#BlackHat #BSidesLV #Defcon preview: Trustwave, all over the place

I try not to give too much attention to any one vendor when writing conference previews, but sometimes it’s justified. In this case, I see some interesting talks on the agenda by people from Trustwave, so I’m listing some of them below and inviting others — vendors and non-vendors alike — to flag talks they feel people should consider attending. I’ll take what comes in and make a bigger list early next week.

Some would say this is foolish of me, because I’m opening myself up to a vendor stampede in my inbox. Fair enough. But since that stampede is already in progress, I figure it can’t hurt. Not every suggestion will make the list, anyway.

Now for a look at the Trustwave talks: Practitioners from the company will participate in 14 sessions during Black Hat USA, DEF CON20 and BSidesLV. They include:

“ModSecurity as a Universal Cross-Platform Web Protection Tool” at Black Hat USA and DEF CON 20: Presented by Trustwave’s Ryan Barnett with Microsoft on July 25, 2:15 pm (Black Hat Arsenal Demo at 3:30). ModSecurity, the open-source software managed by Trustwave’s security team, is already the most widely-used Web Application Firewall, protecting millions of websites. During this presentation, Trustwave will announce that ModSecurity has now become the first ever free cross-platform Web Application Firewall, as it will be available for Microsoft’s IIS and Nginx platforms. A variety of security advancements and advantages provided by this breakthrough will be discussed, including detection of zero-day attacks on these online servers.

“Adventures in Bouncerland” at Black Hat USA: Presented by Trustwave’s Nicholas J. Percoco and Sean Schulte on July 25, 5:00 pm. To prevent malicious applications from entering its Android Market, Google introduced a security service called Bouncer. In this presentation, Percoco and Schulte will demonstrate how they discovered some key weaknesses in the system and created an app that beat Google’s Bouncer. This talk will analyze the issues being faced by mobile application markets in their war against malware and offer new ideas on how to strengthen defenses.

“OPFOR 4Ever” at DEF CON 20: Presented by Trustwave’s Tim Maletic and Christopher Pogue on July 29, 10:00 am. Opposing Forces, or OPFOR, provides an exercise focused on improving detection and response through the principle of “train as you fight.” Maletic and Pogue will demonstrate how they have applied OPFOR to build a continuous feedback loop between penetration testing and incident response. In OPFOR 4Ever, the defense and offense actually train each other. Attacks will be demonstrated from both a defensive and offensive point of view.  Then, using the replay, they will develop the attacks to a form more suitable for real-world penetration testing. The key idea here is to better simulate what “black hat” hackers actually do in order to best understand how to defend against them.

“Mobile Snitch – Devices Telling the World About You” at Security BSides Las Vegas: Presented by Trustwave’s Luiz Eduardo Dos Santos and Rodrigo Montoro on July 26, 10:00 am. In the past few years, we have not only seen a significant growth in use of mobile devices, but also the usage of multiple mobile devices at one time. The nature of mobile Wi-Fi device operations, combined with the lack of user awareness, could lead to someone not only knowing things about your life but even exactly who you are. This type of “unwanted sharing” can even occur within private corporate networks, as will be shown. Most importantly, this presentation will cover the proof-of-concept for “Mobile Snitch,” which will automatically gather information about these devices once in the same network, with the end goal being to determine the identity of the person accompanying each device.

To flag the talks you’re interested in, drop me a note at bbrenner@cxo.com