Will Hurd the Black Hat

Today, Black Hat Conference announced that they’d canned Congressman Will Hurd as keynote after backlash from attendees. Taking a brief flick through Hurd’s record, it seems fair to say he is a misogynistic asshole, but it is a pretty weird step by Black Hat to rescind his invitation, given that it was a pretty weird step to invite him in the first place. Their given reasoning that they didn’t want politics interfering at their conference is frankly ridiculous and a little patronising, given its nature as being a haven for black hats. But anyway. In general I think these big security cons are absolutely right to try to invite feds, politicians, chess world champions and as many people who aren’t security researches as possible to speak at their events, and invariably some of these people will hold opinions that the community at large won’t agree with. Black Hat only decided to not give Will Hurd more of a platform than he already has after community backlash, and they weren’t transparent about the process at all, which is a shame. Frankly I don’t think they have upheld the hacker ethos in the slightest - c’mon Black Hat, you can do better.