and so i got in and walked all around
the factory did what i needed to do so i
stole some some bits and pieces and we
planted a few key loggers cables in the
back of their computers and they were
rinsed so we just showed them the film
of what we did and all the photographs
and i just remembered the security
header security just putting his head in
his hands
and just over and over again saying two
million because they'd spend two million
pounds on the defenses and it was all
for nothing in the face of you know a
cheeky scouser really
[Music]
the legitimate team now the team that
everyone uses is social engineering so
that would be the manipulation of human
characteristics in order to gain
unauthorized access to buildings or data
or information
from 70 up to all the way up to sort of
95
of breaches and of cyber crime is
facilitated by the mistake or
manipulation of a human being so social
engineering is behind phishing attacks
it's behind you know fake texts it's
behind all the fraud or the cons
everything that you see and hear
someone has to click on the link someone
has to give the information someone has
to start chatting to someone over social
media and create that avenue of
opportunity for a criminal or someone
emulating simulating a criminal criminal
attack to get into a business so that's
what social engineering really is and of
course from the physical point of view
it's everything about getting into a
building when you shouldn't be able to
get in so spoofing faking passes and you
know following people you know
tailgating through without a pass
through through security
doors
were there any experiences that you
think shaped your direction in life i
was about seven years old and i was
kidnapped by a neighbour i am now i
wasn't here particularly physically
although she didn't let me go it was a
older teenager i was out playing my
friends but what happened after that was
my parents decided that it would be a
good idea to for me to um hang out more
with some of my cousins because they
would teach me to be a bit more street
wise but what my parents didn't know
at the time was that my cousins were
already sort of into petty crime um
and we're already doing something called
airbags which is urban exploration so
they were getting in and out of empty
buildings all over liverpool
not to take or break anything um but
just to look around and so i started
following them i would have been as i
say seven or eight years old started
following them and going on jobs with
them you learn very quickly when you do
that so you learn how to pick locks you
learn the way the heartbeat of a
building so you know the way people move
in and around the building the lines
adrift which is that you know the way
that people
use spaces and you learn those things
you learn to run very quickly i learned
trespass lord as i was older and and by
the time you know i got to be a teenager
we've been in and out of
hundreds of buildings in and around all
the whole country but mostly
the liverpool area in the northwest so
what was the point where you realized
that you could turn this hobby into a
career the cousins had started doing a
security work as doormen on the clubs
and the bars in the city centre and the
only people in liverpool with any money
at that time with the football players
and so they said well you guys can you
know break into anyway can you come and
check our houses because they had these
great big houses sort of on the
outskirts of the city
um can you come and check if you can get
in and of course we did but then they
have businesses as well and so now can
you get into the businesses
and that was when it really started
paying quite well and if you can imagine
i did a waitressing job at the time and
i was paid about 15 pounds a day for the
waitressing job but one of those jobs
would pay me about 300 quid so it was
it was just a no-brainer at the time to
be a to be someone who broke into
buildings for a living or talked their
way past security and i figured wouldn't
have been too great for my career so i
kept it very very quiet and um
everything was done
word of mouth can you talk us through
the sort of clients you've had and why
they'd hire you like for what purpose
i mean i had one corporate client that
said
look we've spent millions on the
perimeter um
and the fence is the high you know we've
got security guards
you won't get in unless someone leaves
the door open for you you know and so
got my little crew together as a few
people and we needed to do two things we
needed to get inside the fence and then
we need to get inside it was a factory
so we need to get inside the factory so
we find a lot of the ways to break into
a building or the ways to get to someone
is through something called open source
intelligence or oceant and we researched
that building and we researched those
people and we researched and we found
out that they had this great benefits
package which included mots and basic
car maintenance in their car park at the
office
so to get past um the security on guards
inside the fence
we got a pellet gun
and we shot out the windscreen of one of
the cars in the car park one of the
managers cars and we just cracked the
windscreen
um of one of these cars
and then turned off in a van with um you
know let's just say it said jen's auto
repair on the side of the van one of
these magnetic sides i just said we've
come to look at the car with the craft
windscreen and security just waved you
through you see because there you are
it's a legitimate reason um
and i'm in the back of the van and my
two associates are driving in they drive
in
they look at the windscreen for the bay
and meanwhile i get out and i hide right
and so the boys look at the windscreen
they go to the security guard and they
say look you know this is beyond what
we've got now sorry about that you'll
have to call someone else knowing that
the fame will just call their regular
aim people and and they'll fix it i'm
inside the fence by now
and what we'd seen is that the company
was very rules-driven they were very
sort of old-fashioned really and you
know if your manager said something in
this fame then that was the law so we
just got a piece of paper put the logo
on the top the company logo which we got
off the internet and i just wrote please
do not close this store thank you and
signed it like a vague signature with hr
written underneath it and we stuck it to
one of the fire doors
and this is where social engineering
gets clever because psychologically
speaking you know you're a rules-driven
person you work for a rule-driven
company if someone tells you to leave a
door open you leave the door open this
guy comes out sees the sign and goes oh
where does the door open and then loads
of people came out the door and every
single one of them see other people
ignoring it cognitive bias social proof
see everybody leaving the door open and
i left the door open and so i got in and
walked all around the factory did what i
needed to do so i stole some some bits
and pieces and we planted a few key
loggers cables in the back of their
computers and they were rinsed and if i
had been a criminal
um then that would have been very
dangerous situation given what the
thatch actually made and but we're not
so we just showed them the film
of what we did and all the photographs
and i just remember the security header
security just putting his head in his
hands
and just over and over again saying 2
million 2 million brian because they'd
spend 2 million pounds on the defenses
and and it was all for nothing in the
face of you know
a cheeky scouser really
why don't we talk about the job that
made you stop working for a year
so by the time i got to my sort of mid
to late 20s
um i'd done
you know hundreds of jobs
most of which were in the uk
but i had done a fair few abroad as well
so i was in the hotel in hong kong and i
got a call from a client who booked me
a few times you know a year and still
does book me a few times a year and what
he wanted me to do um was to go
to an address in this city
um
and get to this person's desk
inside a
house and look for a name in in their
address book um in their desk and if i
found the name i had a message i had to
write on a post-it note and leave on the
desk i decided to go and do my a
reconnaissance of this address
and this was on um
sort of a friday night friday evening
about sort of 6 p.m
and i get to a a golf club in a cab
come out of the golf club and i walked
towards this address and it was the
quietest neighborhood that i've you know
that you can imagine huge big sort of
mansion houses beautiful gardens but
there wasn't so much as a dog barking or
a car moving it was just like a ghost
neighborhood
and i walk for a while and then i see
the target building
and just a great big mansion like a
colonial style thing
with sort of stairs off the side of it
and everything and a garden
and i looked and i thought
like there's no one in there's no one
there's no one in the street never mind
the house so look through the gates and
sort of touch the gate and the gate's
not locked and
and i thought okay this will be a doddle
um and i went back to the hotel
by now it's about nine o'clock on the
friday night
and i actually got undressed so i
actually you know ran a bath just at the
hot bath put some bubbles in the bath
gotten dressed ready to have my bath and
i was gonna have a bath have some dinner
a couple of drinks early night ready to
go the next evening
and i just looked and just thought
i'm going to do it now i mean why wait
right it's empty um it's easy i'm going
to do it now so i closed back on and i
thought this will be over
so quickly that that bath wash will
still be hot when i get back fine
now i had nothing with me to do a job so
i had to think about well what do i take
what can i improvise
so i looked around the room and there
was a you know there was not much it was
a beer bottle opener i think i took that
and then i go down in the lift
and go to the a hotel there's a little
shop in the lobby and i bought like a
you know a little a little sort of
keyring torch thing from the hotel shop
get in a cab and get back to the golf
club
and i go to the um to the target house
and i climb
i go in and at the bottom of the stairs
i had a phone ring inside the building
and it goes and it goes and nobody picks
up the phone
answer machine kicks in there's nobody
in this is going to be easy
and you know it was
easy to get in i walked up the stairs
there were like french doors and i get
the bottle opener
and i just thought i'm gonna
jimmy the lock those those french doors
if you've got them get additional
security
and then i thought you know what just
try faced
security only works if you use it just
went like that on the door open so it
wasn't even locked and i remember
thinking my contact had said to me this
guy says his home's impenetrable
right so the client is the owner of the
house has spoken to my client is homes
impenetrable and i thought what a load
of rubbish like this isn't even
difficult he doesn't even bother to lock
his doors and that should have been a
big clue because what kind of person
doesn't bother locking the doors
the type of person who isn't bothered
about people breaking in because
nobody's going to break in right
nobody's brave enough to break in
so what you do is you never carry
anything you don't need you travel as
light as you can
so i just put the um bottle opener
down at the bottom of the stairs with
the torch because you know tortures
rubbish anyway and just left and to
cover them with a few leaves i'll pick
them up on the way out
and i went in through there into a
bedroom with an unmade bed and then
walked around like the top of a great
big landing and down these stairs and
sure enough exactly where i've been told
it would be was it was this office with
a great big fish tank
in the dark and i get to the desk smells
of like sandalwood and the fish tanks
there and a huge big leather kind of
thrown of a chair
and i'm thinking this is lovely what
nice office very unlived in place
but you know fine
so get to the um and i sat in the chat
and i was kind of doing you know little
spins on the chair and everything and
looking at the fish and i look in the
address book and i find the name almost
immediately because it was one of very
few names that were in english
so i write the message i'm supposed to
leave
put it on the desk and then i saw these
two sets of headlights pull up
just outside the house so like the
office is on the ground floor there's
like windows and stuff and it sort of
illuminated the whole
and the minute that that happened i knew
i shouldn't be there i knew that if i
was caught
well i mean i shouldn't be there and
like these people who were pulling off
who whoever they were probably didn't
know anything about this so
dashed out ran up the stairs ran back
out of the bedroom window that i got in
on
sort of ran a little bit down the stairs
and tripped a little bit
and in the drive
um there were these two
huge black four by fours each driven
by um
a heavy like like a security guard like
heavies right
um so i flung myself really quickly to
the wall of the garden so that like the
shadow um i kind of merged into the
foliage and the shadows
and i'm face down because i knew that my
face would be that like would show up
against the darkness the soil and my
clothes and i just pushed myself up
against the wall
and i'm thinking
oh my god you know i know i'm not meant
to be here like if they find me
there's no explaining this i knew there
and then
that this was
um not something i could get out of i
couldn't smile my way out of it they
look like they had absolutely no sense
of humor whatsoever like i need them
crunching on the gravel get to the front
door and they're talking on these
walkie-talkies
and i kind of i don't really know how it
happened
but they'd gone into the house to look
for for me i mean they were looking for
me and they were coming in and out and
they're talking and then i heard them
it's getting guns out and see them
cocking these guns
and i remember thinking then i've used
up my nine lives and
this was a stupid career choice and that
if anything happens now no one knows
where i am
not my legitimate job my colleague
and you know and not my family the only
person who would know would be the
client and it wouldn't be in their
interest to say if i went missing so i
was seeing all these headlines you know
scout's woman goes missing in asia
businesswoman never found and then just
as quickly as they turned off they just
ran out the house slammed the door got
into the cars
and just left
got wobbly to my feet
and
and walked you'd never run ever ever
ever you've got to walk and i walked out
of the gate
and gradually picked up speed it's
digital at the end but not for a long
time
got back to the golf club picked up a
cab
and said to the cab driver get me back
to the hotel
and so go back to the hotel
and
cried tears streaming down my face i was
just like so scared and everything that
also came in and by now it's about
course past three in the morning
and i walked into the bar and the bar
was one of these very you know very
swanky hotels in asia with a mirror and
three o'clock in the morning
and i had like twigs hanging out my head
and cuts and my
my little connies were little trainers
were caught and and you know there was
tears everywhere and i had
much all over me
and i sat down at the bar and i says to
the guy
get me a drink that's very alcoholic but
a kid could drink
because i need you need sugar to reset
right when your adrenaline kicks off
like that and he put he hands me this
sort of horrible sweet alcoholic
concoction
and i kind of
knocked it straight back
and he said to me um
in a tough night he said do you want to
be a chaser with that and the minute he
said i better oh my god i've left the
beard opener with the hotel name ah the
scene
i'm not like that's it they'll know when
i am if they go back and get it
but i was so exhausted and so i mean i
couldn't have done anything eh really so
i had another drink went back to my room
bath was cold
um
and just fell on the bed and when i woke
up it was about 2 p.m the next day
and i just got out of there straight
away so like i just i passed out
basically and
got on the plane and got home
i got a call from the client and he knew
i'd left the beer so they have found it
afterwards and he said why
you were supposed to go in on the
saturday not the friday
um
and you know and i said i i know i know
it was a stupid thing to do i said but i
don't want to talk about that actually
she sent me into a situation that was
was very dangerous
and i said so i never want to talk about
this again
you've had an incredible career it's
gone in lots of different directions
what are your hopes for the future
it would be nice now to pass this on so
ethical
social engineering
and manipulation
is the best defense against malicious
social engineering we're looking to
teach people how to do this a select
sort of few people will train to do that
i also speak a lot about it and spread
the word of how
you can be hacked
you know through social engineering i'm
a bit old
and less fit than i used to be so i
really am done with scrambler boats on
rooftops too much although i still do
three or four jobs a year just to just
to stay current now it's more relevant
than ever before
and to teach people how to avoid this
now to recognise it it does real harm
you know on the malicious side so it
needs us to be there to stop it so
that's really what i want to do in the
future
[Music]
i had to strip down to next to nothing
grease out put a towel over the cut
section of
bar off the window so it wouldn't
scratch my back and leave it myself out
well stem wrenched that up just another
little inch
probably strangling everybody had always
hated since childhood but just enough
for me to get out