Security Social: Black Hat's Biggest Threats

- Max Eddy

During the first week of August, like-minded individuals converged on Las Vegas to celebrate their shared love of a future deeply imbued with technology and a society improved by science and rational thought. Those people were at the Star Trek convention. A few casinos away, a similar group gathered to talk about all the new and exciting ways they’d discovered to steal information and hack into systems. Those people were at Black Hat.

Black Hat bills itself as the premier show for offensive security, and it lived up to its promise. This year, we knew we’d hear about hacking Linux-powered rifles, remotely taking control of cars, and attacking Android phones with malicious text messages. But also tackled were the Stagefright Android vulnerability, another flaw by which a clever attacker could use dormant plugins on most Android devices to take control of the phone as if the attacker were holding it, and a clever attack that could steal all of your files from a cloud storage service without you ever being the wiser.

Black Hat is also about learning about how to be a better hacker or security researcher, as the case may be. This year saw attendees learning how to use special security software designed for security research and a session that explained how to carry out research without getting arrested.

Two PC Magazine colleagues and I attended Black Hat this year, and somehow we made it back alive. We bring with us terrifying tales, but also good advice, and the hope that our digital lives can be made safer and more robust through better security.

Hacking Cars From a Cell Phone