Locknote: Conclusions and Key Takeaways from Black Hat USA 2022

## Overview and Format

The session represents the largest Locknote panel held at Black Hat USA, designed to conclude the conference by discussing review insights, topic trends, and audience takeaways. Moderated by Jeff Moss, the session is structured as an informal conversation featuring members of the Black Hat Review Boards who evaluate talk submissions across various security domains.

## Review Board Representation and Roles

The panel consists of track leads and reviewers representing different sectors of cybersecurity:

- **Chris Eng (Veracode):** Member of the U.S. Briefings Review Board and track lead for Application Security (formerly referred to in past years as AppSec or SDLC). He has focused on application security for 20 years. - **Natalie Silvanovich (Google Project Zero):** Member of the U.S. Briefings Review Board and track lead for the Hardware track. Her focus includes exploit development, CPU bugs, and code execution across unusual targets. - **Justine Bone (MedSec):** Serves on both the CISO Review Board and the U.S. Briefings Review Board, currently focusing on the Policy track. - **Matt Suiche (Magnet Forensics):** Serves on both the United States and European Review Boards.

## Submission Volume and Review Observations

- **Submission Scale:** The review board processes an extremely high volume of talk proposals, noted as exceeding 1,000 submissions per event. - **Title Selection Challenges:** The reviewers noted that talk titles significantly influence initial room attendance. High-quality technical content may suffer from lower live attendance if the title or abstract is poorly framed, though attendees frequently discover these sessions post-conference via community chatter on Twitter, YouTube, or the event website.

## Track Focus Areas and Technical Trends

The panelists highlighted key technical areas and evaluation criteria across their respective tracks:

- **Application Security (AppSec):** Encompasses a wide spectrum of software security topics, ranging from secure development lifecycles (SDLC) and CI/CD pipelines to standard web attacks and emerging Web3 security research. - **Hardware and Exploit Research:** Hardware track submissions span from low-level CPU vulnerabilities to targeting unconventional platforms such as automotive systems and satellites. The evaluation emphasizes novelty—seeking original exploit chains and new bug classes over minor micro-optimizations of existing techniques. - **Policy:** Covers governance and industry-wide security policy issues within the conference briefings, bridging technical research and organizational management.