Samy Kamkar

Who is Samy Kamkar?

Samy Kamkar is a privacy and security researcher, computer hacker, whistleblower and entrepreneur. At the age of 17, he co-founded Fonality, a unified communications company, which raised over $24 million in private funding. He is possibly best known for creating SkyJack, a custom drone which hacks into any nearby Parrot drones allowing them to be controlled by the SkyJack operator. He's also known for creating the Evercookie, which appeared in a top-secret NSA document revealed by Edward Snowden, and the front page of the New York Times, and the MySpace worm Samy, over which he was subsequently raided by the United States Secret Service under the Patriot Act for creating and releasing. He is also known for his work with The Wall Street Journal and his discovery of the illicit mobile phone tracking where the Apple iPhone, Google Android and Microsoft Windows Phone mobile devices transmit GPS and Wi-Fi information to their parent companies. His mobile research led to a series of class-action lawsuits against the companies and a privacy hearing on Capitol Hill.