Charlie Miller, often called “one of the most technically proficient hackers on Earth,” will be the keynote speaker for Illinois State University’s Science and Technology Week, April 11-15. Science and Technology Week events are sponsored by the College of Applied Science and Technology (CAST).
Events during the week will include a professional development dinner for students, a 5K run, a round-table on women in leadership, the induction of new members into the CAST Academy of Achievement, and a presentation on the intersection of motor control and cognitive psychology.
Complete event and registration information is available online.
Charlie Miller will address cybersecurity issues in his presentation “If You Make It, We Can Break It!” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 12, in the Prairie Room of the Bone Student Center. The event, which is part of the President’s Speaker Series at Illinois State University, is sponsored by the College of Applied Science and Technology, the Harold K. Sage Fund, and the Illinois State University Foundation.
After receiving his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Notre Dame, Miller was a computer hacker for the National Security Agency for five years. Since that time he has been a consultant and worked for the Twitter information security team. He has won the “Super Bowl” of computer hacking—the annual Pwn2Own competition—four times.
Miller has found countless vulnerabilities in a number of Apple products including their laptops and phones. Perhaps the most notorious of these issues was the ability to remotely compromise an iPhone by merely sending it a malicious text message. He also has the privilege of having been the first to remotely exploit the iPhone when it was released as well as the first Android phone when it was released (on the day it came out). After that, he began focusing on embedded security and has done research in the fields of laptop battery security as well as near field communications (NFC) of cellular phones.
