What is the BlackHat Conference?

For those who haven’t heard about BlackHat, I’ll give a brief summary.

BlackHat is one of the premier and global cybersecurity conferences. BlackHat offers:

• cutting-edge presentations on the latest research into Cyber Security and Information Systems,
• demonstrations of cutting-edge tools and recommendations
• strategies presented by leading figures in the industry.

 

The event is designed for professionals who want to stay ahead in the rapidly evolving world of cybersecurity. The event attracts Cybersecurity professionals, Security Researchers, Ethical Hackers, Engineers, and Security leaders from top organisations worldwide. It’s a fantastic space for learning, discovery, and networking.

 

What to expect at BlackHat

• Business stands: meet with sponsors who offer security products & solutions
• Briefings: Research presentations covering new exploits, vulnerabilities, and innovative technologies. Attend thought-provoking keynotes from public figures and government agencies.
• Training: Hands-on sessions with cutting-edge tools and techniques.
• Social Events: Opportunities to meet and network with industry peers.

The Business Hall

This is where cybersecurity vendors and innovators gather. The Business Hall is open throughout the briefings. In the Business Hall, you can visit company stands, see live demos, and take part in competitions.

During lunch on the first day, I was joined at a round table by a core Cyber Security team coming from one of the main Airports in the Netherlands. They were a friendly bunch and we discussed all kinds of things from what they thought of the conference and what talks piqued their interest, to retro games and game consoles. It was a fantastic experience!

Companies at the Conference

The companies that I most enjoyed speaking with are the following.

GitHub

I had a great chat with a Danish GitHub engineer. We discussed their remote-first culture, innovations taking place with GitHub Copilot, and how their collaboration style closely mirrors our own at Infoserv. At Infoserv we do not have an office, however, we meet up regularly and have fantastic socials— we are remote but connected. It was fantastic to see similarities with such a well-established tech company.

Snyk

Snyk’s booth was unmissable—they had a smoothie station that drew me in like a magnet. 

I had a detailed discussion with their Sales Engineer and a Senior Software Engineer. Their core offering is a developer-first security platform, helping teams and software developers reduce security vulnerabilities and improve code quality. I received a full product demo and asked lots of questions.

Their features include:

• Platform Integration
• Continuous scanning and inline suggestions in your IDE on vulnerabilities that are present in your code
• Coverage of both direct and transient dependencies

They also have access to one of the world’s largest databases of open-source vulnerabilities and cloud misconfigurations. They are a highly impressive company and worth contacting if your project demands a secure development pipeline.

Reversing Labs

Reversing Labs introduced themselves as a direct competitor to Snyk. Their product, Spectra Analyze, focuses on static decomposition and analysis of binary files. Their friendly team shared some unique insights into their products and company.

NATO

Yes, NATO was there—and they brought lock-picking kits! I tried my hand at unlocking a few padlocks and ended up sharing laughs with a Ministry of Defence employee. It was a fun, unexpected hands-on experience that added variety to the day.

The Briefings

The rest of my time at BlackHat was packed with 30–45-minute briefing sessions.

The briefings were amazingly varied. I attended briefings that looked at the nitty-gritty details of side-channel attacks in Intel processors and vulnerabilities in eSIMs to a high level. The big picture discussions around Geo-political changes and challenges across Europe concerning FAANG (Meta (formerly known as Facebook), Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Alphabet (formerly known as Google)) were thought-provoking. These companies are progressively acquiring more ownership and control over critical networking infrastructure that comprises the worldwide web. 

I had a running bet with Paul, one of our directors, on how many briefings I could squeeze in—and he nailed it.

Final Briefing count: 11.

😎

Here’s a list of the briefings I attended.

Wednesday

1. Keynote: Frédérick Douzet

2. How the Internet Dodged a Bullet: The KeyTrap Denial-of-Service Attacks against DNSSEC

3. Improving Side-Channel Protections for Intel TDX

4. LLMbotomy: Shutting the Trojan Backdoors

5. Vulnerabilities in the eSIM download protocol

6. When (Remote) Shells Fall Into The Same Hole: Rooting DrayTek Routers Before Attackers Can Do It Again

7. The Bugs in Your Bootloaders: Embedded Device Secure Boot Fails and How to Fix Them

Thursday

1. Keynote: Eric Freyssinet Fighting Cybercrime in 2024

2. My other ClassLoader is your ClassLoader: Creating evil twin instances of a class

3. The Devil is in the (Micro-) Architectures: Uncovering New Side-Channel and Bit-Flip Attack Surfaces in DNN Executables

4. Guest Revolution: Chaining 3-bugs to compromise the Windows kernel from the VMware guest

Final Thoughts

In the next two articles, I’ll be going into more depth on the Geo-political keynote and the seventh briefing from the Wednesday, on boot-loaders in Cisco’s Nexus-series Ethernet switches.

Overall BlackHat was an incredible experience and one that I’d recommend to anyone.