Hackers Plan to Clobber the Cloud, Spy on Blackberries

October 05, 2009 — IDG News Service — A new era of computing is on the rise and viruses, spies and malware developers are tagging along for the ride.

The new playground for hackers is "the cloud," the term for computer applications and services hosted on the Internet. Some of the devices making the cloud more popular these days are BlackBerries and other smartphones.

"The focus [of security] is definitely moving towards 'the cloud' and to the security of embedded devices (Android, iPhone) to more advanced client-side attacks which leverage on Web 2.0 technologies, such as attacks on Facebook, Twitter and other popular sites," said Dhillon Andrew Kannabhiran, host and organizer of the Hack In The Box (HITB) security conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia this week.

HITB is one of the most prominent security conferences in Asia and now runs twice a year. The big show is in Malaysia, while the newer, yet smaller HITB is held in Dubai. The conference brings together leading security experts and draws self-proclaimed hackers, but Kannabhiran says it's not a wild hacker party. It offers knowledgeable presentations by leading experts in an informal setting, where people can ask questions and meet presenters at events throughout the week.

"Clobbering the Cloud" and "Spying on BlackBerry Users for Fun" are actually titles of two presentations slated for the HITB conference on Wednesday. Other interesting titles include "How to Own the World - One Desktop at a Time" and "Offensive Cloud Computing With Hadoop and Backtrack." .. More >>