On Tuesday, September 27, the Strauss Center hosted professional hacker Tinker, Red Team program architect and an expert in information security, as part of our Tales from the Cybersecurity Front speaker series, to tackle concepts of security, exploitation, and vulnerabilities. Tinker argued that while the concept of exploitation vs. vulnerability encourages us to think in terms of lost money, the realities of information security are much more personal. He demonstrated a scenario in which he was able to bypass two security cameras at a children’s hospital. When this gap in security was presented to the hospital, they were skeptical about the impact, as the two cameras were in public, non-secure areas.

Tinker then went on to show us how successful hacking of one part of a system can grant access to the entire system, which proved the impact was significantly greater than originally expected. This demonstrates ours (and companies) fundamental misunderstanding of the strength of online security and its immunity (or lack thereof) against hackers. With sensitive information, hackers have the advantage, as their only job is to bypass a potentially hackable system. Thus, it is in the sensitive information owner’s best interest to seriously consider the tangible impact on the lives of others in the event of a security breach, in addition to fortifying their security to prevent such an occurrence. Wendy Nather, Senior Cybersecurity Fellow with the Strauss Center, moderated.

Biography

Tinker Secor is a Red Team program architect covering both Information Technology and Operational Technology environments. Tinker has has built up, managed, trained, and conducted operations within red teams and penetration testing engagements in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Prior to this, Tinker served in the SOC trenches as an intrusion detection analyst. Prior to that, he served in the United States Marine Corps. 

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