Jacob Riggs

Jacob Riggs is a British ethical hacker best known as founder of Deadswitch, a dead man’s switch designed to protect journalists, dissidents, and whistleblowers.

Notable achievements
In 2015, Riggs was credited with saving the life of a stab victim who had collapsed in the street with multiple stab-wounds to his left arm, chest and back.

In 2016, he began working on Deadswitch, a cloud-based dead man’s switch intended to provide an immutable data insurance service for individuals at risk.

In 2018, he supported a collaborative investigation into former Saudi Arabian royal court advisor Saud al-Qahtani and his involvement with HackingTeam and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In 2020, Riggs discovered a bug within Facebook and WhatsApp which provided unauthorized access to law enforcement portals used to submit sensitive data requests.

In 2021, he received recognition from the National Cyber Security Centre - Netherlands (NCSC-NL), for his contributions to identifying and reporting vulnerabilities within their critical infrastructure. He was presented with a vulnerability disclosure hacker coin from the UK National Cyber Security Centre on behalf of the UK Ministry of Defence.

Riggs was credited with Hall of Fame recognition by the United Nations in 2021.

In 2022, he was presented with a trophy and formal letter of appreciation from Belastingdienst on behalf of the Dutch government. He was awarded a limited edition solid gold coin, commemorating the life and legacy of the mathematician and codebreaker Alan Turing for disclosing a security vulnerability to The Royal Mint.