Sean Michael Kerner

LAS VEGAS—Every year, there is always one marquee session at the Black Hat USA conference that captures the imagination of the public like no other. At this year’s conference here, it was the remote car hacking attack, which led Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) to recall 1.4 million autos. In front of an overflowing room, Twitter […]

LAS VEGAS—Airwaves are used every day to transmit data via known wireless protocols, but what if a device could be manipulated to cause it to be able transmit a non-WiFi signal that no one knew about? At the Black Hat USA security conference here, Ang Sui, founder of Red Balloon Security, demonstrated and provided great […]

LAS VEGAS—Will the dream of Internet freedom be dead in 20 years? That’s the question that Jennifer Granick, director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, discussed in an hourlong keynote at the Black Hat USA security conference here today. “I believe in the dream of a free and open Internet, […]

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission receives a lot of complaints from consumers about all manner of things, but among the most common complaints are ones about automated marketing calls, known as “robocalls.” The FTC has embarked on a number of initiatives over the years to combat the scourge of robocalls, even enlisting the support of […]

LAS VEGAS–Inside a dark neon-lit room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel here sits the nerve center for one of the most hostile technology environments on the planet, the Black Hat USA security conference. The Network Operations Center (NOC) is where Black Hat manages and monitors the network, providing access and mitigating potential threats. In a […]

Every summer, the annual Black Hat USA security conference trots out a conga line of security experts, many of them with zero-day exploits in hand. More often than not, those exploits get fixed in a relatively short period of time after the conference ends, but not always. Case in point is a Google Chromecast security […]

Bug Bounty Programs Paying Off for Vendors, Security Researchers More companies are finding bug bounty programs to be an effective method of improving security. And Bugcrowd’s recent bug bounty report bears that out. Private Bug Bounty Programs Growing Fast Bugcrowd operates both public and invitation-only private bug bounty programs. Over the last 30 months, Bugcrowd […]

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a foundational component of the modern Internet, providing a mechanism by which carriers can share routing information for Internet traffic. As it turns out, BGP is at risk of manipulation by hackers, which is a topic that will be explored at the Black Hat USA security conference in Las […]

The RIG exploit kit is undergoing an evolution to version 3.0 as malware authors seek to infect an increasing volume of victims. A research team at security vendor Trustwave has managed to infiltrate the RIG ecosystem, which is made up of a command and control system as well as third parties that use RIG as […]

Satellite tracking systems are used for myriad activities, including monitoring the progress of semi-trailers and armored car bank deliveries. In a session at the Black Hat USA conference on Aug. 5 in Las Vegas, Colby Moore, manager of special activities at Synack, will detail security risks in the GlobalStar simplex satcom protocol that could potentially […]

Seven Highly Anticipated Talks at Black Hat, DefCon Events Cars, weapons, safes and death certificates will be part of the discussions at this year’s Black Hat USA 2015 and DefCon 23 security conferences. Remotely Hacking a Jeep The first big story to generate interest in the Black Hat USA 2015 event is Twitter security researcher […]

Casey Ellis started Bugcrowd in 2012 with the idea that crowdsourced bug discovery is a better way to improve security. It’s an idea that is working, according to Bugcrowd’s inaugural State of Bug Bounty Report issued July 30, which looks at bug bounties from January 2013 to June 2015. Ellis is both surprised and pleased […]