The e-Biz2006, conference on electronic business and privacy, organized by CASE is taking place in Opatija from 3rd to 5th April 2006. The three day conference covers the following topics:

• Standards, Directives, Development,
• Internet, Security,
• Solutions and
• Privacy and Identity Management.

The first time Infigo IS is appearing at the e-Biz2006 conference as a sponsor of the second conference day, dedicated to the Internet and security.

Our security experts, Saša Jušić, CISSP and Hrvoje Šegudović, CISA, CISSP-ISSAP, CISSP-ISSMP will deliver the “Information Security Management” seminar. The seminar is aimed for security managers, security experts, information system managers and auditors as well as others interested in information security and information security management.

Our associate attended 6th annual Blackhat Europe conference which took place in Amsterdam from February 28th to March 3rd.

The first part of the conference was reserved for technical workshops. The most interesting among them were “Database security” and “Reverse engineering techniques using IDA tool”. Lectures held by many eminent authors like Shalom Carmel, Cesar Cerrudo, Jamie Butler, Halvar Flake, spoonm, skape, Joanna Rutkowska, Johnny Long and others were opened on March the 2nd.

First day’s lectures were divided into two parallel tracks named “Zero day attack” and “Deep knowledge”. “Rootkits vs. Stealth by Design Malware” by Joanna Rutkowska, in which a prototype of malicious software that uses new mechanisms for root access was presented, and “Beyond EIP” (spoonm & skape) which described new technologies used in Metasploit Framework tool, drew most attention.

Final day of the conference was reserved for “Zero day defense” and “Situation awareness” tracks. In their lecture “Silver Needle in the Skype”, Philippe Biondi and Fabrice Desclaux presented a method for reversing Skype program and vulnerabilities discovered during that process, while Peter Silberman and Jamie Butler discussed rootkit detection on compromised computers in the “RAIDE: Rootkit Analysis Identification Elimination”.

Intensive course of lectures was ended by casual gathering with food and drinks in the main lobby. Microsoft also arranged a party as a gratitude for contribution and accomplishments achieved in the field of computer security, which helped the security improvements of their products. The press was restricted from this event and tickets were almost impossible to get.

Good organization and well favored atmosphere along with hot topics coverage, knowledge and experience sharing among its participants made the Blackhat unique among just a few still non-commercialized conferences abroad.

A vulnerability, which can be used to compromise a system, has been discovered in Mac OS X,. The vulnerability is caused due to automatic processing of .zip files in the Safari Web browser, which is a default setting. Malicious users can exploit this vulnerability through storing arbitrary code in ZIP archives.

Micheal Lehn, who discovered the vulnerability, decided to release details of the vulnerability and proof-of-concept code without previously contacting Apple.

The reason for such decision was the severity of the flaw and the possible existence of exploit code. However, that step violated generally accepted  guidelines for vulnerability disclosure.

Apple still hasn’t released the official patch, so all users are advised to turn off automatic opening and processing of ZIP and other files in the Safari Web browser.

This extremely critical vulnerability, along with other previously discovered vulnerabilities, shows that the Mac OS X platform is becoming more and more interesting to the malicious users.