This article is from WeChat official account:qubit (ID: QbitAI), author: Zhang Shan, the first map from:” Silicon Valley “stills
Friend, have you heard of “Silicon Valley”?
Yes, it is the American comedy that tells the entrepreneurial story of the talented programmers in Silicon Valley, and even Bill Gates himself made a cameo appearance.
For students in computer-related fields, the intensive computer science elements in the play are simply perfect scores. Don’t be too excited.
If you want an aftertaste, or want to see how terrifying the show is, it’s just–
Student Zhang Qingshan, who is studying for a master’s degree in information security at Johns Hopkins University and a fan of “Silicon Valley”, compiled a super-complete collection of information security elements of “Silicon Valley”, which not only summarizes almost all the information in the show Safety elements, and tips on related knowledge are also attached.
Look at the stem + learn professional knowledge, let’s take a look~
Information Security and American Drama Silicon Valley
Season One, Episode Two
1. In Pied Piper(Protagonist startup company in the play) When it was first established, in order to write a business plan and invest in investment, Richard and Jared talked to each team member together and learned about their job functions and personal skills. As the information security architect and system engineer of the team, Gilfoyle introduced his excellent network security skills.
△From 13:15 onwards
△Starting from 13:41
2. Gavin Belson, the boss of Hooli, saw that Richard, a former engineer in his company, invented such a powerful compression algorithm, hoping to seize this business opportunity. Therefore, a team of engineers was called to plan to use reverse engineering to crack Richard’s lossless compression algorithm.
△From 25:53
Tips:
Reverse engineering: Reverse analysis and research on a target product, so as to deduce and derive design elements such as the processing flow, organizational structure, and functional performance specifications of the product to produce similar functions , But not exactly the same product. Reverse engineering originates from hardware analysis in the commercial and military fields. Its main purpose is to derive the design principle of the product directly from the analysis of the finished product when the necessary production information cannot be easily obtained. (from Wikipedia)
Reverse engineering requires engineers to be very familiar with the underlying language and program operation logic in order to reverse-analyze the compiled software, and then reproduce it in a high-level language, which is a difficult area for information security.
The sixth episode of the first season
3. Pied Piper’s team has no members who are familiar with cloud computing. They need a foreign aid, so they plan to ask a young hacker Carver to help them with cloud architecture.
Carver boasted that he had hacked into the Bank of America system. But in fact, Carver used to work at Bank of America, and then he broke the bank’s system, and the bank asked him to shut down, and he said that he had hacked into the system.
However, Richard mistakenly thought that Carver’s skills were superb, so he asked him to help with other tasks and gave him database access. As a result, Carver broke Pied Piper’s system, and Richard did not fix the problem overnight.
△Start from 1:59
△Start from 6:56
The seventh episode of the second season
4. Pied Piper’s algorithm was stolen by Endframe, and now the two companies are competitors. By chance, Gilfoyle got access to Endframe’s system. He hacked into Endframe’s system and obtained their trade secrets.
△Start from 16:53
Tips:
Social engineering refers to the way of making certain actions or revealing some confidential information through legal communication with others.
This is generally considered to be the act of defrauding others to gather information, defraud, and hack into computer systems. In the Anglo-American common law system, this behavior is generally regarded as an infringement of privacy. Historically, social engineering was subordinate to sociology, but its effect on the psychology of others has attracted the attention of computer security experts. (from Wikipedia)
The eighth episode of the second season
5. Because Gilfoyle hacked into Endframe’s system before, obtained their trade secrets. Seth, a security engineer at Endframe, was fired. And because of Richard’s constant death, Seth threatened to hack Pied Piper.
Because Pied Piper will soon receive large amounts of data from the employer’s company via FTP(File Transfer Protocol), Pied Piper’s system will be in Extremely fragile stage. Richard is very worried about this.
△Start from 14:32
Tips:
Since the early FTP protocol did not take adequate security precautions, FTP security is very fragileof.
Season 3, Episode 4
6. Big head also happened to open an entrepreneurial incubator. He took in an entrepreneur who cataloged malware.
△From 15:19 onwards
Tips:
Malware, also known as “rogue software”, generally refers to spread through the network, portable storage devices, etc., deliberately causing privacy or confidential data leakage and system damage to personal computers, servers, smart devices, computer networks, etc , Data loss and other unexpected failures and information security issues, and try to prevent users from removing them in various ways, just like “rogue” software.
The form of malware includes binary executable files, scripts, active content, etc. (from Wikipedia)
The second episode of the fourth season
7. Due to various reasons, Dinesh took over Pied Piper and focused on the chat platform business. However, they did not expect to accidentally collect too many children’s data, which violated the US COPPA law (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act). Rough calculations, they need a total of 21 billion US dollars in compensation.
△From 14:46 onwards
The third episode of the fourth season
8. Dinesh has made a girlfriend Mia, and unexpectedly, Mia and Gilfolye belong to the same hacker community. In the following episodes, it will be introduced many times that Mia is a super hacker and has done many large-scale illegal hacking attacks. She can be said to be the person with the highest level of hacking in the show. Dinesh was therefore very afraid that Mia would retaliate against him after the breakup, and reported Mia many times and kept him in jail.
△From 17:57 onwards
The seventh episode of the fourth season
9. Gilfoyle was very upset with Jin Yang’s newly bought smart refrigerator, so he privately used the computing power of Pied Piper’s server to crack the backdoor password and successfully hacked the smart refrigerator.
△Start from 25:59
Tips:
Software backdoor refers to a hacker method that bypasses software security controls and gains access to programs or systems from relatively secret channels. During software development, setting up a backdoor can facilitate modification and testing of defects in the program. But if the backdoor is known to others, or the backdoor is not removed before the software is released, then it poses a threat to the security of the computer system. (from Wikipedia)
Fourth Season, Episode Nine
10. The Pied Piper team urgently needs users to prove the feasibility of their products. They decided to use the phones of the audience at the Hooli fair to download their apps. They need a way to implant their code. They thought of Dinesh’s girlfriend in prison, and asked her how to use a pineapple router to launch a man-in-the-middle attack.
△Start from 3:53
Tips:
Man-in-the-middle attack in the field of cryptography and computer security means that the attacker establishes an independent connection with both ends of the communication, and exchanges the data they receive, so that both ends of the communication think they are passing a private connection. Talk to the other party directly, but in fact the entire conversation is completely controlled by the attacker.(from Wikipedia)
The wireless pineapple router is the router that allows the user to log in to the attacker, and the attacker’s router logs in to the router that the user originally wanted to log in, thereby using the user’s device.
The third episode of the fifth season
11. Hooli sent business spies to become Pied Piper employees to steal secrets. The spy and Dinesh became roommates and got drunk with Dinesh, and they inquired important information, which is also a type of social engineering.
△Starting from 11:03
12. Gilfoyle wondered why the secrets were leaked. He broke the firewall of the refrigerator company, checked the logs, and found that their products had been monitoring users. Although this was not the reason for the disclosure of secrets, they also threatened the other party with this discovery, so that they were not subject to legal punishment.
△From 23:10
The seventh episode of the fifth season
13. Gilfoyle advocated the release of cryptocurrency and also made a slide show for Richard. Finally, Pied Piper also chose ICO(initial token issuance).
△Starting from 8:31
Tips:
Encryption currency is a transaction medium that uses cryptography principles to ensure transaction security and control the creation of transaction units.
Like the usual paper currency that requires anti-counterfeiting design, the anti-counterfeiting of cryptocurrency is a new type of certificate that uses digital currency and virtual currency to use cryptography and digital hashing and is bound to a smart contract.
Bitcoin became the first decentralized cryptocurrency in 2009. After that, the term cryptocurrency often refers to this type of design.
Initial token issuance, also known as ICO and blockchain crowdfunding, is to use blockchain to combine usage rights and cryptocurrency to develop, maintain, and exchange related products or services Way of financing the project.
The eighth episode of the fifth season
14. A competitor company launched a 51% attack on Pied Piper’s decentralized network.
△Start from 10:20
Tips:
Decentralized networks can prevent any centralized individuals from unscrupulously controlling the network for their own purposes. However, when a single unit or organization can control most of the resources, that is, more than 51%, they can monopolize the network.
Season 6, Episode 6
15. Pied Piper has a network problem, and the team suspects an attack by a competitor. They asked Jin Yang whether there was a backdoor in the competitor’s software, and wanted to log in to the competitor’s system and shut down their system.
16. After logging into the backdoor, they accidentally discovered that the software of competitor YaoNet has a honeypot system.
△From 20:57
Tips:
Honeypot technology is essentially a technology to deceive the attacker. By arranging some hosts, network services or information as bait, the attacker can be induced to attack them.In this way, the attack behavior can be captured and analyzed, the tools and methods used by the attacker can be understood, the intention and motivation of the attack can be inferred, so that the defender can clearly understand the security threats they face, and enhance the actual situation through technology and management methods. The security protection capability of the system. (from Baidu Encyclopedia)
The seventh episode of the sixth season
17. The Pied Piper team introduced artificial intelligence to optimize their network, but unexpectedly, their program could bypass encryption and tamper with the information Richard sent.
This means that if users use the programs they publish, people will not have online privacy, and all kinds of confidential data will be leaked, which makes them very uneasy.
In order not to cause serious social chaos or even the end of the world, they need to consider shutting down their network system.
△From 11:57 onwards
18. In order to prove the harmfulness of their program, Gilfoyle let their program crack Dinesh’s Tesla password, even though Tesla used the most secure encryption method at the time.
△start from 19:04
19. After the failure of Pied Piper, Gilfoyle and Dinesh created the largest cybersecurity company in the Bay Area.
△From 39:44
20. After Pied Piper failed, Monica seemed to go to work in NSA. NSA is the National Security Agency of the United States. It is the intelligence agency of the United States government agency. It is responsible for collecting and analyzing foreign and domestic communications. It belongs to the US Department of Defense, so Monica cannot disclose her work unit. But from her habit of smoking when she is nervous, the reporter guessed that she was probably right to work in the NSA.
△From 40:27
This article is from WeChat official account:Qubit (ID: QbitAI), author : Zhang Qingshan, from Dalian, Liaoning, graduated from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications with a bachelor’s degree, and is currently studying for a master’s degree in information security at Johns Hopkins University,personal website.