Apple to Present at Black Hat Security Conference for First Time

Bloomberg reports that Apple is taking an interesting step into security research publicity, agreeing to present at this week's Black Hat conference in Las Vegas for the first time in the conference's 15-year history.

While many major technology vendors have overcome their reluctance to making a public showing at the conference, Apple, now the world’s most valuable company, has had no problem snubbing a community whose aim is to unearth its vulnerabilities.

That 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.

The report notes that Apple's security researchers have attended the conference in past years, but the company has kept a low profile with its presence. Apple researchers were reportedly scheduled to give a panel presentation back in 2008, but the session was canceled once Apple's marketing team learned of the plans.

“Bottom line — no one at Apple speaks without marketing approval,” [Black Hat general manager Trey] Ford wrote in an e-mail. “Apple will be at Black Hat 2012, and marketing is on board.”

The annual Black Hat conference has been a popular venue for security researchers to release their findings on vulnerabilities in OS X, iOS and other platforms. Apple has sometimes moved very quickly to patch holes disclosed at the conference, such as in 2009 when Apple released iPhone OS 3.0.1 to address an SMS security vulnerability revealed at the conference just one day earlier, although the researchers had previously been in contact with Apple about the issue.