Black Hats, White Togas. The hacker con's 10th anniverary in Vegas runs into Caesars Palace's 40th anniversary. Chaos ensues. It wasn’t so long ago that you could count the attendees at the Black Hat Conference on your fingers…and toes. Well, maybe not just your fingers and toes, but get a few friends together and have them stick out their fingers and toes and you’d have it. The U.S.’s preeminent “hacker” conference (though that term is loosely applied), Black Hat is celebrating it’s tenth anniversary here at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. And, as Black Hat chief Jeff Moss pointed out in his opening remarks here this morning, back in 1996, the show had all of 100 attendees who gathered in the shadows of Defcon — that _other_ hacker con. After the legal and p.r. blow up over Michael Lynn’s disclosure of a hole in Cisco’s IOS, independent Black Hat came in from the rain, accepting an offer from tech publishing and trade show firm CMP Media back in November“It’s nice not to have to worry about accounting…or legal,” Moss said. According to Moss, CMP was just one of six trade show firms looking to buy the show. But after the lawyer letters from Cisco and ISS started flying, half of those companies ran for the doors, Moss said.The “vibe” here seems the same despite the corporate sponsorship — but maybe I’m just buzzing from the lights and air in the casino. Even the controversial Michael Lynn is here. I ran into him at a party last night hosted by vulnerability scanning firm Qualys. Lynn said that, in contrast to last year, he plans on a mellow Black Hat this year. Undoubtedly, though, the show is much bigger. Moss said that attendance is up 30 percent this year over last, with 15 percent of attendees from outside the U.S. You can see evidence of the growth all around: long lines, pillaged food stations and flash coffee shortages. But Moss debunked the notion that the show had sold out, or that Microsoft had “bought” at track focused just on its upcoming Vista operating system. Moss himself took credit for that track, which features leading Vista engineers talking about the security features of the OS and the company’s secure development process. Moss took Microsoft at its word when it said that Vista would ship at the end of 2006, and planned the track with that ship date in mind. Alas, with the date slipping further back into 2007, Moss found himself with a track focusing on an OS that is still, for all intents and purposes, still MIA. Look for more posts from this year’s Black Hat and more pix. Especially from later tonight when Black Hat’s 10th anniversary runs smack into Caesar’s 40th anniversary and plans for the world’s largest Toga Party! Security