Talks at Google
8 HN recommenders · recommended in 14 months, 2018–2023
1:03:20 · 16M views · Nov 27, 2017
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.
Praised as a charismatic, engaging talk with practical security lessons, like why credit cards protect you better than debit cards.
15 comments from Hacker News
Frank Abnagale's Comments on the movie and book (2002) [0]. I don't know if his story is true or not. But regardless of his story, his talk at Google is one of the best ones I've heard [1]. > I was interviewed by the co-writer only about four times. I believe he did a great job of telling the story, but he also over dramatized and exaggerated some of the story. That was his style and what the editor wanted. He always reminded me that he was just telling a story and not writing my biography. This is one of the reasons that from the very beginning, I insisted the publisher put a disclaimer in the book and tapes. [0] [LINK] [1] this video
He did a talk at Google where he asserted basically the same thing: this video Great talk by the way, he's an incredibly charismatic and well spoken story teller, also a consultant for the FBI and a successful businessman - which makes you think about just how important likability and charisma are both to being a successful social engineer and being successful in-general. People will let you stray pretty far from reality if they like you - Holmes, Abagnale, and apparently Troy Woody (at least to this poor girl). Eventually reality catches up, one way or another.
I bumped into this talk today: Frank Abagnale: "Catch Me If You Can" this video He became an FBI agent and works with data breaches. So after entertainingly describing his life story he does mention the Equifax breach at the 37m mark. He paints a very negative picture of Equifax. Its well worth watching the whole thing, and not just skipping to his FBI Agent opinion of Equifax.
Offtopic, Frank Abnegale ( Catch me if you can fame ) also says the same thing in his [1] lecture at Google. The whole lecture is also pretty interesting. One of the best google talks I have seen. [1]: this video
* not in current use according to Equifax. I'm hesitant to take their word at face value, as they've tried to mitigate the entire situation via PR already and claim many users [who were affected] were not affected. However the site was still live, and exposed to the public web. It's only unrelated to the specific event in the United States, but clearly indicative of a pattern of negligence. I also wanted to add that the software in question that was compromised was a free and open source solution[0], not some top-dollar security program. And it was breached by relative simple XSS attack that even may have been carried out automatically. Beyond that it could just as likely have been a script kiddie who caught wind of the vulnerability on a message board somewhere and went hunting. I wouldn't call that highly sophisticated. XSS protection is the very baseline of internet data security... I'd also like to point to a video posted by another user upthread (willfarvar): this video FBI's Frank Abagnale speaks to the Equifax breach at ~37m (as willfarvar says, though, the entire video/talk is great) --- [0] [LINK]