1st Annual Cyber Security Lecture: Fancy Bear Goes Phishing

Guest Speaker: Scott J. Shapiro
Southmayd Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy, Yale University

Thursday, April 4, 2024
3:00 P.M. (PT)
Bancroft Hotel(opens in a new tab), 2680 Bancroft Way, Berkeley
Registration(opens in a new tab)

Agenda

Join BCLT for the 1st Annual Cyber Security Lecture with guest speaker, Scott Shapiro, who will give a lively discussion of his recent work titled “Fancy Bear Goes Phishing” on Thursday, April 4th at 3:00 PM at the Bancroft Hotel.

Abstract: “It’s a signal paradox of our times that we live in an information society but do not know how it works. And without understanding how our information is stored, used, and protected, we are vulnerable to having it exploited. In Fancy Bear Goes Phishing, Scott J. Shapiro draws on his popular Yale University class about hacking to expose the secrets of the digital age. He establishes that cybercrime has less to do with defective programming than with the faulty wiring of our psyches and society. And because hacking is a human-interest story, he tells the fascinating tales of perpetrators, including Robert Morris Jr., the graduate student who accidentally crashed the internet in the 1980s, and the Bulgarian ‘Dark Avenger,’ who invented the first mutating computer-virus engine. We also meet a sixteen-year-old from South Boston who took control of Paris Hilton’s cell phone, the Russian intelligence officers who sought to take control of a US election, and others.”

What makes is the internet so vulnerable? How can we respond? Shapiro shows us the hackers’ toolkits and offers new answers to those vital questions. This will be a lively discussion of the future of hacking, espionage, and war, and of how to live in an era of cybercrime.