Black Hat 2019: What We Expect
The annual hacking and security conference is upon is again. Experts and researchers from all over the world will present their alarming and encouraging takes on vulnerabilities, exposures, and privacy risks. Here’s what we’re hoping to see.
The annual DEF CON hacking conference started as an accident in 1993, and has been going and growing ever since. Black Hat, launched in 1997 by DEF CON founder Jeff Moss (aka Dark Tangent), is its more formal cousin.
To paraphrase a welcome speech by Moss a few years ago, friends said to him, "Hey, why don't you invite more people, charge them a lot of money, and make them wear suits?" The suits are gone, for the most part, but Black Hat gets bigger every year, with 19,000 attendees last year.
Black Hat consists of two very different parts. From Saturday to Tuesday, security experts and aspiring experts pay thousands of dollars to participate in training sessions intended to hone their skills in a wide range of security tasks. The press is not invited. On Wednesday and Thursday, the conference switches to briefings, where security experts and academics from all over the world share their latest discoveries, new vulnerabilities, and cutting-edge research.
Some presentations are too arcane even for PCMag's security experts, but there are plenty that touch on everyone's life and privacy. Here are some of the events we're looking forward to.
Gloss