Creating unhackable humans: Scams, fraud, AI and trust

Every security stack has a human layer, and that's where the most damaging attacks land. Tracy Hall knows this from the inside. She was the final victim of Hamish McLaren, one of Australia's most notorious conmen, whose story was exposed in The Australian's hit podcast Who the Hell Is Hamish? and told in her memoir The Last Victim. She lived through the same playbook that drives business email compromise, executive impersonation, and romance and investment fraud.

In this featured session, Tracy unpacks how social engineers build trust, isolate their targets and exploit emotion. She also shows how AI is now running that playbook at industrial scale, with deepfakes, cloned voices and scripted personas. She challenges the myth that only naive people get scammed, explains why victim-blaming keeps losses hidden, and shows why compliance training alone rarely changes behaviour.

You'll leave with:

• A clear view of the psychological levers behind modern scams and breaches
• The red flags that AI-enabled deception still leaves behind
• Practical ways to build a culture where people pause, question and report