Black Hat USA 2025: “Technology is political,” said Jeff Moss, hacker and founder of the conference

"Who among you feels like we're entering a chaotic and uncertain time ? Does anyone really understand what's going on?" With these questions, American hacker and founder of the cybersecurity conference, Jeff Moss , opened the 2025 edition of Black Hat USA on Wednesday, referring to how artificial intelligence has transformed the technological world over the past three years.

"We see a lot of disruption around artificial intelligence, but we're not entirely clear on what AI is here to revolutionize," said the researcher, also known in the community as The Dark Tangent. Black Hat is one of the largest cybersecurity conferences in the world and takes place annually in Las Vegas .

Moss opened the convention with a strong emphasis on the preponderance of technology in today's world: "Technology is already, without a doubt, political. For two decades, we [hackers] used to sit here and say that we're not politicians, that we're dedicated to the world of ones and zeros, that politics wasn't our problem. That's no longer the case: politics is our problem , because technology is everywhere," he said.

During the event's opening ceremony at the Michelob Ultra Arena at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center (the iconic Las Vegas hotel), Moss also addressed the ongoing US-China war for technological dominance.

“I had to sign a very long form for the Department of Defense, stating that we would not use Huawei [China] equipment at the conference. Who are you going to buy your equipment from? China, Iran, Israel? These questions made even corporate procurement political. Do you think AI is going to help us answer these questions? No, AI will 'read' and summarize these documents, but the final decisions are human ,” he continued.

Among the attendees at the keynote, Moss addressed Black Hat scholarship students: "For everyone who's new to this, don't be afraid to ask questions. We want you to challenge what the speakers say, because in the tech world, things aren't always black and white; they change."

“We must be more Socratic,” Moss concluded, referring to the method of questioning with which Socrates sought to stimulate knowledge, and which Plato helped to popularize (maieutics).

He then gave the floor to Mikko Hyppönen , a renowned Finnish hacker and cybersecurity researcher , as well as this year's keynote speaker at Black Hat .

Mikko Hyppönen is one of the most recognized personalities in the hacking world: "I'm the age of the internet," he jokes in his talks, because he was born in 1969, the year ARPANET , the precursor to the Internet of Networks, was created. During his talk, he reviewed the history of one of the most famous viruses in history, "ILOVEYOU," even pointing out that the ransomware business model is still a threat in the online world.

“Every technological revolution we've seen brings us benefits and problems. While we'd like to reap only the benefits, we also have to deal with the problems. We saw it with the revolution of online connectivity and mobility, with smartphones and social media, and now we're seeing it with artificial intelligence. AI is the biggest technological revolution I've seen in my lifetime ,” he asserted.

In this regard, the researcher asserted that the full potential of AI in the context of cyberattacks has not yet been fully realized. “Every cybersecurity company here will tell you the extent to which they use generative AI in their products. Yes, attackers are also using AI , but they're just getting started. So far, we've seen fairly simple attacks with AI,” he said, anticipating that they will continue to gain complexity beyond current uses.

He also offered a self-criticism of the cybersecurity industry: he referred to the popular phrase that "the user is the weakest link," a reference to the fact that many security incidents begin with a user clicking on the wrong link. "If a user clicks on a link and becomes infected, we have to ask ourselves why that link reached them in the first place. We have to stop placing the responsibility on the end user, we have to stop blaming them, and shift it to all of us at this stage ," he said.

Hyppönen established himself as an authoritative voice during the 1990s, when he held advisory roles in the United States government and positioned himself as a worldwide reference on issues of hacking, cybercrime and cybersecurity. He even made a mini-documentary in which he recounted his journey to find the creators of the first computer virus in history, in Pakistan: Brain , which spread throughout the world on floppy disks in 1986.

At Black Hat, the hacker surprised everyone with a career announcement this Wednesday: he said this week is his last at F-Secure, the cybersecurity company where he works, and that he is moving to a defense company focused on drones.

Last year, a “ Malware Museum ,” i.e., a computer virus museum, opened in Helsinki.

Black Hat is one of the most influential cybersecurity conferences in the world. It was founded in 1997 by Jeff Moss, known in the hacking world as "The Dark Tangent." While the main conference is held in the United States, it also has editions in Asia and Europe.

The convention brings together experts from around the world to discuss vulnerabilities, global threats, defense techniques, and groundbreaking findings in cybersecurity. Unlike DEF CON , which was founded in 1993 and maintains a more informal spirit, Black Hat is aimed at the corporate world.

One of the event's main venues is the so-called "Briefings," where researchers present technical papers on security flaws, sophisticated attacks, and new ways to protect critical systems. The presentations are selected by an independent committee and are characterized by their high technical level.

There's also a section called Arsenal , a sort of fair showcasing community-created software tools, many of which are open source, designed for offensive security testing ("Pentesting"), digital forensics, and threat detection, among other branches of online security.

The conference serves as a showcase for the world of cybersecurity, but also as a laboratory for the current threat landscape.