Analysis BSides, Black Hat, DEF CON... For the last six days, Las Vegas has been home to the top brains in the computer security industry and the business menagerie that follows them – causing some panic among locals. We've seen the pathetic state of the US electronic voting system exposed, claims of advanced eavesdropping at the …

DEF CON Machine-learning tools can create custom malware that defeats antivirus software. In a keynote demonstration at the DEF CON hacking convention Hyrum Anderson, technical director of data science at security shop Endgame, showed off research that his company had done in adapting Elon Musk’s OpenAI framework to the task of …

Updated A Windows SMB vulnerability revealed late last week at DEF CON won't be patched because Microsoft says the service should be firewalled off from the internet anyway. The 20-year-old bug is in at least Windows 2000 to Windows 10. It was discovered by RiskSense bods, who combed Redmond's file server code for flaws similar to the …

DEF CON The BBC’s Micro:bit computer board may be winning over school kids, but hackers have found its wireless capabilities and programmable nature make it an excellent tool for mischief. In a presentation at this year's DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas on Friday, Damien Cauquil, senior security researcher at Econocom Digital …

DEF CON After the debacle of the 2000 presidential election count, the US invested heavily in electronic voting systems – but not, it seems, the security to protect them. This year at the DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas, 30 computer-powered ballot boxes used in American elections were set up in a simulated national White House …

DEF CON The world chess champion who was beaten by a computer today told the DEF CON hacking conference that we shouldn’t fear AI systems, but instead need to embrace them. Garry Kasparov was the chess wunderkind of his day but was creamed by IBM’s Deep Blue computer in 1997. That wasn’t even close to being an AI system, he said, …

DEF CON Businesses in Las Vegas are locking down their systems as hackers fly into the fetid hell of Sin City for a trio of security conferences. This week the BSides conference, Black Hat, and DEF CON are all in town and folks here are worried that their computers are going to be thoroughly subverted by visiting miscreants. Caesars …

Organizers at the DEF CON hacking conference in July are planning a mass cracking of US electronic election machines. The event, which for over 20 years has attracted the best and the brightest in the hacking community, will see a group hackathon against the voting machines that are used in every US election these days. The …

A war of words has broken out after a security researcher claimed last week that Samsung's contactless mobile payment system is vulnerable to skimming and spoofing attacks. In talks at both the Black Hat and DEF CON security conferences, held last week in Las Vegas, Salvador Mendoza claimed that he was able to intercept a …

DEF CON Bluetooth-enabled locks are increasingly popular, but an analysis of 16 such devices shows 12 are easily hackable with inexpensive kit and some can be broken into from 400 metres away. In a presentation to the DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas security researcher Anthony Rose detailed how to hack these supposedly smart …

Four Qualcomm vulnerabilities grant malware writers total access to modern Android smartphones. Yes, yes, nine hundred meellion "potential" users, if you're counting. Attackers can write malicious apps that, when installed, exploit the software flaws to gain extra privileges on Android Marshmallow and earlier versions of …

DEF CON has a lot of odd talks, but the successful hacking of a vibrator by two researchers from New Zealand drew a big crowd. The two-person team of g0ldfisk and follower got hold of the schematics for the We Vibe 4 Plus, a U-shaped vibrator that can be controlled via Bluetooth using a remote control or a smartphone app. The …

DEF CON It’s going to be at least a year or so, and probably a lot longer, before the United States Congress gets around to ruling on the second war on encryption, two members of the US House of Representatives told the DEF CON event. Alex Stamos, chief security officer (CSO) of Facebook, hosted a panel with Representatives Eric …

DEF CON Hardcore hackers and the corporate security industry have never really got on that well. Symantec is looking to change that after hiring Tarah Wheeler to act as its website cybersecurity czar. Wheeler has a long career in the IT industry, including stints at Microsoft and Blackphone-maker Silent Circle. Both of her parents …

DEF CON While some fear the US government is hoarding a vast pool of zero-day security vulnerabilities, the reality is that it probably holds just a few dozen, according to a study by Columbia University. In a presentation at the DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas today, Jason Healey, senior research scholar in the university's …

DEF CON A quest to build a smart computer system that finds and patches bugs faster and more efficiently than humans is off to a good start with all the teams in DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge performing very well indeed. The contest, held at the DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas, was organised by the research arm of the US …

The research wing of the US military has picked the seven teams who will compete to build machine-learning software that can find and patch bugs automatically to fend off hackers. The DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge will be held at the DEF CON hacking conference next month. The agency has put up $2m in prize money in the unlikely …

DEF CON 23 Attending the DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas is always an unusual experience, but among the most celebrated features of the event are its unusual attendee badges. Reg man Iain Thomson attended this year's event – the 23rd – and we at Vulture Annex in San Francisco got a kick out of scratching our heads at the mystery …