Black Hat USA is the most famous conference for IT security professionals and hackers around the globe. The highly skilled speakers provide insights into their ongoing research and release their brand new tools. Of course, the spectacular location at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas contributes to the popularity of this conference as well. This year’s event was particularly special for us because Cyrill Brunschwiler, CTO of Compass Security and passionate penetration tester, was honored to contribute his own talk about the security of the upcoming wireless metering protocol. Thomas Röthlisberger and Sascha Herzog, IT Security Analysts and penetration testers of Compass Security, accompanied his journey and report about the newest trends and their conclusion of the Black Hat USA 2013 in the following paper:

http://www.csnc.ch/misc/files/2013/blackhat_2013_v1_0.pdf

On one hand, this year’s talks did not necessarily reveal revolutionary topics or many new vulnerabilities. Especially in well-known areas like web security, the conference leaves the feeling that we kind of reached the zenith. On the other hand, the known attacks are enhanced with new creative exploiting techniques and helpful tools, which penetration testers will love. Furthermore, topics like hardware hacking and digital forensics have been very popular this year.

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