What do you get when you put hackers, gambling, and dogs together? Black Hat USA 2017 …and a random zoo conference happening next door. Last week, we wrapped up another successful trip to Las Vegas for Black Hat. For those of you who couldn’t make it or had too much Vegas fun and need a reminder of what happened, here’s a little recap for you.
Background
Every year Black Hat, the world’s leading information security event series in the world, hosts a six-day conference in Las Vegas. The conference and technical training sessions focus on the latest research, development, and trends in the cybersecurity space. This year Black Hat hit a major milestone by celebrating its 20th year in hosting these events.
Hot topics
In the last couple of years, we’ve noticed a lot of conversation about AI machine learning – specifically this year focused on AI Machine Learning Neutral Networks in the security industry. The general belief is that AI alone will help defeat all malware and move us into the new age. That’s not going to happen – in our opinion. All these AI talks seem to forget one important thing. How exploitable and manipulative a machine learning database and algorithm can be. They are extremely prone to be poisoned and easy to bypass when you know what you’re doing.
There were a million talks this year and last about AI machine learning and how you can use it to detect malware and defeat exploits and so on and so forth, however it will never be practical in the way the talks are pushing. AI will do amazing things in the background of security companies and in unison with other security functions though.
Booth action
The Malwarebytes booth was as hot as the hippest DJ playing at the “it” club in Vegas. ZERO the robot was a crowd favorite per usual. Our product marketing team (Dana & Helge) broke down the current threat landscape, went into detail about Jaff ransomware, and talked about our latest business products – Endpoint Protection and Incident Response.
Conclusion
Black Hat always seems to bring around a talented group of professionals. We’re happy we can participate in this event each year and spend some time meeting everyone. It seems like AI will continue to be a hot topic, it will be interesting to see what updates are to come in the next year.
Thank you to all those that stopped by the Malwarebytes booth. See you next year!
