Black Hat Conference by Claudia Sonea

For all Internet users it is important to know that last week the Black Hat hacking conference took place in Washington DC. It is a vital piece of information because new threats and confidence issue were approached. Although we are not computer experts, we do use the Internet and face problems like emails from unknown persons or bogus companies, links of malicious sites and other problems that can jeopardize not only our software, but also our privacy.
There were some interesting issues presented at the conference like the hacking of GSM networks used by many mobile operators. David Hulton and Steve have come up with a technology that would crack GSM encryption in less than 30 minutes. However, this is not such good news because it can be used by both law enforcement investigators and malicious hackers.
Shawn Moyer, chief information security officer for Agura Digital Security, and Nathan Hamiel, senior consultant for Idea Information Security, did not present a technology, but rather bought into our attention the trust problem that can fool even the computer security professionals. A relatively simple ruse that lured more than 50 new friends within 24 hours, including security analysts from reputed companies that they refused to disclose.
Both Moyer and Hamiel created fake profiles on particular social networking Web sites and then started sending friend request to people on the site. After managing to gain friends, they started to send invitations through email to prestigious computer security analysts. The conclusion was that social networking sites are dangerous and can not only corrupt your computer, but also get private information.
There was also a funny incident at the conference. Journalists were caught spying on other journalists. Three journalists working for the French publication Global Security Magazine were banned from the conference because they allegedly hacked into the private computer network set up for the press room. It is funny to see just how far the journalists nowadays would go, even between thieves there is honor.


related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080807/ap_on_hi_te/tec_friends_list_tomfoolery;_ylt=AnzycCxz8wWQtSGnYSexvris0NUE

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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posted by Lucia Adamova