With the continual release of zero-day exploits, ever-larger-scale botnets, and rampant spyware, attackers have compromised tens of millions of machines connected to the Internet. With clever attackers mixing social engineering, physical attacks, and phishing into their bag of tricks, their rate of successful penetration is both astounding and depressing. A central thesis of this talk is that a sufficiently determined (but not necessarily well-funded) attacker can compromise almost any organization with an Internet connection.

The discussion will first analyze why this is so. We’ll then look at the implications of such an environment for enterprises. How should information security priorities shift in light of this evolving threatscape and attack surface? What are the implications for system administrators, incident response teams, and even penetration testers? We’ll also briefly look beyond the enterprise, and consider the military and national security issues associated with emerging threats and attacks, and the constantly evolving controversies around cyber war.

About Ed Skoudis

Ed Skoudis is a co-founder and Senior Security Analyst with InGuardians, a Washington DC based information security consulting firm. Ed’s expertise includes hacker attacks and defenses, the information security industry, and computer privacy issues. In particular, Ed has focused on Virtual Machine security issues and advanced malware analysis. Ed is the author and primary instructor for the SANS courses Hacker Techniques, Exploits and Incident Handling and Network Penetration Testing.

Ed conducted a demonstration of hacker techniques against financial institutions for the United States Senate and is a frequent speaker on issues associated with hacker tools and defenses. He has published several articles on these topics, as well as the books Counter Hack Reloaded and Malware: Fighting Malicious Code. Ed was also awarded 2004-2009 Microsoft MVP awards for Windows Server Security, and is an alumnus of the Honeynet Project. Previous to InGuardians, Ed served as a security consultant with International Network Services (INS), Predictive Systems, Global Integrity, SAIC, and Bell Communications Research (Bellcore).