Black Hat 2009: Powerline and optical keysniffing

sniff

The 2009 edition of the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas has just begun. The first interesting talk we saw was [Andrea Barisani] and [Daniele Bianco]'s Sniff Keystrokes With Lasers/Voltmeters. They presented two methods for Tempest style eavesdropping of keyboards. … [Read more...]

Hacking at Random 2009 ticket sale extended

The massive hacker camp Hacking at Random 2009 has extended their early bird ticket sales until April 14th. At EUR150, they've already managed to sell 1000 tickets. Every two years the european hacker community gathers together to hold a multiday camp that covers topics from hacking to art and politics. 2007's CCCamp was largely the inspiration for this year's ToorCamp. HAR2009 is looking for … [Read more...]

Surviving a hacker conference

concrowd

With another hacker conference looming in front of us, it's time to start thinking about hardware security. Hacker conventions have the most hostile network you'll ever encounter. [Security4all] points out that 25C3 already has an extensive page on securing your hardware. It starts from the ground up with physical security, BIOS passwords, and locking down bootloaders. There's a section on … [Read more...]

25th Chaos Communication Congress schedule

The team behind 25C3 has published the first draft of this year's schedule. The annual Chaos Communication Congress is happening December 27th to 30th in Berlin, Germany. There are plenty of interesting talks already in place. We're spotting things we want to attend already: The conference starts off with how to solar power your gear, which is followed by open source power line communication. A … [Read more...]

Notacon call for papers

notaconbadge

Notacon has just announced their first round of talk selections. The Cleveland, OH area hacker conference will be celebrating its sixth year April 16th-19th. When we attended this year we saw talks that ranged from circuit bending to the infamous TSA bagcam. Self-taught silicon designer [Jeri Ellsworth] presented on FPGA demoing. [Trixter] covered his demo archiving process. You can find a video … [Read more...]

Upcoming events

It looks like it's time to update our event list. Here are some hacking related events happening through the rest of the year. ToorCon September 26-28 San Diego, CA - In its tenth year, ToorCon has always been one of our favorites. The conference is fairly small, but features great content like last year's fuzzing talk. Arse Elektronika (NSFW) September 25-28 San Francisco, CA - Happening … [Read more...]

Defcon 16: MIT Boston transit presentation gagged

[Zack Anderson], [RJ Ryan], and [Alessandro Chiesa] were sued by the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority for an alleged violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act after copies of their presentation slides were circulated at Defcon 16. The slides give an eye widening glimpse into the massive security holes present in the Boston subway system. There are at least 4 major security flaws in the … [Read more...]