Mike Grover - How Hacking Tools Are Changing Cyber Warfare | SRS #164

[Music]. Mike Grover welcome to the show man. thanks thanks for having me dude we just. knocked out one of the most fascinating. everyday carry pop Pocket dumps I've. ever seen and uh and the fact that you. designed all that Hardware is just. astounding it's awesome and U so we got. connected through uh mutual friend Bryce. case Jr yeah and uh thank you Bryce and.

um man we've been trying to make this. happen. for I think a year over a year yeah over. a year now so yeah cuz I interviewed he. was our he was last year's Thanksgiving. episode yeah and uh we got connected. right after he told me about the OMG. cable which you developed and uh we'll. get into that. but real quick let me uh let me let me. kick it off with an intro here sweet so.

Mike Grover AKA. mg you're a hacker red teamer. entrepreneur artist security researcher. and educator you work for Fortune 500. companies conducting red team operations. to test and enhance their security you. design and build covert Hardware. implants that bypass and challenge. computer security you also run a. business that manufactures and sells. your Hardware Designs which are now used. by countless companies and governments. to to strengthen their own security the.

most well-known Hardware design is the. OMG cable a malicious USB cable or also. a husband and a. father and I'm sure I'm missing a whole. slew of stuff but uh at least that Pates. the picture but um you know I want to do. a life story on you you know some of the. some of the things that you have. developed um and then probably go down. some rabbit holes with cyber sec maybe I.

love knowing what China and Russia are. up to if you have any insight into that. but um but before we start anything uh. everybody gets a gift. so all. right. gummies League gummy bears so made right. here in the USA legal in all 50 states. all right so uh you know I know you guys. got some fun gummies out there in.

California but this is just candy I'm. going to eat some now man these are go. right ahead musle yeah I'll take some of. those thank. you I'll see if I can not eat these by. the end of the show Good. lot nice those are. good not bad huh yeah but.

um sorry I'm going to talk with my mouth. full. but Mike I got a so I got a patreon. account it's a subscription account it's. um they were a major we were just. talking about before you know right. before we kick this off about starting. businesses and how this started in my. attic and we're both entrepreneurs and. and um so developed a patreon very early. on uh they they have been the key.

component to how I've built my business. um and a lot of them have been here. since the very beginning so one of the. things that I do is I I give them the. opportunity to ask each and every guest. a question and so this is from somebody. Anonymous what's the simplest trick. hackers use that 99% of people still. fall for every day asking just ask them. ask them for Access uh granted you gotta. kind of.

cloak it a little bit but you pretend to. be somebody you're not and uh for. instance like I'm I'm your it Department. I'm your HR you call them up you email. them and you say I need you to do a. thing real. quick. and that process will generally have. them maybe uh entering their password. for. instance except it's into something you. control and at that point you've got. their password it's that is a meth. method that still heavily used and.

constantly Works no kidding that. actually happened to us here oh yeah yep. yep we had to have Brian Montgomery uh. jump in and save the day but um yeah it. was uh I we got an email. saying we want you to be on this podcast. yep and uh I thought it was [ __ ] uh. we had a staff member that that uh kind. of like pushed me to do this and of.

course everything was in a rush and um. boom we saw that then my guy they got. into our Facebook and almost hacked. everything yep took it all and uh and. Ryan was able to uh jump in and save the. day kind of last minute there so nice. thank you Ryan but uh what it what else. what's another one. though I mean that that is like the. go-to right like I mean you can walk.

into a building but why do that when you. can just ask from halfway across the. world right like I mean most most. companies you'll still be able to walk. in and do all that stuff it's just not. worth the risk unless they've got that. level of security kind of locked down. where it's like okay you can ask anybody. in the company for their password they. can give it to you but you can't do. anything with it because you know we got. like two Factor turned on or stuff like. that different security controls and. detections that suddenly requires. physical access to you you got to take. more risks to do that and that's it's a. lot more skill lot more work to make.

happen interesting interesting well you. know I had a little chat with Bryce uh. before before he got here today and uh. we were talking and by the way have you. ever seen have you ever seen that video. of him at the Dead Mouse concert he's. he's up there he's rapping and falls off. the. stage I got to roll this clip you you've. seen this right I I believe so yeah yeah. I got to roll the clip it's hilarious.

[Applause]. plan he brought something up that wasn't. in your outline oh [ __ ] and uh so might. be a little uncomfortable but I got to. ask it and uh and I think it's a good. question because it sets the stage for. the entire interview and everything. we're going to we're going to talk about. but he says in case he chickens out.

ask Mike about his design being so good. that they were copied by the most. well-known hacker of all time Kevin mnik. also known as Condor so I got to hear. about this man oh okay what is this the. OMG cable uh predecessor right so I had. been doing lots. of designs of malicious cables right and. I had some really early proof of concept. just to just to show it's possible no.

wireless connection really tiny payload. capability you know if he doesn't maybe. 100 keystrokes right really limits what. you can do it's really slow I mean we're. not we're not hitting a thousand. keystroke uh per second thing or maybe. maybe a dozen really slow right but it's. like it it worked right can't remotely. update it can't do anything but it. worked I want to show the world because. you know hacker you want to share the. information stuff and work with other. people I I didn't see it as like a. product it was just more like project.

more like art like hey cool look at this. thing and yeah he he reached out wanted. to uh kind of collaborate and you know. have me you know build one for him and I. started on that process but uh we didn't. I I didn't have enough time to complete. it with his his work constraints as well. because he didn't have time and stuff. and eventually what happened I I didn't. know about it but he went to uh someone. else and said make this for me and um no. [ __ ] yeah it was it was not I didn't. know about it until it came out and the.

thing is it it it wasn't very good and I. was just like dude first of all it is. not very good this sucks I wish like you. know making this a proper product but. also it was like Hey if you you know had. the resources like [ __ ] I couldn't. use that um because I was just doing. this on the side right but we have um. you know solved things since then you. know I think there's certain levels of. communication and misunderstanding so I. don't want to be like ah he's he's the. worst but you know uh Lessons Learned as.

well of like you know if if it's. something you can turn into a product. maybe um wait until it's ready you know. things like that um which is exactly. what I did with the OMG cable right that. that that's where it's like thousands of. times better I mean is uh enraging as. I'm sure that was it's also pretty. flattering that uh you know the is he. really like the world's most renowned. hacker I mean well so rip he's no longer. around oh really yeah exactly but uh.

yeah the the way he would be introduced. um I like I but it was always the. world's most famous hacker is the uh the. tagl that was used what made him so. famous uh so well he uh God I need to. refresher on this but basically he had. uh gotten the attention of the FBI and. they were hunting him down uh for. getting into various places a lot of. social engineering tricks and stuff like. that and uh kind of a cat and mouse game.

there's a movie called takedown right so. good movie check it out um but he uh you. know went to prison then and was pretty. unfairly treated there was a whole free. Kevin movement where you know they were. doing I think they put him in like. solitary or something because they. thought he could like whistle into the. phones and like launch icbms or some. [ __ ] like that oh. my this is like back back when every's. like oh my God hackers just evil Wizards. still like that today but it was much.

worse back then they they had no idea. what was even possible um so yeah I like. he was hell for much longer I don't. think yeah I I I don't want to misspeak. here CU I don't remember particulars but. he uh was held for a very long time. pretty unfairly eventually got out and. uh then went into infos as like a. profession uh using that and then tried. to uh take your own GK.

I mean I I guess I guess he he knew knew. it looked good so hey he's good at that. hey you got the the world's most. renowned hacker taking uh you. know your stuff that's uh that's pretty. cool and you know sounds like everything. worked out today so oh yeah definitely. he and just for the record he got a he. got a pretty unfair shake at uh life he. ended up I think he got pancreatic. cancer and he died before his first kid. was born which is just [ __ ] terrible. so yeah I've uh I've since met up uh.

with with his wife and you cleared the. air so good we're good good for you man. well let's get to you so you know like I. said I want to do a life story we got to. get into the OMG cable stuff and all the. other stuff that you're designing some. red team stuff but actually actually in. your in your bio I know what red team. operations are red cell operations but. uh could you explain that to the. audience yeah definitely so there's a. lot of it it depends where we're talking. talk about red teaming cuz there's.

military red teaming which I would love. uh for you to give me a couple stories. on cuz I mean I'm sitting in a room with. a guy who probably knows that really. well way more than me so it would be a. little ridiculous for me to explain that. to you um but red teaming in terms of. like corporate cyber security is a. subset of pen testing pen testing is. find the holes tell us the holes right I. mean that's cool but it doesn't quite. test. how someone responds I think there's.

this like um I think it's a Mike Tyson. quote where everybody has a plan till. they get punched in the face right it's. like okay well it's maybe a little. aggressive in context of cyber security. but uh you know how do you solve that. like in boxing you you train you get. punched in the face right and then well. okay now it's not going to be new when. it happens so you might have a plan but. are you going to execute on the plan are. you going to like Miss some steps is. motion going to get involved and also. you know I can find holes at different.

layers but red taming is going to be. repeating exactly the entire chain it's. often called a kill chain where it's. you're connecting all of these different. vulnerabilities to go from completely. outside to completely to the crown. jewels take them out and succeed and. then you show how you did it after the. fact how'd you get into. that good question so kind of almost. don't even know but over the course. course of just life.

and I started off as just help desk it. sisadmin where you learn a lot of things. and at the time I didn't think it was. very applicable but like those are all. the systems and the nuances and like. just the weird compromises you learn. like oh I don't have enough budget so. I'm going to do it this way or you learn. about the end users that you're. supporting this help desk and all the. problems they run into and oh they're. running into like policy that stops them. from working so oh they're going to do. this that's going to cause a degradation.

in security but it's really common you. know that having been in health desk. inist and so you start to connect these. things together and it it becomes this. really valuable just bucket of. information for oh how would I get into. the company using that and you know got. really into security for a while it's. just it's it's also a piece of that role. like you're going to run all the systems. for it you got to keep them secure too. especially in small companies where you. don't have dedicated security it's like.

no you you are the security so you had. to learn it that way which requires you. to think also how does an attacker do it. you got to defend against that right So. eventually uh I just kind of got bored. of doing it and made the jump into. security uh started learning uh actually. Bryce a good connection on this as well. so I had known. Bryce for a long time. and I think it was like 2013 first time.

I went to Defcon hacker security. conference biggest one uh in the world. in Vegas every year and I decided oh God. what was this so there's these. unrecorded talks they also do in certain. areas he was on stage I think he was. doing something with like Bitcoin at the. time and he had this like uh like. telepresence robot on stage for a guy. who was on house arrest like he couldn't. come so he brought a telepresence robot.

to be like Bryce's partner on the stage. and it was it was just wild watching. this so I'm in the audience I'm just. like oh yeah Bryce you know buy cracker. I don't like I'm GNA go see what he's. doing and then you know he gives the. talk and after it's done I'm like hey yo. what's up like never met you before but. uh from that point on we kind of you. know our relationship grew got to know. him a lot better but he also DJs as you. know and he was dejing for a guy called.

fuzzy knop who or sorry flip that around. fuzzy knop was DJing for him because he. also MC's and sing songs right so he. needs someone you know to play that so. fuzzy was DJing for him on a lot of his. shows so met him and well he is the one. who had built out a red team for a new. company it's not a new company new red. team for a company large company and he. ended up pulling me over in into that. team oh cool yeah I love that guy man.

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that's ziprecruiter.com. SRS ZipRecruiter the smartest way to. hire well let's um took a little. Sidetrack there but let's let's get to. you and uh let's get to your I'll let. you get there. eventually where'd you grow up all right. so I grew up in. Wisconsin yeah brothers sisters yeah I. got a younger sister four years you guys. tight yeah we don't keep in touch as. much both like super busy but uh we we.

could definitely be a lot lot closer is. she a hacker too no she uh culinary. culinary yeah picked that up for my dad. as well so my dad um yeah so uh he was. in the Navy as a Corman for a while I it. was like four years submarine stuff um. but medicine both my parents in in in. medicine we're in medicine and uh they. did a lot of DIY stuff so they built. their house from the ground ground up. designed it from the ground up so I was.

in that that kind of raw materials. environment like the house never. actually fully got completed which is. actually kind of cool cuz there constant. like tools raw materials around growing. up I thought that was an amazing. experience uh dude I remember uh. shoveling out the uh the house because. it snowed before we got the roof on no. kidding yeah that was pretty cool I was. I was pretty young at that time but it. was still like you know impacting like. oh look you just you can just do stuff. right like that wasn't their profession.

but they just picked it up learned it. how to design it built nearly everything. I think they didn't do was that the. masonry for the basement cuz yeah um the. trusses and then they were rushed with. the weather to get the drywall up so. they paid for for that um everything. else they did by hand um wow wow pretty. cool so but yeah culinary right that's. for going back there um. yeah he's really into he he was really.

into just cooking and uh really really. good at it I uh both my parents uh were. doing um barbecue competitions for a. while as well they. just yeah just get into it and go and uh. I think that was a pretty good learning. experience and obviously that had an. impact on my sister um who got in a. culinary as well and just did some did. some great uh great stuff there I I. didn't pick that scale up so what what.

were you into as a kid oh god. [Music]. um definitely Electronics type stuff so. just depends on the stage um video games. first lots of video games what video. games what platform I guess it temp as. over time so there was the console stuff. like Nintendo uh Etc so let's go let's. go all the way back so Atari uh and this. is kind of like the first Hardware hack. actually my dad uh so if you remember. the Atari joysticks it's it's a joystick.

and a single button right that's that's. the whole controller um and we were. playing the game tank right you just. move around like you're in a tank and. you fire at stuff right uh my dad took. some uh speaker. wire a tongue depressor medicine right. and a random button probably from Radio. Shack and just taped it to a stick to. the tongue depressor ran the wires off. and soldered it to the controller so. that I could have access to my own.

little like button when I I don't it was. like four or something um so I could. fire the tank well he steered it around. right um I thought that was pretty cool. and it kind of stuck with me right like. you you just modify stuff like hack and. stuff so um very simple but you know. that was first video game first Hardware. hack right that was kind of exposed to. and yeah spent lots of time on like. Nintendo Super Nintendo and then I got. into Quake Quake was extr extremely. impactful for me that's where I went.

from you know consoles to the computer. in the house that we had you used it for. like encyclopedia like you can chat with. people online cool but it's more just a. tool right then Quake you got to start. learning things back when Quake came out. and this late 90s right you had to learn. like how dial up work how to connect to. other people so you could do multiplayer. like that wasn't just like a button or. two it's you got to learn stuff and even. running Quake it's like oh you you just. don't launch it you know reboot the. computer in DOS mode and stuff like that.

so you're learning how a computer works. but that also kind of that's where we. get into hacking as well that's that's. kind of like the inflection point lot of. things also you know Nish Nails was. built in that game they did all the. sound effects. and uh you can see the N Nails logo on. the the crates of nails as well if you. look in there um but yeah that was also. kind of uh impactful for me with the. stylistic stuff and the art damn so you. started the hacking stuff at like. how old were.

you was the same age that was that was. high school Atari was high school no. Atari oh God I don't I don't even know. when that. was uh yeah I mean just really was it. like five or six yeah I don't I don't. even know 80s it was 80s like but yeah. Quake was high school right on right on. so. what well let's fill in the gaps were. you into anything other than Electronics. or was it always just electronics and I.

shouldn't say just was it always. Electronics I mean there it's all. connected in some way like I was in a. cars as well like you know part of it. was just like making the car continue to. run uh but also you know like let's. let's add sound systems to the cars and. learn how that works which is you know. Electronics in some way um also got into. water cooling the computer to overclock. it but that required learning like water. cooling what do mean water these days. you can just buy a kit and install it.

right uh but most computers are air. cooled you got a little fan in there. blowing out the heat right um if you. overclock a computer you can get a lot. more power out of it especially back in. you know '90s early 2000s uh but it. would dump a lot of Heat lots more heat. and air cooling couldn't keep up with. that so what you do you take little uh. water blocks basically like a little. piece of copper strap it to the. processor uh the video card and run. water loop through it kind of like.

a h i don't know how to better explain. that but uh it's like a little maze that. the uh water would take through through. the channels on this block and it would. pull the heat out and you would dump it. and at the time uh God it was a Chevy. chevel heater core that was just like. the perfect size you can use that as a. radiator with a larger fan on it so. instead of using the small fans that. you'd find on like laptops or even. desktops that you know maybe it's like. that big you just fan that big and it.

keeps it quieter while dumping heat and. you can just run these things really hot. and yeah I I had to learn how to make. those things right so you know you get a. pond pump from like a fish store you get. the chevel heater core get all the. tubing wire together but I had to Mill. out or I didn't Mill it I drilled it I. use a drill press cuz I could could not. afford access to that I it was like a. $100 drill press at the time you just do. like cross drilling through all. different directions plug it up and get. this cool spiral pattern where the uh.

water would go through it and uh pull. heat out of all your devices and you got. to learn about things like corrosion. like you got copper and brass and. aluminum and like you know these things. are going to start to corrode so you. learn you know the chemistry behind how. to prevent that from happening because. you don't want corrosion because then. your computer's going to have water all. over it when it leaks for example right. so wow so you you're like a jack of all. trades. you like taking stuff apart putting it.

back together figuring out how it works. how to fix things at a very young age. and it just. exploded what you're doing now how'd you. get into. hacking uh so I'm going to put that on. quake as well so you you're playing. online games right and you learn you can. do like interesting things you start. controlling things in weird ways and it. kind of escalates you're like wait a. second there at the time there was no. what we call like client side security.

or client side like Integrity checking. like the game files I had on my machine. were unique to me like you would. download them from you know the author. at this time we were actually installing. it from CD drives um and you just you. know expected to not mess with that but. nobody stopping you you go and mess with. the uh the player models for instance. and you can like add a really large. cross that goes like 10 feet above Below. in all sides to this this person right. so you can see them running around a.

corner because you know this this post. is sticking out them and you see them. coming from the corner they don't know. that but you know was a good good. approach or a lot of dark spaces right. can't really see people in the dark. you're like cool I'm going to add a. fluorescent color to their skin and. there they are they're glowing in the. dark right uh see through walls right. like you got these uh textures that. would go on the walls and you know. they're opaque but they don't have to be. you just set them to transparent and. sudden you're seeing through the walls. and you know that typee of stuff was I.

had more fun like figuring out how to do. it than actually doing it uh but that. kind of just opened the door of. like there's rules and there's. expectations but there's also not many. people checking like best way to kind of. God I I don't want to get like philosop. get get into philosophy here but there's. this kind of beautiful uh I think it's. Jack bronier who defines like police. politics right as like you got you got a.

road right and it's painted there lines. and everybody just obeys those right and. he connects that back with politics of. like oh you're told to vote and do all. these things it's like okay but like. what if if you don't follow the paint on. the road what if you go off the road. what if you get really close to the edge. and most people are they see those lines. they're going get right in the center of. the road because it's what you're. supposed to do it's like what happens if. you don't that's that's interesting to. me that's where weird things start to.

show up like unintended designs. unintended powers and. capabilities just unended failures. unexpected failures um it's it's really. fascinating to play with that play on. the edges see how close you can get and. I guess now that you make me kind of say. this uh that's probably a good. descriptor for how I think about a lot. of things like art everything across the. board is find find find the boundaries. and what happens if you go on either. side of it interesting interesting did.

were you uh did you get involved in any. of these like hacking type communities. oh yeah. so yeah so like early late late 90s more. more early 2000s there's a lot of online. communities some are big um I mean I. think the the really big ones you would. know of uh that most people would know. of rather like forchan and like. something awful right big places that. had like the bigger names at the time. but there were also much smaller like.

specific topics water cooling right. there was a water cooling there was a. bunch of them but you know there would. be water cooling communities where. people just share their techniques and. stuff uh so they could all just improve. upon it and uh yeah there were also you. know hacking themed ones so Bryce and. digital gangster was one of those uh he. was that that is one of the several. communities I I have you know known him. from and yeah there's this was also at a.

time where online space and meet space. uh were very separate right like uh like. online dating for instance that was like. what uh now it's like that's all the. kids do these days um it's really weird. uh but I met my wife from one of those. online communities. um but eventually those those worlds. start to blend together when you spend. more time in there and you're spending. most of your time in there and just.

talking to these people eventually I. mean it depends on the community maybe. not so much like digital gangster where. it's like just raw crime happening is. maybe not the best best idea to meet up. uh for many reasons but you know certain. lesser criminal communities uh yeah meet. up with people and those worlds start to. blur together and uh it's a little bit. different than the you know 2024 is. where it's just everything is just. together now yeah how'd you meet your.

wife yeah I mean so uh we posted on some. of one of the the communities out there. I think it was like from Hardware. overclocking I yeah I can't remember. exactly what it was but uh. we I moved out to. California uh that that's its own story. we can go into but when I moved out I. think it was like the first week just. like hey anybody in this community like. around want to hang out show me around. town and she was one of people it was. like yeah and yeah I just kind of Grew.

From There is she a hacker too uh not a. hacker per se uh gamer photography art. uh cool yeah how long he hasn't been. married sorry to put you on the spot. with that one what year is it anywhere. um I think 10 14. years 2009 15 years 2009 14 yeah so uh. almost 15. 15 years yeah it's crazy yeah I had.

known her since 2004 so what's the what. do you think the secret to a successful. marriage is H oh my God bet you weren't. expecting that one no I was not. expecting that one I'm GNA have to think. about that one man um I don't know man. just. um guess I can connect this back with. everything is just kind of understanding. uh I mean humans are a mystery to me but. at the same time there's so much. complexity and it.

creates it's like. a everybody's different like everybody. wants to put everybody into a bucket. like there's there's the US and there's. the other but like dude humans are messy. and complicated and unique and. understanding that helps a lot with. everything whether it's being in a. marriage or attacking somebody to get. into a company it's like yeah same thing. right like understanding but you know. very different motives and goals behind. that one is just truly understanding the.

person and and working with them and you. know the other is kind of the inverse of. that right on right on let's talk about. you know some of the stuff that you did. did you what are some of the big hacks. were you involved in any big hacks uh. not not like Hands-On keep I I'd like to. watch those um I so for most most of my. time like any of the hacking stuff that. was.

me I kind of viewed it as like. entertainment like it wasn't like power. money or anything like that for me it's. just like just have some fun right um. yeah you can mess around like I would do. stuff on like some of the communities as. well like I knew the people who would. run the server so you you can mess. around in there and like what kind of. stuff I mean okay for for instance. um This I Gotta remember all the. complexities here but. uh.

they this community was like very. liberal with like temporary bands and. stuff like that so you know I got myself. banned and I'm like get around that. right and then they could not get me. banned in this in this environment cuz. they had some add-ons that they were. using for this this V bulletin uh I. think it was V bu might have been PHP. BBB um. phpbb uh anyway one of the large. platforms at the time just had a lot of. plugins that just gave me raw right.

access to the database effectively and. you know I could post through that and. you know they they had a lot of fun. chasing me down in that situation I'm. just like how are you still here so very. you know lider lighthearted in that um. instance you know they were they were. more interested in how it was done than. like oh you're you're breaking into my. stuff. so. yeah right on bri well let's move. into.

we I don't know you know a whole lot. about hacking so yeah yeah you know I I. would love for you to expound on you. know how you got into it or not how you. got into it but but some of the things. that you just found fascinating that. that that kept you going all the way up. until building your own Hardware yeah. definitely and actually you know going. back into the uh the youth for a little. bit uh something probably important I. had a phase where I was really into. magic right slight ah and deception that. type of stuff I think that was Middle.

School right actually got my first taste. of uh Authority not being super ideal. for me uh brought in a fake cigarette to. Middle School right and it's the the. peak of the dare dare situation right uh. looked perfect looked like it was. actively lit and you blow on it like you. know tal I think powder came out but it. looked like smoke uh that got. confiscated we got friend and I got. pulled down to the principal's office. um I don't know I think I got suspended.

for not taking the situation seriously. enough like how you can take this. seriously like it's fake cigarette but I. think my friend pointed out oh yeah. that's right they brought on the the. cops to test it because some of the T. powder came out and they're like that. might be cocaine and uh my my friend. made probably an unhelpful comment of. like that's not even how you would smoke. cocaine but uh yeah um anyway. slight a hand you know that gets into.

like deception and the human aspect. which is often forgotten a lot in in. hacking people are like oh yeah it's. just knowing computers really well. definitely huge piece but. like it's people as well that have to be. kind of like manipulated you got to. understand them you got to convince them. to do things which is the most common. way of getting into so many systems you. say hey like I'm from your it Department. let me in and you got to know how to. make that sound legit and you know if. somebody's like H I don't know and like.

okay let's use some urgency to like make. them kind of panic a little bit where. their decision- making goes down and. they're panicking and they're like oh I. just got to do the thing or you know I. might get fired this bad thing is going. to happen or you know there's there's so. many different like psychological. triggers that come into play and create. this misdirection interesting and you're. like oh it's it's it's like slight a. hand for you know psychology right so. you you push people into different. directions and you get them to you know. reveal their password or run an.

application on their computer that just. gives you access to everything and that. overlaps with the technical and the. hardware and all these other things and. just I guess being a generalist now that. you make me think about it it just. allows you to kind of glue all of those. things together and I guess yeah uh at. the time before I officially got into. like paid security I was thought that. was a weakness like oh I've never. specialized in. anything I just I couldn't possibly keep.

up with people who did specialize and I. mean that is true there's like every. person I work with that specializes they. go so far into just absolute Wizardry. that amazes me and I could never keep up. and because I just cannot sit down and. focus and be like I'm going to do this. thing and that's all I'm going to do. like I get 80% of there and I want to go. play with another thing but yeah yeah it. worked out it's great for the ENT. entrepreneur type perspective as well we. going to jugle all the things keeps you.

busy right yeah yeah well Mike let's. take a quick break and when we come back. I want to get into some of the hardware. that uh that that you've made and yeah. absolutely and and how that happened and. who's using it what governments all that. kind of good stuff see what I can. say going online unprotected is like. leaving your door unlocked when you. leave the house maybe you trust some of. your neighbors but what about random. strangers do you trust all of them too.

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checkout that's roka.com with code. SRS all right Mike we're back from the. break I missed a couple of things in our. outline here so I'm going to have you. pick it up with uh we going to start. with 2600 whatever the hell that means. oh yeah yeah. so all the the security stuff I was. doing um. know the times I was you know doing help.

desk and stuff like that security for. the most part anything security. connected was a hobby so you know even. even the overclocking and water cooling. that was hobby too but yeah 2600 is a. you know kind of a hacker Zine I think. they're quarterly um just lots of people. writing in to show you know tricks. they've done whether it's with payones. you know freaking phone freaking wait so. what is 2600 it's a a hacker Zine. basically you can you can go magazine. yeah like a little magazine you can you. can go to like Barnes & Noles and get it.

um okay so yeah wait so what is it is it. a book uh just uh I think it's quarterly. where they will just publish a new set. of like little like kind of Articles. written by different people that talk. about how to hack something how they. hack something uh just cheats on systems. uh just sometimes politics just you know. hacker minded stuff right gotcha it's. pretty cool but uh that was also when I. first got into that you know phone. freaking and stuff was more popular then.

as well what is that yeah so that's. that's hacking with phones basically so. this goes back way way long ago. um God uh I think the guy's name was Joy. bubbles actually de guy or sorry not. deaf that wouldn't make any sense blind. um and. he noticed that there were like tones on. a phone when you know connecting to. overseas and stuff like this is way back. when you know you just you you had to. pay long and stuff like that right calls. cost a lot of money but he noticed they.

made like certain tones and stuff so he. he had Perfect Pitch and he would just. whistle them back and you notice like. the phone network would do stuff when. you did that so yeah this is what we. call inband signaling when you can hear. the signal the other end you know there. there's the like the switch panel of the. phone networks hear these tones and it's. like you know when you you push uh. numbers on the keypad and they make a. tone right you do a certain sequence and. it's like oh it hears that there's other. tones that the keypad doesn't make that.

tell it to do other things it's where. the 2600 comes from actually 2600 Hertz. uh I can't remember what that does um at. the moment but it it would allow certain. uh administrative type functions and. it's like routing around like oh you. paid and now you can route long distance. or something like that right but no [ __ ]. so hold on hold on so the so it actually. has nothing to do with the keys that. you're pushing it it has to do with the. tone that they're programmed to make. yeah I mean at least at the time things.

have changed since then but yeah it was. just the tones you could literally. whistle those tones or hum them or. whatever so blue boxing was the other. thing it's called Uh there's there's. many boxes many colors but blue boxing. just replicated that you could literally. quickly dial a number or whatever you. want to do do the administrative codes. play it right into the mouthpiece and. you would dial and do all these things. um holy [ __ ] I have no idea believe it. or not that's how Apple started um. W and Jobs made some of their first.

money selling blue boxes and what is a. blue box so it's it's the device that. would allow you to more or less get free. phone calls in the age of you know. having to pay for long distance and. stuff like go to a pay phone just pull. out your blue box hold it up to the uh. mouthpiece press some buttons make it do. what you want call whoever you want um. it it was illegal at the time I oh what. was the there was a magazine got into by. a guy named Captain Crunch at the time.

he got that name because there is a. whistle inside of the Captain Crunch. cereal that just happened to make that. 2600 tone when you blow it so he didn't. have per perfect pitch like Joy bubbles. did but he had the whistle so just blow. blow that into the phone then you uh. open up certain axis with Cracker Jack. not crackerjack but cap and crunch uh. style toe. uh which is really cool but yeah you can.

electronically reproduce those sounds. and that's what they were doing with the. the blue box there was like red boxes. and rainbow box there was so many. different boxes that would do different. things that people would figure out and. they would share that with each other. and yeah it was technically criminal but. a lot of people did it at the time and. yeah uh was and jobs so took that money. and started apple with it so no kidding. it's pretty cool I had no idea very cool. and W was I I would love to meet that. guy one time but he's a great example of.

like the the old school hacker that was. way more about like mischief and just. figuring out how things work um and not. necessarily anything criminal so. interesting great great example. interesting so you were working at this. at this magazine yeah no so I wasn't. working there I was just enjoying it and. there were uh a lot of lot of. mun different cities would have like. meetups like hey 2600 meet up and you go. and you know meet people that are into. that stuff and really tiny where I was.

from so it didn't really go anywhere but. that that was cool it would get you into. just more like hey here's other ways of. hacking that you didn't know about and. just gets you to think like wait if I. can do that if they did that what what. else can you do like let's let's play. like it's just it's all about. exploration experimentation like what. was a frontier too like there's just. unexplored space like what what else can. you do and. um yeah I mean outside of 2600 there's.

like there's all the tools that people. knew of the early online days like sub. seven or netbus what's that kind of kind. of like a a software Trojan more or less. basically you get somebody to run in or. you run it on their computer and it. gives you remote access right you can. fully control those machines over the. internet right um open up their uh the. CD trays close it up just do all kinds. of wonky stuff could be for pranks or it. could be criminal um God okay.

there reminds me of one of the ways we. used it so again we I was way more about. just pranking and having fun um my. friend uh in high school her name was. Heather uh she was really into. like. just spiritual stuff and like you know. she thought like Spirits were in her. house and stuff like that she it was a. face right um but uh friend and I had.

that running on our computer and you. could play noises the middle of the. night and [ __ ] and just like it was. terrible it was so bad you know the CD. drives would open just like you know it. it it she was terrified at the time but. later on thought it was funny um but. yeah for an example right like you you. can just have fun you can play with. people you don't you don't have to. actually straight up do crime um crime. crime does occasionally pay though so. some people would get into that. how would they use it um for criminal. yeah.

um God this goes way back we're I mean. we're talking like 20 over 25 years ago. so I'm not 100% remembering this but it. would have been you can do like file. system modifications stuff like that so. you can get access to cookies uh you. know that'll contain like login. information you just you know get into. people's accounts send male as them and. like so you know spamming was a huge.

thing back then uh I mean this that's. where Bryce has gotten a lot of uh. reputation from from those early days. spamming um my my friend at the time uh. paid for his first computer by spamming. for a porn company actually which is. funny because he's uh cashing a check. sizable check for a porn company and. he's like I don't know he was probably. like 14 or something at the time getting. like weird eyes from the bank. um so yeah that happened but.

[Music]. um what else yeah I mean did you ever do. any did you ever do anything illegal. that's pass the statute of. limitations you can share so common. misunderstanding about the statute of. limitations is it's not just about the. time in which has passed since you. committed the crime depends on the crime. but many times the clock starts from. Discovery interesting common Miss Mis. Mis. misconception uh that is good for a lot.

of hackers to. realize but um I mean I'm sure so the. cfaa Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. literally any access to any electronic. interface that is not explicitly allowed. that's a federal crime so literally what. I describe you know getting on my. friend's computer hey that that's FAL. crime even though they're cool with it. and all this stuff. yeah gotcha so literally any of those. things can be heavily punished gotcha so.

yeah it's tricky. but well let's get into your first job. yeah so first job. it um again like security was not really. a huge thing uh for the most part uh all. that was side stuff but you know you. still have to be conscious of you know. secure design uh my coworker uh was of. my mentor at the time he he was ex DOD.

ex uh. Navy uh had had a lot of fun stories but. uh also got me more into security we. actually did our first security. presentation for uh the company kind of. using some Classics here so the movie. sneakers a lot of amazing movie still. holds up today if you haven't seen it go. watch sneakers it's awesome um but they. did a lot of like physical security. stuff like you know if the doors got the. hinges on the inside you can kick it. open it's on the outside you know then.

you to do something different but um. what else there's like the social. engineering aspect where they wanted to. get through like a front lobby attendant. who had to like buzz them in so they had. someone else come in with. like I think it was like a delivery like. just creating a lot of stress so one. guy's like yo I got this delivery other. guy's like hey I got my cake in my. balloons can you just ring me up and it. just goes and escalates until he's like. ah just pushes the button gets in right. of course you know he didn't have a cake. or anything like that the balloons were.

to cover the camera and the cake was I. think it was like a briefcase of some. Hardware that he had to like infiltrate. into the company that would go attack. things right great demo we use that like. hey here's some physical security things. get you get you to think about it and uh. Catch Me If You Can another thing where. it's uh you know social engineering was. used and believe it or not that uh movie. based on Frank abigil most of the stuff. he said is actually made up it was like. the con on the con um but anyway uh yeah.

that was kind of a a classic thing that. still a lot of security presentations. today will still use those anyway uh. long story short kind of got me into the. idea of educating on security instead of. just playing and having fun and just the. entertainment Val he like oh you got to. actually teach people like you know. there's a responsibility here like teach. people how to not uh fall VI victim also. did some like Live password cracking. like back in the day people were using.

real terrible uh passwords so just. adding some extra characters and stuff. we were able to you know do uh password. password cracking just in the middle of. this this presentation of like hey this. password you can get in 15 seconds this. one's going to take us 10 hours in. reality how do you begin to crack a. password uh basically I mean there's a. lot of different ways the way we were. doing it was just brute forcing being. able to have uh the ability to retry. like word set like common password sets. you can just get those there's there's a.

lot of uh pass password lists what we. call them that will uh when you're going. to brute force and you just want to try. them well like hey we know these are the. common passwords we know these are. passwords from leaked breaches just. shove them all together good chance. somebody's reusing that somewhere um. good approach there's cryptography and. stuff but do you use the password. manager oh yeah definitely highly. recommended which one uh one password's. pretty good um there's there's different. ones depending on what you need is. keeper any good I haven't looked too. heavily into that one um I know I know.

somebody who's very into like that that. space that speaks fairly highly of one. password but it's been a while so I. wouldn't want to be like yeah this is. this is the one because that space is. always changing but um what constitutes. a good. password one that you don't know so. password manager exactly so if you don't. know your password it should be unique. per site and just long long as hell uh. and that means you're you're going to. have to use your password manager to.

autofill that or you know copy what. however you're going to do it you're. going to need the password manager to. feed that back and log into the site um. that combined with proper two Factor. going to secure so much uh when it comes. to you being compromised by social. engineering and fishing okay that's good. to. know y let's move on yeah yeah so uh. um yeah after that.

job I was kind of bored of. Wisconsin and my friend at the time the. the one who uh made the money uh. spamming he uh moved out to San. Francisco a year. earlier and worked for a company called. long now they're the ones doing the. 10,000 year clock that a lot of people. are associated with I think Bezos is on. there but uh steuart brand hold on. what's the 10,000 your clock yeah so. it's this idea. I don't I don't think they've built it. yet but uh still working on it but the.

idea is that they're they're going to. put a clock like an analog clock in a. mountain that stays accurate for 10,000. years it's it's get it's really to get. people to think really long. term. um and what do you mean just like who's. really yeah it it's hard for people to. think more like like even like one. election out of consequences right like. four years 10 years maybe I think as far. as your kid kids okay cool well how. about a thousand years how about 10,000.

years like that just changes how you. think about the future and what you do. what matters what doesn't and it's it's. it's kind of it's almost like a a. thinking prompt for people it's like. Nobody Does it Like start doing it uh. this was also I think it was formed. shortly after the Y2K bug which was. hilarious because you know computers. started a lot of the systems at the time. were kind of birthed in the70s. and you know they had two digits for the. year right like the last two so you know.

78 79 you know eventually what happens. when you get to 99 it rolls over to0 is. that 1900 is that 2000 oh nor neither. did the computers right but people were. only thinking you know a couple decades. that's enough somebody's going to. rewrite my software no it's not no we're. still using that software today so. that's where the Y2K bug came from and. it's like cool you needed to at least. think you know thousand year scale so. you can have four digits of space for. your ear that was that was the entire. Y2K bug but I believe the that was kind.

of around the same time that okay. thousand years what about 10,000 is. probably where that came from so hold on. they want to make a clock yeah that's. accurate for 10,000 years and put it put. it in a mountain yes basically the. mountain I think is to keep it safe um. they have to like keeping time for that. period of time like you can't use use. any other timekeeping system like you. know the atomic clocks and stuff like.

that aren't accurate over that time span. so you have to account for uh like orbit. variation shift in the poles of the. earth and all of these other things like. they have a whole cam system that. readjusts the calibration of where that. clock will be in X years over that span. it's it's absolutely crazy to like. engineer with that in mind it's like no. you don't nobody thinks about like orbit. variance over time of the Earth or the.

polls. shifting for the clocks they use like. it's just not a factor but what if what. if you had to I think it's really cool. but interesting yeah so yeah my buddy. got a job just doing sis for them and. web development and it's like hey if you. want like a few weeks on my couch go for. it I'm like you know. what I'm going to take you up on that. I'm going to use that to just move out. there I had no plan I just like I. brought three no plan I'm just like I'm.

just going to do it and figure it out. um which I guess is a very red team. approach too it's like you you you can't. plan anything you're just gonna move and. figure out what's in your bag of tricks. as you go um and work around the. problems but yeah I'm like I'm going to. bring three suitcases uh I prioritized. one of them uh was like my gaming system. like I a whole suitcase was dedicated to. just a a computer like I don't know what. I was think thinking but uh yeah that. was uh 30% of my uh luggage when I moved.

out uh stayed out his catch for a bit. got some random odd jobs doing like. audio QA testing and stuff like that. just to make it and uh eventually got. into the game industry doing said man it. help desk stuff um it just kind of grew. from there and you I stayed there for. like I don't know 15 years in the game. industry but on the side being in San. Francisco gave me a lot of unique. perspectives so first of. all Stuart brand is kind of the guy that.

was running this show over at long now. Stuart brand is one of the original. people on like the hippie bus with like. Timothy ly and all this other stuff. right they're doing running going around. the country doing the acid tests and. stuff like that but lots of just. Divergent thinking coming from that and. that was interesting just to kind of see. like I didn't get that in Wisconsin um. this Al kind of where like you know the. PC Revolution came from that type.

of people right we're just diversion. thinking what can we do what Mischief. can be made all all this this stuff uh. the maker space uh maker fair was out. there as well so this is just this is. more like Hands-On Hardware hacking not. like security hacking just like hobbyist. hacking like 3D printers let's just. build some stuff the kind of stuff you'd. find at like burning man right like the. art where you start mixing all these. things together that um opened my eyes.

to just like different different uh. focuses and Aesthetics there's. um really good point to kind of De. deviate here uh something called beam. Bots actually I'm going to pull up this. laptop here to show you a picture. because it makes way more sense when you. see it Bean bot yes you're like what um. so Bean bot bam M uh biology Electronics.

Aesthetics mechanics it's just a kind of. a design philosophy around building. little robots. so I just kind of had to show it because. I don't know you're probably picking up. a bit of an insect vibe from this I. would assume right so it does a couple. things first of all there's no PCB on. here it's just free form soldering and. all of these components there's nothing. extra for the Aesthetics it's it's all. functional so on the back you got a. solar panel soaking up energy this like.

thorax here that's that's holding the. charge from it and then these this is. really cool uh these are LEDs but LEDs. when you shine light on them they. actually emit a little bit of energy on. the lines like a reverse solar panel. right they're they're inefficient solar. panel but you can literally use them as. eyes for this so depending on what. direction it's facing it's going to one. one eye is going to see more light than. the other that's where the light source.

is coming from and there's a really tiny. brain in the middle it's literally four. logic gates um which is Tiny like your. your phone has millions of logic gates. in it right like a calculator uh my. cable has hundreds of thousands of logic. gates this thing it's got four okay what. is a logic call a log logic gate so. basically all all Computing comes down. to. the concept of uh binary on or off like. think of it like a light switch right.

it's on or off um you can do math with. that let's go through it real quick. actually like we got uh three light. switches right. yeah got to think which direction we're. going here so uh we got one on two off. that that can give us a one turn them. all off that's a zero right easy now we. put two in the picture you turn two on. you basically double double the last one.

so if two are on that's going to be uh. three basically uh the first switch is. the value of one or zero the next one is. two or zero and then the next one will. be four or zero next one is eight or. zero that's binary math right okay and. all decision making can kind of be based. on this so in this sense it's very. analog but basically this will. eventually fill. up and have enough energy charged that.

these four logic gates are suddenly. making a decision like this side's. filled which eye is sensing the. most light and at that point it's going. to fire the opposing leg with all the. energy it's gotten here to steer towards. that so you have this little bug looking. thing that walks right and it just. constantly Ste towards the light source. and to me I thought that was really cool.

cuz a focuses on Aesthetics which is not. super common and B it uses really cool. Hardware hacks like I said with the the. lights here that normally it's for. emitting light but no you can you. reverse that and use it in an unintended. way and you can use really minimal logic. to do what you want and you know I've. applied some of that to my cables as. well not this specifically just the. mindset of like you don't need 10 things. in this cable you can strip it down to.

one if you're really creative wow that's. how you that's how you shrink. things so um that's that's kind of where. that connects with you know like hey. let's fake let's focus on uh Aesthetics. but also. minimizing and just using things in. unintended ways to get more out of it um. so that that was. um kind of a a a good point in which it. kind of just opened my eyes to also you.

know soldering in electronics but also. the art of it and and all that so yeah. Bean Bots that was that was a good. pausing Point uh for my many hobbies. that I would pick up over time that. eventually led into what would become. the OMG. cable I know everybody out there has to. be just as frustrated as I am when it. comes to the BS and the rhetoric that. the mainstream media continuously tries. to force feed us and I also know how.

frustrating it can be to try to find. some type of a reliable news source it's. getting really hard to find the truth. and what's going on in the country and. in the world and so one thing we've done. here at Shan Ryan Show is we are. developing our. newsletter and the first contributor to. the newsletter that we have is a woman. former CIA targeter some of you may know. her as Sarah Adams call signed super bad. she's made two different appearances.

here on the Shawn Ryan Show and some of. the stuff that she has uncovered and. broke on this show is just. absolutely. mindblowing and so I've asked her if she. would contribute to the newsletter and. give us a weekly intelligence brief so. it's going to be all things terrorists. how terrorists are coming up through the. southern border how they're entering the. country how they're traveling what these. different terrorist organizations. throughout the world are up to and.

here's the best part the newsletter is. actually free we're not going to spam. you it's about one newsletter a week. maybe two if we release two shows the. only other thing that's going to be in. there besides the Intel brief is if we. have a new product or something like. that. but like I said it's a free CIA. intelligence brief sign up links in the. description or in the comments we'll see. you in the.

newsletter let's move into defense. distributed yeah so I think this is. about. 2013 um so First Defense distributed. it's the the company behind uh The. Liberator which is a 3D printed gun and. also the ghost Gunner which is a mill. desktop Mill that you can Mill out a. lower receiver uh AR-15 platforms was. like the first commonly you're the one. that did that I did not no um so I got.

very interested in that that was um that. was done by Cody Wilson he so let's. let's crack that whole whole Topic open. a little bit more so I think it was. 2013 there was a lot of uh. experimentation in like the 3D printing. space with like Firearms right uh. Cody introduced it to the world he he. basically inflicted this idea upon like. the public psyche in like this amazing. way that just caught my attention in in.

a couple ways. first it's this approach of like Hey. we're going to give this to the world in. a way that is irrevocable like going. back to that like the police politics. concept I was mentioning it's just like. okay what if you create. something like there's voting and. opinion having but you create something. to put in the world that nothing can. change that at that point I just thought. that was just amazing from like the. political standpoint regardless of what.

topic or what what opinion you may or. may not have on Firearms the politics of. it and the power of creation was amazing. to. me um and he did it with like a a level. of like art and bravado that was. just like perfect for the delivery of. this and uh so what fast so what you're. saying is is bring something to the. world that cannot be taken back like.

Bitcoin yeah great another great example. of like no opinion on that is going to. change its existence it exists and like. what if you're thinking about like real. politics and participating like creation. is one of the most powerful things you. can do um and that's what I kind of. learn from watching that but yeah I. decided like hey I want to know you know. more what they're doing um and I've I've. helped out with you know security and.

you know just computer stuff in general. used used what I had like hey can I help. uh to a lot of different places whether. it's like Nish Nails communities just to. get more insight of like how the. artistic process works there or in the. case of Cody uh just helping out with. the security of that just to kind of you. know see see how they work you know uh. bunch of anarchists getting together. building a company and just. just just the whole like fight that they. were in it was very fascinating to me.

just to observe that and uh that kind of. stuck with me both the creation the. power of creation and the artistic. approach they took to it uh that that. was one of the things I kind of had in. mind when I first created the the OMG. cable it's like hey at the time I. thought I was just going to open source. this thing and put it out there um that. ended up not making sense because it was. really hard to make you can't just DIY. it but um yeah it it uh it was one of.

the motivators in my head at the time. when I was first kind of putting it out. into the world so yeah one of the many. things is just like hey this is a. fixation I want to know more I just. going to focus on it for a while um so. yeah they're they're still doing their. thing um still so what did you do though. I just helped out with some security. stuff like I didn't security stuff uh. Network and it I mean every every. companies got to have that right so I'm. like hey you know you're probably a. small shop probably don't have the level.

of security you know understanding and. for your systems but I don't know maybe. I can help so it just helped out and it. allowed me to get more insight on how. they run things and. just just just more exposure to like how. how the artist works right because that. that uh allows me to just kind of figure. out. there's there's a lot of things I would. experiment with but I never found like. my medium right like as an artist right.

like I I've gotten into music you know. I'm not not that great with music you. know Visual Arts not that great with. that I mean 3D printing is everywhere. now yeah you know and so you were at the. Forefront of this you were on the I mean. I I so I wasn't doing anything besides. like the security for them it's just. just kind of uh even if I didn't do any. work for them just that just being a. small part of it yeah exactly but even. just seeing it happen would have been. enough for me MH uh. to kind of Kickstart some it's it's.

another how did that come across your. radar uh I mean it was everywhere at the. time it was like in wired and all these. other places of like 3D printed gun you. know firing like it's everyone can print. a gun now like regardless of laws um and. that's you know that that was kind of. the the um message going around in the. press it this is also kind of another. pivotal time. uh. when the NSA ant catalog so Snowden.

happened around the same time this is. often incorrectly misattributed to him. but there were a lot of leaks that. happened around that time both with and. without snow and that kind of opened my. eyes to the level of games and just. technology happening in Computing yeah I. mean I already knew a decent amount of. it but the ant catalog oh man that that. had it was just like. you know when you're growing up and. there's like the Spy tools in the back. of the magazine disappearing ink and all.

you know all those things this was like. that on crack dude it was like they they. had a malicious Cable in there uh this K. uh what was it it was leaked in. 2013 the catalog was dated 2008 and they. were announcing in 2009 they would have. these cotton mouth cables available for. you know purchase to their ecosystem of. you know whoever they sell to in in the.

NSA um the price on those I think it was. a minimum order quantity of 50 with a. $20,000 per cable price tag it's like. wow amazing but you know had all these. Electronics inside a radio inside and. that that was cool um and actually pull. this up again.

so uh cotton mouth that's this this is. the page out of the catalog where it. shows uh it's really chunky table like. really really thick Hood but they they. sandwich a whole bunch of different pcbs. inside of this thing and you know that's. stuck in my head. obviously um so what does that do they. weren't super specific about the exact. capabilities but you know it had a radio.

it had some ability to manipulate USB I. I mean I would based on all of my. reading in here it's the the latest. generation OMG cable is basically a dead. match to its. capabilities um from what can be. deciphered from this page so all the way. down to like covert exfiltration and. stuff like that what were they using it. for uh that's a good question. what's the thing what does sheet say um. it doesn't it just it just it's more of.

a capabilities thing like getting. through and breaking security. effectively so I I mean I would imagine. this gets implanted into spaces that are. higher security like you know if you. can't just walk in and do stuff or if. you can't do the easy things you're. going to start having to use these types. of tools to get into a place have. somebody plant a cable. and then you've got remote access they. they there were a lot of other tools in. this space.

um like implanted uh video cables that. you would implant on a monitor uh so you. could remotely read what's being. displayed on the monitor uh lots of cool. tricks like that some some were long. range some were short range but all. kinds of crazy spy gear that would allow. uh impressive capabilities that very few. people in the uh private civilian space. even considered defending against um.

interesting yeah so what is the ant. catalog yeah I forget the ex if there. was ever a mention of what ant stands. for but it was just this leaked catalog. with all of the different it was a. leaked catalog yeah somebody leaked it. it's a lot of people say it was from. Snowden but like if you actually trace. it back it wasn't uh it was never at. least attributed to Snowden um yeah that. just came out and uh you get to look at. the amazing spy gear that is out there.

what's some other stuff that caught your. eye um definitely those those video. cables I'm trying to remember all the. different things you can pull it up. actually but yeah you want to pull it up. right now I can pull it up on the. internet pull it up. sweet all right cool so yeah let's go. through uh just a few of the pages of. the an catalog I haven't done this in a. while so. Rusty but yeah so uh let's look at just. the hardware stuff we.

got let's see what is this this is a. short to medium range implant for uh RF. transceiver it was uh this is a. component that adds RF to one of the. other pieces they have in here which. they call a digital core to to provide a. complete implant so it's kind of like a. customizable build your own what kind of. implant do you need they put this into. various pieces of Hardware there's. actually I think is over here here's. kind of another implant they call this.

theve flux rabbit it's a hardware. implant designed specifically for Dell. power Edge servers like a specific one. uh hooks to uh it's called a JTAG. debugging interface basically a lot of. Hardware has like a debugging interface. if you get access to that electrically. you can do a whole bunch of stuff you. can implant things uh at a really low. level on that machine that gives you all. kinds of access right gives you lots of. data so if you got a de an implant that.

goes into there and hooks up to it you. got like permanent access uh similar to. the like I was describing with the USB. cable uh with that that covert. exfiltration mechanism um but this is. baked into the machine so I would. imagine the way this happens is during. mailing interdiction so you know Dell. ships the server over to the customer. customer right. and our government knows this is. happening they grab it in the mail crack.

it open put one of these inside close it. back up send it off to the intended. target and uh now they've got long-term. access inside there even if they wipe. everything like down to the hard drives. put new hard drives in you can still get. right back in they would have to crack. everything open and look at all the. hardware to find this type of stuff. really cool really cool types of hint. plants wow and there's no way to know. that. I mean there there are. ways yeah uh you got to know what you're. looking for basically do you worry about.

that stuff at all I. mean h it depends like I I me personally. know um I know the types of targets that. this is destined for and like you know I. I I'm not one of those targets what kind. of targets is that I mean well I mean. the the Israeli Patriot situation great. example of like. do I worry about my pager exploding like. I I'm not Hezbollah so no I'm not.

worried um just for example just to put. a very uh pointed. like answer to uh very current topic for. instance right now there are certainly. lots of gray area we've seen lots of. gray area where it's like wait you're. doing surveillance on US citizens and. like that generally isn't happening like. with Hardware implants and stuff like. that that's access to. Telos um just internet providers and.

yeah. that's I I operate very openly so it's. not you know I'm. I'm I'm a little less concerned but I. it's more of a political and. philosophical like you know when. nobody's got privacy it changes Society. in ways that aren't very good that's. where I'm more worried how often do you. think the US was using this on its own. citizens I mean this specifically like I. would suspect these types of things um.

well Hardware implants let's go with. Hardware I I don't know how often. Hardware implants would be used that. tends to be super targeted like and. Super Target also generally I would. assume I would hope means significant. more legislative kind of not legislative. legal oversight where you know you're. getting the warrants and all these other. things whereas these really WID net. things which Hardware is much harder to. make WID net WID Nets where you can. collect all the things because you've. got access to uh Telco phone uh internet.

type providers and you're just slurping. everything up yeah everybody would then. be pulled into that that's the kind of. stuff that Snowden showed right that's a. different story that's that's uh. everybody's get pulled into that one way. or the other uh type problems that. occur so are are do you have to worry. about people getting you know breaking. into your Network and just causing. problems in your life I don't that's a. that's a complicated topic like it's.

more privacy Invasion at that point and. it's like yeah what are we worrying. about are we worrying about our personal. safety our personal. freedoms uh society as a whole and the. health of it if they you know and a free. press like it's yeah it's it's a very. large complicated top do you think. China's putting this stuff into the. electronics that we're buying from them. um I mean not like in the sense of like. consumer levels I mean it it depends. right like could it be access from that.

far away if they wanted to anyone if. anybody wanted to do that yes but the. thing is doing it to just like off. the-shelf consumer stuff is a lot harder. to do in terms of Hardware implants if. you wanted to do it that way that's. where we get more into the software. level like software back doors which. we've seen in things like cryptography. right um you know it's posited that a. lot of uh cryptog cryptography backd. doors were put in by cooperation with.

like the NSA for an example I'm a little. rusty on this stuff but basically that. becomes very valuable when you're. slurping up all the internet data and a. lot of that's encrypted but if you know. how to quickly break the encryption well. now you can see the contents and that's. where that comes in and yeah. it's a lot of people say that they're. kind of hard Hardware is uh installed. into our power. grid.

um depends I would say well God uh I. have forgotten I think I think China. makes a lot of our like power. transceivers and stuff but make a ton of. it I honestly from what I've seen and. the people I talk to that work in all. this stuff I don't think physical. implants are quite needed like it's. things are just not secure remotely like. externally like if you don't want to. literally I think it was yesterday maybe.

I don't know it's something that news. that has come over the last few weeks. where our own government is saying. everyone I think it was actually to. their own uh government employees to use. signal use iMessage use encrypted chat. do not use text messages because China. has they're just in all of the Telco. system right now which means they would. be able to read the text messages right. they didn't need Hardware implants that. I know of to do this maybe they did that.

to get in but now they're in that system. right like there I've I mean. I've helped uh in environments that uh. foreign adversary had gotten into and it. took a bunch of time to evict them and. find where they are that was done all. remotely right like there's a lot of. this stuff doesn't require like the. James Bond type Hardware to get in and. interesting yeah that's that's a tricky. topic interesting do you worry about.

it I mean there's so many things to. worry about. though uh like yes kind. of. um there's once you've seen enough like. horror shows though you're like oh wow. everything's just broken. and Society is a whole it's amazing that. it operates just levels of trust like. one person. is all it takes with enough well-placed. like damage and whether it's security or.

just electrical power grid all all these. things there's all of it can just tip. over right with just enough of a push. and like everything's that way it's not. just. security. um yeah so I don't know I kind of just. lump it all together of like this is a. really good experiment for Humanity I. mean humans have been what on this. planet for some say 300,000 years right. like we're living in the best time. there's like I I don't think there's a. single person alive today who would be.

like yeah bringing me back at. random more than a hundred years. ago s me like that's that's that's not a. good uh the odds are not good right like. we're the most comfortable we've been. most well off on average across the. Earth in in this last 100 years and you. know it's a good experiment and things. are volatile I mean that's kind of the. consequence of Freedom too right like. it's the people got to got to maintain.

it what text messaging app do use do use. I like signal signal is great you know. there's a lot of rumors that the CIA. created signal I'm sure they did I mean. so the I think they help fund it. actually but they they help fund a lot. of things our govern in many ways but I. mean signal is an amazing tool if you're. an agent as well like you're going to be. overseas uh in hle environments and you. need to communicate how are you going to. do that securely are you going to use a. secure tool that SS out like a giant red.

flag because nobody else is using it. probably not the greatest thing it's. like hi I'm an agent I don't know what. you're saying but there's an agent right. there right like I mean obviously. there's answers to that and stuff but. it's it's valuable as like oh that's. just the tool everybody uses signal. everybody's got that right like that's. that's valuable um. you know obviously there's always. trade-offs right it's like it can be. used for bad it can be used for good and. you know who's bad and who's good and.

whose. perspectives yeah right I mean that's. how we communicate via signal yeah yeah. exactly is that how you communicate with. everybody a lot of people yeah I mean I. I'll meet them where they're at right. like my manufacturers and stuff don't. use signal um they've got different. governments over them and things like. that that uh yeah it's it's interesting. MH so yeah whatever whatever you use. I'll I'll meet you there but uh. contextual contextually it matters like. okay I'm on this platform which can be. seen by these adversaries cool um noted.

I'll make sure I keep that in mind which. is kind of the the the whole point of. like the psychology when you know you're. being watched changes how you behave in. ways that can be negative. um like what's you know if you're always. being watched by somebody what what does. that make you how does that make you. behave so. different so yeah yeah I mean there's. there's lots of other other cool things. in this catalog like uh R reflector so.

this is for picking up. uh audio this is standard audio bugs. right like you know spite on what's. happening in the. room uh what else we. got lots of um cellular based stuff now. this is this is like 10 years old at. this point so a lot of this stuff is. well known really tiny implant so this. is this uh is like a probably a VGA.

cable here for like an older monitor um. which made more sense back in uh 2008. really tiny uh implant into that cable. tap to one of the color signals and it. would allow somebody to kind of energize. it with like a radio pointed at it more. or less and then receive the signal. bouncing back with. the uh the video signal encoded in the. bounce so then You' be able to see.

what's on their screen wow really cool. stuff right what do you think was in the. Spy balloon that was traversing the I. don't know I I haven't studied those. well enough but I mean there's a lot of. amateurs that just do that like it's. they'll just set up a balloon and um. it's kind of like the the ham radio. space kind of in a way where they're. just like oh you know we can track it. there it goes It goes around and let me. phrase that question what could have. been what could it have been I mean I. don't I don't know man there's that.

that's probably outside of my skill set. and awareness uh and research but I mean. it could be used like a balloon I mean. I'd probably probably be using a drone. more uh because the problem with. balloons they're much more higher. altitude which causes problems for a lot. of electronic circuitry because it gets. really cold and stops functioning also. so you know you've got power that you. got to deal with so best you can get is. battery that's not going to batteries.

also start to fail at that that level of. cold right so you need special batteries. something to keep it warm which needs. more energy so you get in from solar. power probably this a really low power. stuff right like I don't know I may. maybe just the value of how does someone. respond to putting something in their. awareness yeah which is absolutely a. thing right how does someone respond. which I don't know similar to the drones. that are popping up and like I don't. know where that's coming from Jersey had. one recently but there's lots of like.

drones in the sky I'm like I don't I. don't know what that is but I would love. to find out. and is it collecting data or is it just. seeing how people respond to unknown. unreported drones in the sky yeah uh for. you know tactical knowledge in the. future all right Mike let's get into. some of the stuff that you make I know. you have exploding hard drives you got. the the OMG cable you're you're making. all kinds of just crazy wazu Wizardry.

gadgets that I am just fascinated with. and um so where where did this kind of. start did it start with the exploding. hard drive uh USB drives yeah I mean. kind of like I had always been tinkering. with things like like those beam Bots. right um but yeah so I think it was on. Twitter or something I saw just a. picture of somebody with a USB drive the. shell was open and there was just like a. fire cracker sitting inside of it no. idea if it worked or not but I'm just. like everybody has like the same. visceral response to seeing that like oh.

[ __ ] floating thund I'm like you know. what would be cool is if it was. worse so USB rubber ducky got to explain. what that is first for this to to make. sense uh my now business partner hack. five kind of invented the USB robber. ducky uh I don't know like 15 years ago. now something like that that's does the. same basic keystroke in section that I. had demoed with the cable right where. you plug it in it types something really. fast whatever you want to control a.

computer whatever you want right I. wanted one of those that also exploded. so first thing I had to do is if you. open up a rubber ducky there's a there's. not much space in there it's All. Electronics like okay how can I shrink. this really tiny so I have space for. something goes boom so I spent a lot of. time playing with that right now didn't. recreate a rubber ducky exactly like. it's a really really limited version. like a few hundred keystrokes really.

slow done right that's it really hard to. use but it it was Tiny and I shrunk it. and shrunk it shrunk it shrunk it it's. just I don't know I think it was like 8. by 10 millimet when I was done like like. a pill basically that left the rest of. the thumb drive empty that I could hook. up with a little mini Detonator and you. know some maybe maybe firecracker too. and a bunch of confetti and I rigged. this up to a keyer injection payload. that opens a browser to uh animation of.

a Jack In The Box and he's cranking it. right on the screen except it goes for. an awkwardly long amount of time to. build up. tension and it's going it's going that's. what shows up on the screen when it in. so you're watching. that and then pop the uh the drive blows. up confetti goes everywhere I'm like. yeah that cool I I just viewed that as. fun yeah another type of art or. something like that put it out on the.

internet and I was like that's crazy a. lot of people ask me to sell that now no. that's a terrible idea for so many. reasons liability Etc um when you put. something into the world that can be. used negatively it's always worth gaming. out like how how bad can it go and can. you prevent some of it um which I've. done a lot with the cable but uh in this. case it was just you know something I. wanted to put out there but now at that. point I had a really tiny ducky right.

that I could well maybe I could put it. in other things and eventually I got the. idea probably in like doing my it job. looking on Amazon for spare parts for. hardware and stuff I noticed there were. um like USB cable repair ends and Boots. I'm like wait what you you just get. those you know at the time I didn't know. much about manufacturing right got some. of those and realized there was enough. space in them for the cables and this. really tiny you. know fake ducky right shove it in there.

and I get the very first proof of. concept of a malicious USB cable. um yeah put that out and you know I. already told the story about that one. where you know gets out there and a lot. of people like it and a lot of people. wanted it uh I think almost a year goes. by before I'm like you know what I could. make that way better like that's that. was a toy like this is like a cool. gimmick to show like a very basic prank. barely even worked for that what what.

would a proper tool look like and I was. getting way more into like the concept. of I want to do red teaming as well so. I'm combining those. things and yeah like okay well I need. Wi-Fi I need remote control to update. payloads after it's already in play. because the the idea is you can either. deploy a cable like physically get. insight or you head just leave it in. somebody's bag uh leave it just leave it. around and eventually you know people. are going to take a cable sometimes and.

they'll bring it in with them yeah to. the secure space like cool I didn't have. to even go in great. um which creates some interesting legal. problems which we can get into that I've. also solved um but uh that yeah that. kind of is just how it kept evolving and. then at that point it's like okay this. is a real tool at the time I was. thinking I should do this a way that I. just make it open source and everyone. could make their. own um are we still talking about the. USB yeah USB cable okay and that's uh I.

like I I thought about that right like I. was prototyping this cable this new one. like on on a desktop Mill for cutting. pcbs right like I was pushing the limits. on this machine where you can Mill a PCB. so the PCB actually I got a little. problem for. this so up PCB like here here's here's a. complete product this is a Raspberry Pi. right when I say PCB I'm talking about. just the green part here okay that's.

just it's basically a fiber glass and. epoxy with a thin layer of copper on it. that gets turned into traces and it. connects all of these components the the. black thing there that's a component and. all all the little things you see on. there they're soldered on that's. components with copper traces connecting. them together electrically right okay so. I used a mill to kind of cut out the uh. the copper traces and I would assemble.

in you know my my garage lots of. different test versions of what this. cable could look like and I got the idea. you know kind of going back to the. defense distributed. concept where oh open soures this people. can make it on desktop Mill you go that. direction uh what I learned over. the 8 12 months of revising and revising. is. it's really hard to do this like DIY was. just not in the cards like nobody was.

going to be able to do this I'm like. okay well let's throw out the DIY I can. just turn up the complexity there's uh. pcbs with two layers like copper on each. side right that's the common one those. are I can make those in my garage but. okay what if I want eight layers or. something like that that like that gets. really expensive we're talking every. time I want want to do a run of an eight. layer PCB six layer PCB is a minimum a$1. th000 okay like I I have to send that.

off to a factory they're using lasers. and all kinds of crazy x-ray inspections. and stuff to do this so I'm like okay if. I can use. that how far can I go and that that kind. of is how I evolved into making a more. and more and more complex cable that is. like the latest generation OMG cable it. does all of these different things and. uh yeah. very interesting very interesting so so. how did you go so you went from the.

exploding USB yeah to the to the what do. you call it what do you call the the USB. the exploding USB the other one the the. OMG cable yes yeah I just OMG cable but. there was a hard drive there was a USB. cable that did with the OM or so I guess. I just kind of call it like uh early. prototype tests uh I was I was referring. to it kind of at the time as like bad. USB cable which is not an accurate. description it was more of a nod to some.

uh research at the time that was called. bad USB that's where you would take an. actual thumb drive there's a spec. there's a few old old thumb drives that. you could take and reprogram the. controller on it actually do keystroke. injection among many other things it. could it was also a worm that would. replicate to other thumb drives you. would plug in cool concept but what was. the first product you took to Market uh. OMG cable definitely the OMG cable uh so. here's the thing is I was making a lot.

of these things like for like personal. use but I would also kind of sell them. to friends and stuff you know it's kind. of like the the back alleys of Defcon. type situation like I wasn't advertising. this but it's like if you know if you. know me I know you I'll I'll give you. some of these things gotcha um but it. became clear like I I had to start. scaling up like the first B of prototype. OMG cables I think it was 2019 I brought. as many as I could they they took.

me it was like eight or 16 hours per. cable and 50% of them were failures. because like that that which is terrible. like when you make something uh like an. electronic product usually you get like. 95 99% yields which means you know 1 to. 5% are failures that you throw away uh. these things were so hard to sell. assemble that I was throwing away 50% of. what I made so that automatically. doubles the amount of time invested to.

make a cable so you know I'm doing like. 16ish hours per cable to make them wow. 16 hours of cable silly so yeah I was. kind of hitting my limit of like what I. could accomplish with the time I had and. it's like you know what I need to learn. how to like delegate this Outsource. manufacturing assembly um cuz I was also. doing this like hand placing things uh. you go to a an assembler so an so. there's a couple steps here so I'm going.

to run you through basically the. manufacturing pipeline that I slowly. learned is is important here but first. hack five it's really important to. mention hack five here so USB rubber. ducky already mentioned you know that's. that's Darren Darren kitchen is phone. five um he you know that was his his. baby invented about 15 years ago he's. got so many other things like uh the. land turtle the Wi-Fi pineapple uh just. pack what are these they're uh similar. to the. ant exactly right so all of these are.

different kind of like Hardware implants. or hardware tools for they're. multi-purpose but often used for. offensive security so like the land. turtle is like a network implant that. can control a computer but also like. sniff up uh network data or just do. malicious Network stuff. um what else Wi-Fi pineapple this is a. little box antennas on it that allows. you to do Network attacks right really. cool stuff uh Network what uh network.

based uh so Wi-Fi text like you break. into Wi-Fi uh you. can they call them like man in the. middle concept uh like to refer to it as. Mischief in the. middle but basically uh you know you got. your device here and like the wireless. access point here right they're talking. but bring in a Wi-Fi pineapple and it. can kind of Intercept in between the two. there there's so many different ways you. can do this there's no one single way.

it's lots of Wi-Fi based tooling um. another example it's not so much. relevant these days but uh you know when. you connect to like your free Wi-Fi. access points coffee shops and stuff. your phone remembers that typically. you've tell you've told it to remember. that usually so next time you're range. is going to automatically connect right. mhm the Wi-Fi Pine Apple for inst. can say guess what I'm that Wi-Fi too. right so if I pull up one right here and. put it next to you or just anywhere you.

know you happen to be your phone's going. to be like oh that that I know that Wii. let me connect to it right so that type. of stuff um there's just so many. different attacks that I I couldn't. possibly run through all of them um but. that just as an example like there's so. many different approaches to security. like we we think about computers and. like plugging USB in but yeah there's. there's other things there's the networ. work there's the wireless um there's. nearfield communication with like Badges. and things like that totally totally.

different tools totally different uh. Specialties and focuses like the the the. badge readers you don't think of as like. computer security for the most part it's. it's just building access right that's. all one whole thing when you're doing. proper complete Security awareness and. testing well let's take a quick break. yeah when we come back I want to get. into what is the actual OMG cable oh. yeah good point. perfect the economy has been a major.

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but you know we need to I want you to. discuss and talk about exactly what what. it is that the OMG cable does and uh and. show us an example and and for those. that are listening if you go to Mike's. everyday carry does a phenomenal job it. it actually showing what it does Real. Time on on computers on phones it's. fascinating but go ahead and give us the. uh you know show us what it is and and.

and and walk us through what exactly it. does yeah definitely let's pull one off. a. visual there's a good one. so OMG cable right looks exactly like. one of the many USB cables youve got and. if it doesn't I got a whole bunch more. ha to guarantee does here yeah pull that. oh let me see that thing yeah so it's. got a whole uh a whole line of them yep.

and uh I got the complete set yeah you. did watch out but yeah so what is so. each one of these fit a different phone. or IND oror USB drive yeah I mean so. basically think about I should say yeah. Ian think about all the different uh in. it's think of it as camouflage basically. it's like what's the environment did. they use white cables do they use usba a. USBC uh is it a Mac shop cool they're. going to have lightning on one end maybe.

if they got the older phones if it's. newer phones cool. USBC um and it's really about blending. in to fit what's already in place so you. could swap it out or you can do other. things uh there's a lot of different. approaches and techniques you can have. when you have a device that is. physically invisible mhm um and it and. just hiding in plain sight so that's. that's the physical aspect of it and. that took me a huge amount of time of. shrinking down the components which I.

will describe in just a second but. shrinking it down is it just took absurd. amounts of time uh just designing the. PCB that goes in here and then beyond. that just the entire process of. integrating the PCB into a cable that. just took like a year basically well. before we get into how you manufactured. it let's talk about what does yeah. exactly so the PCB inside of here what. it does is when you plug it into a it's. primly targeting laptops and.

desktops um it's got a PCB that will. wirelessly kind of light up and it'll. connect back to you there's so many. different ways you can configure it but. this wireless connection allows remote. connection into the cable get a full web. UI in your web browser right whether. it's on your phone or laptop um can even. connect out to the internet and you can. connect to this thing from anywhere. anywhere on Earth if you if you do it. that way what's what's it do though you. got control this wirelessly uh the main.

thing when you say it can connect to the. internet does it does it bypass. passwords no um you still got to have. like a wireless network it can connect. to or or you bring one in like if I if I. opened the my phone right now and looked. at all the wireless networks I bet. there's probably one in there I could. connect to if not like are you going to. notice like a free coffee shop WI nearby. no not for instance right there's the. flexibility is the name of the game with. this there's no one way to use it. there's so many ways because in a red.

team scenario you don't know what you're. up against and you're going to need some. options to circumvent a problem but yeah. still what does it even do we you're. connected to it but um it primarily. emulates a keyboard says I'm a keyboard. and it types really fast so what does. that do literally anything I could do. sitting at the computer at the keyboard. s you so whether that's implanting. malware or whatever it may be right.

that's that's kind of the the basic. functionality of it but I mean it's not. it um USB cables can often connect a. keyboard to a computer when you're. sitting at a. desk swap out that cable and this can. now intercept the keystrokes which is. really good uh just like one classic use. case. is if the machine is locked I mean you. can type all you want but you're at a. lock screen you need to get past the.

lock screen what do you need to get past. the lock screen you need the password. right how do you get the password there. a lot of ways I mean you could call up. the person and effectively ask them for. it by saying I'm it or something like. that but if you're deployed between a. keyboard you just pull it right off the. lines they're going to type that. password every single time they log into. the computer you remote remotely see. that you rebuild a new payload that. maybe when they go to lunch in the. evening when you know they're not at the. machine anymore it's just going to type.

in that password automatically unlock. the machine and then do all the uh. nefarious things you want it to at that. point so you just have full access to. the to the computer yeah at that point. you can see everything you can access. anything so long as you capture the. password from the keystrokes yeah so not. so much scene not well there's there's. there's a lot of it depends right but. it's a screen share like that team. viewer thing not not not at this stage. so at this stage we're just blindly.

sending keystrokes in right so as long. as you know you know what OS it is or. something like that that's that's that's. all you need on a desktop like I know if. I had command space it's going to open. up Spotlight on a Mac and I can open up. Chrome and then go to the address bar do. some things right for example like. that's a very repeatable ser of. keystrokes and you can do them really. fast once you know it just for an. example okay all right so that's that's. the basics of the very core.

functionality and then you you combine. that with key logging and suddenly. you're you're getting a bigger picture. here but there's also other hold on I. want to go down yeah yeah totally I'm a. I'm a dummy with [ __ ] so yeah let's go. deep so yeah so what would you so now I. didn't even understand that to be honest. when we did the EDC pocket dump so. basically. you're so in that little window you said. there will be a window that might pop up. for oh yeah so you see a little window. blink right that's basically your.

terminal in that case there's there's a. lot of things I could do but in that. case on that I think it was. uh so you could put some type of a. trojan horse or something in there Y and. implant it in the computer like very. exactly right through a series of. keystrokes exactly and then if you. detect the droan on there and you remove. it and the cable's still in play which. it's designed to be just put it right. back on no [ __ ] which is absolutely a.

thing that has happened with a bunch of. my customers that they have told me that. you know they did an engagement with a. very high-profile client we we can go. into these types of things but that. reinfection Vector is exactly what they. used do you prompt it or does it just. automatically do it when you put it in. the computer either or so all about. flexibility so you can program this a. couple different way so what I showed. was me remotely connecting to it and I. hit go but this can be configured that.

when it Powers up when it gets plugged. in it Powers up it can immediately run a. payload it can wait a series of you know. how however long you want and then run a. payload uh is a payload the actual. keystroke or exactly so when I say. payload it's the the series of. keystrokes that gets run and the mware. or the the Trojan Horse or whatever you. can there's ways of typing out like if. you got like a small executable that you. want to transfer over there's a couple. ways to do that like you just use the. key strokes to download it right you can.

download stuff from like the terminal. for instance or I could use Chrome and. download it there and go to the. downloads folder and open it up there um. through keystrokes yep I can navigate. everything with keystrokes so you. could I have no idea what the hell I'm. doing with this [ __ ] but I'm learning we. can do some fun stuff so you. could send somebody an email and. and with a with a downloadable whatever. one way Y and. then plant that cable on them they plug.

the cable in it does the key strokes. automatically to open Chrome log into. their email download the the thing and. yeah one way yep go to the downloads. folder download it then you're in and it. all happens within like a couple of. seconds yep that's one way I mean I. probably wouldn't email it to him cuz if. if I was going to email it I probably. include an email that convinces them to. just run it for me but if I'm up against. a hardened Target where it's they're not. as susceptible to that they're unlikely.

to do it I'm like okay well let's get a. cable that'll do it for me um as as an. example right this can also do mouse. movements too if we need um lots of. control there and yeah it's you can also. yeah so the the malware right you can. download that you can also type it back. out um. it's called base 64 it's just a whole. bunch of it looks like random garbage. characters if you open like if you open. up uh an executable with uh notepad.

roughly stay in high level here you're. going to see a bunch of garbage text. right but you type that same text out in. the notepad and save it it's that. executable so I type that back into the. computer and boom there's there's the. executable which is something we've done. quite a bit uh in environments where. they're checking what is being. downloaded from the internet like okay. you're looking at the internet cool I'm. going to just type this this little.

piece of malware back into the computer. um lots of cool tricks you can do like. that wow it's fun and and so there there. there's other aspects of this too so you. know keystroke injection Mouse injection. I showed you the key logging oh we were. you were asking about the ways of. triggering it so I showed you remotely I. can click go we can have it boot up and. go there's also uh what I refer to is uh. geofencing basically it's got Wireless. in there so it can just look at the. nearby networks and figure out where it.

is and where it isn't and you can. trigger or block things on that and. there's a self-destruct function where. it'll erase everything on it now it. sounds super nefarious but it's actually. prompted by legal um a lot of a lot of. places have strict controls so with the. USB rubber ducky does the keystroke. injection looks like a thumb drive by. hack five that's uh my my business. partner um they they invented that 15. years ago. is.

um what what they would do is you could. put like salaries. XLS on it so it's. like oh that must be the company. salaries and litter it in the parking. lot right that that's one way that. people would be convinced to pick it up. in the parking lot bring it inside plug. it in see what's on it right and boom. they've just infected themselves with. malware right there's a downside to that. which is depending on how bad that. payload. is if you're a red team you're an. employee of this company right you've.

got malware sitting on a loose object. that anyone could pick up and bring it. home bring it into another business and. now you have just infected another. business that's not ideal right so. certain environments they're legal teams. like no way you put Geo fencing on this. you have a payload where boots up and it. just says am I in the office is the. corporate Wi-Fi present cool if not. completely wipe everything are you.

[ __ ] me so. you wow wow so it knows where it's at. yep and where it. isn't holy [ __ ] so this this scan right. here this was done by Luma field they. got a CT scanner which is basically an. X-ray scanner that takes a lot of x-rays. little slices across a product and then. assembles it into a 3D object so Luma. field actually just did some work with.

them to you know sit down and talk about. their machines they use for all kinds of. things manufacturing inspection but also. starting to get into like lot of. security stuff like where you can. literally see inside this is a scan of. the end of one of my cables so right. here's the connectors USB connectors and. over here we got the components so this. is the main process proc and this little. thing over here is the antenna you can. kind of see the USB wires running out. the bottom there wow and the cool thing. is let's see if I can turn.

this there it is that. is the whole. internal and lots more components uh. kind of on the back you you can use this. to step through every layer and just see. literally every little detail about. something so uh if you got untrusted. hardware for for instance that scanner. would uh reveal all of the internals in. this casee it's just really cool and it. shows off here's here's what's inside my. cable that's all the magic you got to.

get that framed I think I'm gonna it's a. beautiful scan that is very cool yeah. they they have done a lot of work. to uh kind of democrat democratize the. access to CT scans uh CT scanning. machines are normally just industrial. machine that's really hard to use and. really expensive like we're talking like. a million plus dollars for machines. roughly um um they do a subscription. where it's like the cost of a like. maintenance contract and they did some. amazing stuff to make it super usable.

like you can see me turning this um it's. super easy to use the outputs and set it. up and uh they did something magic and I. don't know that they communicate this. but uh the sensor on a x-ray machine. normally decays and you have to replace. it they've somehow made like an eternal. scanner so that reduces the cost as well. which I don't I don't know I'm I'm. completely obsessed with your technology. right now so sorry for the momentary. splurge on that but oh that is super. cool super cool good stuff who are your.

customers uh I got a everyone basically. um so here's the thing uh me personally. I've got one customer hack five and we. we can probably go into the story about. how we met but basically uh when I was. making these things by myself and I. needed to take the jump into. Manufacturing. had a lot of bad experiences but hack. five was amazing they're like let me. just kind of show you the ropes right. like manufacturing running a business.

all this stuff Darren has been great to. me um so I sell all of my stuff to him. and all of my products are available on. hack five as a result they take care of. who gets it and they have very tight. expert controls uh there's a lot of. countries they would just will not ship. to can I just go on there and buy it. yeah you can you're you're not a. prohibited country wow so yeah you can. just go in there and buy it and. hobbyists can use it um security. researchers awareness training so that's.

where you go on stage and kind of just. show off concerning things so that. people will change their behavior and. primarily red teams there's lots of red. teams in the private space you know. Fortune 500s uh military industrial. government all have their own. equivalencies to that and uh again the. the red team is where you are emulating. what an actual attacker does from end to. end penetrating to the getting into the. company and all the entire chain of.

hopping around and getting to the crown. jewels pulling those back out that that. is red teaming and um this is used a lot. there so uh I have a lot of customers. who will also reach out just for advice. on how to use the cables or maybe. they've run into a situation like that. legal constraint like hey this is cool. but like oh yeah cool just fix that and. solve that legal problem now I don't. know like the full scope of what they're. doing but it's like oh here's a problem. I can solve that for you um there's yeah.

every they they are the people I've. talked to and now I I've I know a lot. more than I can talk about here but. there are plenty of people who uh have. said yeah you're going to Shan Ryan go. ahead and you can talk about it this way. um couple people who are those people. yeah so uh. is it my former employer I mean possibly. so I don't know that level of detail and. don't really want to but as long as. they're part of like the.

okay entities are there any okay. entities yeah I know exactly right the. ones who are a whole another. podcast this is going to be defined on. who is or isn't going to put me in. prison so let's that's that's my. definition of good in this scenario is. keeping those people happy um but and. but to be clear there's another. Advantage here which is some of these. places are critical infrastructure that. they work at or are tasked with securing. or improving the security so we all.

benefit from that like I don't want a. place that isn't has some form of. nuclear material in it getting. compromised cuz the people who want to. compromise those places are probably. looking to hurt me in some way right so. let's let's help them. so the other feature kind of added to. these cables recently is call it hid X. stealth link it's kind of The Branding. of it to explain what it is but. ultimately still acting as a keyboard. but now it's got B bidirectional data.

transfer so like a network interface but. without ever showing as a network. interface you can send data back and. forth between the computer uh and it. just looks like a keyboard to the Target. system this was used quite a few people. in a lot of environments but um in this. case you know they the critical. infrastructure was not looking for this. type of exfiltration technique and it. worked really well got them in and they.

achieved their objectives with this. critical. infrastructure and got it fixed you know. I I was told that my name got put into a. report that I will never have access to. but that is that's extremely cool it's. like cool I got my name into a report to. fix some critical infrastructure with a. technique that we developed with with my. team and honestly I'd love to pause and. even talk about that team because uh. while I make the hardware and the. manufacturing and run the. business all the tricks this does.

heavily about the actual firmware that. runs on this and that requires multiple. people to pull off let's talk about your. team yeah so there a couple pieces of. this but uh one guy is retired uh and. just loves working on Hardware uh prior. to this I mean he did did a lot of. things but prior to this he was working. on the firmware for police body cameras. so um very interesting background there. another guy is blind and he does kind of. the the UI you seen it's kind of poetic.

uh he's the the blind guy is in charge. of the UI he's got a lot of experience. what is UI uh yeah so the the visual. interface when you open it up in the. control panel and you got all the. buttons and stuff in there um are you. hold. on pick that cable up yeah yes when you. open that thing up and look at the. control panel and the buttons wirelessly. so when you connect to it wirelessly. with your web and then you open your web. browser and then connect to the the IP. address you get like a web web page.

right okay with all the buttons on it. that give you the controls you can view. the key logs open the hundreds of. payloads you can save on here and run. them all that purely visual the kind. stuff doesn't have to be you can. automate it but yeah it's primarily. visual um and it allows all the cool. controls to happen so uh got another guy. who uh you know in education and a lot. of them are familiar with you know the. the Government Contracting spaces as. well um fairly small team but they've.

been along for the ride the whole time. and just constantly interested in. picking up just challenges and like the. way the key logger works on here is like. that's not supposed to be possible how. did you get this word out how are you. marketing this H that that's a really. good question actually is I have not. done any marketing yet this thing kind. of has its own leg. which uh I mean I could imagine but I. mean what was the first thing like how. did uh I put a I think I just put a. video out uh video of like hey like I.

made this with my maill check it out. here's what it can do excuse me yeah and. here's what it can do and then it just. took off like it that was mostly in the. infox space so you know it kind of went. around the the hacker community and the. Professional Security Professionals. Security Professionals. um and at some point it just kind of. goes outside that bubble because it gets. enough traction like Vice took it Forbes.

took it uh you know there's there's so. many different high-profile this has. been in Forbes oh yeah this has been in. Forbes a couple. times look Mom I made it to. Forbes yeah it's uh it's been pretty. wild um I I am at the point though where. I am starting to think about focusing. purely on this because it has just. become this awesome monster that uh.

takes a lot of my time as well as. running you know red team as well so. that's uh probably something I'm going. to be pivi into very shortly and. focusing out on that helping the team. and seeing seeing what more we can do uh. probably going to relax for a bit though. good for you I'm tired how is business. is it going well it's very good so um. it's I'm probably long overdue to jump. when do you what do you think you'll. grow into with this I have no idea that. so I've I've never had a plan ever on.

any of this it's just what's the thing. and the opportunity at the moment and. how can I play with that in an. interesting way um which you know. there's a lot of things why you would. want to plan in business but I just yeah. I don't know maybe eventually I'll have. a plan do you have any fear about this. being on the market so available um I. mean it's been five six years now and. I'm very proud of like the result of it. with all the places where it's been. fixed in the very low abuse scenarios.

like we're we're very intentional when. we think about okay let's add a feature. to this but let's figure out who wants. this feature who's going to make use of. it like for instance like the number one. that I want to avoid is like stalkerware. bware stuff people look at this and. they're like oh yeah I need that for. that I'm like no I'm I'm going to make. that hard like that's not as valuable to. a red team professional I like we're. trying to get into corporate. infrastructure we're trying to do like.

Oceans 11 [ __ ]. on like Fortune 10 or something like. that like this would be so easy to plant. in any government facility yeah that's. it yeah I shouldn't say I shouldn't say. any government facility but you know it. might be it's been a while since been to. a skiff but uh you know it's they seem. to have a pretty oh yeah you know pretty. good uh gauge on what's going on but I'm.

I'm talking like DC Congress Senators. absolutely. politicians those types would. be it would be a [ __ ] joke just. to you could hand them out yeah and. here's the thing though is that's the. other aspect is there's a lot of very. detectable defense faults you have to. really know how to use the tool to work. around these things but by Design it's. supposed to be detectable if you're. doing good security like this is going.

to light up and it's literally it. announces itself as an OMG cable out of. the you know effectively out of the box. right so hopefully you're at least. checking that and all of your. experiences is uh doing Red Cell. operations yes and no how many people do. you think are testing that so here's the. thing. is the people who are that low on the. bar of security I don't I don't need. these to get in I just pick up a phone I. send an email okay fair enough that's.

that's that's that sweet spot where it's. like all you know you map out all the. the desires the capabilities and the. threats and the ne negative consequences. and just thread the needle to get just. that sweet spot and uh we spent a lot of. time thinking about that but I right now. I just point to the last five years of. like look the the results and uh that. way you know I I can talk all day about. how how much intent we put into it but. the results are far better than the.

intent in terms of convincing. somebody um another thing so uh I think. I showed. you these these should actually [ __ ]. deactivated for multiple reasons which. you can imagine there's a a little call. it the programmer it's kind of a. firmware tool so you plug this into your. computer to activate it right uh this. doubles for multiple other things so if. you do like a self-destruct. self-destruct on it you recover the. cable with this if you wanted to you.

have to get it back out of the field but. self-destruct will just put it into a. neutral cable that's just not harmful at. all uh really good if you can't pull the. thing back out of the field you you want. to neutralize all your stuff uh however. if you're blue team and you found this. you can also use one of these to dump. every bit of firmware that's running on. here which will include payloads and all. this stuff so as long as you know it. hasn't been self-destructed you can just. dump that and do a full forensics on it. so they get to practice as well wow so.

yeah we we've done a lot of things that. kind of show off the forensic. capabilities and ways of approaching so. it's it's meant to be holistic for. security not just purely uh offensive. use but it's it's really about raising. raising the bar. basically. interesting I mean. when I look at that you know I've always. heard you know I've always heard RIT. guys always telling us you know don't be. buying [ __ ] off Amazon if you're going. to get if you're going to get an iPhone.

cable get it from the Apple Store not. from Amazon if you're getting Wi-Fi. extenders go from the manufacturer and. not some [ __ ] on Amazon is China putting. the [ __ ] into our ecosystem I doubt it. so these are highly targeted so it's. it's kind of things like this yeah. exactly but I I think it's good to think. about it like let's let's step back to. like a different type of crime like. pickpocketing versus like Oceans 11 Bank. job right like this is more on the you.

know the bank job whereas pickpocketing. that's what you're more likely to. experience as just a random individual. like that's going to be more equal to. like fishing emails like really low. grade commodity malware type stuff. that's delivered over email like the. risk of physically delivering this stuff. uh is too high or in the case of like oh. we're going to contaminate contaminate. the the the shelves effectively uh. online or not that's so high cost and so.

easy to find that's like some you just. need one person to detect that this. happened and we'd all hear the news. story um this which kind of reminds me. of that Bloomberg uh grain of rice story. right which was complete [ __ ] um my. friend Joe Joe Fitz Patrick is a great. guy to talk about this um but basically. there was this Bloomberg news story that. a little grain of rice component was. found implanted in a bunch of servers.

right and it just doesn't make sense. which is why that story didn't make. sense because there's so many other ways. of approaching that that are way less. detectable there anybody like how do you. control where that goes you it's very. hard to control where implanted Hardware. goes and if you don't have control. anyone's going to find it um I think. like the the the closest you can get to. that might be that Israeli P story where.

they had to create a fake manufacturing. plant to develop these things and that. is how they controlled where it went so. hold on I don't I'm not familiar with. this you going into this yeah yeah. totally this the Israeli pager story. where they blew up all the husa guys yes. exactly so thousand fascinating. thousands of pagers I think it was about. to 5,000 and 4,000 went out so yeah a. lot of lot of booms um but basically. what they did is set up a fake.

manufacturing company right and they I. think they had their own manufacturing. plant and everything they licensed a. legitimate. uh model of pager from a legitimate. company welln this is a typical. relationship for a lot of Hardware you. just license it and you sell it and then. you're like yeah put my name on it. depends on what it is like obviously. Apple's going to do their own thing but. we're talking pagers right this is like. 30y old technology here um so they did.

that they had a bunch of they they even. went as far as getting a bunch of random. customers and gave them good pagers but. then they got their hesa client and I'm. always curious about how they did that. have some postulations but um they got. their hesa client and then they. made exploding Pages for them they they. put uh High explosives in part of the. battery. and a Detonator in there and basically. it was configured to explode detonate. this thing uh after a specific message.

was sent to the pager and the way pager. networks work are all like broadcast so. you can you can send one message that. goes to all Pates in the network which. is probably what they did anyway uh this. was in play for I don't know I think it. was like one or two years like these. were out there and uh slowly going. through you know the it operations of. hey guys we got new hardware and slowly. sending them out in the field I think. they were encrypted. pagers um it was funny uh in in some. ways that.

this pager Focus was entirely because. they knew their cell phones were. compromis like oh start using pager. maybe it's the walkie-talkies I forget. but they were moving away from one coms. to another to avoid surveillance and as. a result they got explosions uh but. that's the kind of like level of control. like if if those got out to someone else. which I mean there's still opportunity. for that like they're not watching One. pager go from hand to hand to hand like.

it's like oh we deployed it to hezb and. it's reasonable to assume that this. level of dissemination with this margin. of error and other people touching them. and you know they they probably did the. math on that right um I. didn't but uh that that's kind of a good. example of like how far you can go in. like the risks of Discovery um stuff. like stuck net stuck Nets another good. example of I think it was the Iranian. enrichment.

facilities where oh I can't remember the. full story here but there was like a. thumb draw with a worm on it and it got. in basically got carried into this. enrichment facility and it would damage. the part of the enrichment Machinery. right but didn't do it all at once it. would randomly pick one or the other. because you don't want to be discovered. right if you did it all at once you're. like oh something's up just like oh one. not whatever it must be bad right like.

see there's like the psychology of. making sure it doesn't seem like it's. something to investigate it's like oh. bad machines it must be bad process I. kept doing that and eventually uh I. can't remember how it got dis discovered. um but there was a issue where it. started spreading around elsewhere like. the worm or something like that that and. somebody noticed it I think I I can't. fully remember but there was a discovery. event cuz kind of got too wide and once. it's discovered okay now you can defend.

against it now you can find them in the. wild and dude it the moment somebody. found anything in in our stuff they're. going to tell the world like hey look at. this cool thing I found I'm a security. researcher so um that said on the flip. side there's plenty of places we don't. look most of the stuff you find in there. is just vulnerabilities like oh I didn't. think there would be a hole on whatever. some aspect of a product like oh if you. just log in 10 times and do this you get.

in you bypass everything it's like wait. what you do what that that's the type of. stuff that's typically well nobody. thought to try that so yeah it really. depends. um physical implants are much easier to. discover CU I mean they're physically. there you can't revoke them you can't. like oh self delete it's there I not not. counting the patri situations it's a. different type of delete but uh you know. delete in a way that doesn't leave the. the evidence around yeah yeah I'm I'm C.

like what's in your head man what's next. for you I don't know yet um I'm just. going to what are you thinking about. like I I have. been focusing more more on personal. stuff just like hanging out with my kids. spending more time with them while I got. got the the time and they're growing you. know once 14 so you know you can shut it. off. no yeah so learning how to do that is. part of part of it so um I haven't. learned how to do that yeah it's it's. when you do me dude it's hard um cuz you.

love this I can tell this is your. passion yeah you're you you're moving. into this full-time this is going to be. your full-time business. yep give me a snapshot I mean what what. are some of your ideas here's an example. so I'm reusing the same implant in a. couple of ways so I mean this is an easy. one so USB adapters basically a cable. right cool uh I had a thing where. customers were enjoying the firmware so. much for like payload development they.

would get the cable and cut the end off. like dude no that's my baby what are you. what are you doing so you know there we. go keychains that you know don't have. the cable on it cool got that um now. here's another. one uh are you familiar with USB data. blockers no so it's a commonly. recommended like secure charging. mechanism you're like oh I can't trust. the airport charger or something like.

that you're like well get a data blocker. can you trust an airport. charger mostly I mean I I I'm personally. more concerned about the quality of the. electricity coming out there frying my. phone than I am about like a data. situation because going back to the. discoverability you put something in a. wide space like that once it get. detected you hear about it we've not. heard about it gotcha and especially in. a secure space like. uh all the airport locations like.

there's everybody's on camera right like. good luck uh it would be really hard um. there's advisories that come out and I. think the FBI was doing um uh they get a. lot of flack for that because there's no. like proof it existed but I don't know. like I I I don't have the intelligence. they have either so I mean there's. things you could do uh I'm I also don't. consider my my creativity to be all. inclusive in all ways you can do.

something negative like there's plenty. of people with different motives and. Minds than me so yeah we'll see uh it. it' be a cool story but yeah data. blockers that's the the idea you you now. have safe charging I'm like cool I'll. put one of my things in a data blocker. now you know cat and mouse yeah I just. thought it was funny but just as an. example just kind of Chase that a little. bit um go from there I don't know we'll. see do you have any wazu crazy. inventions that you that that you're.

dreaming up um I've done a lot with on. the manufacturing side so uh I've had to. invent so many tools and. mechanisms both for create creating. these cables which turns into their own. products cuz you know I'm teaching other. people how to use them and it breaks and. I got to do support for those products. and you know they their own pcbs and. everything you know it's it's a hardware. product with its own firmware just to. test these cables at multiple stages um.

uh so I'm still uh packing these at home. with the kids um and the envelopes right. I got to label those that gets really. annoying over time I'm like you know. what I'm going to create a machine to. label these so uh I just keep chasing. that down and seeing how much I can do. you know um there's a there's a guy. called Cliff sto he does a lot of really. cool things science. uh math uh he's got a book on security. but he also makes something called Klein. bottles to Total deviation here but you.

you'll see why so cin bottles are you. know mobia strip uh you take a strip of. paper and you pull the ends up rotate. tape them together now you got a 1D. Dimension so if you follow around one. pan is one dimensional a cent bottle is. a 3D version of that anyway he I think. he lives in pel elto small place he runs. like distribution entirely out of his. house for that so under his house he has. built an entire robotic uh Warehouse. system like drives the thing around.

pulls the stuff out I think that's cool. as hell um and it goes back to like the. the old school Hecker mindset of just. doing that I like that kind of stuff. just catches me and I I'll like okay. cool I I want to do as much. Manufacturing in home as I can cuz a my. my stuff is really small um but you know. also let's let's just see how far I can. take it how much more I can optimize. like I this this orange clip that goes. on these things uh that I ship with so.

so you know which ones are bad I've. redesigned that like six times so far. just like I don't know I just want to. see how much further can I take it wow. um. yeah so are you manufacturing these. yourself or it's a mix so the process. for it I'm going to go back to this this. PCB as a reference here but real quick. the process that I I'm kind of taking. right now is I ask.

one uh one manufacturer make the raw the. PCB the Green Piece here then that gets. shipped to another place that assembles. the components to the PCB they're. they're basically running through high. heat that melts solder and they all get. like glued to the board right now. they're now you got a functional piece. of. uh and now once it's glued to the board.

here's one of my implants and we can get. some close-ups later but here is that's. that's one of the implants that's the. size of it this is what goes in the. little USB thing yep inside the the boot. of the cable basically this little bitty. ass thing yep connects to the internet. yep. it's wow why the [ __ ] is my modem so big. yeah. know um I mean serious man wow yeah.

there's there's a lot of compromises to. make that happen like get that damn. thing yeah if if you were not size. constrainted on that that would be 10. times bigger because it would be so much. easier to make with 10 components. instead of you know two or whatever I. forget how many I have in there I think. I got like 12 but you know times 10 the. components is normally what you'd see uh. so that creates uh the need to do a lot. of creative engineering to compromise. and get get small but at some point I'll. show you here I'll just rest these.

here's that little one with the USBC end. on it and here. USBC so that's kind of you know okay. components are on there you know one. shop did the green PCB one shop put all. the components on there cool well that's. what I got right now right it's not a. cable yet so another shop going to help. integrate that into. cables. and so this other Shop's going to.

integrate it into cables to some extent. there's still unfinished work to do. unfinished testing um. then and if it's the woven cable there's. another Factory it has to like do. special cutting and crimping and Searing. of the ends so it doesn't unravel anyway. so you know three four factories later. ships over to me I'll do the finishing. work on them sometimes it's closing the. actual cables up but at a minimum it's. testing everything calibrating them. putting like that initial firmware on.

there um tons of QA and QC work. packaging um shipping it off to the the. hack five Warehouse so wow lots work so. where do people find this product yeah. so uh two places basically you can go to. the o.g. LOL website that's that's my. primary. website um or you can go to my business. partner it redirects to my business. partner effectively which is hack5. ha5 hack.org.

OMG and all my products are up on their. site wow that's incredible man that is. incredible fun stuff man I can't believe. uh have the agencies been in touch with. you to come work for probably science. and technology department or I'm not. sure I would. know you would know yeah um and there's. been a lot of interesting challenges too.

like uh I mean I'm I'm saying you know. that's that's actually not a joke that's. oh yeah totally you know yeah very very. sharp guy very inventive uh very. impressive I'm I'm happy to help uh all. kinds of people secure their. environments. so um. yeah I mean they know where to find me. I'm sure they. do um let's. see there's uh oh you know another thing.

might be interesting here is this kind. of kicked off right when the pandemic. kicked off it's like you know working. with the the factories had to do all. that remote and that immediately ran. into uh the chip shortage I saw that. come in from like six months before. everybody else did so immediately had to. figure out all the supply chain. Logistics where to find chips when they. are out of the market everywhere. hoarding them Mass like I this this is.

something I have put the oh first two or. three years of profits entirely back. into production whether it's improving. the PCV improving the capabilities or. storing extra components because we're. in the middle of a chip shortage so I. can still make my stuff that was that. was wild time um and it felt like there. was just one thing after the other that. was like no you can't sell these no the. Market's down uh no you can't have. access to the chips uh and just find.

trying to find ways of working around. that um down to like compon all these. little tiny components come on a in a. really long piece of tape coiled up on a. a reel right I I count those I uh. assemble those by myself as well so you. know I got machines to count them and. assemble them so I can just send it off. to the assembler uh there there's so. many different facets of running a. hardware business that is like this that. uh is really unexpected and I'm just.

kind of learning on the fly so. yeah very impressive Mike thanks man. well I think we're wrapping up the. interview but I just want to say man you. are. a super sharp fascinating individual and. um what an amazing conversation thanks. man very inventive thank you thank you. and uh you. know I'll be tracking you where where. can people find you oh yeah I mean I'm.

all over the place I um definitely on. Twitter mg uncore um lots of other. social networks starting to form and. fall apart and whatever they may be I'll. try to keep all of that on the contact. page of the o.g. LOL site though perfect. well Mike I wish you the best of luck. and um I can't wait to see what you come. up with next thanks all right brother. cheers thank.

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