Hackers at the recently held DefCon and Black Hat
security conferences in Las Vegas failed to hack the wireless
networks set up for the events, despite challenges from the
organisers.
DefCon is an annual event for the “hacker underground” and Black
Hat is an annual conference for security professionals.
Both events used wireless network infrastructure deployed by
Aruba Networks. Organisers said wireless networks at previous
events had failed to withstand the concerted hacking attempts of
the attendees.
Over 7,500 participants attended this year's events, creating
what is arguably one of the fiercest hacking environments to be
found.
The conferences’ founder and organiser Jeff Moss said, “During
my opening remarks, I explicitly encouraged attendees to take a
shot at hacking the wireless network. Given the level and
concentration of hacker talent at these events, I was more than
pleasantly surprised they did not succeed.”
The wireless network was heavily used during both conferences -
supporting more than 2,600 users and passing more than 33GB of
data.
Among the attempted breaches detected and prevented were around
535 “man-in-the-middle” attacks; 200 denial of service attacks; 270
rogue access points; 750 wireless bridges; 2,090 access point MAC
spoofing attempts; and numerous impersonation attacks, IP spoofing
and syn floods.
Aruba's wireless intrusion protection not only detects
unauthorised wireless devices and access, but also provides an
automated response to shut down the threat.
“We knew we were putting our equipment and technology right in
the middle of the hackers' playground, but we viewed this as the
ultimate test of our network security implementations,” said Keerti
Melkote, Aruba Networks vice-president of marketing.