Announcing BlueHat v12
The days are getting shorter, the holidays are getting nearer, and looming on the horizon is a trio of 12’s – it’s almost time for the 12th BlueHat Conference, on tap for the twelfth month of 2012. We have a terrific lineup of speakers from both inside and outside the company; there’s nothing much we can do about the weather in Seattle in mid-December, but indoors we have compelling work to do on making the cloud, mobile devices, the Internet, and the rest of the computing ecosystem, safer for customers.
Here’s a quick overview of the planned speaker lineup for the two days of BlueHat v12. For more detail, please check back here in the weeks between now and the conference.
Day 1: Thursday, December 13
We’ll open the conference’s first track, Anti-Fraud & Abuse, with author and Microsoft Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich. Mark will also be joining attendees for a lunchtime book-signing (have you read Trojan Horse yet?). He’ll be followed in the morning by Microsoft’s Ellen Cram Kowalczyk, speaking on fraud and abuse, and specifically looking at life on the Internet today. Facebook’s Alex Rice will give attendees a look into how the world’s biggest social-networking site handles attempts to abuse its users. After a short break, Christopher Hadnagy, author of “Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking,” joins us to discuss the role social engineering plays in successful (and unsuccessful) fraud attempts. Finally, Microsoft’s Alex Weinert will give us a look at his work at Microsoft on anti-fraud.
After lunch, the Cloud & Online Services track kicks off with Mario Heiderich, who’ll cover how, after sustained efforts to mitigate XSS and similar cross-site scripting attacks, an attack surface remains (and what can be done about that). He’s followed by Chris Hoff of Juniper Networks, speaking frankly about what cloud evangelists know…but won’t tell CSOs. We’ll have a break and rejoin the action with MSRC Engineering’s own Gavin Thomas, who looks at better security through Microsoft HPC Server and Windows Azure, followed by Tim Maletic and Chris Pogue of Trustwave discussing OPFOR. The afternoon wraps up with a call to action from Mark, followed by several lightning talks on subjects sure to surprise and delight.
Day 2: Friday, December 14
We’re giving you all a later start (9:45 AM), taking into consideration your socializing the night before. MSEC program manager and emcee, Leigh Honeywell, will open the second day of conference at 9:45 AM, with the Vices & Devices track. She’ll turn the floor over to Charlie Miller, who’s currently playing a major part in Twitter’s security push; he’ll talk about attack surfaces in the NFC (near-field communications) protocol stack. After a short break, Microsoft’s David Ross and Crispin Cowan dive into the world of Windows 8 applications. Matt Garrett of Red Hat joins us to answer “Why UEFI?” Lunch will feature an Online Services Security and Compliance (OSSC) Lunch n’ Learn, focusing on managing security risk to Microsoft's global online services.
Friday afternoon brings the conference’s final track, Hot Topics, with a combination of guests, current Microsoft employees, and alumni on tap. First, James Forshaw of Context Information Security discusses the allure for security researchers of managed languages. Next, Fermín Serna – once a Microsoft colleague, now at Google – speaks of current thinking on information-leak vulnerabilities. After a break, MSRC senior security program manager David Seidman explains why some users simply won’t, don’t, or can’t apply security updates – whatever the consequences. The afternoon will close with Mat Honan, Senior Writer for Wired, whom we think will put the conference’s conversations and revelations in perspective as he describes how all the issues we’ve discussed can touch the lives of the customers we aim to protect.
Thanks –
Emily Anderson
Security Program Manager, MSRC