Sean Michael Kerner

LAS VEGAS—For as many years as I’ve been coming to Black Hat, one of my favorite activities has been sitting in the Pwnie awards. The Pwnie Awards is a set of awards that are given out in different categories symbolizing the triumphs of security researchers and the failures of security product vendors or corporate IT […]

UPDATED SEPT. 28, 2016: In the last three years, much has changed in RFID technology. In 2013, 125KHz RFID proximity badges were the default in nearly all deployments, but that’s no longer the case in 2016. In a follow-up interview, Francis Brown, managing partner at security firm Bishop Fox, noted that since 2013, he has […]

LAS VEGAS—Every day millions of ads are displayed to tens of millions of users across the Web. According to a pair of WhiteHat Security researchers speaking at the Black Hat security conference here, those ads could be the gateway to enslaving your browser into a botnet army. There is little preventing an attacker from spending […]

One of the highlights for me in any given year that I’m at Black Hat, is seeing big name hackers do what they do best. This year, I’m going to miss seeing at least one of them. One of those big name hackers (for me) has been Charlie Miller, since at least 2007 when i […]

SAN FRANCISCO — Quite aware that the advent of more and more big data workloads has caused new vulnerabilities in enterprise security, RSA on Feb. 25 released a new version of its Authentication Manager platform to provide new big data intelligence in user authentication. The world’s largest IT security company made the announcement on the […]

LAS VEGAS €” A year ago at the Black Hat 2011 event, Microsoft announced the Blue Hat Prize. The goal is simple: It motivates security researchers to come up with a new defensive technology for Windows. At the 2012 Black Hat conference, Microsoft followed up with a new set of Blue Hat prizes that included […]

LAS VEGAS €” Microsoft’s Windows 8 is not yet generally available€”the operating system officially lands on store shelves Oct. 26€”but that’s not stopping security researchers from trying to find flaws in the OS. However, hackers who have had an easy time with Windows might find some new security features hard to beat. For years, Windows […]

LAS VEGAS €” Payment terminals are ubiquitous in modern society, enabling us to pay for anything we want with a credit card. At the Black Hat security conference here, a pair of security researchers demonstrated in front of a live audience that those payment terminals are not as secure as they should be. In a […]

LAS VEGAS €” For millions of travelers and road warriors, the ubiquitous hotel key card is the primary, and essentially the only, way to access their rooms at the end of day. However, security researcher Cody Brocious believes the current systems used to secure hotel doors throughout the United States and elsewhere are severely flawed. […]

LAS VEGAS €” The United States is at war in the cyber-theater, and it€™s a pervasive threat that all Americans need to take seriously. That€™s the message from a former, high-ranking FBI agent, who delivered a July 25 keynote address at the Black Hat conference here. For 24 years, Shawn Henry worked in the FBI, […]

LAS VEGAS €” At the Black Hat security and B-sides conferences here, mobile security will be in the cross hairs this week. While there seems to be a limitless supply of vulnerable mobile apps, defensive measures to actually easily validate and identify mobile vulnerabilities have not been as plentiful. That’s a situation that Parth Patel, […]