The CULTURE of CYBERSECURITY with CHEMA ALONSO

Some guests need no introduction, and yet I still ask them the usual question: who are you and how did you get here. With Chema Alonso the challenge was to have him tell us something we didn’t already know, because even our grandmothers have learned from him what malware is.

Joining me is a working-class kid from Móstoles who has been programming since he was twelve, wrote his final degree project on computational geometry and founded Informática64 at twenty-four. He fell in love with security almost by accident, when in 1998 a paper on SQL injection taught him that with one small command you could bypass a website’s login. From there came the master’s, the doctorate and the beanie he won’t take off even in front of the king. We talk about his seven minutes on El Hormiguero, which people still remember, about FOCA, about Singularity Hackers as a way to guide anyone who wants to work in cyber, and about why there’s a shortage of professionals but not of talent.

We also get into Cambridge Analytica, deepfakes and his defence of a humanist technology that puts people at the centre. A conversation that helps you understand where all this is heading and why he’s worth listening to.