DEF CON 23 - Chris Rock - I Will Kill You on HackerTube: recommended by 7 Hacker News commenters across 6 separate months, 2016–2025.
talk · evergreen
A DEF CON 23 talk showing how weak controls in electronic death registration systems let someone virtually kill a person and obtain a real death certificate, with consequences for their identity and life.
HN repeatedly recommends it whenever fake deaths, identity verification or records fraud come up, praising how easy the attack seemed.
“Really eye opening, and potentially devastating if it's done to you.”
10 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
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
in “Verizon fell for fake "search warrant," gave victim's phone data to stalker” · View on HN
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
in “What to do if the bank says you're dead” · View on HN
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
in “It's Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name” · View on HN
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
in “$190M missing after crypto exchange Quadriga CEO dies” · View on HN
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.
in “Facebook ordered to explain deleted profile” · View on HN
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
in “Faking your death” · View on HN
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 .
in “How to Overthrow a Government [video]” · View on HN
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
in “What happens to your online accounts when you die?” · View on HN
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
in “India's living dead” · View on HN
> 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
in “Three Years in Identity Theft Hell” · View on HN