Melanie Gonzalez
Melanie Gonzalez is a journalist turned ethical hacker, who has covered reproductive justice in Latin America and the United States. Melanie became interested in cybersecurity after producing a story on violence against journalists and taking a digital security for journalists training. In the past three years, she's taken a deep dive into black hat Python scripts, secure coding vulnerabilities, OSINT, digital forensics and improving her CTF personal record. This past year, Melanie began volunteering as a digital security trainer for journalists and human rights activists. In her spare time, Melanie enjoys horror and needlework.
Session
From activists organizing and standing up to authoritarian governments, to people trying to safely access healthcare information, everyone has something to protect. As technology gets more advanced, so do the powerful who wish to steal data belonging to those with fewer resources, making it seem impossible to protect our communities against these threats. However, the cybersecurity community has the knowledge to empower the most vulnerable among us.
This talk will cover threats and tactics used against marginalized communities, and show how digital security and privacy is an ongoing practice in harm reduction. We will walk through threat modeling and how threat models are different for different identities. We will also use storytelling frameworks to explain privacy and security concepts to a non-technical audience.