It's that going to the doctor scenario when you have a pain, you don't want to necessarily find out what it is because you know people are naturally averse to bad news.
You can't be like that with cybersecurity.
If you don't have a cybersecurity vendor, if you don't have a company helping you out with that problem, get on it.
Everybody is a target at this point.
Your company is not small enough to be off an attacker's radar.
I have seen five person companies, actually I've seen two person companies attacked and hit.
So you know my advice is don't be afraid to ask for help.
Hello and welcome. I'm Shane Parrish and you're listening to the Knowledge Project.
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This week I'm talking with Matthew Holland the founder and CEO of Field Effect Security.
For the past decade Matt's been the guy that every three letter agency in the western world has called when they have a problem that they can't solve.
Before Matt started field effect he enabled allied governments to pursue their lawful mandate.
This episode is all about cybersecurity, exploits, hacking and defending and while this is a world we all hear a lot about, rarely are the people talking as knowledgeable and informed as Matt.
In fact I'd say he's the top three in the world at what he does.
Let's dive into the mind of an attacker, what's possible and what questions you should ask your cybersecurity vendor.
Along the way we'll talk about Snowden, what it's like to work at an intelligence agency and of course Huawei and national security.
It's time to listen and learn.
So I've known you since what?
1999 we met? Yeah around then yeah.
That's crazy. Yeah world.
We used to work together at the intelligence agency.
Yeah. And then that was the most insane period of time ever right?
We're in this small team, September 11th happens, the team works non -stop for effectively seven years.
Like I don't remember any of us having vacation from 2001 to 2008 other than like a random Monday or something.
Yeah I mean firstly I think like vacation is probably largely overrated just because I'm a workaholic.
But yeah I know it was a really neat way to start.
I mean our career is you know just a year or two apart but it was definitely a very interesting experience being thrust into an environment where everything you do contributes much more than you would ever think.
Because coming out of university you know you're you want to get a job with a good salary all of a sudden you're in our case we're doing things that actually matter to the country that have a very significant outcome.
And it's like going from zero to mature very very quickly.
Overnight. Yeah. Yeah I remember one of the first meetings I had with you we were trying to figure out how something worked and I stood up you know in my university sort of bravado and I was like oh I'll tell you how this works.
And then I spent like 30 seconds explaining this thing and then you looked at me and just deadpaned like you're absolutely wrong here's how it works you stood up and for 45 minutes you worked through like every instruction that happened in the operating system.
And I was just blown away by your level of knowledge.
I mean that's kind of you to say there's probably a factor of blown away at how much of a jerk I was in the process of that which I'd like to say has changed but probably not so much.
But yeah it was it was a really it was cool I think the environment that we got to work in was learning from people.
The you know for me that that time in my life really defined what a good team was you know when you learn something you share it with other people in the office.
I remember you know there was five or six of us in particular at one point where it was a very large research focused group and anytime you learn something or I learned something or one of our colleagues learned something it was a really neat discovery but we took the time to educate each other.
And I think what that fostered was a team that you know a level of trust that I had never experienced in my life.
I remember you know entering that team being massively humbled and you know once once the ego got dealt with and you could really jump into that environment it just it catapults one's growth and and I still look back to those times and consider myself extremely lucky and I guess always acknowledge that that time
in my life largely defined who I am today.
I want to come back to that in a second I remember it is weird to hear you say it's sort of like you were humbled you were literally the best in the world at what you do and we're gonna come back to that throughout this interview.
Is it drinking whiskey?
Pretty good at that.
I remember showing up like you used to drive me all the time and your Mazda what was that the is MX -6 buddy.
That was that was the smell like toffee nut latte.
Yeah no that was the that was the dream cybermobile we spent a lot of time together.
What made you leave?
So I reflect on that quite a bit just because I get that question often and I don't think I've ever really had a good answer that that wasn't necessarily immature.
The ultimate reason I left was because I saw a limit to what I could grow into and what the vision of the group I was in achieving one.
Like there was a ceiling arbitrarily put on top of that and I'm the type of person that I don't work well when somebody says this is as far as you can go or this is what we're going to do regardless of what the evidence or ideas or good ideas bad ideas whatever that that stopped and it was not an environment
that I said I can grow here anymore.
One of the big indicators of that which you probably laugh at this but there's a there's a management competition.
I screwed up the entire the entire interview but it was the same problem where somebody would ask you know the interviewer would ask me a question and rather than give them the answer of you know I would I would build a team to do this I would request funding to do this I would you know reach out to universities
to bring them into the into the fold so you know that's the answers they wanted to hear what I gave them were the technical responses to the questions they were asking so how would you solve this problem?
Yeah my answer was well I would do XYZ and then I would do this.
You didn't play the game.
No it was just I answered the question and I think that was the first time it really dawned on me that I probably don't fit into the mold that they were looking for so I think that's when I started to I guess the the ball started rolling on my departure.
I remember it changed probably about eight months before you left like it started to get more I don't know I don't even know how to word this like when we started it was very fast moving we had a lot of authority a lot of control a lot of decision -making power and then slowly as we became more successful
the irony is like that sort of became less and less over time.
Yeah I remember having a conversation with one of our mutual colleagues at the time and I remember being very irritated about the you know the arbitrary handcuffs that were being put on our ability to innovate research you know I remember a contentious time that you and I actually you know stood up
at a town hall and got in a giant argument with a director.
Stu if you're listening we're sorry.
And it was it was very frustrating and I remember that colleagues saying this is just part of business man like once you once you're part of a group that does something really good and and people take notice and they you know they want to turn that into a larger part of the organization and with that comes
what you're seeing now you know formalized you can't work more than this you have different reporting responsibilities and you know at that time I just I just wanted to innovate I just wanted to come up with new solutions to the problems that operations were running into you know not being able to do
that in its raw form was extremely frustrating.
So you left and we can't talk about what we did there but we can talk about what you did right after you left and so you started Linchpin and you you had an unconventional sort of way of starting that company which is releasing privilege elevation to get some attention on Microsoft you want to talk
about that? Yeah so that that was a that was a funny period so you know at the time my business partner and I we we thought you know how can we make a splash because when we left you know our attention was to you know augment the world that we left with I guess a privatized twist on things.
So we thought about okay how can we how can we really stir things up a bit and at the time Microsoft was releasing mandatory driver signing as part of Windows Vista which is showing our age right there and and you know there's so much hype around it and the way it was being advertised what it was gonna be
the silver bullet to stop all malware to stop you know anything bad that could be happening and anybody who has spent any time I guess on the offensive side of the house you know was looking at that and saying no the bullshit yeah it'll be it'll make things better but it's not going to be the silver
bullet that everybody thinks so we said alright well why don't we just do something kind of funny and you know show them so what we did was we wrote a tool called denwhip active the name of the company was denwhip active which is Vista pooned in reverse you know got a signing certificate under this fake
company legitimately registered fake in reality and released a tool that would load it was an assigned component that would load an unsigned driver and it was not to do anything other than show how easy it is with the most simplest goofiest approach to get around this problem and so at the time I was in Australia with my
business partner starting things up we were working out of a closet really kind of a ragtag set up to start and at the time there were people being arrested for violations of the DMCA digital millenniums copyright act which you know back at that time was a really contentious thing because it was changing
what people could or could not do with computers and it was a really big deal so when we released that some people were like oh that's kind of other people are you know one person in particular was like this is a violation of the DMCA you should be arrested PS it's not really that cool I'm going to
go and release a tool that actually exploits ATI drivers and Nvidia drivers and then basically does the same thing but I've done it a lot cooler so take that linchpin ha ha right and in reality that that was I remember that guy yeah that was so much worse because and I don't know if it actually resulted
in the revoking of ATI and Nvidia's signing certificate but it was something that you know to us it was it was just it was well it was stupid to say that we were violating the DMCA and to the response was just so much unbelievably worse and it was a very weird first few months of the company do you
ever miss sort of working at the intelligence agency I miss people I miss a lot of really good people they're amazing people that's a very underrated people think that all sort of like government employees are lumped in the same same group they're not as we can both attest to you yeah so I miss the people
I miss having first -hand exposure to the mission you know I think back to some of the things I got to see and be a part of that no one will ever know about and and that is really cool it was really neat being a part of that it creates memories that I'm pretty sure if I were to run into somebody 30 years
from now on the side of the world in a bar you know immediately there's that connection of like hey we did that that was really cool so yeah I mean I miss aspects but I don't miss the the handcuffs that were were ultimately a part of my departure from there and then when you left do you ever feel like
there was they didn't want you to succeed because they wanted you to come back was there a part of you that felt like they didn't want to give you contracts they didn't wanna I don't know if there's any any interest in me coming back I think there was definitely skepticism as to whether I could succeed
which it's I'm fine with that I mean you know clearly at the time my business partner and I were the first ones to kind of make that jump and do that together and there's a lot of skepticism as to whether we should be allowed to do that whether we are able to do that I remember having a departure interview
with a Hyatt manager who sat me down and said you're gonna go sell to China you're gonna enable China and I looked at him in the eye and I said what on earth would make you think I would ever do that that is the most ridiculous thing ever so I think there was a bit of fear that we would enable you know
adversaries of allied countries which yeah I mean in retrospect I can understand I just think it at the time it was a it was an immature view I remember going to a meeting a couple weeks after he left and they were like oh we're not gonna buy anything from him and I was like we're gonna end up giving
this guy like 50 million bucks a year I want to say I was closer to reality than they were but I mean so so the idea of going private was taking the handcuffs off and creating an environment where we put really really smart people together and you know part of our recruiting strategy was immediately
going after the best people in the community and taking all barriers out of their way and making letting them do amazing things I want to dive into that a little more because you were able to replicate an entire wing of an agency if you want you want to say that with 120th the number of people and have higher
output how are you able to do that you just same people you just took them out of the environment and what enabled that largely removing barriers I mean I think that was a big component of it you know giving them an environment that they could excel in which you know breaks down into what tools do you
need do you need to put in a purchase requisition to get what you need or can I just get that for you like that was one of the comments from one person I remember early on when they joined they're like okay these are the things I'm gonna need to do my job and I was like okay I'll be back in 30 minutes
and here's your stuff and the reaction was really like we can just do this it's like yeah go be a genius go produce amazing things so I think that was a big component I think making it clear that everything that we were doing was as a team and I think as an aside this is one thing I think people who are entrepreneurs
sometimes get caught up in that it's about them it's about their journey and the way I approach it is no we're all in this together I'm really lucky to have you in the company and creating that environment where they knew that they were lucky that I appreciated them and that whatever we do we're doing
together I think it's an empowering message to build a team around I remember one of the things I took away that I've learned from you is when you started doing that with people and you were like what equipment do you need to do your job and you just go out and get it for them and they were astonished
by how simple that was and that's something we do with everybody here too we just sort of like what is it you need to do your job to the best of your ability there's a downside to that too which is really interesting because then you lose the excuse of the equipment's a problem if only I had the right
tools I could like deliver right like so you said there's this subtle sort of undercurrent to it which is I expect you to be amazing at what you do and keep getting better yeah and I mean I think for some people sometimes just that belief helps them get there and so you did LPL from what 2007 7 to 18
to 2018 what are some of the lessons you learned about growing that when you ended how many people were there so so globally I'm gonna lump in the the partner company that we we were sold with but I think for at the time close to 90 to 100 we sold in 2018 but I didn't leave until December of 2019 I
want to I want to come back to that but what are some of the lessons you learned from growing scaling running that company recruiting I think I think one of the biggest things was I you know starting a company from scratch you know at that time I I had a computer science background like I clearly had
a lot of experience in in cyber security you know I took some accounting courses and marketing courses in university so I think there was a bit of a foundation as to okay if you know I remember doing a business plan because that was one thing you did you made a business plan but one thing through the lynchman experience
that I that I got to have was I got to do every job so I got to literally be the janitor I got to be the marketing person I got to be the primary salesperson I remember doing really challenging sales pitches in front of audiences that didn't even want me in the room because I was you know stamping on their
their creative territory I got to write code I got to manage projects I got to be the the evangelist in the company and going from there to field effects with that base I think allows me to really you know make decisions that are more informed it allows me to I guess understand and appreciate all the different
parts of field effect and that which is a much more we're gonna come to feel that yeah so I think so I think there was that I think the ability to make decisions and be confident in those decisions not get caught in you know paralysis of decision -making that is something that I think at first I struggled
with but over time the ability to filter out the noise and focus on the things that actually truly matter have have really helped so why'd you leave I mean right before you left you're the you're the guy every three letter agency and basically the allied world would call when they had a problem they
couldn't solve and you would solve it why leave I was gonna make a joke about they ran out of problems but they didn't know this problems done I'll promise I'm actually the same reason I think and this is actually where I think I realized why you know the root factor of why I left CSE is it was a similar
scenario where yeah yeah but it was a it was a change in in what I could do was it you know I started to see a ceiling on what I could achieve and it became clear to me that you know I was the square peg trying to fit into the round hole because of admissions and more creative things that I thought
we could do and that was that was actually pretty interesting experience coming to terms that I you know I was there the square peg and the round hole because it definitely took time to you know the goal is not gonna change yeah and you go through this evolution of like what's wrong with everybody why
is nobody on board with this and then the realization that oh shit it's it's me I'm the problem here and then the the appreciation of okay okay understanding why that is and I think that that ultimately made the transition very easy actually and and it's not something that I look back with at this point
with any animosity or anything it was just part of life you exited with more than enough to sort of walk away for the rest of your life and to sort of like sit on a boat in Costa Rica and never have to worry again and then but the sharks there are sharks but then you you start a field of fact and how
many employees are you now almost 100 you're almost 100 you're entirely self -funded to this point so you basically took all this money you made and you were like oh I want to do this again and I'm gonna put all on the line like what went into that thinking I had several factors I think I really enjoy
solving hard problems and the the current state of the cybersecurity industry to say it's a hard problem is an understatement it is a is a unethical shit show I would say and it it really bothers me where it's at so I think there's a there's a large part of me that wants to fix that there's also the aspect
of I'm like ultimately a serial entrepreneur and and I remember chatting with my wife like when that transition was happening she asked me like why are you doing this and what else am I gonna do I'm just gonna start something else and it's either you know a cybersecurity company that I'm once again running
that I believe can change the world and fix a lot of problems or I can open a coffee shop probably gonna take the same amount of time so how about the cybersecurity firm and how important is she been through this she's amazing I I don't think I could ever thank her enough I think the the the formula for for my
success she is a she is a huge part of that she is a workaholic yes if you if you could if you could sample what makes her run you know who she is and somehow create like a vaccine and inoculate the world like you would have world peace hands down and that obviously is a strong statement but she is a phenomenal
anybody who knows her would would definitely agree with that I would agree she's amazing she has pretty cool you mentioned sort of the state of the cybersecurity industry talk to me a little bit about that where are we what's it look like I mean there's nobody in the world from my point of view that would have a better
aperture into you not only how things are how they're sold but also the attackers mindset in terms of what you're buying versus what you're consuming and how it's impacting your business this is the part in the discussion where I get angry that's okay we got a lot of scotch so I think to answer that question the first
thing you know we need to do is look at what the cybersecurity industry actually is because I think that it gets muddled the the way the public looks at it the way it's reported on it's just everything it's like a grab bag for yeah so I think there's there's three groups or pillars of cybersecurity
there's the one there's the offensive side which we've talked about the the ransomware the intelligence agencies I say offensive but the whole it's that traditional hacking which you know has largely been glorified thanks to Hollywood mr.
robot gets it right though I don't know you I remember in swordfish he sits down like yeah seconds later everything yeah no it's largely horseshit is that how it works with VR goggles yeah but have you ever seen mr.
robot that that is actually an accurate representation if you ever are curious but it is a you know it is this glamorized thing that is entirely misrepresented but it is an economy in itself there's an economy behind ransomware and they get paid for it they are successful there's an economy behind intelligence
agencies that is ultimately what drives that dollars and cents on the defensive side the second bit oh by the way the first bit only exists because humans are generally horrible at writing software so that wouldn't exist if people were actually good at security models and implementing software the second
bit only exists because the first bit exists so that's the defensive side so let me I guess the best way to describe it is as a consumer it is probably the worst experience you could go go through so if you if you're gonna go buy some cybersecurity are you buying it any virus exactly what I want to
do I want to buy yeah buy some cyber yeah cuz that's largely because it's it's it's a we're joking about yeah it's a black box industry right a lot of a lot of businesses a lot of people don't know what they're actually buying and that has been exploited by the industry and this is the part where I
get angry because none of the solutions out there there there are a few that are decent but like look at what your options are do I buy an antivirus do I buy any spyware do I buy firewall Shane maybe an IDS intrusion detection system maybe endpoint detect and respond maybe user behavior and analysis maybe
a network monitor and the way that vendors will try to push it forward as they say you actually need all of that which is total crap you do not need all of those things they do not work well together so that that whole thing angers me to no end the third bit is a category that isn't actually cybersecurity
I read an interesting article recently and it kind of clued me in I was like actually yeah I know this third thing or pillar exists that is entirely wrong and it's that bit that happens in you know on the internet social media that type of thing that isn't actually security related but people like to
kind of put a box around that so an example would be you know election interference so how do what are the organized influence and influential campaigns on social media to get people to vote in particular directions I do not think that's cybersecurity but that also gets lumped in so that that is the third
bit which is kind of like faux cybersecurity it's a little bit confusing because then you lose track of what's actually happening but I mean intelligence agencies have been spying on other countries forever one of the things that have changed now is not only the amount of consumer data and the value
of that data but also that people are spying on companies now as a means to fast -track their R &D yeah why invest hundreds of millions of dollars when you can sort of like just hack into somebody else's computer and download all their work and then claim it as your own you know I mean it highlights why
you know it people companies need to take this this problem seriously and I don't think it necessarily extends just to large companies at this point legal firms accountants huge targets huge targets I mean you think about what they're dealing with in regards to confidential agreements financials of individuals
and companies and and that's one thing I think we've seen over the last couple years is the the attention that state -sponsored groups are going after it's no longer you know the Sony's of the world it is now your your your law firms because there's a lot of intelligence value there patent firms I mean there's
a lot of intelligence value there so the you know how seriously smaller companies need to take this threat I think has really gone up I find it super interesting I mean I was talking to KPMG just last week and they were like oh send me this and I was like how do I send it to you and they're like just
put it in an email I was like what what are you talking about like I'm not putting that in an email yeah I sort of compromised with like I used quick forget .com and like uploaded something and it's like this is good for like six hours so you better download it but it's amazing to me that the lack of thought
that goes into the information you share and how that manifests itself or what's exposed right because if somebody breaks into that computer that whole email chains there now the files there already but the a lot of the emails stored in the cloud it's a lot easier to access than people realize what makes
you want to tackle this problem like this is like the greatest intractable problem ever with tons of competition like the government's doing host based you have private sector doing all of these things cobbling together solutions like what makes you think that you you can have a better outcome for customers
probably arrogance a joke but that's I mean nobody knows the industry better than you do but like seriously there's billions of dollars going on here yeah so I mean if we if you look 20 years ago it's the same problem well one of the things I tell people when they join who you know when I hire from intelligence
agencies is that be prepared to be disappointed because the problems that you are going to see will shock you that you know that they're still out there so the techniques that are are 10 years old are the problems that should be 10 years old are still happening today and you know I think that is that's
a large referendum on how not good the cyber security industry is at actually trying to solve the problem and if and if I look at you know the vendors out there not going to name any specific competition but what I see is a sales strategy that is like a warped use car salesman strategy and that's probably
an insult to use car salesmen out there because it's it's much worse it's all about the transaction it's all about you know getting getting that done taking the customer's money and saying good luck and that isn't result we're not responsible for anything yeah and and that's not making anything better
how should that work like how do people buy cyber isn't the I wasn't on sort of like the acquisition of cyber side but like this Gardner quadrant does that sound familiar yeah yeah so that is I guess a measuring system a measuring stick to help the vendors or customers prospective customers companies
I guess it's a better term to you know guide them and buying what they they may or may not need there are a few problems with that the Gardner quadrant system is often outdated we were for example field effectors marketing a managed tech and response service well before it was defined in Gartner and ironically
at the time we had a hard time you know gaining traction because that's always looking at like existing sort of technology and threats and looking backwards saying like oh these people accomplish this but not looking forwards in terms of where the industry is going yeah so so that that you know that that is a it
is a useful classification system it is just behind the curve continuously the second thing is I don't think businesses actually necessarily know what they're looking for yeah like how would you be educated if you're like a law firm an accounting firm you got a hundred employees you don't have like
a cyber guy or girl and no like how do you how do you go about doing that so so I mean that's that's ultimately the the realm that you know field effects it's in the the small to medium business space because you know it is infeasible for every company to have an IT team and in our experience I mean an IT
team is good they have expertise but they may not necessarily be you know security experts is that kind of like Shopify for cybersecurity because Shopify is really arming you you don't have to worry about building a store you don't have to worry about managing inventory you don't have to worry about that they're
arming the troubles if you will against Amazon like are you giving world -class technology to small and medium -sized businesses as a means to like you don't really have to know all the ins and outs of cybersecurity but then it becomes trust -based like why would I trust you over another vendor that's
a great question I mean I think trust takes time you don't just magically get trust right out of the gate and I think that is a that is something we put a lot of time into building we take time to create a customer relationship ask customers what their needs are what are their problems and then you
know tell us about your network how can we help you and you know early on in that process I think it becomes clear that we're not just out trying to sell software in a commoditized way the first thing we do is do an external view of the network and then identify okay here's a problem right here we want
to help you fix problems it's not just here is a solution that you have to run with it is all about us helping you be better fixing problems and sustaining that moving forward and then that is largely a component that I don't think most vendors in the cybersecurity industry get they are more interested
in showing you check out this really cool interface which you know no one in your company is probably going to know how to use and then if you don't see something it's like oh it's on our fault it was in the interface somewhere and yeah you didn't see the logs so why why didn't you action that and then
that I mean I think the assumption that the average business is going to care about cybersecurity is is a false starting point because businesses you know you buy your computer hardware you get your IT set up if I'm a business and you know out there I'm not starting my day off thinking oh I can't wait
to buy some cyber's or understand some you know cybersecurity and that is the baseline right that that I think for you know an effective solution that's what you're dealing with you're dealing with a company or a customer that doesn't care about cybersecurity but you need to help them the baseline of the the interface
could be an office manager not somebody who has a computer science degree or somebody who has any background or interest in cybersecurity so having a system that you know is set up and built and implemented to work with people who don't necessarily care or will care or or should even care because that's
not their job that's what we do well that's a good point right like you're not trying to make them care you're just trying to say this is no worry for you anymore yeah yeah and when something comes up here's a very concise way of dealing with it not a you know a series of links go google this learn
how to implement a VPN learn how to use a firewall or how to patch your system it's a it's a guided approach to this is specifically what you need to do let's flip that around and what people don't often see which you can add uniquely is sort of what's the mind of the attacker like if you're looking
at acquiring valuable information from a company walk me through that whole process like how do you think about that how do you go about doing that what does that look like so initially an attacker is going to profile the target and that can look like different things so if you know the the target has online
services they'll probe those services to see what's there are there any email addresses on your website that are really easy to identify what type of social media presence is there and that ultimately will lead into typically a social engineering campaign either in the form of you know an email that is received
that looks really normal that you want to trust and hopefully we'll get you to click on something or double click on an attachment or it'll go to your phone you click on that and that exploitation occurs the other approach that we see quite a bit is people don't use multi -factor authentication with just
a basic email setup so brute force brute force in passwords works somebody gets in will scope out your inbox and see what's there who your customers what's your routine and then they will perform perhaps a financial redirection so in that case they would get an idea of what your entire portfolio is and email
all of your customers and say hey here's your new payment instructions and they will have all the outstanding invoices already you know listed and ready to go so they can immediately say you know you OS X amount this is where I want you to send this money now and that is remarkably and surprisingly
effective yeah and hard to track down even though there's like a total with bank accounts will come to crypto currencies and sort of ran somewhere later but with bank accounts it's easy to see where the money goes it's really hard to get the money back once it's gone yeah and that's conventional sort
of attacks right versus sort of somebody like Boeing or General Electric or sort of Cisco who would have a lot more valuable IP and probably worth a zero -day or sort of like developing a custom exploit can you walk me through like how that would work yeah aesthetically of course so I you're interested
more the pointy end of the stick yeah yeah so you know the way the way exploitation works is specific platform you'd like to walk through let's walk through windows windows okay so if you're going after a windows box it's either a server or workstation and typically servers if their internet facing
gives you the ability to hit it direct so if you have a zero -day and you know a web server for example that is something you can directly access and an exploit that that is a very direct way I guess of attacking the other approaches you you have a windows client you're you're sitting at your desk you
have a laptop and you're just you know typing away and you get an email that is probably the most common way and what what that looks like is again back to the the scenario where you're trying to convince somebody to trust an email so they click on a link what happens like walk me through I click on this line
yeah yeah so so the first thing that happens is you know the browser would be exploited so whatever browser renders that link web browser exploit would would basically gain code execution and and modern browsers are definitely getting better at protecting against that type of thing so you know Chrome
is every browser has a sandbox now most browser flavors are you know some measure of Chrome so even Microsoft Edge is now based on chromium and so is brave and so is like Firefox isn't there is it no no Firefox is not okay I think they're still rocking their own their own setup for now they just fired
their threat team oh geez I didn't even hear that so so yeah you gains execution inside the browser and then the goal is then to gain privilege in the operating system so that could constitute a sandbox escape to get out of that browser sandbox a privilege escalation to ideally execute at a higher privileged
level to basically nullify any security on the host and ideally get execution in the operating systems kernel and once you're there it's largely game over so what but you get kernel on individual host walk me through how you like how does that become network access to at a super admin level or so so once
you have that you you there really is no barriers to do to doing anything on that host so if you want to open up comms back to mothership you can do that if you want to access a whole bunch of data you can do that but how do you open up comms like isn't everybody monitoring these links now in terms
of like how you exfil information no no it's a so we're kind of diving into why this is actually a really hard problem and why any specific pillar doesn't work so if you only buy a network monitoring solution you won't see really anything that I've described thus far if you buy an endpoint only solution there
may be hints of things that have happened depending on the sophistication of the endpoint solution but as soon as it gets so particularly deep in the kernel that you're not going to see that so it's a very challenging position that that's why having a holistic approach is so important you need network
you need endpoint so if you get by either one of those things the other will pick it up and how does that work like on a particular client I can understand how those things communicate but then how do you how do you take an attack on one company and then translate that into a defense on another company
with something you haven't seen before so I guess largely that depends on how well the cyber security solution is implemented if it is part of a network where you can dynamically signature an attack quickly and create an artifact we'll say that can be applied across the network of other customers that is a way
to combat against that I mean the zero day problem is something that's always going to be there I think this is something a lot of vendors don't actually realize that no matter how much you lock down your operating system there's always going to be a creative group out there that does things better
that can get around it I mean if you look at Apple Apple iPhone for the past I don't say decade they've been adding an increasing number of security mechanisms into the operating system that largely limit an app writer to only being able to do specific things but that is largely crippling from a security
standpoint because all you need to do is get around these set of mitigations and you now can own any Apple device in the world and a really scary thing is recently a company called Vupin that isn't you know they buy zero day exploits not sure where they go after that but what they do is I can speculate
but they buy zero day exploits and they they posted something recently where they said we're we're full up on iOS privilege escalations we get enough yeah and if that isn't a wake -up call to Apple I don't really know what would be that's basically the industry is saying yeah your operating system is not as
secure as you think it is that it's kind of like the Great Wall Theory right like you have this big wall around but once you're on the inside of that wall it's like there's no defenses after that yeah and that perfectly describes Apple and that actually describes every mobile operating system out there
well Android talk to me about the specific challenges with Android because they have their they're like a host of other problems that aren't common occurrences that have to be dealt with like everybody has a different version of Android that they're running it's always at a date it's yeah so Android's
an interesting beast because a lot of it's the most common platform yeah yeah and it gets a lot of positive attention out there because it is an open platform you know you could download a nightmare yeah you can download the source code and you can see what's running and that is a component of a secure
operating system I guess that you know the average person can go out and audit what's there the average person could if they want take that download it pilot put it on their phone and maybe add some additional bells and whistles the concept is very noble the reality of it is not so great because what we
have today is there is the main Android branch that you know evolves that Google releases Android 11 just got recently released and vendors will take that and they will adopt it as is or they will customize it or they will you know take particular parts of the what's called a change history it's basically
the the changes that have been made to the code base when that is taken in context with vulnerabilities the fixes may or may not make it in so you could have you know the latest Samsung phone running Android 11 that doesn't actually have all of the security fixes that the main Android branch right because somebody's
accepting or rejecting yeah yeah and I can tell you that a hundred percent certainty I have not looked at Android 11 but what I have experienced over the past two decades there are problems in the Samsung version that have been missed because humans again are part of the equation and you know on the list
it'll say you know CB fix CB fixed but those fixes aren't there bad guys our attackers will know that and they will exploit that and there is literally nothing you can do to defend against that if you are a target and that is a pretty frightening proposition so you would rather go up against an Android
phone than an iPhone if you were an attacker that's an interesting question I think the odds of getting exploited are higher on Android although the the nature of Android also creates a scenario where there's so many different flavors of Android it makes it much more difficult to create a mass attack
whereas an iOS because it's the same version of the of the operating system across the board on every device if you can find a problem in that you get all those devices on Android you get the nuances I put nuances in quotes of some of the decisions that individual vendors will make that that makes it
very difficult to take an attack on Samsung and apply it to I don't know Google phone or ZTE phone so it's I would say generally it's the security position on Android is is is worse you know the the odds of being hit in a mass attack are potentially lower but if somebody is targeting you I would say
that the odds of you know you them being successful against you are higher on Android for sure as phones or you know if you want to call them personal computers it's like those are our personal computers right more so than we think become more prevalent they'll become the surface of which gets commonly
attacked walk me through like how does phone exploitation even work like is it the same sort of system that you would use for Windows or Apple is it different like how do you attack the phone you have this thing on your all the time it's got a mic it's got a camera so the unfortunate answer is the exact
same way you go after every other type of computer iOS is just an operating system Android is just an operating system there's there's no there's no special features that make it impervious to attack there there are different security mechanisms in place that an attacker needs to get around but it's
the same deal so if I'm going after your Windows laptop and the scenario that I described where I send you an email on mobiles it's the same thing and it's actually worse in some cases about a year ago company out of Israel called NSO group they got busted for having a whatsapp zero zero click mechanism
so there's some quick lingo dive here one click versus zero click one click is you have to social engineer somebody to the point where they can click on a link and exploit the phone zero click is where there's nothing you can do you are just owned and you have no idea by you don't even see a message
like you're just yeah no decision on your part you're sleeping in the middle of the night in this case NSO group you know sends you a malicious bit of content via whatsapp assuming they've been able to you know figure out your whatsapp ID and then exploit your phone and congratulations that that whole
step of getting around sandboxes privilege escalation that it's all the same concepts but in this case it is a direct way to attack a device that you own so previously like tools like that were only in the hands of governments and they weren't generally targeting individuals or small corporations has that changed
I think the accessibility is different there's like an asymmetry to this right like some some person some teenager guy or girl sitting in their garage can literally have a massive disproportionate impact I'm thinking of the the attack on Twitter recently and how how you know that was a social engineering
yeah and and you know in the context of going after mobiles I mean that that's that's it all comes down to the accessibility of the attack factor and the creativity of the person running the the attack factor so I was thinking you know with that with NSO group you know there's there's a lot of articles
on them about who they sell to and don't sell to they have a whole group now or whole internal group within the company that I've read dedicated to making sure they make ethical decisions I don't personally trust that they're making it as a I think why do you need a group to make ethical decisions I
mean that's an indication that you know ethics weren't a component in founding of the company that's all probably a whole other description but yeah I think you know the the point that the attacker and what that looks like is is you know it's much more plausible that it is not an intelligence agency
you know you look at the the groups that are running out of you know other countries I'll pick on India a little bit just because I've seen some you know some IP reports on you know some some problems coming out of there but firms of social engineering efforts you know it doesn't take a lot to go after Android
that's two years old and how many I haven't looked at the statistics of how you know what the the market coverage is of Android versions pretty confident that if you're rocking a version of Android that's a year old you're probably pretty big target and that you know again I don't mean to pick on Android
but that is just a reality of how that ecosystem is evolved people don't really realize the scale at which this affects the economy right like you see these ransomware attacks which I want to come to next in terms of like 20 million dollars paid in Bitcoin but what you don't see is the trillions of dollars
in IP that have been transferred to foreign governments over the last decade recently we've seen a lot of intellectual property leaks I kind of feel that you know it's if you were gonna steal intellectual property and then create a competing product with traces which you know while I got busted for that yeah
well I want to come back to a while yeah internal rage meter just went up you know it's a much more you know deniable scenario where you know things hit the internet and people say okay I just it was out there now so it's public domain knowledge so the you know having separation from the attacker and the beneficiary
of you know the results of the attack you know it makes a lot of sense if one's goal was to get a hold of somebody's intellectual property I mean once it's out there everybody's going to consume it you know you look at the leaks of the whole Eternal Blue leaks it's a series of tools from NSA that got
leaked windows vulnerabilities you know went to WikiLeaks was that NSA or was it the CIA ones that got released false seven no that was that was NSA was there CIA ones or am I making that up no there was one that was rooted in vault seven was was that group was that leak I guess the one I'm referring
to was from NSA and it was a it was a whole treasure trove of tools and this one was particularly interesting because it really there are events that occur that destabilize I guess the defensive posture ransomware in general I don't get how it even exists it is the easiest malware to detect and stop
how there's even an industry around that blows my mind but the attack vector that people use to wrap ransomware the payload weaponized that chain I talked about earlier basically allowed you know a point and exploit capability on patched windows machines to walk me through ransomware like what what happens
depends on the flavor but the the the the overall goal is to extort money out of the the victim so there's different potentially encrypt their personal photos credit card information maybe other personal compromising information and then say give me X amount of money or I'm going to I'm going to you
know expose all your photos I'm gonna delete it all when it comes to businesses it's more of going after intellectual property where if a particular workstation gets compromised ransomware runs on that workstation encrypts everything potentially deletes deletes everything at the time typically making
a copy of it because there's value in that and then we'll go through all the network shares and do the same thing so there's one one particular there's different groups I guess of ransomware actors out there some that are you know won't call the bluff and others where if you say I'm not gonna pay you
they will 100 % follow through on what they're going to do and this weird I guess sub industry has emerged from ransomware actually being a thing and being accepted where companies will actually act as negotiators so if you think back to those really cool movies where you know there's a really cool ransom
or sorry hostage negotiator trying to talk somebody out of the scenario that exists for ransomware and it drives me do the ball for me yeah yeah why is that a problem like do do like do your customers have ransomware problems like well no because they they use co -payless we protect against that that vector but the one
how do you stop that like if it's that easy to stop why doesn't everybody stop it I wish I had an answer to that I don't think you know a network monitoring solution will not stop at ransomware there's nothing you can do about that to be on host yeah you have to be on host and you have to have a measure
of sophistication and trade craft to identify and block it we've seen we have some coexistence scenarios where I won't identify the companies but they are very very large successful companies so cybersecurity companies and the ransomware gets by them but we stop it and it blows my mind that you know
based on the use that's easy like that's not a big thing that you're worried about it is a very very basic profile to stop identify I might be jaded because I've been doing this for 20 years and in the grand scheme of things that I've been a part of ransomware is definitely low on the sophistication bar
do you think it would exist without cryptocurrency and anonymous payment forms because it's always seems to be at least in the news it's always like you need to pay in Bitcoin so I can like run away with this money and yeah I would say it definitely be harder because that is definitely a very convenient
payment structure to pay to pay with Bitcoin the I'm just thinking in the cases where we we've seen financial redirections and those are anonymous accounts that are used and then torn down so there's there's definitely how hard is that to track like if you're sort of like the FBI or the another three
-letter agency like to follow that path I I don't I don't know about that it's not my not my background but I would say the the challenge would not necessarily be the difficulty it would be the average person or business getting any agency to care to track it down because that Intel agencies law enforcement
agencies aren't sitting around waiting for things to do you know there's really big problems they're going after and trying to fix and solve and you know a small company you know a law firm getting ransomware it is is just low in there well it's not even a matter of payment for them in some cases it's
life or death for the business because you can effectively turn the business off overnight and just eliminate it especially if you're small and you you don't have these sort of like big bank accounts to pay yeah yeah I'm aware of you know businesses that have been shut down because of ransomware the the payment
is just too high and it's much easier just to say okay fold thrown in the towel we're gonna fold up shop and maybe start again and this is ultimately why I don't like I get very frustrated that companies will pay ransom or not take the time to hire a company ahead of time like it's much much easier
and cheaper to be preventative and to harden your system and be ready for a tax I mean that that is the reality of today and anybody who thinks otherwise is you know they've got their head in their sand you're going to get ransomware bad things will happen and hopefully it doesn't kill your company
or compromise customer data that's that's a whole other aspect of this equation that I don't think people taking into consideration of their legal obligations to report compromises in customer data now there are fines I remember before COVID -19 dropped there was discussions about you know six figure
fines going to Canadian companies if they are ransomware customer data gets compromised and it has shown that they weren't taking the problem seriously ahead of time so they didn't have the adequate security protections in place what's adequate like that sounds so subjective yeah yeah I mean is that back
to that Gartner I checked the box you can't sort of like fire me so so if I was a you know virtual see so I would probably you know reference the Gartner quadrant to make sure that you know the executive board is covered in regards to liability there's almost like two layers to this right there's the apparent
layer which is like I want to solve cyber security but the real layer is like I want to keep my job and yes this way to do that is not take any risks and go with the industry standard and ultimately that when it comes down to accountability that is a safe way to go it is unfortunately your own yeah
yeah it's it's it's the safe way to go but it is not the best thing for the company it is not it is not forward -facing it is I think it's being naive in regards to the type of attacks that are coming so if you're a customer and you don't know a lot about this what are the questions you should ask to
sort of reveal the type of solution you're getting for real instead of sort of like checking the box you know right off the bat I would say how are you protecting my company to tell me how you're protecting my company like full stop what happens when something goes wrong and and you'll probably get
a whole bunch of you know what's the difference between a good answer and a bad answer to that question if somebody uses the word next generation seamless you know what will stop everything yeah AI we've got machine learning any of that if any of that comes up big red flags so if somebody can give you
a good answer to what happens when your system fails that gives you comfort that I think that is a good position to move beyond when I said earlier that you know the cyber security industry is like a bunch of unethical use car salesmen it's it's because there's so much jargon and salesmanship that goes
into this for example the the process of buying a car what do you expect when you go to a dealership to buy a car what what do you want to walk away assuming you really like a car or a brand what do you expect to walk away after a transaction occurs the car yeah unfortunately with the current cyber
security industry there are salespersons all over the place that will will say you know what you need is you need some wheels and then another salesperson will say I can sell you the engine and another sales person will say I'll say you the steering wheel you probably only need the steering wheel but I
can sell it's gonna it's gonna be some rims over here yeah and it is up to you as a as a as a company to put those things together and make use of that so you're cobbling together the solution yourself and each vendor like no vendors responsible then because it's like oh this person there's a lot of finger
-pointing yeah and ultimately the the only working cyber solution and I don't care what the the sales point is the only true working cyber security solution is one that looks at it from where's your data how are you going to be attacked across the board so it needs to include an endpoint component a network
monitoring component a cloud component potentially an IOT component an XYZ for things that we don't even need to know what exists yet this is where this whole concept of next generation drives me nuts because people say we have this next generation thing and what I'm seeing right now is the exact same
thing I've been seeing 20 years ago regardless of whether it has a machine learning component or not like what does that mean next generation like if you knew the next generation of exploits you'd be well ultimately it doesn't mean anything a good solution should be iterative a good solution should be
engineered to handle the future without needing to put a sales tag around a you know this is what we have now we call it the next generation thing that the world's never seen PS it's gotten machine learning AI blah blah blah blah blah which ultimately doesn't mean anything if you were a buyer all it
does is confuse you drives me there's so much jargon in this industry in particular right and a lot of it is salesy like it's created by the yeah sales teams the Salesforce the yeah the the number of times I have had to worry about this you know these features that are sold to businesses around the world
being on the other side of the coin just years ago never I've never had to worry about machine learning and by the way the existing machine learning implementations and a lot of solutions out there is the exact same thing that you know I've seen an antivirus is back in 2005 they just didn't call it
machine learning it was just training analytics to look for anomalies and so when you were an attacker what did you worry about oh that's an intimate question getting caught I mean ultimately yeah I mean so as an attacker it is a continuous balance between risk and losing a capability and this is what does
that mean and I'm speaking from you know back when I you know was at CSE it means that you know when I said earlier that on the you know that first pillar of cybersecurity you want to call it a pillar there's an economy behind it so there's a cost to building capabilities to to go after a particular
target if you lose that capability that immediately is an expectation of okay find a new one and it's difficult there's there's cost of that there's labor and and that that is a very big component that goes into the the I guess the risk equation as to how you're going to approach an operation how aggressive
you're going to be and different different you know agencies around the world will do different things I mean you look at China and Russia they're remarkably aggressive with a lot of I don't say disregard to their own intellectual property and what they're using but they're certainly not quiet about what they're
doing it's like spray and pray right yeah I find I find it really intriguing it makes it makes me wonder a little bit like do they have a an army of thousands of people and warehouses cranking the stuff out which they probably do which is really scary yeah one of the things that I always found really
fascinating about intelligence problems was there's always a country with more people who are just as smart if not smarter than you and just as good if not better technology than you and yet your tasks was sort of defending or in some cases acquiring information against these people and the hubris that sort
of like goes into we know best and yeah that was always an intriguing calculation back back at CSE it's a good debate to have I guess if you've got something that took a lot of time to build do you throw it down a hill and hope for the best or do you protect it you put shoulder pads and knee pads on it
and you know try to make it last as long as possible and so talk me through that they're like how do you see that because allied governments friendly governments whatever you want to call them have exploits that are zero days that they don't release that have huge national security implications like
we've seen some of those become public and have massive implications within the NHS hack in Great Britain the result of a stolen zero day from an allied government that one's tough but should they disclose them what's your like how do you think about that so so from what I so full disclosure I don't
have as much much exposure to what the internal debate is on that I'm aware that it happens I think a lot of it comes down to what the perceived value is gained versus lost if you just if you if you don't disclose something and you use it operationally is there more good for the the mission the country
its people by not disclosing it versus disclosing it and losing a capability yeah it's a aren't going to disclose they're they're not going to care if they have something they can weaponized they will use it and I think unfortunately that is probably the tone that is set globally that underpins a lot
of these the decision making like if if you're being attacked constantly and having your intellectual your nation's intellectual property stolen I mean you could disclose all the vulnerabilities you have and you know about as a nation it's not going to stop them it's just not going to they're there
you know going back to the the voopin example there are more out there there's a backlog apparently yeah yeah speaking of oh I'm gonna probably push some of your buttons here so you might want to take a drink touch me a little bit about Wow way I'm just gonna leave it there expand on so we've had many
conversations what a chestnut that situation is so why always had a bit of a an interesting less than smooth ride I would say they came out of nowhere with all this tech yeah which which miraculously happened right after a Cisco leak a giant Cisco source codely it's a coincidence yeah so I you know
there's there's document ties to the Chinese federal government with that company existing there is I don't know if they were ever convicted it was back in 2003 2004 but there was a there was a very clear -cut case that Huawei was using conveniently leaked intellectual property this is back to you know
if I was going to steal your intellectual property it is much more deniable if I leak it out into the internet and then use it and come out six months later and say oh look I just found this out there and I used it really convenient coincidence yeah and and you know where we are today while a basically
you know price undercuts other other vendors and it you know I asked how did they get to that point that that sounds like they have a lower R &D budget and how do you have a lower R &D budget you get intellectual property via creative means you know today with them being banned from the US I don't disagree
with that I have different thoughts about the whole tick -tock situation but we dive into the why I think why don't you disagree with why don't I disagree with them being banned yeah I mean I agree with them being banned yeah so I don't think there is a framework to build trust I don't think they have earned
that trust and given you know if a nation is going to re -kit their entire country with a new type of wireless gear especially with the complexities of 5G you need to trust that vendor you need to be sure that the interests of that vendor are at the very least not opposed to the interests of the country
that you're in and I don't know how anybody could possibly say that about why I remember when the Brits did this whole thing like we're gonna set up this accredited lab we're gonna test it so we're gonna allow British Telecom to use it but we'll test everything that's deployed I remember just like that would fall
apart in a second because the minute there's a zero day you're gonna deploy it right away especially if it's leaked on the internet and then you've deployed code that you haven't code reviewed and then the whole thing just falls apart I'm like okay well well it doesn't scale to the realistic pace of software development
right so let's let's imagine that a government does have a program in place where every iteration of source code and these aren't small systems what we're talking the millions of lines of source let's assume you have a crack team of amazing source reviewers that can say with confidence yep this looks
great or better yet they have a set of automated tools to be able to derive that answer which is challenging probably possible extremely challenging the realistic outcome is the time for let's say Huawei releases a new iteration the time from that release because if they are a vendor that actually believes
in securing their product and that new release of the firmware has you know fixes time matters you're against the clock before you know vulnerabilities could be discovered and put out because all it takes is for them to release that firmware once have somebody rip that firmware apart and identify differences
between the old and new so you're immediately up against the clock and if this ideal analysis process is being slowed down in any way you're immediately compromising the vendor and giving them the the argument that this system doesn't work because what they and I don't necessarily disagree with that if I
was the vendor and my releases were being slowed down by a month I would get pretty cheesed because it's not my fault yeah you're slowing down fixes and and oh I'm sorry your your routers just got hacked that's on you that's that's not of the vendor at that point so I don't think that concept is one
that actually works and the way to avoid that is sort of like just not allow that in your critical infrastructure or do you think it should be not allowed in any infrastructure your personal take oh my personal take I I'm again I'm completely fine with the ban I mean there's there's still allowed to
sell into Canada I'm not aware of what the I think it's not allowed in that I mean my knowledge is that it dates we'll have to like factor this but I think it's not allowed in the critical components of Canadian telcos but it's a lot on the periphery but I mean but that's like silly when you think about it
right because you don't want to ever be held hostage to somebody you can you can turn that off and somebody who's more patient than you right because you could just go 25 years with no incident and then all of a sudden there's an incident but you've built up 25 years of trust and credibility so the story
you tell yourself is we haven't had an incident it's cheaper because it's likely subsidized and not only R &D but subsidized by the government yeah so I mean ultimately this is I don't have any problem with the Huawei being banned in the US I would not I would not argue about that by the way the the name
of the vendors erodeum boopen started sorry boopen started zero okay yeah I was lumped them together just you know well same parent company I would imagine yeah yeah what do you think of Snowden yeah I feel like you're asking questions that is slowly taking years off my life so I've been doing that since
I met you no you're great but I do not agree with what snow did in any way and that is that is putting it very very kindly regardless of you know at this point there's been things that he brought to light that has been declared illegal the the unfortunate assumption is that agencies security agencies
and tell agencies are you know these devious groups that are like let's do whatever we can and I don't think the average person actually realizes how difficult that job is how normal the people are who do that job they have families they come in they want to you know solve a mission or solve a problem
make things better and the way he went out with this giant trove of information which I'm gonna come back to completely ignores the the the way that technical implementations get approved it's not like developers are sitting at their desk and say I had this great idea let's go do it and all of a sudden
it's running in operations without any you know accountability or review there is a team of lawyers depending on the size of the country that will look at that and say this is okay this is bad I remember being at CSE and arguing for something for I don't know how many years but there was there was a problem
legally and it didn't get through and that that vetting process people take extremely serious and if something goes through that process there is a measure of legality to it there are a group of lawyers who honestly like to say no to ideas that have said yeah this is okay so the idea that anything that has been
deemed illegal you know I'm not in a position to say that's right or wrong but what I can say is the process that those things would have gone through people underestimate the sheer size of the bureaucracy to get anything implemented crazy so so that whole side of things I find unfortunate because the the byproduct
of that is distrust for agencies that are working extremely hard to keep countries safe and it is extremely disheartening for those people to you know get dragged to the mud publicly when the public doesn't actually have an awareness as to how much they sacrifice on a day -to -day basis like I couldn't
count the number of long nights that I've seen people work you know it it can break families it can break relationships and it has yeah definitely so the other side of it is you know trusting his intentions so he he had gripes about you know those types of illegal you know mass monitoring or mass surveillance
programs in the US why did he go public with such a large archive that had nothing to do with that why did he you know expose completely legitimate legal intelligence gathering programs that have a ton of people's names associated with that why did he go out the door of that and that I think is what I
have a much larger problem with and that you know there was no thought process I you know it sounded it to me it seemed like more he was just giving the intelligence community the middle finger yeah I mean I sort of took with the same thing from that whole thing which was even if he felt just in what he
was doing it would have had a different sort of feel to it when it came out and you don't need to reveal the techniques you can just reveal the details of the programs but the actual techniques that he revealed the software techniques the exploitation techniques that I mean that that definitely cost
people lives that had a huge impact on people working there yeah and how far back did he set programs how much did you know entire agencies need to go into damage control because some Yahoo decided that this thing over here was illegal and then oh PS here's a whole bunch of other interesting stuff unredacted
being released yeah I think people think oh there's no names associated with it but like on the original documents there's definitely names and I think we both assume that every intelligence agency worth their salt in the world has unredacted copies of all of those documents yeah yeah to the best of my
knowledge Wikileaks doesn't receive redacted versions of things I mean that's that's largely my opinion on him if he's so you don't think you should be pardoned a little part of me will die if he's pardoned why do you think he's in Russia is there is there something to that story I mean the where's
the safe place to go when you've burned you know a particular group like right into the pretty bad enemies safe places Russia yeah I mean yeah I'd be really curious to actually know what his living conditions are like right now and you know hopefully they're not comfortable but I mean he brought it
upon himself there there's other ways he could have done that and come forward with how could you have done that differently what do you think well like internally there's lots of outlets for that stuff he'd said he followed that there was no documentation released that I can remember that he did follow
those yeah I mean you look at the the whistleblower protection and that's in place now was that post in there or yeah you know I was just thinking that I don't know whether it was post Snowden I mean maybe his decision to do that would have actually improved the protections for whistleblowers and you
know that's probably important to acknowledge but it's I thought he was the best thing to happen to Lynch been though I remember like and I don't mean that in a negative way I just remember like what happened in the immediate aftermath of that was they locked down the process by which people get hired
so like I don't think you or I would make it through today from start to finish because of our backgrounds and sort of different quirks of our personality and and so what happens is like post note and you end up hiring I call it the stormtrooper problem which is like you end up basically hiring the same
type of person right there they're sort of like never had a problem in their life they get straight A's they do all the right things they tie their shoelaces the right way and they come into the organization and they get promoted and the process for promotion now is sort of like here the ten things
you need to do to get promoted because it's so sort of like laid out and so bureaucratic that you end up you're 30 and all of a sudden you're you're in charge of solving a problem that nobody's ever solved before but you're in a group of people who all see the problem the exact same way so you all share the same
blind spot so I remember when that started happening I was like oh man this is like great news from Matt because you're hiring in a way the misfits of the the industry right the people who don't want to go to meetings the people who don't want to fill out the forms to go travel the people who just want
to be able to do their job yeah I'm trying to think back of you know what was there was there an effect I don't actually know if I could speak to that without violating an NDA honestly but yeah we don't want to get you in trouble yeah this year yeah I think how you characterize the that the mindset
of these organizations are it's pretty accurate I mean the well we both sat in meetings where they're like oh we can't hire this person cuz there's like a flaw in their background and and there's some legitimacy to that too right like you're trying to manage top secret information you're trying to manage
risk and manage an organization but the flip side of that is like you're hiring effectively the same person yeah you're not wrong I definitely don't I don't disagree I think from one one benefit the linchpin from that was definitely it pushed people out the door absolutely I think that's a trend that that continues
to this day I mean I'm I'm still you know full disclosure actively recruiting from intelligence agencies the people that are excited to leave and do something more and you know for the lack of better better terms be unleashed to solve technical problems like there's that there's that hunger there and it's
I love that perspective of unleashing people that have sort of like had handcuffs before and it's like now your ceiling is not bureaucracy your ceiling is your own ability yeah I've been doing this for 15 years almost as an entrepreneur and you know two companies and I've gotten to witness people going
go through that unleashing process and it is really cool to see how you know one month after they're they're just blown away with what they are now afforded to do and what what what you know I'm not saying don't do this it is just here's the goal here's the problem solve it let me know what you need
we'll catch up every once in a while in Canada people typically join join the company with you know one year leave of absence or a five -year sabbatical component and I always I always laugh about that because yeah I mean nobody's ever gone back oh yeah so yeah so from a risk standpoint that makes sense
so I never I never argue with that but from a practical standpoint nobody's ever gone back and it's become something that I've seen weaponized against the employee you know oh you're you're going to this company we're not gonna give you your one year leave of absence and it's like okay that is extremely
bad decision and you're showing some really unfortunate true colors you know in that ever make somebody stay or does it like push them out the door faster and motivates them yeah chips on shoulders man there's something to the motivation that comes from that that just drives people I mean Google's project
zero is largely built from people who have exited the intelligence industry with a chip on their shoulder I don't know if that's worked worked out so well but I want to just sort of like end on some of the lessons that you've learned growing field effect now to hundred people that's the critical phase
for a lot of companies like a lot of companies break in this sort of like 40 to 100 people range because you start reaching the ceiling of the processes that you put in place but also the ceiling of the people who've got you here how do you think about that how do you scale and how do you go beyond
that and crack through that sort of ceiling I think the the first component is making sure that everybody is going in the same direction you have to be very straightforward frank honest when you know looking internally but also what the company goals are and everybody needs to know what the company
goals are I don't think that you know execution is not necessarily something that comes naturally to a lot of people and and for me right now like one of my one of my biggest concerns as we approach 100 as we go through COVID -19 I mean when this COVID -19 started there was you know a decision to be made
to go aggressive or or cower I guess from the scenario and you know in my opinion it was very clear we go aggressive because you know our competitors are probably going to be category B and damage control so yeah so you can get ahead yeah so so execution is a big part of that and it takes a bit of time
to understand what execution looks like in each particular problem or a given company so that discovery of you know how do we execute as a group has been something that I think is is extremely important and largely the the company is absolutely doing amazing at it and and that that I think is one thing
that you know always resonates in my head that you know everybody has great ideas but how you push through is execution you need to you need to material materialize those great ideas into things that are reality is there anything else you want to say about the state of cyber before we wrap this up have I
am I out of swear jar say whatever you want I think we're already explicit at this point so so so I would say you know if you are a company looking for help it is it can be a challenging thing I think it's it's that going to the doctor scenario when you have a pain you don't want to necessarily find
out what it is because you know people are naturally averse to bad news you can't be like that with cybersecurity if you don't have a cybersecurity vendor if you don't have a company helping you out with that problem get on it everybody is a target at this point your company is not small enough to be
off an attacker's radar I have seen five person companies actually I've seen two person companies attacked and hit so my advice is don't be afraid to to ask or help hello at field effect comm yeah the second thing I would say is anybody out there looking for you know a really cool opportunity for a really
cool company you know the experts of the world regardless of what company you're looking for right now we're always looking for our people that's amazing like my kids call you uncle Matt but they also whenever Elon Musk comes out they say we know somebody who's gonna do more than Elon and sort of like
and they're pointing to you so we're looking forward to seeing how this progresses over the next couple years I don't know how to respond to that but that's very uh that's very kind of them thanks for chatting man yeah thanks for having me it's a good time hey one more thing before we say goodbye the knowledge
project is produced by the team at front up Street I want to make this the best podcast you listen to and I'd love to get your feedback if you have comments ideas for future shows or topics or just feedback in general you can email me at Shane at F s blog or follow me on Twitter at Shane a parish you
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