“Online, a Little Paranoia Is Healthy”
Can artificial intelligence put an end to the eternal game of cops and robbers? Is complete security online even possible, and is it true that our part of the world breeds remarkably good hackers? Petar Kirkov, the Bulgarian sheriff in today’s online Western, has spent more than 20 years in cybersecurity and is now the national coordinator in the field.
02A Stuntman Takes On the Hackers
Which is harder—knocking out Antonio Banderas or fending off the cyberattacks aimed at a large company? There can hardly be more than one person in the world who can answer that from personal experience. Only our guest today. Veselin Troyanov has worked as a stuntman on countless Hollywood blockbusters, alongside Jason Momoa, Scarlett Johansson, Gary Oldman, Ryan Reynolds and Antonio Banderas. Today he heads the Bulgarian team of Check Point, a global cybersecurity company with vast experience, while also building his own platform for influencers. Yes, we will talk about security and incidents. About risk and caution. About stuntmen and the spectacular crashes anyone can arrange for themselves by not being careful enough online… And can there be such a thing as safety on the internet at all?
03Trust, but Verify Online!
If you have never heard of “social engineering,” or “social engineerism,” as today’s guest says we ought to call it, you are probably picturing a plot straight out of Frankenstein: the engineer builds himself a person… Or something from the conspiracy theories about mass mind control. Whether you have heard of it or not, though, we need to talk about it more and more. Because this is the most dangerous and most effective attack in the digital world. One that targets not computers, networks, servers or programs, but the weakest link in the chain: the human being. “Today cybersecurity breaches happen more and more often through social engineering, a method that uses manipulation and manipulative techniques so that people are deceived and access to sensitive information is gained,” says cybersecurity specialist Plamen Tsvetanov. But what are the most important steps to protect ourselves? What are the biggest risks of underestimating the person on the other side? Why should trust online be a scarce commodity? The subject matters to everyone, even those who don’t realize it…
04Mitnick, the Mythical Hacker
As a boy, Kevin Mitnick was curious, but puzzles and chess left him cold; he preferred a rather different kind of problem… Before he even came of age, he was convicted of hacking, a crime that at the time didn't even exist in the law books. Soon he would become the most wanted hacker, “Public Enemy No. 1” (according to the New York Times) and the FBI's greatest challenge. Only to land in prison again, and to walk out as the savior of companies from online criminals. A life like a movie, you'll say. And films have indeed been made about his life, but… only about part of it. In July 2023, Kevin Mitnick passed away, seemingly having finally found happiness, though he narrowly missed living to see his first child. The man who coined the term “social engineering,” the teacher of today's hackers and of today's cybersecurity specialists alike, lived his life like a movie worth watching from beginning to end. The way he himself would have told it—the most wanted and most talked-about hacker in history…
05Experiment: How Many People Will Click the Dangerous Link?
A very important and revealing experiment. Together with cybersecurity specialists, we send emails to 393 randomly chosen Bulgarian addresses. We simulate a cyberattack to see how many people will fall for it. And the results are astonishing…
0610+4 Things to Keep in Mind When Shopping Online This Christmas
E-commerce offers plenty of convenience, but it also comes with a number of dangers. On the eve of the holidays, I invited Viktor Rachev, a cybersecurity specialist at the specialized company SoCyber, to help us with practical advice on what to watch out for. Read it, think it over, and show it to your family and friends—it could well help you avoid an unpleasant mistake.
07The Boy Who Saved the Internet—and Went to Prison
May 12, 2017, the day that could have put an end to the internet. The computers of Britain's National Health Service begin to collapse one after another. They stop working, and an unambiguous message appears on the screen: “Ooops, your files have been encrypted! Send between $300 and $600 in bitcoin to the following address to unlock the machine…” The WannaCry virus, which entered Bulgarian meme folklore under the absurd translation Искаплаче (Iskaplache, “wants-to-cry”), becomes the most powerful cyberattack in human history. In a single afternoon it causes between $4 billion and $8 billion in damage. What's more, because of how and how fast it spreads, it threatens to infect every device connected to the internet within a day. It is stopped, in a most unexpected way, by a likable curly-haired Briton of Jamaican descent. At just 22, he becomes a celebrity in the cyberworld. Until, a few months later, he ends up in an American prison facing charges that could bring him decades behind bars. The story of Marcus Hutchins is something between The Count of Monte Cristo and Crime and Punishment for the digital age. About the rise and fall of the boy who saved the internet (and thousands of lives) before he came face to face with the mistakes of his past…
08Five Jobs on Their Way Out and Five the Future Is Bringing In
Technology is drastically changing the needs of society, needs that must be met by the daily work of its individuals. Today whole professions vanish and new ones appear faster and more quietly than ever, and although forecasting in so dynamic a field is nearly impossible, we will try to sum things up: which five professions will soon disappear, which five will be most in demand in the near future, and what five professions we can only imagine might one day exist?
09“AI Is No Better a Programmer Than the Ones You Already Have!”
“However we integrate AI, in the end every line of code has to be read by a human.” “It is sheer madness to believe that general AI can be achieved with large language models.” “The world as we knew it is dead, and it isn’t coming back.” Ivan Vankov (Gatakka) can always be counted on for an original, unorthodox, provocative and thought-provoking take on technology, as the lines that follow will show.
10“We Can No Longer Think Only About Endless Growth!”
“Right now we don't have the conditions for AI to develop dramatically,” says Krasimir Kostadinov, chief technology officer of Scalefocus, who argues that the future of IT has aspects even more important than artificial intelligence. After his provocative talk at the 9th DEV.BG All in One conference, we continued the conversation about the Bulgarian dimensions of the IT future. Is it worth entering IT in Bulgaria today, and which qualities matter in the dynamic times we live in?
11Gone in 60 Seconds: The Person and the Profile
How important is your profile on your favorite social network? And what would happen if everything it holds vanished in a second, with no chance of getting it back? Here is an especially important first-person story about how easy it is to lose… yourself online.
12When Musk Puts a Chip in Our Brains…
“It’s very important that artificial intelligence not be ‘other.’ It must be ‘us.’ That’s the only way we survive,” says Elon Musk. To get there, he has launched Neuralink, an ultra-ambitious project whose goal is for us to merge with machines: a tiny chip in the brain that makes us part of the global network. Is this fantasy, or the only chance for the human species to survive?
13Car, Take the Wheel!
Autonomous cars have been a recurring topic for years. We were supposed to be done with driving by now, and that step still seems close… But is it really? Why is this innovation so important and so eagerly awaited? Here is a brief snapshot of the subject and the challenges ahead.
