DEF CON 23 - Chris Rock - I Will Kill You

Yeah, and Facebook is the least of your concerns. Defcon talk about the security of death certificates, and what happens to your life if you are targeted by this attack. ▶ this video

It is! This video is a bit old now but it's still so unbelievable how easy it was for the speaker to "kill" people (in Australia) ▶ this video

This reminds me of a Defcon talk.[0] In Australia before a certain date the states/feds didn't keep a record of your face if you got a licence/proof of age card. If you find yourself in this position all that is required is non photo id and a statutory declaration signed by friend to authenticate your identity. [0] ▶ this video

On the subject of people being declared dead, there's a good defcon talk about abusing how easy it is to declare someone dead. "Chris Rock - I Will Kill You" ▶ this video

An alarming amount of societal functionality depends on what effectively amounts to the honor system. This is especially true when it comes to any sort of gatekept specialty profession, like coroners for example. There was a great talk at DefCon about faking death: ▶ this video

Most jurisdictions (US and otherwise) have moved to Electronic Death Registration Systems. There was a fun Defcon talk about "killing" people with them a few years ago - ▶ this video

It's not only Facebook who have this process unsufficiently secured. The process for administering real death is also not really tamperproof. There is a hilarious defcon presentation on virtually killing someone and getting a real death certificate: ▶ this video Improperly reporting someone dead, or misrepresenting someone's will is something "you don't do" so the system is designed to minimize friction/pain.

> The United States. I assure you that even though other countries have credit reporting, they do not use SSNs. They use ID cards with at least some features to make forging said ID cards more difficult, unlike the US SSN which is pretty much just a number on a piece of paper. This is mainly an issue of authentification and as long as your credentials remain crappy/easy to guess/easy to forge (like the US SSN system), that long it will stay easy to game the system. Imho this def con talk about birthing and killing virtual babies might also be quite relevant to the issue, tho it's not entirely focused on the US: ▶ this video

The speaker's previous presentation at a different year of the same conference, about using online records to fabricate your own death or the birth of a made-up baby, is also worth watching: ▶ this video .

Reminds me of a DefCon speaker that talked about exploiting a bunch of websites to order death and birth certificates. Really eye opening, and potentially devastating if it's done to you. Edit: ▶ this video