The Passwords Are the Problem with Thierry Gagnon and Philippe Desmarais
Release Date: 10/18/2023
Scam Compounds
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When most people think about online scams, they picture criminals sitting behind a screen and stealing from victims around the world. But in Southeast Asia, many of the people sending those messages are victims too. Some were promised legitimate jobs, flown across borders, trapped inside guarded compounds, and forced to scam others while trying to survive. In this episode, I talk with Ivan Franceschini, a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the Center for Contemporary Chinese Studies Asia Institute. After years of studying labor rights, civil society, and Chinese investment in Cambodia,...
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Sports Betting
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Sports betting is everywhere now. It is in the commercials, on the apps, wrapped into game broadcasts, and sold as a fun way to make sports more exciting. But behind the easy sign-ups and “risk-free” offers is an industry built on odds most people do not fully understand, fine print that can cost real money, and a business model that depends on customers losing. In this episode, I talk with Danny Funt, an investigative reporter and the author of Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling. His reporting on sports betting, politics, news, and sports media has appeared...
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Google Maps Scams
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Most people are not thinking clearly when they need a locksmith or a plumber. They are locked out, water is leaking, something broke, and they just want somebody nearby who can fix it. So they open Google, tap one of the first businesses that comes up, and assume the listing is real. Unfortunately, that is exactly the kind of situation scammers count on. In this episode, Mike Blumenthal, co-founder and analyst at Near Media, talks about fake local business listings and the ways bad actors have learned to game Google Maps. Mike has been following this problem for years, going back to the...
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Job Recruiter Scams
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Job hunting is hard enough without having to stop and ask whether the recruiter in your inbox is even real. My guest today, Jay Jones, ran into that problem firsthand after being laid off in December 2023. With his daughter due to be born just weeks later, Jay began receiving messages from recruiters that looked promising at first, but quickly turned out to be fake. Jay, also known as The Profiler, decided not to ignore what was happening. He started investigating the patterns behind these scams and has since identified and helped remove thousands of fake profiles, fraudulent companies, and...
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Bail Bonds Scams
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Getting a call that someone you love has been arrested is scary enough. Getting that call from someone who sounds official, knows just enough to seem credible, and says you have to send money right away is exactly the kind of moment scammers are counting on. Julie Henderson is the president of the North Carolina Bail Agents Association and has spent 24 years working in the bail bond industry. She started in the field almost by accident after applying for what she thought was a legislative assistant job, and she has stayed because she cares about helping people get through one of the most...
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Confessions of a Fraudster
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Technology keeps changing, but many of the most effective scams still come down to something very human: trust. My guest today is Tony Sales, co-founder of We Fight Fincrime and Underworld TV. Tony has a perspective most people in fraud prevention will never have. Earlier in his life, he was involved in organized financial crime and was once described in the UK press as Britain’s greatest fraudster. After years in that world, and after serving time in prison, Tony made the decision to use what he knew to help stop the very crimes he had once been part of. Today, Tony works with...
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Personal Safety
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Scams and safety threats don’t always announce themselves. Sometimes they start quietly, with a moment of distraction, a strange feeling you ignore, or a situation that shifts just enough to test whether you’re paying attention. My guest today is S. Gale Bleth, a personal safety educator, certified RAD self-defense instructor, speaker, and author of Aware: A Personal Safety Playbook for Leaving the Nest. Gale brings a deep background in crime prevention and safety education, including 16 years at Cal State East Bay and 16 years as a crime prevention specialist with the Hayward Police...
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Data For Sale
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Everyday conveniences ask for tiny pieces of information all the time like a phone number at checkout, a zip code at the register, an email address for a receipt, or a loyalty account for a small discount. At the moment, it can feel harmless. But those small details can add up quickly, creating a personal profile that businesses, data brokers, scammers, and even people with bad intentions can use in ways most of us never agreed to or fully understood. My guest today is Ron Zayas, CEO of Ironwall by Incogni. Ron is an online privacy expert, speaker, and author who has helped the judiciary, law...
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Exploiting Psychology
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Scams are often explained as a failure of judgment, but the truth is far more human. People are not fooled because they are foolish. They are manipulated at the exact moment emotion overrides logic, whether that emotion is fear, loneliness, hope, urgency, financial stress, or the desire to believe something better is finally possible. My guest today is Dr. John Demartini, one of the world’s leading authorities on human behavior, perception, resilience, and personal development. For more than five decades, he has researched, written, and taught in the fields of human awareness and potential....
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Investment Traps
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Investment losses can be confusing because they do not always tell the whole story. Sometimes money is lost because the market has changed. Other times, an investor was sold something they did not understand, pushed into a product that was never appropriate, or denied the information they needed to make a real decision. Courtney Werning has built her career in that space, helping investors sort through what happened and whether someone can be held responsible. Courtney is a named partner at Meyer, Wilson, and Werning, a national investor protection firm that has recovered more than $350...
info_outlineWith the use of passwords, we’re hoping to ensure privacy and security, but sometimes it is at the expense of convenience. As technology changes and biometric databases become more utilized, we need to remember that they may also be hacked.
Today’s guests are Philippe Desmarais and Thierry Gagnon. Philippe is a tech entrepreneur who co-founded Kelvin Zero and currently serves as its CEO, overseeing the company’s strategic direction. He is also a member of the Next Generation Advisory Council at Rockefeller Capital Management. Before creating Kelvin Zero, Philippe played a significant role in various start-ups, focusing on data analytics for political campaigns, remote hardware device management, and cybersecurity.
Thierry Gagnon is co-founder and Chief Technology at Kelvin Zero. He is an expert in software development, malware analysis, cryptography, and reverse engineering. He has been actively involved in the cybersecurity community, participating in renowned competitions and projects such as Malware Information Sharing Platform.
Show Notes:
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[1:18] - Philippe and Thierry share their backgrounds and their roles in the company they co-founded together, Kelvin Zero.
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[2:34] - Thierry’s expertise is in cybersecurity but Philippe’s interest was more in crime. They combined their strengths and passions to create Kelvin Zero.
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[6:18] - Passwords have been around for millennia.
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[7:24] - We often confuse being smarter with being faster.
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[9:45] - Passwords are not often attached to an individual. We have so many passwords and can’t actually know them all.
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[11:53] - We can compromise passwords at scale.
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[13:20] - The attackers only need to be right once. The defenders need to be right 100% of the time. How can we flip this?
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[15:47] - The average person is tasked with trying to keep up with cybersecurity and, in most cases, they are not qualified to do this.
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[17:11] - What does it look like to take a password-less approach?
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[19:20] - If cybersecurity is done successfully, the opportunities are massive. But regulation holds us back.
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[21:51] - Once a tech company can serve protection, then companies can focus on their services and products.
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[24:46] - There are differences between the physical world and the logical world.
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[28:41] - How do you convince people to share medical data for research when there are constant breaches?
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[31:33] - Is privacy the same as anonymity?
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[33:52] - Technology should be able to do what we want it to do, but that’s not the case.
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[36:36] - In a password-less environment, how can we validate a user?
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[39:40] - Thierry believes we should get away from the server authenticating because then it is the responsibility of the organization.
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[43:18] - Sci-fi movies sound far-fetched, but a lot of them predict technology.
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[46:35] - Thierry and Philippe share their thoughts on what we should be putting our focus on now.
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[49:40] - Stay away from single-factor authorization.
Thanks for joining us on Easy Prey. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and leave a nice review.