Hacker Valley Red Episode 4 - Alissa Knight

October 6, 2020 Hacker Valley Studio

00:00:00

Show Notes

On this episode of Hacker Valley Studio, hosts Ron and Chris speak with Alissa Knight, author of the book Hacking Connected Cars and self described “recovering hacker.” Their conversation covers content creation, API’s and hacking cars.

 

Alissa grew up in Seattle, Washington where there was a big art scene. She began building her own computers and running her own boards at an early age. She says a lot of people don’t know that she started out in the BBS scene back in the 90’s. At seventeen she hacked into a government network and was arrested. Eventually, the charges were dropped on a technicality and she went on to work for the US Intelligence Community in cyber warfare.

 

Alissa’s first start-up was a web design company where she ran a Lennox webserver around the time the teardrop attack in Lennox servers. The people she rented office space from were teardropping her web hosting server. She picked up a book on cyber security, and got introduced into the world of cyber security through necessity. She had a passion for finding vulnerabilities, and understanding things that were difficult to understand, which is what brought her to embedded systems. The rest she says is history.

 

As the episode ends, Alissa talks about her YouTube Channel, KnighTV. She says she’s always been an artist, and always wanted to do things at 200%. Her following is relatively new, at the beginning of 2019 she only had 4 followers on Twitter and now she’s passed the threshold to be part of the YouTube Partner Program. She wanted a cinematic experience for the viewer to stand out and not be just another video for the viewer. For anyone interested in getting started in being a breaker, she’s posted a couple videos on the topic, and explains there are many resources at their disposal. She says this line of work takes grit, and in her opinion a passion for reading.

 

2:08 - The episode and guest are introduced.

3:19 - Alissa gives an overview of her background.

6:29 - How Alissa’s career began.

10:16 - Do you have to program to hack?

14:26 - What led Alissa to hacking cars?

24:55 - Alissa explains what people get wrong about the red team.

29:25 - Alissa answers the question, “is there an unhackable device?”

36:54 - How KnightTV came into being.

41:08 - Alissa gives her advice on where to start getting into cyber security

 

Links:

Learn more about Hacker Valley Studio

Support Hacker Valley Studio on Patreon

Follow Hacker Valley Studio on Twitter

Follow Ronald Eddings on Twitter

Follow Chris Cochran on Twitter

Follow Alissa Knight on Twitter

Subscribe to Alissa’s YouTube Channel

Learn more about the season sponsor, RiskIQ

Recent Episodes

December 5, 2023

Ransomware: How to Use AI to Create

a Readiness Kit with Scott Suthe...

The adversary is using Artificial Intelligence. Why aren’t you? In this episode, Host Chris Cochran talks with Scott Sutherland, VP of Research at NetSPI, about everyone’s favorite hot topics; ransomware and AI...

November 28, 2023

Cover Your SaaS: Navigating OAuth

and SaaS Security Challenges

SaaS misconfigurations may be responsible for up to 63% of security incidents. Do your SaaS applications have risky OAuth grants and misconfigurations? Let’s not find out. We will unravel the complexities of OA...

November 21, 2023

Standing Out On LinkedIn as a

Cybersecurity Professional with ...

In this episode, host Ron Eddings speaks with Chris Hughes, President at Aquia, Cyber Innovation Fellow at CISA, and cybersecurity legend. Special guest, Chris Hughes, was initially inspired to build a personal...

November 7, 2023

Adversarial AI: Navigating the

Cybersecurity Landscape

In this episode, host Ron Eddings is joined by Sr. Director of Red Team Operations at Coalfire, Pete Deros, to discuss the hottest topic around; adversarial AI. Ron and Pete discuss how AI is used and how the a...

October 31, 2023

Protecting What You Can’t See with

HD Moore

In this episode, host Ron Eddings is joined by Metasploit creator, co-founder and CEO of runZero, HD Moore. HD changed the world with Metasploit and he’s doing it again with runZero. Attack Surface Management c...

October 24, 2023

Penetration Testing, Public

Speaking, and Content Creation w...

In this episode, Ron Eddings is joined by Penetration Tester, Instructor, International Speaker, Best Selling Author, and Podcast Host, Phillip Wylie. Phillip shares how pen testing and the need to educate peop...

October 17, 2023

Ruse and Deception: From Hollywood

to Corporate Espionage with Robe...

In this episode, Host Ron Eddings interviews Robert Kerbeck, author of Ruse: Lying the American Dream from Hollywood to Wall Street. Robert shares how his professional acting skills helped his career in corpora...

October 10, 2023

Hacker Culture and ADHD with Kim

Crawley

In this episode, host Ron Eddings is joined by cybersecurity researcher and writer, Kim Crawley, to deep dive into one of her greatest passions; computing! From its origins to its newest capabilities in quantum...

October 3, 2023

Starting at the Endpoint with Danny

Jenkins

In this episode, host Ron Eddings is joined by Co-Founder and CEO of ThreatLocker, Danny Jenkins, to talk about his "Hero’s Journey" from IT to launching ThreatLocker. From spam emails, bots, and ransomware to ...

September 26, 2023

Having Resilience In Your Cyber

Career with Erika Eakins

In this episode, host Chris is joined by Erika Eakins — a cybersecurity sales ninja, podcaster, and co-founder at Teach Kids Tech. Erika opens up about her challenges entering tech and cybersecurity as a woman ...

WORK WITH US

PODCASTS + SPEAKING + EVENTS

Are you the best kept secret in cybersecurity? Let's change that by partnering together for podcast ads, social campaigns, and your next event or keynote. Send us your details to get started.