Black Hat says 'canceled' Apple talk never existed

LAS VEGAS--On the eve of this year's Black Hat Briefings, officials disputed a researcher's claim that his talk had to be canceled. They say the talk never even existed.

Last Thursday, researcher Charles Edge told Brian Krebs of the Washington Post that a talk on a previously disclosed flaw within the encryption for Apple FileVault had to be canceled because of a signed agreement with Apple.

The story had the individuals at Black Hat who handle the Call for Papers--the process by which a researcher submits a request to make a presentation and then waits to hear back from the conference--scrambling. Edge, who goes by the nickname "Krypted," is a well-known Apple security researcher who has previously presented at both Black Hat and its sister conference Defcon.

But on Tuesday, two different Black Hat officials confirmed to CNET News that Edge never submitted a paper for this year's conference.

Charles Edge did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and this story will be updated as necessary.

Meanwhile, a Black Hat spokesperson confirmed that a panel discussion titled "Meet the Apple Security Experts" was canceled by its moderator. The panel still appears in the printed schedule for the conference; the cancellation came too late to change the printing. All other references have been removed.

The truth behind the so-called cancellation of talk at Black Hat on a newly discovered Zero Day vulnerability in Apple Mac's File Vault—PING!

MacPing!

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But it does appear that there was some plan to have a “Meet the Apple Security Folks” event. A strange for a company like Apple to plan, and even more strange to cancel it. Are they just trying to piss off hackers?

Black Hat was not touting this Apple first in any of their ads for Black Hat. Given Apple's reputation for taciturnity and non-participation in such conferences even when the forum is friendly, I sincerely doubt that Apple would appear at a conference that has a reputation for dissing Apple. I think it is just another way to twitch Apple's nose.

The Edge story came out around Wednesday of last week. Black Hat could have made the announcement then that they made today, a week later. They didn't. Why not? I think they got a lot of column inches and free publicity from Edge's claims. Now we have the "Apple cancels forum" story that also doesn't ring true... getting them even more face time and free publicity for their conference.

I think they are using this as a form of "Viral" advertising.

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