# Black Hat USA **Entity class:** Annual commercial information-security conference and training event **As of:** 2026-09-23 ## Definition **Black Hat USA** is a major information-security conference organized around professional training, research briefings, tool demonstrations, and an extensive vendor exhibition. Its public and commercial scale distinguishes it from the classified intelligence events in this cluster. The conference is operationally relevant to government because vulnerability research, exploit technique, defensive tooling, security talent, and vendor capabilities are concentrated in one place. Government agencies and contractors visibly participate in the broader security ecosystem, but claims about the scale of intelligence recruiting or private briefing activity require event-specific evidence and are not inferred from attendance alone. ## Relationships - **research community:** [[wiki/Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures|Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures]], [[wiki/Zero-Day Exploit|Zero-Day Exploit]], and [[wiki/Continuous Vulnerability Intelligence|Continuous Vulnerability Intelligence]]. - **adjacent event:** [[wiki/DEF CON|DEF CON]]. - **event ecosystem:** [[wiki/Intelligence and Defense Conferences|Intelligence and Defense Conferences]]. - **collection route:** [[collections/Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and the Intelligence Environment|Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and the Intelligence Environment]]. ## Sources / Provenance - [Black Hat USA 2026 — briefings](https://blackhat.com/us-26/briefings.html) - [Black Hat USA 2026 — trainings](https://blackhat.com/us-26/trainings.html) - [Black Hat USA 2026 — Arsenal](https://blackhat.com/us-26/arsenal-overview.html)