[Swordmaker]

This seems to be a revision of what was originally reported. The original report of this pull-out said that the presenter was a hacker who was going to make a presentation on a previously unreported vulnerability in File Vault. Between the time he agreed to speak and his pull-out, he had been hired by Apple. In his cancellation notice, he stated that he would not "speak because would be against his employer's wishes" and that could damage his income. That is referred to in the third from last paragraph:

"Apple's absence from Black Hat had a bit of a ripple effect, as security consultant Charles Edge was forced last month, upon finding out of Apple's plans to cancel their presentation, to withdraw a session he had proposed to Black Hat organizers about flaws in Apple's FileVault encryption software, citing confidentiality agreements he had signed with the company, according to the Washington Post."

Any "security consultant" who had already signed "confidentiality agreements" would have known that discussing unpatched "flaws" in an important security aspect of OSX would not have Apple's blessings. What I infer happened is that Edge shopped his discovered flaws to Apple and they hired him to help close them and required him to sign the NDA which, consequently resulted in his canceling is scheduled presentation at Black Hat.

Somehow this has been confabulated in this article into APPLE, INC., being scheduled to discuss their commitment to security and APPLE pulling out of an agreement to speak. That just doesn't comport to Apple's history or corporate policies. It would have been a major coup to have Apple officially address the Black Hat convention. Since they were not advertising this presentation out the kazoo, I don't think it was ever scheduled.

I think this entire article is FUD.

[Swordmaker]

SCientific American Blog claims Apple has pulled out of a scheduled presentation at this week's Black Hat convention—PING!

I don't think that is what happened.

Thanks to Leonard210 for the heads up.

Mac Black Hat Ping!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[chaos_5]

OK, maybe I'm just some kind of nut job, but it seems to me that the last thing you would want to to is tick off a bunch of professional hackers.

[null and void]

FUD? FUD? Who would do that to Apple???

Dija catch this gem?

“Thanks to this move and a few other gestures of ill will toward its customers (such as dropping the price of the iPhone...”

Dropping the price of a very popular product transmogrifies into a gesture of ill will towards the customers!

[byteback]

Apple is running UNIX. Gee, like that’s ever been hacked?

[SunkenCiv]

...says Herbert "Hugh" Thompson, chief security strategist at New York software security firm People Security, "Apple's shield of being a charmed company could be lifting."

...and who are ya gonna believe, some software patch salesman, or...

[LongElegantLegs]

Spot The Fed!

[weegee]

Petko Petkov, founder of security research firm GNUCITIZEN, said in the description on the Black Hat Web site of his presentation today that he planned to expose a flaw in Apple QuickTime running on the Windows operating system that Apple has yet to repair (a situation known as a "zero-day" bug), which means that hackers could immediate start attacking it. "If Apple responds before the event," he wrote, "I will drop the details of a QuickTime 0day for Windows Vista and XP."

Sounds like blackmail to me. So which nation is going to pursue him for cyberterrorism?

[ReignOfError]

gestures of ill will toward its customers (such as dropping the price of the iPhone last year

Either I'm missing something, or the author of this article is.

[Sunnyflorida]

Un-Scientific American article.

Just more crapola from a rag which evangelizes Global Warming.

[Swordmaker]

I was right.

"Black Hat says "cancelled" Apple talk never existed"