Cybersecurity expert opens Tulsa Town Hall

Everything, according to cybersecurity expert Theresa Payton, can be hacked.

“Well,” she said, “except for VHS tapes.”

But with the determination of those wishing to inflict financial and psychological harm upon others via the internet, and the ease with which the tools to inflict that damage can be obtained, Payton joked that probably not even such antiquated technology as videocassette tapes are beyond the reach of hackers.

Payton spoke Friday at the Tulsa PAC to open the 2022-2023 season of Tulsa Town Hall, to discuss “Securing the Future: Unmasking Cybercriminals & the Triple Threat Facing Business and You.”

Payton served as chief information officer at the White House during the George W. Bush administration, the first woman to hold the position. She is the founder of Fortalice Solutions, one of the nation’s leading cybersecurity firms.

She also starred in the reality series “Hunted” and is the author of “Manipulated: Inside the Cyberwar to Hijack Elections and Distort the Truth.”

Payton said the No. 1 cybercrime is not identity theft but business email compromise, where criminals often use freely available programs to track the internet activity of a given target, usually the CEO of a major company.

Once the hackers have gathered all the information they can find — including travel itineraries, possible passwords, even recordings of the person’s voice that can be manipulated to create certain phrases — they use it to initiate wire transfers of large sums of money.

And because everything can be hacked, Payton predicts that before 2023 is out, someone will attempt — and maybe succeed — in hacking into some of the low Earth orbit satellites now in operation, from the International Space Station to the commercial objects that provide everything from GPS information to cellular phone service to worldwide online shopping.

Payton outlined other potential…