What if We Had TLS for Phone Numbers? An Introduction to SHAKEN/STIR

ShmooCon XVI - 2020

Presented by: Kelley Robinson
Date: Friday January 31, 2020
Time: 17:30 - 17:50
Location: One Track Mind

If you’ve noticed a surge in unwanted robocalls from your own area code in the last few years, you’re not alone. The way telephony systems are set up today, anyone can spoof a call or a text from any number. With an estimated 85 billion spam calls globally, it’s time to address the problem.

This talk will discuss the latest advancements with STIR (Secure Telephone Identity Revisited) and SHAKEN (Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs), new tech standards that use well accepted public key cryptography methods to validate caller identification. We’ll discuss the path and challenges to getting this implemented industry wide, where this tech will fall short, and what we can do to limit exposure to call spam and fraud in the meantime.

Kelley Robinson

Kelley Robinson (@kelleyrobinson) works on the Account Security team at Twilio, helping developers manage and secure customer identity in their software applications. Previously she worked in a variety of infrastructure and data engineering roles at startups in San Francisco. She believes in making technical concepts, especially security, accessible and approachable for new audiences. In her spare time, Kelley is an avid home cook and greatly enjoys reorganizing her Brooklyn kitchen to accommodate completely necessary small appliance purchases.


KhanFu - Mobile schedules for INFOSEC conferences.
Mobile interface | Alternate Formats