We’re thrilled to announce Blackhoodie Seattle on 14th-15th Nov 2025! Huge thanks to IOActive for hosting us!

TL;DR:

What: Class on low-level security topics, introductory and intermediate

When: Nov 14th - 15th 2025

Where: Seattle, WA

Who: Women

Registration link: Fill form here

Fees: The trainings are free; food, travel and accommodation is responsibility of attendees.

We are meeting at IOActive’s office on 14th-15th Nov to share our mad skillz. We will have the following trainings

• Speculative CPU Shenanigans by Thaís
• Compiler Internals by Marion
• AI Agents for Security + Security for AI Agents by Bhavna
• Cloud Incident Response in the Age of AI by Supriya and Hanne

Speculative CPU Shenanigans - Friday 14th Nov - Thaís

Trainer

Thaís is an offensive security researcher.

Workshop description

In this workshop we will deep-dive into security from the CPU perspective. We will learn about Spectre, Meltdown, and other side-channel attacks exploiting speculative/transient execution. We will learn how to use timing (side-channel) attacks to infer information otherwise not reachable to us. It is going to be very hands-on, no slides, no fancy diagrams, not much of a GUI - it’s going to be you, a text editor, a shell, and me (speculatively) having lots of fun!

Requirements

Fundamentals of modern computer architecture, coding in C and x86 assembly, *nix like environment (WSL is fine)

Compiler Internals - Friday 14th Nov - Marion

Trainer

Marion is a seasoned malware analyst and reverse engineer.

Workshop description

We’ll set up an environment with which we can analyze source code through different compilation stages and by the end of the day students will be able to inject code to a given compiler stage. Students will gain understanding how compiler mitigations are placed into applications, and understand the security relevancy of a build chain.

Requirements

Bring a laptop on which you have permissions to install software, basic coding skills and Linux command line skills required, knowing basics of assembly is helpful but not required

AI Agents for Security + Security for AI Agents - Saturday 15th Nov - Bhavna

Trainer

Bhavna is a ML/AI for security researcher.

Workshop description

This workshop is a zero-to-sixty journey to understand how to build AI agents. We will build a toy AI agent for reverse engineering. Then we will evaluate its security, break it and make it secure again.

Who should attend?

This workshop is for Security Researchers who want to learn to build AI agents to support their work.

Requirements

This workshop will require you to read and understand python code and know your way around a * nix commandline. You will need an internet connected machine (local or cloud) with admin privileges, with atleast 50 Gb of space and *nix like environment. We will use python and Claude code throughout. You can use your preferred coding assistant (there is approximate feature parity, but there may be some differences). We might be using it a lot so you may need a paid subscription (e.g. Claude Code is $20 for a month). If this is a financial hardship, you can request Blackhoodie to reimburse you for this.

Cloud Incident Response in the Age of AI - Saturday 15th Nov - Supriya and Hanne

Trainers

Supriya is a senior security engineer / tech lead specializing in DFIR (digital forensics and incident response) at Amazon. Hanne is a senior engineer at Splunk (Cisco) specializing in DFIR (Digital Forensics and Incident Response).

Workshop description

Coming Up!

What is BlackHoodie?

BlackHoodie is a free, women only reverse engineering workshop and community. More information can be found here: https://www.blackhoodie.re/about/

Why women-only?

One qualifies to attend an in-person bootcamp either if born and raised female, or if one identifies as a woman. This concept of women-only has no intention of putting up walls or feeling exclusive. Blackhoodie is about creating space in an industry that’s very competitive. It is a comfortable place, where attendees feel encouraged to grow skills without pressure. We do what we do, not to create women-only bubbles, as contradicting as it might sound, but to enable a minority to enter the security space, learn skills that are otherwise expensive to learn, find their interests and grow a professional network.

And, it works. BlackHoodie alumnae have gone far beyond being successful in the classroom since the workshop series started. They ventured out to start community projects and collaborations, got themselves new jobs in the security industry, went to speak at major security conferences, joined review boards and become influencers in our community. Many went on to mentor others after they had found their spot, came back to BlackHoodie to give trainings on their own or are now conference trainers and teach classes to the community.

Finally, why does the security industry need more women at all? The industry is growing and facing a talent shortage. More importantly, jobs are typically well paid, come with certain privileges, and are challenging and often fulfilling. And we do firmly believe our society as a whole can only benefit from having more women with money, independence and confidence. Likewise, the tech sector has grown in size and influence, and with great power comes great responsibility – responsibility best shared among a diverse body of decision makers.