FinTech Magazine December 2019 | Page 35

“ Are you guys all sitting down ? I don ’ t think any of you are doing anything correctly ”

Alissa Knight , Cybersecurity influencer , hacker , industry analyst , author of the applications of mobile apps too . If you ’ re not doing it , do it .”
It ’ s clear from watching Knight over the course of Money20 / 20 that she has little time for rest . Indeed , hot on the heels of breaking into some of the world ’ s largest financial apps , she ’ s in the midst of developing what she called “ the sexiest thing anyone would hear about all show ”. In essence , this is a large , fake bank – sexy , if you ’ re that way inclined . Knight is . “ It ’ s based off the idea of Sun Tzu ’ s Art of War : if you ’ re going to defeat your enemy , you need to understand your enemy . So , we ’ ve created a fake bank complete with internet-facing APIs , and even a fake website ; we want them to be hacked . It ’ s all about understanding and monitoring how our adversar ies are breaching APIs so we can study their tactics , techniques and procedures .”
Knight calls the project , for which she has already gained multiple sponsors , ‘ adversarial analysis ’. As part of it , she explained , the data has been weaponised : once breached , the code grabs the hacker ’ s system info , the IP location and other data .
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