These days being a Black Hat isn’t as highly frowned upon as it once was. Although any professional wants to separate himself from the negative connotation associated with “black hat” many SEO’s are coming out of the wood works in search of like minded individuals. This year the 11^th annual Black hat security conference will bring dollars, issues and a host of controversy. Being held in the Caesars Palace in Las Vegas the Black hat security conference will host two days worth of public sessions. Just the sheer size of the Caesars palace shows how popular the black hat methodologies are becoming.

Some of the topics on the agenda are methods for compromising the Windows vista x64 kernel, vulnerabilities within a popular forensic software used commonly by the government and law enforcement agencies. Not on the agenda this year is a large series regarding Windows Vista which came as a surprise to many of the attendees. However popular topics such as voice services security, hardware, forensics, zero day attacks, and zero day defenses, will be on the agenda. In addition new topics have been added such as: application security, reverse engineering, fuzzing, operating system kernels and application security.

Clearly many of these topics include controversial subject matter. Richard Clarke, President Bush’s former special adviser regarding cyberspace security, is set to give the keynote address about “who seek truth through science, even when the powerful try to suppress it”. The second key not speaker is Ton Sager, an NSA employee who will speak about government security standards and how they will work with commercial vendors. The individual speeches are not with out controversy either. Neal Krawetz (a return speaker) will be speaking about image forensics and how to find less than obvious manipulations. Dan Kaminsky will be speaking on his annual Black Ops Survey while Phil Zimmerman is returning to speak about securing internet telephone lines.

Many others are speaking such as Jeremiah Grossman with his speech entitled “Hacking Intranet Websites from the Outside (Take 2)–Fun with and without JavaScript malware”. To supplement that speech Billy Hoffman and Brian Sullivan will discuss “Ajax-ulation” and creating a secure site built with large amounts of Ajax code. One of the celebrities of this black hat conference is Joanna Rutkowska who’s speech last year drew a standing ovation. This time around she will be featuring the Windows Vista kernel hack. A speech by Luis Miras will cover a way of hacking peripheral devices such as mice and pointers.

With so many speakers in such a short its no surprise that these conferences have been packed every time. Mozillas Window Snyder and Mike Shaver will introduce new tools that allow you to fuzz browsers and talk about security features in the highly anticipate Firefox 3 internet browser. One of the most controversial topics being discussed is the RFID chip vulnerabilities. This is a highly controversial subject as RFID chip use is becoming mainstream in both retail and external applications. If the RFID chip has major security flaws this will be a brig problem for investors and corporations pushing the technology.

While many can make it this year one unlucky speaker will not. Thomas Dullien the CEO of Sabre Security was denied entry into the United States for stipulations laid out within the H-1B via regulations. US customs officials held Mr. Dullien regarding materials he had brought for the Black hat conference. Simply the fact that his material was too controversial to pass through customs shows just how much attention this conference has drawn. One thing is for sure search engine optimization is heading into a strange new world.