Cisco routers again take spotlight at Black Hat

The Cisco hacking scene has been pretty quiet for the past three years, but at this week's Black Hat hacker conference in Las Vegas, there's going to be a little noise.

Security researchers will give talks on rootkits and new hacking and intrusion-detection software for the routers that carry most of the Internet's traffic.

Three years ago, security researcher Michael Lynn shined a spotlight on Cisco's products when he talked about how he ran a simple "shellcode" program on a router without authorization. Lynn's controversial talk was the biggest story at Black Hat 2005. He had to quit his day job to get around a company prohibition on discussing Cisco, and both he and the conference organizers were quickly sued by Cisco. The networking company argued that Lynn's presentation slides contained information that violated the company's intellectual property rights, and Lynn's talk was literally ripped out of the conference materials package. In a settlement agreement, the researcher was barred from further discussing his work, but copies of his presentation (download PDF) were posted online.