7 HN users recommended this talk6 months2016–2025score 6
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN repeatedly recommends it whenever fake deaths, identity verification or records fraud come up, praising how easy the attack seemed.
A DEF CON 23 talk showing how weak controls in electronic death registration systems let someone virtually kill a person and obtain a real death certificate, with consequences for their identity and life.
“Really eye opening, and potentially devastating if it's done to you.” (HN, 2016)
Reminds me of a DefCon speaker that talked about exploiting a bunch of websites to order death and birth certificates. Really eye opening, and potentially devastating if it's done to you. Edit: [this video]
DEF CON talk on exploiting sites to get death and birth certificates
The speaker's previous presentation at a different year of the same conference, about using online records to fabricate your own death or the birth of a made-up baby, is also worth watching: [this video] .
Talk on using online records to fabricate a death or a fake baby
It's not only Facebook who have this process unsufficiently secured. The process for administering real death is also not really tamperproof. There is a hilarious defcon presentation on virtually killing someone and getting a real death certificate: [this video] Improperly reporting someone dead, or misrepresenting someone's will is something "you don't do" so the system is designed to minimize friction/pain.
Funny talk on virtually killing someone and getting a real death certificate
Most jurisdictions (US and otherwise) have moved to Electronic Death Registration Systems. There was a fun Defcon talk about "killing" people with them a few years ago - [this video]
Fun talk about abusing electronic death registration systems
An alarming amount of societal functionality depends on what effectively amounts to the honor system. This is especially true when it comes to any sort of gatekept specialty profession, like coroners for example. There was a great talk at DefCon about faking death: [this video]
Great talk on faking death through honor-system processes
On the subject of people being declared dead, there's a good defcon talk about abusing how easy it is to declare someone dead. "Chris Rock - I Will Kill You" [this video]
Good talk on abusing how easy it is to declare someone dead
> The United States. I assure you that even though other countries have credit reporting, they do not use SSNs. They use ID cards with at least some features to make forging said ID cards more difficult, unlike the US SSN which is pretty much just a number on a piece of paper. This is mainly an issue of authentification and as long as your credentials remain crappy/easy to guess/easy to forge (like the US SSN system), that long it will stay easy to game the system. Imho this def con talk about birthing and killing virtual babies might also be quite relevant to the issue, tho it's not entirely focused on the US: [this video]
Relevant DEF CON talk about birthing and killing virtual babies
This reminds me of a Defcon talk.[0] In Australia before a certain date the states/feds didn't keep a record of your face if you got a licence/proof of age card. If you find yourself in this position all that is required is non photo id and a statutory declaration signed by friend to authenticate your identity. [0] [this video]
DEF CON talk relevant to weak identity verification
Yeah, and Facebook is the least of your concerns. Defcon talk about the security of death certificates, and what happens to your life if you are targeted by this attack. [this video]
Talk on death certificate security and attack consequences
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
10 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.
Citations, criticism and jokes
Read more