These days meetings of computer hackers are no longer gatherings of pale young men sitting in rooms knee deep in pizza boxes.

Instead they’re a magnet for security experts from banks and corporations eager to hear the latest in computer security research.

The annual Hack in the Box conference is first and foremost a gathering of “white hat” hackers. If the term seems opaque just think of old Westerns in which the bad guys wore black hats.

The white hats carry out independent testing of computer security systems by trying to find loopholes in them - and then usually taking their research to the companies in whose products they have discovered problems.

And what the assembled white hats were saying is that the security of a lot of the stuff we use or rely on just isn’t good enough.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7004750.stm

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