Pocket PC Abuse

Seth Fogie, author of the OReilly book Security Warrior, gave an interesting talk about Pocket PC vulnerabilities. For the hardcore CPU hacker, Assembly language and Opcodes covered the first half of the talk. In the second half, he showed off a few home-brewed tools.

Mr. Fogie demonstrated a reverse engineered version of the recent WinCE.Dust virus. The original Dust virus was actually a very polite virus, as it would pop up a window asking the user for permission to spread. Mr. Fogie re-engineered the virus to cause a Pocket PC to do a hard reset whenever the user does a soft reset.

Mr. Fogie, with a good sense of community responsibility, promises not to release this virus. He made the virus to prove a point that Pocket PCs are vulnerable to attacks.

Conclusion

Traditionally, the Black Hat convention has been THE convention to introduce hardware/software exploits and hacking tools. The first day was no exception as more than a dozen brand new exploits and tools were brought to light.

At the end of first day, most attendees staggerred out of the talks with their minds full and their stomachs empty. Fortunately, Black Hat provided a wonderful dinner and open bar with admission. I'm not sure if Computer Security and alcohol mix too well, but we will find out when everyone returns for day two.

Please continue with Black Hat: Day 2 Sounds Security Alarm .