We hope you’re surviving the July heat! Whether you’ve been spending your summer flipping hotdogs on the grill or flipping bits in the terminal, we’ve got the perfect excuse for you to escape the humidity and step into some glorious air conditioning.

We are keeping the summer sizzle going this month with an incredible speaker and a topic focused on taking back your privacy and liberating your own hardware.

The Details

• Speaker: Mark Carman
• Topic: Removing Alexa: Hacking Amazon Echo devices for Local Voice Control
• Date: Thursday, July 9th
• Time: 6:00 PM
• Location: Virginia Western Community College, Business/Science Building, Room M302 (see details below)
• The Perks: We are providing pizza! 🍕

About the Talk

Amazon makes some really good smart devices, but they come with the privacy issue of handing all of your personal information and more directly to a mega corporation. Instead of succumbing to the corporate surveillance state, lets take ownership of our hardware and keep our data to ourselves.

Mark will show which Amazon Echo devices are hackable, how the hack works, perform a live hack to show how easy it is, and turn echo devices into a fully locally controlled voice assistant that can control your home without an internet connection!

Whether you are a privacy advocate, an IoT hobbyist, or just want to watch some great live hacking, this is a demonstration you won’t want to miss.

Where

We will be meeting at Virginia Western Community College in the Hall Family Business/Science Building. Take the stairs to the left and go to the third floor and go to the CyberSecurity lab in room M302.

Mark your calendars, bring a friend, and we look forward to seeing you all back at Virginia Western on July 9th!