Andrew Wbeelsoi (right) and Mischa Spiegelmock speak at the ToorCon hacker conference in San Diego on Saturday. The two gave a presentation that was a mix of dark hacker comedy and more serious talk, including the disclosure of a possible vulnerability and zero-day exploit in the open-source Firefox Web browser. The flaw affects Firefox on Windows, Apple Computer’s Mac OS X and Linux, they said.
Jesse Ruderman (left), a Mozilla security staffer, was called to the stage with the two hackers, Wbeelsoi and Spiegelmock. He attempted to persuade the presenters to responsibly disclose flaws via Mozilla’s bug bounty program, instead of releasing them publicly or using them for malicious purposes–such as creating networks of hijacked PCs, called botnets, which is what the two claimed they did. \r\n
\r\nAfter the presentation, Ruderman joined the hackers in the halls of the convention center in an attempt to learn more about the apparent vulnerability they had just disclosed and their motivations.
Bill Detwiler is the Editor for Technical Content and Ecosystem at Celonis. He is the former Editor in Chief of TechRepublic and previous host of TechRepublic's Dynamic Developer podcast and Cracking Open, CNET and TechRepublic's popular online show. Previously, Bill was an IT manager in the social research and energy industries. He has bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Louisville, where he has also lectured on computer crime and crime prevention.
