Sean Michael Kerner

LAS VEGAS — A pair of separate security researchers at the Black Hat security conference demonstrated new tools to automate penetration testing of Mac OS X and Oracle databases — shedding new light on potential vulnerabilities in each. The tools are new modules to the open source Metasploit Vulnerability testing framework and are intended to […]

From the ‘friggin Laser beams‘ files: LAS VEGAS. There are all kinds of ways that attackers can ‘sniff’ a users password, but laser beams and power cords? No it’s not Science Fiction, it’s Black Hat. Security researchers Andrea Barisani and Daniele Bianco gave a tremendously entertaining and informative talk here about how good old PS/2 […]

From the ‘fun with Wi-Fi’ files: LAS VEGAS. Security researcher Mike Kershaw is on the verge of getting LORCON2  (acronym for Loss Of Radio CONnectivity) into Metapsploit. Lorcon is an open source network tool for Wi-Fi injection. “It will figure out which driver a user is using and then for each packet do some fun […]

From the ‘negativity sells‘ files: LAS VEGAS. Douglas Merrill former president of record label EMI has a few thoughts on what’s wrong with security today. He shared those thoughts in a keynote presentation at the Black Hat security conference. “CEO’s are terrified of security and as a result they are writing more checks, Merrill said. […]

LAS VEGAS — Here at the Black Hat conference, HP security researchers today are set to show off Veiled, a browser-based darknet. A darknet is a hidden Internet where information and content are shared by darknet participants. Usually, darknets are not easily accessible via regular Web browsers — which is what changes with Veiled. Veiled […]

How do you secure a wireless network for a convention of hackers? That’s the question that wireless networking vendor Aruba Networks has been answering for the last four years as the wireless service provider for the Black Hat security conference. Black Hat takes place this week in Las Vegas, and Aruba is providing the wireless […]

From the ‘insightful comments‘ files: Yesterday Microsoft put out an out of band release to deal with a killbit issue that will be discussed today at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. I caught up with Mike Reavey Director of the Microsoft Security Response Center (in a hallway in Caesars Palace where Black […]

From the ‘yeaaah DNS, again‘ files: It was about a year ago that security researcher Dan Kaminsky reported his DNS flaw that affected many vendors and the internet itself.  DNS – particularly BIND 9 is now at risk from another flaw for which an exploit is already available. BIND 9 is a popular open source […]

One of the most devastating aspects of the open source metasploit vulnerability testing framework is meterpreter, which exploits a host machine in memory without leaving a trace. Meterpreter is supposed to be undetectable by IPS systems making it difficult if not impossible for someone to know what an attacker may have done to the victims’ […]

How do you secure a wireless network for a convention of hackers? That’s the question that wireless networking vendor Aruba Networks has been answering for the last four years as the wireless service provider for the Black Hat security conference. Black Hat takes place this week in Las Vegas, and Aruba is providing the wireless […]

From the ‘static analysis is your friend‘ files: IBM has been busy today – they acquired metrics vendor SPSS for $1.2 billion – and oh yeah they also bought Ounce Labs. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed – Ounce is privately held. Ounce is a static analysis vendor and will fill in […]

The idea behind the IT security concept known as the honeypot is all about luring hackers into a server or network so they can be tracked. The Web Application Security Consortium (WASC) has its own particular brand of honey to attract would-be attackers — a blend of open source and open proxies. The WASC is […]