ICS0018 CotW seminars

The idea

The Crook of the Week seminars are meant for student presentations/talks about famous social engineers of the past. Each seminar will host three 20-minute presentations by different students, plus discussion. The main points of the presentation are

• to introduce the person (biography)
• to explain the motivation behind his/her actions
• to study the modus operandi (ways) of social engineering by this person
• to outline the main human weaknesses the person exploited (cognitive biases, automatic thinking etc)
• to summarize the main lesson the person teaches us

A successful presentation will result in passing the course if the attendance criteria (5 out of 8 lectures and seminars) is met. To register a presentation, please send an e-mail to Kaido, stating the chosen time and person to cover. There are only 12 presentations in total - first come, first served! Others would have to resort to other tasks to pass the course!

The Crooks

• Carlo Ponzi
• Victor Lustig
• Frank Abagnale Jr
• Mark Abene (Phiber Optik)
• Kevin Mitnick
• Susan Headley (Suzy Thunder)
• Kevin Poulsen (Dark Dante)
• Bernie Madoff
• Elizabeth Holmes
• Sam Bankman-Fried
• Mythical and literary characters: Jacob, Odysseus, Iago, Grima Wormtongue...
• BYOC (Bring Your Own Crook): introduce a well-known crook from your home country (as we are a very international bunch)!

The Seminars

The CotW seminars will have the following schedule:

• Thursday, Feb 29 @ noon:
  1. Mario Reinu - Sam Bankman-Fried ✅
  2. Olesia Chevyliuk - Carlo Ponzi ✅
  3. Andrei Rõmar - Sergei Mavrodi ✅
• Thursday, March 7 @ noon:
  1. Louis Alvin - Victor Lustig
  2. Deniz Keskin - Mehmet Aydin
  3. Maksim Gorozhanko - Kevin Mitnick
• Thursday, March 14 @ noon:
  1. Michelle Watford - Elizabeth Holmes
  2. Radu Strelciuc - Bernie Madoff
  3. Dariia Shvabii - Susan Headley
• Thursday, March 21 @ noon:
  1. Marek Kopania - Kevin Poulsen
  2. Vira Lavrova - Yemelyan Pugachev
  3. Arina Rõbakova - Anna Delvey

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