Hacker Summer Camp 2026: A Longitudinal Study of 2,295 Talks
Blog post from Semgrep
A Semgrep-led analysis of Hacker Summer Camp, spanning DEF CON, BSidesLV, and Black Hat, compared 2,295 talks from 2025 and 2026 using a consistent 27-category taxonomy, supplemented by transcripts from 556 recorded 2025 sessions containing 3.2 million words. It finds that the events serve different audiences and stages of security ideas: DEF CON emphasizes experimentation, BSidesLV translates emerging issues into practical professional threat models, and Black Hat focuses on difficult enterprise problems and commercial solutions. AI and machine learning discussions rose by roughly ten percentage points year over year and increasingly combined AI with established vulnerability and attack topics rather than replacing them, with AI-related offensive content growing more strongly than defensive content. Across talks, a prominent concern was improving the precision of AI-assisted security tools, especially reducing false positives through combinations of LLM reasoning, conventional scanners, rule-based analysis, and reliable validation methods. The analysis also notes that conference abstracts and titles may overstate certainty or hype compared with the more skeptical conclusions delivered in full presentations, while uneven recording practices mean in-person attendance remains important because much DEF CON content is never publicly released.
No tracked trend matches for this post yet.
Use this post, company, and trend context to find content marketing opportunities, perform competitive analysis, or address product feature gaps via the Plushcap MCP server or the Plushcap API.