De Charleta: “Blindsided Attacks” (Samy Kamkar)

Samy Kamkar is a privacy and security researcher, computer hacker, whistleblower and entrepreneur. At the age of 16, Kamkar dropped out of high school and one year later, co-founded Fonality, a unified communications company based on open source software, which raised over $46 million in private funding. He is possibly best known for creating and releasing the fastest spreading virus of all time, the MySpace worm Samy, and being subsequently raided for it by the United States Secret Service, under the Patriot Act. He is also known for creating SkyJack, a custom drone which hacks into any nearby Parrot drones allowing them to be controlled by its operator, and for creating the Evercookie, which appeared in a top-secret NSA document revealed by Edward Snowden and on the front page of The New York Times. He is also known for his work with The Wall Street Journal and his discovery of the illicit mobile phone tracking where the Apple iPhone, Google Android and Microsoft Windows Phone mobile devices transmit GPS and Wi-Fi information to their parent companies. His mobile research led to a series of class-action lawsuits against the companies and a privacy hearing on Capitol Hill.