Black HatUSA 2025 
Evil Digital Twin, Too: The First 30 Months of Psychological Manipulation of Humans by AI
South Seas A&B, Level 3
Thursday, August 7, 2025 
10:20-11:00

In our highly rated 2023 talk "Evil Digital Twin", we warned that large language models (LLMs) were exploiting the cognitive vulnerabilities of their users, and that humans would perceive AI as sentient long before true artificial general intelligence emerges. Twenty four months later, the situation has escalated rapidly, and many of our predictions have become realities, rewriting our civilization's core realities.

Join us for a two year check-in, as we discuss how human digital twins (HDTs) trained on the core patterns of human individuals are being deployed at scale to simulate everything from human i workflows to relationships. Cyberattack stakeholders have taken notice of the capabilities of LLMs in exploiting human social norms, cognitive bias, and perceptual limitations.

We will detail a present where longitudinal interaction data is facilitating low-cost social engineering labor and high power AI-human hybrid attacks. We will also explore a coming future of persistent cognitive cyberwarfare, escalating as the cost of deception approaches zero, and the attack surface shifts from networks to minds. Audience members will interact with a human digital twin of a Supreme Court justice, meet a perfect AI assistant for insider threat, and leave with a NIST research-based LLM that speaks in phishing emails. Get a sneak peek at research in collaboration with the US Military Academy (USMA) at Westpoint that pits humans and human digital twins against one another in competitions of manipulation and deception.

We will finally talk about a brighter future that is still attainable, where AI natives, those that have grown up in a context suffused by AI, can help us to build defensive posture that extends beyond infrastructure to include cognitive security, protecting not just digital systems, but the systems that underpin civilization and the human beings they serve.

BSidesLV 2025
Human Attack Surfaces in Agentic Web: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the AI Apocalypse
Ground Truth
Monday, August 4
15:00 - 15:45

AI agent usage is accelerating us into an era of the Agentic Web, a digital landscape where machines, not humans, dominate creation, interaction, and consumption. As we inch closer to this new reality, we must ask: What are the security risks of an internet not built or experienced by, humans? LLMs have already begun to radically reshape the way we consume online information and will completely redefine how we live our online lives. From buying goods and services to searching for jobs, homes, and even relationships, agents will increasingly perform these tasks on our behalf. But convenience comes at a cost. In the coming world of bot-vs-bot warfare, scammers will unleash agents to exploit the agents of unsuspecting humans. This isn’t some distant dystopia, it’s happening right now, and it’s already creating an endless array of new vulnerabilities. We will glimpse the near future of cognitive security, where an unrelenting cascade of attack surfaces will emerge. We’ll delve into the mechanics of AI agents and the economic pressures driving their rapid adoption, explore real-world examples of how agents are already being exploited, and conclude with a look ahead at near future scenarios.

DefCon 2025
Evil Digital Twins in Influence Operations
(Workshop)
Misinformation Village
Saturday, August 12
10:00am - 11:15am

Explores the untapped potential and risk of Uncensored Large Language Models (LLMs). We invite cybersecurity professionals and enthusiasts to examine the capabilities of an uncensored LLM, hands on, in the context of misinformation and manipulation tactics ripe for misuse by malicious actors.
Attendees will experience how LLMs employ strategies from psychological literature and advertising science to manipulate targets by leveraging cognitive biases, social norms, and habit loops. A focus will be on 'shadow prompts,' hidden instructions that simulate a compromised LLM, and subtly alter interactions.
Participants will be invited to join our "Evil Digital Twin" community, creating a collaborative environment for continuous learning about LLM security, and fostering robust defense strategies within their organizations.
The workshop, led by experts in psychology, cybersecurity, and intelligence, will deepen understanding of LLMs, opening dialogue on their disruptive potential.

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