Hackers to Face Off in Black Hat 'Iron Chef' Contest

Two 'Iron Hackers' will have one hour to find as many vulnerabilities in a piece of mystery code as possible at Black Hat USA next month. For the second year in a row, Fortify Software is hosting its own version of the wildly popular Food Network show “Iron Chef,” pitting fuzzing techniques against static-code analysis in the Iron Chef-style hacking contest.

The two hackers who will face off in Vulnerability Stadium on Aug. 6 are Charlie Miller, principal analyst at Independent Security Evaluators, who will use fuzzing techniques to find vulnerabilities in the code; and Sean Fay, lead engineer for source code analysis at Fortify, who will show his stuff with static-code analysis techniques.

Miller was recruited for the hacking battle after nearly stealing the show last year. “Last year, this epic battle taking place wasn’t the battle we thought it was going to be -- it ended up being a battle between Iron Chef [session] and the session next door, with the iPhone vulnerability [found by] Charlie Miller. So we had to get some resolution this year,” quips Brian Chess, chief scientist at Fortify Software. “This year, Charlie Miller is taking up the cause of fuzzing."

Chess is keeping details about the open source code -- the “secret ingredient” -- close to the vest, but he did say it would be something that Miller would be comfortable with. “But we won’t be handing out iPhones,” Chess says.