Converged hacking: They want in

Everyone in the world of physical security may be tired of the word “convergence”, but apparently hackers aren’t even close to exhausting the possibilities of "converged hacking". According to an article reported from DefCon (a hacker show held in Vegas last week), one of the show's focuses was in taking advantage of physical access to facilities. It’s not hard to figure out why: If you are inside my network, you likely have less security to get through than if you are trying to hack in from outside my network. In sum: Give a hacker an actual local area network (LAN) connection, and the business of hacking suddenly gets much easier.

On that note, there was a session on picking locks (Gale Johnson, editor of our sister publication Locksmith Ledger magazine gave us a great response in my blog to what was really going on; he says "don't believe the hype"). There was also such physical-meets-network security discussion of how hackers could use microphones to identify keystrokes (as opposed to using a software-based keystroke logger to steal your passwords). Other tactics: Sending an iPhone-like device into a company mailroom so it can scan for open network points.

Not much is changing, I guess. Two years ago, we had a report from DefCon about how hackers weren’t trying to fake fingerprints to beat biometrics systems. Rather, they were just going after the back-end computer systems running the biometric readers and attacking those computers through standard Windows and Linux hacks.

Airport gun ban stays interesting Judge upholds Atlanta airport gun ban, but issue hits second amendment

In a recent column, I discussed the peculiar case of the challenge against a gun ban at the Atlanta Airport (yes, this is the same airport much of our industry will be flying to in about 4 weeks for the start of the 2008 ASIS International Seminars and Exhibits Expo). The case was brought about by a Georgia gun rights group. That group argued that the recent case which forced D.C. to drop its gun ban could also be applied to public facilities like airports. A federal judge has now ruled that the Atlanta Airport does have the right to keep guns out of its terminals. The issue was so politically heated that a Georgia legislator threatened to test the gun ban with a “high noon” style showdown at the airport; fortunately the legislator didn’t have as much of a spine as he originally believed, and he backed down from the gun ban showdown – likely avoiding arrest and imprisonment.