We can’t always make it to the conference, and when we do we can’t always get to see every talk we’d like to see. That’s one of the reasons why I like to shop around YouTube from time to time and look for talks I wish I’d seen in person.

Here are five great ones I recently found. They’re worth every minute of your time.

DEF CON 24

Richard Thieme: Playing Through the Pain The Impact of Secrets and Dark Knowledge

The toll hacking and the security profession can take on an individual – scratch that: does take on individuals – is one of the most grossly under-discussed subjects in the industry. In this talk Thieme tackles the personal costs to chasing security and secrecy.

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DEF CON 23

Social Engineering Village

Dave Kennedy: Understanding End-User Attacks

This fun and informative talk by Dave Kennedy, founder of TrustedSec and Binary Defense Systems, takes a deep look at social engineering attacks and how enterprises are subjected to all sorts of attacks that leverage social engineering tactics. And how, after the user falls for the attacker’s ruse, he covers ways attackers move laterally throughout the environment.

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DEF CON 24

Social Engineering Village

Chris Hadnagy: 7 Jedi Mind Tricks: Influence Your Target without a Word

In this talk about influence, social engineering expert Chris Hadnagy teaches some of the non-verbal techniques social engineers will try to get their targets to act in a way that they indeed — and to do eagerly.

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DEF CON 25

Dan Petro, Ben Morris of Bishop Fox: Weaponizing Machine Learning

Why spend your own mental cycles sweating how to crack that web app or database when you can have your bot do all of that for you. In this talk, Petro and Morris discuss the weoponization of machine learning systems, and the work behind their own machine learning bot, DeepHack, which uses a neural network and trial-and-error to learn how to break into systems all on its own. Skynet is coming.

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DEF CON 21

Peiter "Mudge" Zatko: Unexpected Stories - From a Hacker Who Made It Inside the Government

In this must-watch video, Peiter "Mudge" Zatko provides some deep background about a number of the biggest stories in cybersecurity in recent years, from Julian Assange’s story to him about the origins of Wikileaks, to stories concerning anonymous, and how the government failed to seize the opportunity to build bridges with the hacking community.