HITB

Google has fixed a hole in its Chrome browser that earned a white hat hacker $60,000 at the recent Pwnium 2 hacking contest.

The company released the fix for the vulnerability on Wednesday, around 10 hours after it was revealed at the Pwnium competition at 'Hack in the Box 2012' contest in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Tuesday. The hacker — who goes by the name of 'pinkie pie' — found the vulnerability in the browser by combining two separate exploits, and netted a cool $60,000 for his discovery, as well as a free Chromebook.

Hack in the Box will host its 10th security conference this week in Kuala Lumpur featuring an all-star cast of hacking luminaries and a cutting-edge program.

The lengthy speakers list includes John Draper aka "Captain Crunch," who famously used a whistle from a cereal box to access long-distance switching networks in the early 1970s, as well as Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij, two founders of the torrent search engine The Pirate Bay.

CHARLIE Miller, a principal research consultant for Accuvant Labs set a lot of tongues wagging at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference earlier this year.
 
His presentation involved demonstrating how Near Field Communications (NFC) features in mobile phones opened up new venues for hackers to gain control over the device.
 

L33tdawg: The finalized conference agenda is here (PDF)

Hack in the Box 2012 Kuala Lumpur, programmed to take place between October 8 and October 11, will host many interesting activities. Among them, there is the enhanced version of the classic Capture the Flag (CTF) competition.

Hackers and security enthusiasts from all over the world are getting prepared for the Hack in the Box 2012 Kuala Lumpur (HITB2012KUL) security conference that will take place between October 8 and October 11. Besides the usual activities, this edition will also host a charity auction whose goal is to raise funds for cancer patients.

TIME dotCom Bhd (“TIME” or “The Group”) will supply Internet speeds of 500Mbps to the Hack in The Box Security Conference 2012 (HITBSecConf2012) from 8 to 11 October, allowing conference participants to seamlessly showcase the latest in online security, data and encryption techniques. The connection would be a dedicated link direct to the global internet exchanges powered by TIME’s 100% Fibre Optic Network giving participants the fastest ever Internet access in Malaysia. It’s first of its kind for any HITB event.

With less than a week to go, the HITB team has been ramping up its preparations for HITBSecConf2012 - Malaysia, the 10th year anniversary of the HITBSecConf series.

AS THE world becomes more interconnected due to the expanding Internet and increasing globalization, software is increasingly becoming a target for exploitation, as it is often the weakest link that can be manipulated by cyber-criminals. And that painted target is going to get worse especially when you’re the world’s largest software company.

FOR all intents and purposes, Google’s Chrome web browser has been one of the fastest adopted browser in the history of the browser wars. Although there is some debate going on about how these metrics are exactly measured, it’s safe to say that indicatively, Google’s share of browser use has escalated in the past three years since it came into being.