If you are reviewing the archives for Black Hat 2015, these were the presentations that had the most impact:
A talk titled "Windows 10: The Kernel is Calling" demonstrated that Microsoft’s new baby, Windows 10, was shipping with a driver model that allowed attackers to disable anti-malware software if they could get ring-0 access. It was a sobering reminder that even a brand new OS carries the ghost of legacy code.
Several talks targeted the encryption that held the web together. With the discovery of Logjam and the continued exploitation of FREAK (Factoring Attack on RSA-EXPORT Keys), researchers showed that a nation-state could downgrade a "secure" HTTPS connection to 512-bit export-grade crypto in minutes.
For the attendees of blackhat.2015, the message was clear: Encryption is only as strong as the oldest protocol you support. blackhat.2015
Though not the headline, 2015 was the year the security community realized healthcare was an easy target. Researchers demonstrated that hospital drug infusion pumps (like the Hospira PCA LifeCare pump) could be remotely controlled by an attacker without authentication.
While this wasn't technically "ransomware" yet, the implication was clear: if you can change the flow of medication, you can hold lives for ransom. The seeds planted at BlackHat.2015 grew into the massive healthcare ransomware plagues of 2020–2021.
The fallout from BlackHat.2015 was immediate and unprecedented. Fiat Chrysler issued a recall of 1.4 million vehicles, sending USB sticks to owners to patch the software. More importantly, the stunt led to the creation of the automotive industry’s first coordinated disclosure process. If you are reviewing the archives for Black
For the audience watching in 2015, the message was terrifyingly clear: The "Internet of Things" was not a convenience feature; it was a blast radius.
If you are digging into blackhat.2015 for technical analysis, the slide decks and white papers you want to look for from that year include:
Casting Chris Hemsworth as a master coder was widely derided. “Hackers don’t look like that,” went the refrain. But that complaint misses Mann’s point entirely. Hathaway is not a basement dweller; he’s a blackhat—a mercenary who weaponizes code. His physique is not for show but for physical infiltration: he rappels down buildings, beats men in hand-to-hand combat, and uses social engineering as much as scripts. Mann is arguing that high-level cybercrime has merged with traditional espionage. The hacker is no longer a nerd; he’s a hybrid predator: part programmer, part soldier, part grifter. With the discovery of Logjam and the continued
Moreover, Mann subverts the “lone genius” myth. Hathaway operates with a crew: his brother-in-arms (played by Leehom Wang) and a network analyst (Viola Davis’s character, a nod to real-world cybercommand structures). The climax isn’t a 1v1 keyboard duel but a brutal physical shootout in a Jakarta market, where a hacked cryptocurrency exchange is just the backdrop to a knife fight. The message: code opens the door, but flesh must walk through it.
There was one story that escaped the confines of the Mandalay Bay convention center and exploded across mainstream news: The remote hack of a Jeep Cherokee.
Security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek took the stage at BlackHat.2015 to deliver what is arguably the most impactful car hacking presentation ever given: "Remote Exploitation of an Unaltered Passenger Vehicle."
