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DEF CON 23 - Chris Rock - I Will Kill You

DEFCONConference · talk · Watch on YouTube

Security & hackingPrivacy, surveillance & cybercrime

What it is

A DEF CON 23 talk showing how weak controls in electronic death registration systems let someone virtually kill a person and obtain a real death certificate, with consequences for their identity and life.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN repeatedly recommends it whenever fake deaths, identity verification or records fraud come up, praising how easy the attack seemed.

  • 7 people recommended it
  • 6 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2016, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “Really eye opening, and potentially devastating if it's done to you.”

    DEF CON talk on exploiting sites to get death and birth certificates

    jastanton, 2016-09 · Recommendation · in “Faking your death”

  2. “is also worth watching”

    Talk on using online records to fabricate a death or a fake baby

    griffinmahon, 2016-09 · Recommendation · in “How to Overthrow a Government [video]”

  3. “There is a hilarious defcon presentation on virtually killing someone and getting a real death certificate”

    Funny talk on virtually killing someone and getting a real death certificate

    Maarten88, 2018-06 · Recommendation · in “Facebook ordered to explain deleted profile”

  4. “There was a fun Defcon talk about "killing" people with them a few years ago”

    Fun talk about abusing electronic death registration systems

    molesy, 2019-02 · Recommendation · in “$190M missing after crypto exchange Quadriga CEO dies”

  5. “There was a great talk at DefCon about faking death”

    Great talk on faking death through honor-system processes

    chatmasta, 2019-11 · Recommendation · in “It's Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name”

  6. “there's a good defcon talk about abusing how easy it is to declare someone dead”

    Good talk on abusing how easy it is to declare someone dead

    TheDong, 2020-11 · Recommendation · in “What to do if the bank says you're dead”

  7. “it's still so unbelievable how easy it was for the speaker to "kill" people”

    Old but unbelievable demo of how easily the speaker could kill people on paper

    unforgivenpasta, 2023-12 · Recommendation · in “Verizon fell for fake "search warrant," gave victim's phone data to stalker”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: identity theft, def con, social engineering, records security, fraud

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