Just in from Heise:
German security expert and reverse engineer Thomas Dullien of Sabre Labs, better known by his pseudonym of Halvar Flake, has revealed that he has been refused entry to the USA for the forthcoming Black Hat conference. Following a four and a half-hour interview with immigration authorities, he was sent home. Flake had been engaged by the conference organisers to give a session on “Analyzing Software for Security Vulnerabilities” as part of a series of pre-conference training sessions. According to Flake’s blog entry on the incident, numerous representatives of US government agencies were due to take part in the session.
He was apparently refused entry because he did not have an H1B visa, required for such activities. Dullien states that he has travelled to Black Hat training sessions without a visa for years under the terms of the visa waiver program. He appears to have simply been fortunate that no-one noticed that, from the point of view of the immigration authorities, he was an employee of the Black Hat conference for this period.
Bad luck that.
[tags]Halvar Flake, Black Hat, US Customs, Black Hat Courses[/tags]