Black Hat 2008 Preview: Paranoia and Learning

Hard to believe, it's time for another Black Hat conference. This is my third, and as I sit in the airport waiting to head out to Vegas, I'm eagerly anticipating the show. For lots of reasons, but mostly because it's the only show I attend to actually learn something. It's not like RSA or CSI are big on "education." I certainly know that I don't know it all, but Black Hat is a place where I can hang out with guys a lot smarter than me. And that's a good thing.

Even if the show has gotten a bit corporate. 

As others have mentioned, Black Hat/DEFCON are not the places to be careless about your computer security. Now that BH is doing the Wall of Sheep as well, no one is safe. I was at Rob Graham's session last year where he pulled up some poor saps Gmail through his sidejacking attack. That ain't going to be me.

So what do I do? WiFi is OFF. Period. Until I get back to ATL on Friday, WiFi is off. I'll just rely on my Verizon card for the few times I'm in my room and connected. I don't carry my laptop at the show, rather relying on good old fashion paper and pen to take notes. I may do a quick post or two from my iPhone (3G, I upgraded over the weekend), but for the most part I'll be mostly disconnected.

Speaking of my iPhone, WiFi is off on that as well. I'm also turning off Bluetooth. That means I'll be the silly one with the wired headset. But I'm not sure what new attacks have emerged, so I'll suffer the wired life for a few days. I'm also turning off the GPS. It's not like I'm going to get lost in Vegas, and again although I haven't heard of specific GPS attacks, why risk it?

Yes, clearly it's paranoia in full effect. But better to be safe (if a bit disconnected) than sorry. That's for sure.

In terms of sessions, a few caught my eye:

1. Bad Sushi: Beating Phishers at their Own Game (Wednesday, 10 AM): I'm going to see my friend Nitesh Dhanjani and Billy Rios do their anti-phishing talk. Clearly there are both process and technical defenses against the phishermen.
2. DNS Goodness (Wednesday, 11:15) - Obviously Kaminsky's session is going to be a circus. They should probably move it into the keynote room to accomodate everyone. Not sure I want to fight the masses to attend, but I'm sure it will be interesting.
3. The Four Horsement of the Virtualization Security Apocolypse (Wednesday, 1:45) - I've got to be there to support my boy Hoff and I'm actually interested in how he's evolved his pitch. I also heard (from the horses mouth) that the slides are real pretty, so I'll probably take a few presentation pointers from the Rational one.
4. Malware Detection through Network Flow Analysis (Wednesday, 3:15) - Since part of my schtick is REACT FASTER, Bruce Potter will be previewing a new version of his flow analysis tool, and that may fit the bill. Lord knows a lot of the NBA tools are way to heavy and high end for the mass market, so an open source alternative could be interesting.
5. Exploiting Google Gadgets (Wednesday, 3:15) - I'll also try to swing by RSnake's pitch, where he and Tom Stracener will be exploiting Google Toolbar and discussing a zero day. Woo Hoo.
6. Satan is on my Friends list (Thursday, 10) - I'm fascinated with this social networking thing and figuring out how to exploit it is pretty interesting. There is a lot of cutting edge research happening around this area.
7. No More Signatures: Defending Web Applications from Zero Day Attacks (Thursday, 11:15) - Yes, I plan to go see Sir Ivan and Ofar Shezaf discuss how profiling traffic can help defend web apps. This sounds like a positive security model and I think that's a pretty important aspect of defending the web apps.
8. Get Rich or Die Trying (Thursday, 3:15) - I'm also going to see Jeremiah do his logic flaws pitch. These are very interesting attack vectors and I'm looking forward to seeing how Jeremiah and Arian go through an pwn applications via the developers own mistakes.

I'm sure there are others, or maybe not. I tend to like to keep my schedule pretty fluid at Black Hat. I'll be hitting the party scene as well, so I hope to see at least some of you in Vegas.

Safe Travels.