Keren Elazari reframes attackers as the engine that hardens our digital world. She opens with a real incident at Starbucks Argentina, where a 10-second Wi-Fi delay quietly ran Coinhive JavaScript to mine Monero on visitors’ laptops. The point is not the code but the business model thinking adversaries apply, which organizations must anticipate.

She traces her path from curious teen hacker to researcher, then surveys today’s attack surface: an exploding universe of connected devices that can be hijacked for DDoS and abuse of core protocols. Mirai exemplifies how default credentials and weak IoT baselines can fuel global disruption. Even “benign” smart tech becomes an exfiltration route, as with a casino’s internet-connected aquarium sensors that attackers used as a data tunnel. She flags Shodan as a mirror for defenders to see their own exposed assets.

Shifting to criminal monetization, she explains ransomware’s enterprise-grade playbook, from hospital extortion to the WannaCry wave and the NHS impact. Attributing campaigns is murky. EternalBlue’s leak and Shadow Brokers show how nation-grade exploits blend into criminal kits. NotPetya illustrates collateral damage when a compromised software update in Ukraine became a wiper that halted operations far beyond the initial target, underscoring supply-chain risk and business continuity stakes.

Elazari argues that obsession with “who did it” distracts from readiness. The better questions: when it will hit your ecosystem, how you will detect it, and how you will respond. She outlines practical moves: share incident intelligence, invest in digital forensics and incident response, and build everyday security decisions into culture. Most crucially, collaborate with friendly hackers through red teaming and bug bounties. Tesla’s public challenges and the U.S. “Hack the Pentagon” program demonstrate the speed and value of open engagement. Looking ahead, automation and ML will shape both attack and defense, evidenced by DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge bots. Her call to action: embrace hacker collaboration and AI-enabled defense to evolve faster than adversaries.

This short reel frames the tension between fear of hackers and the value of their choices on society. Keren notes more than 14 years in cybersecurity across Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and security vendors. She argues that we actually need hackers because they can act like an immune system for the Information Age, forcing companies to fix products and exposing systemic weaknesses.

The clip highlights cyber as a frontier for conflict where small amounts of code can disrupt physical infrastructure at a distance, reshaping world affairs. Keren urges that cybersecurity is too important to leave only to governments or the military; it requires community, curiosity, and ongoing practice. Security is presented as a journey powered by geeks discovering a superpower. The close challenges viewers not to fight all hackers blindly, but to channel that energy toward defense and to prepare now for a future that has already arrived.

Filmed at Les Assises in Monaco, this 2017 interview highlights the rapid rise in cyberattacks and why ransomware became a global epidemic. Keren Elazari attributes the spike to two drivers: criminals discovering reliable revenue streams in ransomware, and governments engaging in covert cyber warfare that spills into public view. She references attacks on Equifax, Deloitte, and the NHS to show the wide-ranging impact.

Discussing WannaCry and NotPetya, she suggests ransomware waves may serve as smokescreens for deeper campaigns, while also influencing Bitcoin’s rising value. Cyberattacks, she explains, can be both a revenue model and a geopolitical tool.

Elazari advocates that cybersecurity cannot be left to politicians and generals alone. Individuals and organizations must practice “cyber hygiene,” share intelligence, and engage with friendly hackers. She stresses that bug bounty programs from companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, as well as Hack the Pentagon, demonstrate how collaborative security works in practice.

Her conclusion is that bug bounties disrupt underground markets by offering hackers legitimate ways to profit from their skills. Instead of selling zero-days on the dark web, hackers can earn substantial rewards—sometimes $30,000–$50,000 per vulnerability—while making global systems safer.