social security

Jayson E. Street's DEF CON 19 talk shows photos from real security engagements where he was already inside client facilities, illustrating how social engineering and physical intrusion can cause huge losses. For each attack he also explains what defenses would have stopped him.

CGP Grey explains the history of the US Social Security card and number, and why they became a de facto national ID despite never being meant for it. He also covers why America resists a proper identity card.

Apple security head Ivan Krstic gives a Black Hat 2016 talk on iOS security, covering HomeKit, Auto Unlock and iCloud Keychain. He explains key hierarchies and how data can stay safe even in adversarial clouds.

Lock-picking YouTuber Bill Johnson (BosnianBill) explains how to choose a high-security lock and why, showing examples and comparing designs. It covers what makes some padlocks more pick-resistant than others.

A Wendover Productions explainer on how airport security is designed, covering screening layers, x-ray scanning, and the contrast with Israel's profiling-based approach. It walks through the logic behind why security works the way it does.

Ivan Krstic's Black Hat talk on Apple platform security, including the Find My design that uses elliptic curve key diversification to locate offline devices privately. It also covers hardware features such as the T2 chip and secure boot hardening.

Chamath Palihapitiya's Stanford GSB View From The Top talk on money as an instrument of change. HN mostly knows it for his remarks on social media's dopamine-driven feedback loops and regrets about Facebook.

A VICE News piece on China's Social Credit System, including a neighbor-watch pilot where paid watchers record behavior. It covers rewards for high scores and public shaming or restrictions for low ones.

A short clip demonstrating a phone-based social engineering trick in which a crying baby in the background is used to pressure a customer service rep. It shows how attackers exploit human sympathy rather than technical flaws.

James Mickens's humorous USENIX Security keynote argues that improving security and trusting opaque technology like machine learning is far harder than the industry admits.

Meredith Patterson and Sergey Bratus argue that networked software stays insecure because protocols and inputs are too complex to recognize safely. They propose using formal language theory and grammars to build secure, verifiable input handling.

Frank Abagnale, the real subject of Catch Me If You Can, speaks at Google about his life as a con man turned FBI fraud and cybersecurity expert, including advice on fraud, breaches and credit cards.

Andrew "bunnie" Huang examines how realistic hardware supply chain attacks are, from rogue insiders to nation states, in the wake of the Bloomberg Businessweek report. He explains how undocumented components could be hidden on boards and how hard they are to spot.

Sandy Pentland of MIT presents his book on social physics, which uses big-data studies of how people interact to explain how ideas spread. He describes findings on collective intelligence and social influence.

A four-minute Onion Talks parody in which a social media consultant pitches never putting any effort into social marketing. It lampoons TED-style talks and marketing consultants.

Lieutenant General Mark Hertling gives a TEDx talk arguing that obesity and poor youth fitness are a national security problem because too few young Americans can meet military physical requirements.

A 34C3 talk on the security architecture of the Nintendo Switch and the early progress breaking it. It introduces the Switch's custom OS and software stack, with the hackers' reverse-engineering and glitching work.

Tony Chen of Microsoft explains at BlueHat Seattle 2019 how the Xbox One was designed to resist physical attacks. He covers the security design and hypervisor-based OS architecture that kept the console uncracked for years.

Dan Geer's Black Hat 2014 keynote argues that cybersecurity is a matter of power and policy rather than wishful thinking. He covers surveillance, the vulnerability market, software liability and privacy as the capacity to misrepresent yourself.

David Weston's BlueHat IL 2023 talk traces the evolution of Windows security and previews Windows 11 and hardware advances. It ends with upcoming changes such as Rust in the kernel and fonts, signed binaries and adminless Windows.

A Channel 4 News interview with technologist Jaron Lanier, who argues that social media damages people's lives. He discusses how Facebook, YouTube and Google use algorithms and data collection to shape what users see.

A short Apple Get a Mac ad that mocks Windows Vista's constant security pop-up prompts.

Deviant Ollam's two-hour conference talk explains how elevators work, from the pit and buffers to the car top, controller logic and access-control features. It shows how this knowledge can be used for optimization and for bypassing building security.

Sociologist and comedian Harald Eia argues in a TEDxOslo talk that Nordic social democracies produce more rich people per capita than the US or UK. He credits high taxes, welfare and strong unions for creating a safety net that enables risk taking.

An Extra Credits episode on China's Sesame Credit, which gamifies obedient citizenship through a social score. It covers how the system rewards conformity and pressures people through their friends' behavior.

Locksport historian Schuyler Towne's RVASec 2012 talk on why people lock their doors, tracing the history of locks and the assumptions about security behind them.

A Kurzgesagt video arguing that social media's problem is information flooding and tribal polarization. It suggests a return to smaller online communities and more in-person interaction.

Deviant Ollam shows that most physical attacks on doors bypass the lock, with photo and video examples of how doors, frames and hardware get defeated. It is a physical security talk from Shakacon.

A DEF CON 20 talk by RenderMan on the security weaknesses of ADS-B, the unencrypted, unauthenticated aircraft tracking broadcast. It shows how easily the data can be spoofed and what that means for security designed in too late.

Gary Vaynerchuk's Web 2.0 Expo keynote on building a personal brand in social media. He urges keeping a day job while building something on the side, with passion and persistence, in a loud and profane style.

Theo de Raadt presents pledge, a new OpenBSD security mechanism that kills processes which exceed the system calls they declared they need. The talk was given late at night at Hackfest 2015.

Megan McArdle's AEI Vision Talk 'Capital and Poverty' argues that social and financial capital work differently in low-income communities, and that this explains barriers to reaching the middle class.

A UC Berkeley CS 161 lecture by Nicholas Weaver on cryptocurrency and blockchains, covering how they work and the case against them. It is aimed at a computer security course audience.

A 36C3 talk that systematically evaluates OpenBSD's exploit mitigations, asking how effective they really are and what they cost in performance, complexity and inspectability. It challenges the project's security marketing.

Chamath Palihapitiya talks with Jason Calacanis about how he bought into the mythology of Silicon Valley, which he calls a Ponzi scheme, and about rebuilding Social Capital. He urges founders to grow slowly and build what matters.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on US voting machines, covering how they work, their security weaknesses, and how elections could be made more secure.

A two-minute clip from a March 2005 House Budget Committee hearing in which Paul Ryan asks Alan Greenspan about personal retirement accounts and social security solvency. Greenspan replies that nothing prevents the government from creating as much money as it wants.

LockPickingLawyer picks an Amazon's Choice 'high security' padlock in about two seconds.

A two-minute clip of Richard Feynman on the social sciences, discussing what counts as real science versus pseudo science.

Rory McCune's AppSec EU 2015 talk on security risks in modern software deployment. It covers weaknesses in package ecosystems like npm, RubyGems and PyPI, and repository compromise.