of Black Hat’s many ‘whistle blowing’ presentations re: browser security flaws.

●     Sources indicate that the Mozilla foundation immediately notified Black Hat about the error, rather than holding onto the information to announce at a later date, as a deliberate “we’re more respectful than you” type of gesture.

Some other Black Hat demos:

Hacked ATM spews cash, sings a jaunty tune, and displays “Jackpot” on the screen.

●     All hacked remotely, and demonstrated live.

This $1,500 system can hack into your cell phone calls

●     Pretends to be a cell tower, so can even receive encrypted calls.

●     Only 2G GSM calls

●     “Encrypted calls are not protected from interception because the rogue tower can simply turn it off. Although the GSM specifications say that a phone should pop up a warning when it connects to a station that does not have encryption, SIM cards disable that setting so that alerts are not displayed.”

Hacking pre-paid parking meters

Android wallpaper app steals millions of subscriber’s personal info

●     Watch for apps by “jackeey,wallpaper” and “IceskYsl@1sters!”

●     Watch for apps that request access to “android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE” which grants the application access to APIs to access the device’s phone #, subscriber ID, and more.

●     UPDATE:  Details of which data was potentially stolen.

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