Cybersecurity speaker Samy Kamkar is a famous computer hacker, privacy and security researcher, and entrepreneur. At the young age of 16, he founded a unified communications company called Fonality Inc. The company focuses on Voice over IP software development, evolutionary and genetic algorithmic software development, reverse engineering, automated security and vulnerability research in network security, and network gaming.

Fonality raised over $46 million via private funding. However, Samy became really popular when he unleashed the Samy worm on MySpace in 2005. This worm caused MySpace servers to choke and it also exposed their vulnerability. Samy had to go through three years of probation. He had to complete 90 days of community service, as well as giving compensation to MySpace. During this time, he had the right to use the internet and a computer for work purposes only.

Nowadays, speaker Samy Kamkar helps businesses discover their own systems’ vulnerabilities.

Samy is also the creator of SkyJack, which is a custom drone capable of hacking into nearby Parrot drones. This practice allows SkyJack to take control of the Parrot drones. Samy made SkyJack’s specifications available online the day before Amazon.com unveiled Amazon Prime Air, a hypothetical future delivery service utilizing drones.

Samy Kamkar is also the founder of Evercookie, which exposed NSA’s systems vulnerabilities. He is one of the main individuals who revealed the practice of unlawful mobile tracking done by iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone devices. Through the use of these devices, Wi-Fi and GPS information was transferred to their parent corporations. Lawsuits were filed against said corporations, along with a privacy hearing on Capitol Hill.

Samy Kamkar released PoisonTap in 2016. Samy’s invention allows the hijacking of secured and encrypted computers through a USB ethernet device. The security status of the website is irrelevant since PoisonTap compels backdoored devices to send a request using the cookies stored on the user’s hard drive with unprotected websites, allowing the attacker to mimic the identity of a local user.