Black Hat 2012 Conference Wireless LAN Suffers Over 1,500 Severe Security Events from Attendees

Black Hat USA, a yearly premier conference on security information attracting thousands of attendees, was the brunt of over 1,500 severe independent security events on its wireless LAN during this year's conference.

Wireless networks remain to be an open target for those with just enough 'hacker' experience. During this year's Black Hat 2012 event at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, NV, there were a variety of devices used by attendees accessing the WLAN. It was estimated that 3,155 of the attendees accessed the network at one time where most of them, about 30% of the total, used Apple iOS devices. Over 13% used Mac OS devices while users for Linux came in around 20%, Windows accounted for 19.2% and Android just 17.6%. Of the 3,155 connected devices, there was a total of 1,561 severe independent security events.

What does this mean? Having over 1,500 security events logged on a wireless network simply means malicious activity took place over the available WLAN. Although the security events accounted for a wide variety of attacks, many of them could have been initiated for the purposes of cruel intent.

Even though there is a growing number of Internet users utilizing security features on their wireless network, some home users, business and organizations make up 13% of those without Wi-Fi or WLAN encryption. Without encryption, wireless network users are free to connect to and attack the network at will.

Black Hat events attract the largest volume of attendees that conduct security events of attacks within a single WLAN infrastructure. It is rather obvious that the majority of the audience of such an event is 'well-versed' with finding their way around a computer and network. This year's Black Hat event, providing a wireless network covering a 200,000 square foot facility, took on attacks from attendees ranging from hundreds of rogue APs (Access Points), APs impersonating the official event network, Power Save DoS (Denial of Service) attacks, AP Spoofing, Hotspotter attacks and Block ACK DoS attacks.

Of course with such a robust network covering a large area, it included many advanced access points and access switches that the alleged attackers in the audience were able to easily penetrate. An engineer from Aruba, one of the primary providers of the Black Hat WLAN access points and switches, said: "You simply don't see the kind of traffic, users or volume of security incidents that you see at Black Hat USA anywhere else."

With the recent attack on the Black Hat USA WLAN infrastructure, experts may be on the lookout for orchestrated attacks on other large wireless networks. It may just depend on the type of audience that is in attendance on whether or not additional security measures should be taken to protect such networks. Black Hat conferences may be an exception to the rule at this time specifically due to the attraction of savvy computer users who generally attend such an event.