Black Hat security conference offers two-day Macsploitation class

Attention would-be Mac hackers and those hoping to write viruses and malware for Mac OS X! You can bone up on your Macsploitation skills at an upcoming two-day class to be held at the Black Hat security conference July 30 through August 2.

This isn't the first time that Black Hat has featured Mac hacker training. The class, which will be taught by Italian security consultant Vincenzo Iozzo and Mac Hacker's Handbook author Dino Dai Zovi, requires registration ($2000 now, $2700 onsite) and has a number of other prerequisites as well. What kind? Well, in addition to bringing your Mac along to the site, you'll want to make sure you have a Windows XP virtual machine running on the Mac, the IDA Pro disassembler and Apple's Xcode tools package. If you want to impress the instructors, you'll also want to grab zynamics' BinNavi reverse-engineering tool.

For the most part, the people who attend Black Hat are good guys who are there to learn how to keep our systems safe. As noted on ZDNet, Mac OS X security remains much better than that of Windows. Mac OS X 10.6.6 only included one security fix, while Microsoft's February Patch (released last Tuesday) plugged 22 vulnerabilities.

If your work involves Mac security, there's no better place to pick up the skills that you need to be an expert than at Black Hat.