BizzRoot

LAS VEGAS — Radio frequency ID tags embedded in U.S. passports can be read hundreds of feet away, potentially making it inexpensive and easy to pick American tourists out of crowds for illicit purposes, “spychips”, a demonstration at Black Hat 2010 showed.

Once thought to be unhackable, the Android phone is anything but, according to researchers presenting at Black Hat 2010.

Barnaby Jack hit the jackpot at Black Hat on Wednesday. Twice.

Expect some chaos this week in Las Vegas. Expect some surprises. If you’re attending, expect a hangover. But also look out for some interesting security stories on these five big themes.

All the most commonly used Internet browsers are vulnerable to exploits that can force them to cough up users’ personal information that can be used to hack into bank accounts or set them up for other attacks, the Black Hat 2010 conference will be told this week.

In the 13 years since its inception, Black Hat has emerged as one of the premier conferences in the security industry. Each year, Black Hat attracts thousands of security researchers, security practitioners and government types to its annual events in Las Vegas, Tokyo, Amsterdam and Washington. On the eve of the annual conference in Vegas, Black Hat founder Jeff Moss talks about the show and how it has evolved.

Black Hat organizers are looking to avoid pressure from outside groups to cancel important presentations by withholding details of selected talks at future events.

Two premiere security conferences — Black Hat and DefCon — run back-to-back in Las Vegas this week, each with their own distinct flavor. But even these events don’t meet the needs of all computer security pros, setting the stage for a widening set of satellite events.

Looking deeper within malware yields fingerprints of the hackers who write the code, and that could result in signatures that have a longer lifetime than current intrusion-detection schemes, says one Black Hat 2010 speaker.

A talk on China’s military cyber-attack capabilities has been pulled from the Black Hat security conference schedule following pressure from Taiwanese and Chinese agencies.