A first for Black Hat hacker con: Apple in the house

Apple has never before participated in Defcon or Black Hat, but Bloomberg reports that this will change Thursday "when Dallas De Atley, manager of Apple’s platform security team, is scheduled to give a presentation on key security technologies within iOS, the operating system for iPhones and iPads" at Black Hat in Las Vegas, NV.

It’s significant because in recent years, Apple products have been stripped of their image of being hack-proof. The company’s rise has made it a bigger target, as hackers have been discovering bugs in the iPhone since it came out in 2007. Earlier this year, more than 600,000 Macs were infected, the first major malicious software attack targeting Apple computers.

Weev: Not Amused.

• [nomad411]

  FIRST!!  to say that this is a good thing. :)

• [Warren_Terra]

  Apple products have been stripped of their image of being hack-proof.

  Did anyone except pathologically dishonest marketing managers in Cupertino ever try to claim such an image was accurate? Macs weren’t targeted by viruses because no-one was interested in going after a platform whose market share was in the low single digits, not because they were better defended against any attempts that did occur. I’m sure that Apple welcomes the destructive efforts of unscrupulous hackers for what they are: recognition that Apple users finally exist in sufficient numbers that it’s worth going after them.

  • [royaltrux]

     Well it was certainly implied all over the place, even if the more savvy of us knew why.

  • [Dlo Burns]

    I’m still pissed about having to help my sister get a virus off her macbook pro, the so called genius flat out called her an idiot liar and said she must of bought a Chinese knock off. 

  • [taintofevil]

    Except that there were plenty of Mac viruses before OS X, and the market share wasn’t any bigger.  No one really thought Macs were hack-proof, but having a decent Unix core made it harder than it was on Windows circa 1995.