A Day at the Miami Beach Cyberarms Fair

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-06-05/infiltrate-conference-draws-hackers-spies-to-miami-beach

By Michael Riley
Business Week
June 05, 2014

Thomas Lim, the founder of a boutique company that sells cybermunitions 
and hacking tools to governments and corporations around the world, has 
mischievous taste in T-shirts. The one he’s got on, as he sits in the Art 
Deco-style bar of Miami Beach’s famed Fontainebleau Hotel, says he’s a 
reservist for Unit 61398 of the People’s Liberation Army, a notorious 
group of Chinese computer spies. It’s an inside joke aimed at the 
160 hackers, spooks, and mercenaries attending Infiltrate, an annual 
security conference that draws a more elite crowd than the larger industry 
confabs.

An unusually boisterous 44-year-old in a business that prizes discretion, 
Lim is the chief executive officer of Coseinc, based in Singapore. His 
nation-state clients are mostly countries that want to join the U.S. and 
China in the cyber­power club but don’t have the skills to do it on their 
own. He conducts a lot of business at conferences—networking, picking up 
clients—and Infiltrate is one of his favorites. While most such gatherings 
have become unabashedly commercial affairs, Infiltrate still maintains the 
feel of a digital Casa­blanca, where hackers mingle with spies, and 
defense contractors troll the bars for talent. Mindful of laws on 
corporate espionage, sellers of cybermunitions are careful to say they 
only provide information and code; the buyers decide what to do with it.

Over two days in May, Lim trades Edward Snowden jokes with National 
Security Agency spies and slams beers with Argentinian exploit developers. 
(Exploits allow a hacker to take over an unsuspecting user’s PC.) The 
event’s technical talks—and sideshows such as Brazilian jujitsu 
demonstrations—draw experts from England, Finland, France, Italy, and 
Malaysia. There are no name badges, only color-coded wristbands: black for 
featured speakers, red for the audience. The list of attendees is secret. 
If you don’t already know who you’re talking to, the ground rules suggest, 
you shouldn’t be asking.

[...]

--
Subscribe to InfoSec News
http://www.infosecnews.org/subscribe-to-infosec-news/