Reporters Cause Controversy at Hacking Conference -- Journal 14 - August 10, 2008

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/08/08/reporters.hacking.ap/index.html

Thousands of hackers met last week in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Black Hat convention. Of those thousands, three were caught hacking the hackers’ convention. Dominique Jouniot, Marc Brami, Mauro Israel were all kicked out of the convention and will even lose their partnerships with Black Hat.

The organizers of the Black Hat convention warned attendees that the conference’s public wireless access was being monitored by hackers. But that did not stop the three. The three were only caught when they tried to get others to post the stolen information on the Wall of Sheep, a forum designed to embarrass security professionals who don't follow proper security procedures themselves. The workers declined and reported him, but the three said they did it “educate the press about the importance of sending data securely”.

Forbes Magazine is reporting that the hackers used a form known as ‘sniffing’. Packet sniffers detect information sent across networks and can gather either all information sent or only certain queues that match what they are looking for. Detecting packet sniffers is not an easy task either.

I find it so interesting that the ‘hackers’ convention was hacked itself. It is also a little misleading to call it such. Black Hat features an annual technical information security conference in which helps to define the coming year’s security headlines and concerns.

I understand that the three hackers broke the law (possibly criminal law as well) but why would Black Hat not want to learn where they went wrong? If their own network was easily hacked, it seems to me they should be working with the three hackers to see how they did it. From public opinion, I do not know if I would look at Black Hat the same. They could not even secure their networks enough to keep three reporters from hacking it.

References:
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/08/08/black-hat-conference-tech-security-cz_tb_0808blackhat.html

http://netsecurity.about.com/cs/hackertools/a/aa121403.htm