Apple pulls out of proposed Black Hat talk

Though I'm far too dumb to understand what they're talking about, I like the Black Hat hacker guys. Most of the Internet is all "New Vegas" now; all (supposedly) family friendly and glamorous and glitzy. But those guys are back on Fremont Street, gambling with everything they've got and shoulder to shoulder with the dregs of society.

Unfortunately, Apple's marketing department doesn't share my feelings. Computerworld says they've put the kibosh on a speaking engagement they were supposed to have at the conference next week in Sin City. In fact, they can't even say they were asked to pass -- everyone involved in organizing the panel, which was set up early last month and "abruptly canceled" late last month, spoke on condition of anonymity.

Which is a shame -- organizers of the conference say the panel was supposed to be all about how serious security is at Apple and how they're committed to keeping users secure. And it wasn't even supposed to be a Q&A, which is why the organizers thought it would easily be approved by marketing.

That, however, wasn't the case -- while the panel wasn't yet approved by the conference folks, the request to have the panel was pulled. We're sure the Black Hat guys will still have fun (it is Vegas, after all), but it's a shame we couldn't get that look inside Apple's security team.

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Source: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewA…

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Analysis / Opinion Internet Apple Security

Though I'm far too dumb to understand what they're talking about, I like the Black Hat hacker guys. Most of the Internet is all "New Vegas"...

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iomatic

Could be as simple as a lack of budget mid-year.

Maybe if the post-happy kids on the intarwebs get frickin' jobs, they might figure this out instead of all this general armchair analysis all over the blogosphere.

August 05 2008 at 12:09 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to iomatic's comment

James

It says right there that marketing killed the talk. If the budget was the problem a) accounting or management would have killed it and b) it would never have been approved to begin with, unless a serious budget crisis has come up since it was first scheduled.

August 05 2008 at 2:02 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

iomatic

I still stand by my second sentence. hehe.

Get a job!

--

What would this accomplish anyway?

/bitter old man

August 05 2008 at 4:24 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Slartibartfast

Given the current track record, they probably don't want to be embarrassed anymore than they already are.

August 05 2008 at 8:45 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Apple's continued lack of dialogue with anybody - developers, customers, *anybody* - is starting to look like a very foolish policy.

It's all very well to remain cool and aloof, but (at least in my opinion) their reputation has taken a massive hit since the screw up that was the MobileMe/iPhone 2.0 launch, and they need to climb down from the ivory tower and start communicating with people.

Strong and silent only works when you're getting things right. They're starting to loose their grip on quality and stability, and they need to start talking to people.

August 05 2008 at 8:31 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Kelmon

I do find it daft that Apple won't even discuss the subject. Given that the topic is so important to end-user, and Apple clearly recognises this given their marketing for the Mac for at least the last 5-years, I find it ridiculous that they don't have a dialog on the subject. Whenever a new vulnerability is revealed we have no idea whether Apple is aware of it and, if so, how important it is to them. What they need to start doing, at the very least, is a company blog on the subject where they can acknowledge vulnerabilities that they have been notified of/discovered, state when they expect to have a fix released (if applicable), and provide a workaround. The current silence on the subject does not engender confidence.

August 05 2008 at 7:47 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply