… everything looks like a nail.
At the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas this week the two major announcements were not particularly surprising.
- Researcher discovers flaws in Cisco IOS. No sh–. What's so significant about this discovery, is the behind-the-scenes conspiratorial machinations of Cisco, ISS (the fellow's employer) and the conference organizer. The researcher discovered that IOS can relinquish control of routers to an unintended administrator, and not just stop working. Of course, the latest software releases fix this flaw, but not every ISP around is using the latest software.
- PGP creator, Phil Zimmerman, has created a privacy scheme for VoIP. He hopes to get VC funding and license the software to IP phone manufacturers. I haven't seen the technology or read anything about it, except that it doesn't use PKI (Public Key Infrastructure), so I can't really comment on its viability.
