Killing social networks, outsmarting airlines at #HITB2011KUL

L33tdawg: Online registration is now closed but walk in registrations are still accepted (USD505 / MYR1599) - See you guys on the 12th @ InterContinental Kuala Lumpur!

Security conference Hack In The Box returns to Kuala Lumpur this October 10-13. Besides the usual state-of-security talks, there will also be discussions about social networking and — surprise, surprise — airline reservations.

On social networking, conference speaker Marco “embyte” Balduzzi has a controversial-sounding track titled: “Attacking the privacy of social network users.” “With my presentation, I hope to raise the awareness against the use of social networks,” said Balduzzi. He outlined various ways social networks are used by criminals — to the detriment of their users.

He noted specific trends when it came to attacking social networks: Worms that propagate across social networks, malware that used networks as vectors, data leaks through automated crawling, targeted spam and advanced botnets that would harness social networks as “command and control” servers are among them.  In contrast, VOIP expert Hendrik Scholz will be speaking on an entire economy centred around fare searching. With the Internet, news of great deals travels fast. Great deals here meaning not the typical discount fares but occasions when airline online ticketing systems have errors that are easily exploited for cheaper tickets.