Tosh Show My Cybersecurity Expert - Alex Stamos
Sep 16, 2025
Alex Stamos, former Chief Security Officer at Yahoo and Facebook, and now a professor at Stanford, joins the conversation to tackle pressing cybersecurity concerns. He discusses how hacking motivations vary worldwide and reflects on the 2016 election's social media impacts. Stamos provides valuable advice for parents on keeping kids safe online while navigating technology. The chat also touches on AI's role in relationships and the changing landscape of cybersecurity, all wrapped in entertaining anecdotes and humor.
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From Game Piracy To Professional Risk
- As a teen Alex removed copy protection from games to share them because he couldn't afford games.
- He notes modern teens with similar skills now risk joining organized criminal hacking for profit.
Adversaries Train And Profit Daily
- China and Russia build cyber capabilities by commercializing offensive hacking, giving operators practice and profit incentives.
- That daily practice and implicit government cover makes their adversaries more capable than purely defensive U.S. teams.
Snowden Led To Technical Fixes
- Tech companies now encrypt inter-data-center traffic so the NSA can't trivially collect it the way Snowden revealed.
- Agencies still can request data legally, but the technical hole Snowden exposed has been largely closed.