BlackHat USA 2011

“Men’s minds have difficulty adapting to things with which they have no experience.”

Almost 10,000 security pros, hackers and interested folks gathered at BlackHat USA this morning at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. The morning began with a keynote talk from 28 year CIA counter-terrorism veteran, Ambassador Cofer Black, comparing the evolution of past global conflict with the evolution of the world of cyber-security.

Black related his past experiences and difficulties in fighting terrorist organizations around the world with experiences and difficulties that security pros currently have fighting cyber-attackers around the world.

One of his most alarming statements, and one which has been discussed thoroughly by Kaspersky Lab researchers and speakers, was “Stuxnet is the rubicon of our future”.

He outlined the significance of the attack: it was a very expensive effort, that our virtual world of cyberattacks had morphed into the physical destruction of a national resource, and that it forced nations to rethink what the potential response would be for something like this. He repeated that these all have huge impacts on our lives, along with the expectations and needs for cyber security in our lives.

And with that, a slew of talented security researchers present their work over the next two days. We will update this blog with thoughts from some of the sessions here. Right now, I am sitting in on an analysis of Google’s replacement for HTTP, otherwise known as SPDY.