Robert Downey Jr., sans armor, fights cybercrime at SXSW

“Technologically, I’m just a dummy,” actor Robert Downey Jr. said March 12 at South by Southwest Conference & Festivals. “Why am I FaceTiming my dentist?”

That’s more than a little ironic, considering that Downey rocketed to the top of Hollywood’s hot list thanks to his portrayal of billionaire tech wizard Tony Stark in Marvel’s “Iron Man” movies. It was apparent at the Austin Convention Center that his star-wattage powered interest in a panel he moderated: “Online Crime: An American Crisis.” An hour before the featured session began, a queue of conference-goers poured out of the building and down a couple flights of stairs.

Downey’s presence on the panel made a lot more sense when he disclosed he’s an investor in Aura, an A.I.-powered cyber security service. Aura featured in a Downey-starring ad that played on the big screens before the session. The firm’s founder and CEO, Hari Ravichadran, also sat on the panel, as did writer Maria Konnikova and security expert Eric O’Neill.

Here are 5 things we learned from the panel.

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Robert Downey Jr. is a very effective way to get people to care about cyber crime.

The second the “Avengers” star took the stage, phones popped up across the ballroom. Downey was freshly shorn and wasted no time in bringing his idiosyncratic energy to the session. He explained that he’s taken an interest in cyber-crime prevention because of technology’s omnipresence in our lives (shouting out a character he used to play), which has led to progress, as well as danger.

Then the teleprompter gave out, and Downey started riffing. He posed for some photo opps for the cameras at the front of the stage and conducted a couple “interviews” with the photographers. He jokingly asked one journalist, “Are you a deepfake?” He became transfixed with his giant visage on the screen behind him; he made friends with a service dog named Josie in the front row.

It’s a scary world wide web out there.

If you believe actors who invest in security companies that they’re promoting, the average American household has 25 connected devices, and $10.3 billion was lost by Americans last year to cyber crime. These days, Downey said, home burglaries account for less than half the losses that online crime incurs.

“People start to assume that’s just part of life,” Ravichadran said of online security breaches.

“People think, ‘It can’t happen to me,’” O’Neill added. “Attackers are criminals. They’re lazy. They want to hit you because they can.”

Konnikova: “Not only are they lazy — we’re lazy.”

Americans have some misconceptions about cyber crime.

Rethink how you visualize the folks who run phishing operations or email scams, the panel agreed. “There are no hackers,” O’Neill said, dispelling notions of teenagers wearing hoodies in basements.

“I thought about ‘War Games’ with Matthew Broderick,” Downey cracked.

These criminals are often very capable and operating on an expert scale. Konnikova said they’re confidence artists who take advantage of human nature. They don’t actually outright steal our money as much as we just give it to them once they’ve gained our trust, she said.

Even in her research unmasking scammers, Konnikova has found herself charmed by them, and she knew to be on her guard — they’re that persuasive, she argued.

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What can people do to protect themselves?

Check your accounts right away when you get a fraud alert, Ravichadran said, and use different passwords for all your various profiles, from email to DoorDash. Employ a password manager app, he suggested.

O’Neill thinks passwords will soon be “useless” and login systems will use biometrics soon. For now, make sure you turn on two-factor authentication, he said.

Konnikova offered perhaps the hardest pill to swallow for a room of tech-savvy SXSW-goers: Lock down your social media as much as possible, don’t share all your life events online (which can be used by con artists) and don’t accept friend requests from people you don’t know.

The next disaster is looming, according to one expert.

O’Neill said that a critical global cyber attack could be on the horizon as the next frontier of world conflict.

Our way of life is more vulnerable than the average person thinks, he said, so that’s why it’s important to push for hardening our infrastructure. For example: A bad actor can take out a large chunk of the U.S. power grid by shooting out just nine substations.

“We need to get ahead of it,” he said of what’s lurking just behind the screen.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Avenger Robert Downey Jr. fights cybercrime at SXSW panel in Austin