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TEDxMaui -- Hack Yourself First

Ten years ago if you would have told me that I'd be back living in Hawaii, founder of a fast growing technology company, and a TED speaker -- I would've said, "What's a TED?" Preparing for TEDxMaui was extremely difficult. The presentation format is completely different than anything I’ve ever done before. It was limited to just 18 minutes as opposed to 50, and given to an audience of every day people eager to see something amazing, instead of security professionals and high-tech workers. The message had to be crystal clear. Since TEDxMaui videos won’t be published until late February, you’ll have to settle for my substandard textual description for now. I wanted everyone, both the viewers in the audience and those who would eventually watch the video, to deeply appreciate the crucial importance of Internet security. I want everyone to know that to discuss Internet security is really to discuss our economic well-being and our national security, and I want everyone to know that both are under attack -- every single day. Most of all I wanted everyone to know that hacking, and people learning how to hack, is absolutely essential to defend ourselves. I labelled this concept Hack Yourself First, the title of the presentation. Hack Yourself First advocates building up our cyber-offense skills, and focusing these skills inward at ourselves, to find and fix security issues before the bad guys find and exploit them. Before presenting Hack Yourself First I had to first imagine how the audience would respond. Most watching undoubtedly have only had negative experiences with the words “hacking” and “hackers.” All they likely knew of hacking is in relation to viruses infecting their computers, stealing money out of (their) bank accounts, TV interviews of shadowy characters wearing Guy Fawkes masks, salacious articles featuring cyber villains, and of course bad hollywood movies. Whether we like it or not, these are the ambassadors of hacking, so the idea of teaching cyber-offense skills might be considered akin t...

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Source: Jeremiah Grossman - Tuesday, 24 January


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