- Hey guys, it's Jonathan Strickland
with How Stuff Works Now.
I'm in Austin Texas, with my good friend,
Mr. Brian Brushwood.
- Dude, glad to have you in my hometown.
(thumpy bass music)
- Now Brian is a stage magician extraordinaire,
also a scam artiste
- I'm like a theme park version of a scam artist.
I don't really walk the walk,
but I take you on an adventure
as if, we were scamming people
- Right, and one of the things
that you teach people, I think,
through this process,
is actually the process of critical thinking.
- Absolutely.
- You recognize these things when you encounter
them yourself.
- Yeah, you know, all of that goes back to a time
when I was working at a movie theater,
and somebody came in asking for change,
and there was something weird about
the cadence of his words,
and there was a process, and
I was trading 20's for 10's and at some point
I remember thinking, "this feels like a magic trick"
and it turns out after he left that he had actually
pulled the classic short-change operation.
Ended up taking about 50 dollars
of the register's money,
and it occurred to me,
that it's one thing to be told,
"Hey you might get fooled,
watch out for con artists",
But if you put someone in the position
of doing a magic trick enough,
they understand the beats of deception.
And that's what we try to do with scam school.
- See, now this is what is so fascinating,
because the one thing that we turn to for entertainment
is also the thing that can be
a massive downfall for people,
I mean we've seen some really big stories about
giant jobs of hacking,
things like the Sony story from a while back,
and when you hear more and more details
it does seem like, at least social engineering
played partly a role--
- I'm sure! Well, and think about it this way,
if not for the, if it didn't play a role
in the actual hack itself,
it certainly played a role in the fact that,
people were not using real good hygiene
for their naked self-pics, or whatever, you know,
There's software that you can download
that has everything encrypted.
If you have certain pictures
that you want to only exist on your phone
and if they exist anywhere else they're encrypted,
you can make that happen.
But most of the population doesn't think on those terms.
- So, I just wanna say.
Guys, if you want to be really secure,
you should probably study magic.
- Absolutely.
- It's not a joke
- I'll back that play.
Because again, the fundamentals.
Once you learn to deceive someone else,
it's like this protective shield.
Where all of a sudden you become,
not invulnerable, but it's a lot harder
for somebody to use these same techniques on you.
- Alright, so let's say that you were going
to try and use misdirection on someone,
Give me, like, a concrete example,
so that we can kinda see how that works.
- Well, from a security perspective,
one of the classic stories of social engineering,
was in order to infect a virus into a network,
Kevin Mitnick took a floppy disc
and just labeled it "salaries.xls"
and that inherent natural curiosity
caused somebody to put it in,
and once you got one infected computer
its all downhill from there.
- The classic story I always hear is
the guy with the patter who comes in
and they're posing as the IT guy
"Listen, I'm ready to upgrade your computer now
"I know you've been waiting on it
"for a long time.
"I'm just gonna need your login and password
"so that I can do the finalization."
And then you've just handed over access
to your entire network, to a person.
- Absolutely, that's why if you read
the stories of folks like Frank Abagnale,
one of the greatest con men in history.
He found out that by wearing
the trappings of authority;
being dressed as a pilot, or as a police officer,
or as a security guard,
he could pass even the most obviously bogus checks
without anyone looking twice at 'em.
- So Brian, one thing that you and I both know
is that often in Hollywood,
in media depictions of hacking,
we get a really overly simplified,
almost cartoon-ish approach
- I was about to say, it's a freaking cartoon, isn't it.
That's what's great, we're standing here
in the shadow of the Mr. Robot exhibit.
That is one show that by and large, gets it exactly right.
And it's nice to see the,
more of the, accurate representation
of technology and hacking techniques that are out there.
I think the better people will be to protect themselves.
If your parents watch Mr. Robot
they got a better chance of not
picking an obvious password.
- Brian, thank you so much for
coming by and chatting--
- [Brian] Dude, absolutely!
- [Jonathan] Now guys, make sure you go to
nowhowstuffworks.com every day
to check out the coolest stories going on right now.
Brian, what do you have going on?
- You know what, we just launched a brand new show
called The Modern Rogue on the YouTube channel
If you head on over to youtube.com/scamschool
we're making homemade gas masks and testing 'em
against against tear gas, grenades.
We're teaching people to use burner phones.
And basically it's like a tour of the deep underbelly
of what's possible on the internet.
- So, it's kinda like
spy school for the average person, it sound like.
- Yeah, a little bit. A little bit.
- All right, you got me sold.
I'm signing up right away.
See you guys later.