Talk On Chinese Cyber Army Pulled From Black Hat

Trailrunner7 writes "A talk on China's state-sponsored offensive security efforts scheduled for the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas later this month has been pulled after concerns were raised by people within the Chinese and Taiwanese government about the talk's content. The presentation was to be delivered by Wayne Huang, CTO of Armorize, an application security company with R&D operations in Taiwan. The talk was billed as an in-depth, historical look at the offensive capabilities and operations of China's so-called cyber-army."

Comments

Re:Slashdot sensationalism

[TubeSteak]

Worded quite differently, no? This published summary accuses the Chinese and Taiwanese government about it, while the other one just says they had concerns about their good relationships in the community.

FTA: Caleb Sima, Armorize's CTO and co-founder, said on his Twitter feed yesterday that the talk had been pulled.
"I had to pull our blackhat talk. Taiwanese gov is prohibiting it due to sensitive materials. Unreal."

Sensationalism? I think not

[winkydink]

If the US doesn't start taking the PRC's cyber offensive capabilities seriously, the US is in for a whole world of hurt. Note how, in the article, the author mentions that Titan Rain and Aurora were not viewed as surprising in Asia, but rather more like, 'yeah, yeah, what else is new?' It is widely known in the security industry that China has been pursuing cyber offensive capabilities for quite some time. Why doesn't it get more discussion?

Re:they did WHAT?

[gclef]

???

BlackHat caved before and they'll likely cave again (for reference, see the Cisco incident 5 years ago), *but*, the issue in this case isn't BlackHat. It's the company that employs the speaker that's feeling the pressure. BlackHat can't make someone give a talk, and if the company or speaker decides to back out, that's their choice.

Re:Sensationalism? I think not

[spinkham]

Because publicly traded companies are reactionary.

Until Google stoop up and admitted to getting owned, businesses would say it was only worthwhile to defend against automated worms and viruses. That targeted attacks can get your company owned is not news to anyone in the security space, but justifying the monitoring and defensive measures to detect and respond to malicious attackers was tough without datapoints showing that attacks like that actually happen.

Unless you're Richard Bejtlich, who wrote the book on that. http://www.taosecurity.com/books.html

Here's a great overview article by him on APT.

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/magazinePrintFriendly/0,296905,sid14_gci1516312,00.html

What about Defcon?

[ratnerstar]

The same talk -- or at least a very similar one, by the same people -- is scheduled to be given at Defcon. Anyone know the status of that? I doubt Defcon is very susceptible to outside pressure, but since the speaker does business in Taiwan he may be reluctant to defy them.