Black Hat Briefings: A basic primer

For the next two days, I'll be in Las Vegas attending the annual . Black hats, in computer security parlance, are the villains, the criminal hackers. White hats, therefore, are the good guys, the computer security professionals. Thus, the Black Hat Briefings are conferences for the white hats to learn about the current nefarious activities of the black hats. Black Hat Briefings are held annually in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Immediately following the U.S. Black Hat Briefings is Defcon, a less formal, three-day convention of hackers with many of the same presenters. Both conferences, Black Hat and Defcon, were founded by Jeff Moss, a former hacker turned security professional.