A Week of Security in Vegas: Black Hat, Bsides, & Defcon

Towards the end of summer each year the information security world descends on Las Vegas for a week of training, discussion and the disclosure of a year’s worth of quiet research. I’ve been attending off and on for years, and was joined this year by several of my new SecureState co-workers from Profiling and Risk Management.

The week started off with the biggest, and most expensive of the 3 events: Black Hat Las Vegas. This is the original and largest of the Black Hat events held around the world each year, and it has often been a forum for disclosing some of the most cutting-edge and impactful research within Information Security. The biggest talk this year hands down was Barnaby Jack’s presentation on compromising Automatic Teller Machines. Barnaby had attempted to give a similar presentation in 2009, but his employer pulled the presentation after pressure was applied from some unnamed ATM manufacturers. After changing employers and adding several new ATM machines to his collection, Barnaby was back this year to give a live demo of local and remote compromise of two different ATMs.

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