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Cyber crime experts reveal emerging security threats

World-renowned specialists, researchers and authors, tackle the new information security landscape at ITWeb’s 5th annual Security Summit.

They have challenged convention, caused controversy and outwitted some of the sharpest criminal minds and sophisticated computer programs in existence – cyber crime specialists Dr Charlie Miller, Moxie Marlinspike and Felix ‘FX’ Lindner, will lead the speaker panel at ITWeb Security Summit, from 11–13 May at the Sandton Convention Centre.

Dr Charlie Miller, principal software security analyst at Independent Security Evaluators, will demonstrate smartphone attacks that have been successful in the past, as well as make some “wild speculations about the future of smartphone security”.

A computer security researcher who spent five years working for the National Security Agency, Miller is known for publicly demonstrating his hacks on products manufactured by Apple, including the iPhone and the MacBook Air.

Moxie Marlinspike, independent computer security researcher, will examine modern threats to privacy. The author of published research on secure protocols and creator of sslsniff and sslstrip tools, Marlinspike says, “A lot has changed since discussions around digital privacy began.

“Rather than a centralised state-backed database of all our movements, modern threats to privacy have become something much more subtle, and perhaps all the more sinister.” His talk will explore these evolving trends and discuss some interesting solutions in the works.

Felix ‘FX’ Lindner, owner of Recurity Labs, computer and network security consultant, will highlight the gap between security theory and practice for securing communications infrastructure. “In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. By using just a couple of simple key points, we can have the entire Internet as a secure and safe global network, or so it often seems.”

Lindner co-authored The Shellcoder’s Handbook, which describes how to find security holes in any operating system or application.

Other international security experts who will address the 2010 Security Summit include:

* Nitesh Dhanjani, who will discuss the security risks of social networking.

* Joe Grand, who will give an historical perspective on the L0pht: a hacker think tank, which famously testified before the Congress of the US that they could shut down the Internet in 30 minutes.

* Jeremiah Grossman who will reveal the top web hacking techniques from 2009.

* Saumi Shah who will explain exactly what is needed to provide web application security.

* Dino Dai Zovi who will discuss practical return-oriented programming.

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