But it does appear that there was some plan to have a “Meet the Apple Security Folks” event. A strange for a company like Apple to plan, and even more strange to cancel it. Are they just trying to piss off hackers?
Black Hat was not touting this Apple first in any of their ads for Black Hat. Given Apple's reputation for taciturnity and non-participation in such conferences even when the forum is friendly, I sincerely doubt that Apple would appear at a conference that has a reputation for dissing Apple. I think it is just another way to twitch Apple's nose.
The Edge story came out around Wednesday of last week. Black Hat could have made the announcement then that they made today, a week later. They didn't. Why not? I think they got a lot of column inches and free publicity from Edge's claims. Now we have the "Apple cancels forum" story that also doesn't ring true... getting them even more face time and free publicity for their conference.
I think they are using this as a form of "Viral" advertising.