First I must say much thanks to Black Hat for helping to sponsor CCCure and to Clement for allowing me to represent CCCure at the Black Hat DC 2007, I was one of the lucky three Clement mentioned and this is my report on the event.

This was the third time that Black Hat visited the Washington, DC area, in the past they were more geared toward the Federal Government, but with the changing landscape of the area, it was much broader.

While not as grand as some of the other Black Hat conferences, this one showed promise. It had been a few years since they last were in the Washington DC area mainly due to scheduling and not being familiar with the area, but the hope to make this an annual event.

Actually it was held in Crystal City which is in Arlington, Virginia and is just across the river from DC. They held two basic tracts for the briefings each day. Day One focused on “Hardware and Below the OS” and “Forensics and Incident Response”. Day Two focused on “Affecting the Enterprise and “Software Security and Binary Analysis”.

There was close to 300 attendees and 7 vendors. The vast majority of attendees probably 92% were male. I’d guess the majority of the attendees were in their late 20’s – early 40’s.

I did not attend the training sessions held before the general sessions just the sessions themselves. I arrived a little early the morning of Wednesday the 28th to register, as the traffic here can be unpredictable.

It was 7:50 when I walked into the lobby of the 2nd floor and already a line for registration had formed. There were perhaps 20 people already waiting ahead of me.

The keynote speaker was Jim Christy, retired special agent of the FBI who was previously Director of the Defense Cyber Crime Center. His talk centered on cyber crime and was very informative. Basically he described the state of cyber crimes and to how cyber crimes have blossomed over the years. The amount of data that needs to be processed over the years has also grown exponentially. He did say that about 42% of cyber crime was centered on child porn, a very disheartening fact I must say.

The requirement for first responders to be certified was really stressed. In the US it is becoming more and more important that this be done so that the evidence recovered is not in question.

My chosen tract on day one was forensics and incident response. The speakers were all first class, very informative and knowledgeable. Though a few of them were marketing products or services, their talks were not focused just on sales. The briefings were designed in such a manner that it was not a sales pitch and not information overload either. I really gained a lot of insight on this subject matter. I really enjoyed many of the speakers and only once felt overwhelmed when one of the sessions dove into CPU internals. But other than that I was comfortable with the level of information provided.

Day one was not without the typical Black Hat controversy. One of the topics was cancelled at the 11th hour. A talk on RFID security was pulled because of some “concerns” from Global HID. This was driven home by the torn pages in the bound session copies. The evening ended with an open bar, finger food that was among the best, lots of conversation, and in general a pleasant time.

I’m told that Black Hat always treats the attendees’ first class and if this was any indication I agree. This afforded us a chance to do some networking and even question the speakers in depth. The vendors were knowledgeable, helpful, and personable. I found them to be very open when discussing other products and not the usual “our product is so much better because…”

Day two was more talented speakers and interesting subject materials. I did not stick to a specific tract on this day. I bounced around listening in on topics that were the most interesting. This was my first pure “security” conference and I am glad that I was able to attend.

After this experience I am hoping that I can attend the USA 2007 Black Hat in Vegas. The knowledge I came away with will only strengthen my skill set and add to the people resources that we all rely on.

I would strongly recommend that if you get the chance to attend a Black Hat conference by all means do so, you won’t be sorry.

Thanks again Clement for this opportunity and for the best darn site around.

Regards, Jim
(Side_Winder)