This article was first published in the January 2016 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
In an age when hackers trade techniques on the dark web and sell them to intelligence agencies, Samy Kamkar takes a more entertaining approach: YouTube.
A display of the 30-year-old's digital mischief, the video series Applied Hacking teaches some 50,000 subscribers flashy hacks, and no household item is immune. He has tweaked a kids' toy to open garage doors, 3D-printed a lock-cracking robot, devised a fake charger that can sniff keystrokes in wireless keyboards, and even hijacked cars' smartphone apps to remotely unlock and start the vehicles. "I just assume everything is vulnerable," he says. "It's a pretty safe bet."
Kamkar gained notoriety in 2005 as the creator of the Samy worm, viral code that added unwitting MySpace users to his friends list and displayed the text "Samy is my hero" on their profiles. It worked too well, ripping through the site and bringing Kamkar a million new friends in 24 hours, along with a visit from very unfriendly Secret Service agents. He pleaded guilty to computer tampering and was banned from using computers for three years.
After that ordeal, Kamkar approaches his research with strict transparency. He says he alerts firms to vulnerabilities in their products but doesn't profit from his hacks and won't accept security consulting work, to avoid conflicts of interest. "I want to do what I think is right," he says. "That's hard when someone's paying you."
Instead, he takes his reward from his modest fame -- close to three million YouTube views so far -- and the thrill of solving the hidden puzzles he finds in everything he touches.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
