Another man that caught his conversation with a hacker
on camera was Andy,
who says that while it felt like his home
was being burglarized,
his hacker opened his eyes to how vulnerable
his information was.
Hello, is anyone there?
Can you hear me?
Hello?
Don't be scared or frightened.
I'm not here to cause any malicious thing.
I'm a security researcher from Canada.
I'm here to help you,
I don't know, if your password's been leaked.
All right, I'm gonna shut this thing down then.
Yeah, no worries, and, again,
I'm really sorry if I've startled you or anything.
Just change your password and.
Are you just like a hacker?
How does this work?
I'm just a hacker.
I'm with the Anonymous Calgary Hive Mind in Canada
and you'll be fine.
That's what they told us
before they threatened to kill me.
Yeah.
All right, Andy is joining us now via Polycom.
His hacker, Hank, is joining us via Skype.
Andy, let me start with you.
How surprised were you when your camera
started talking to you?
(laughing)
I was totally shocked.
I mean it was something that I would never expect.
You buy these things to protect yourself
and you think that it's for the better good
but obviously it didn't turn out to be that way for me.
Hank, you're the one that was on the other end
with the mask on saying what you were saying to him
at the time but you agreed to take the mask off for us
and talk about this and help educate some people.
What was your agenda?
What were you thinking about?
Why Andy?
What I was doing the day that I connected
to Andy's camera was going through cameras
that were attached to businesses,
so something that's a physical business with a store,
and it was warning them and telling them
to enable two factor authentication
and don't reuse passwords.
Why is this on your list of things to do?
I've loved computers since I was really little.
I never really considered hacking a bad thing,
especially warning people about it.
Are you really a Canadian researcher?
I guess I'd like to call myself
an independent security researcher.
I look into bug bounties and vulnerabilities every day.
This wasn't something that was meant to get as big
as it did.
I guess you could say best case scenario
because now something might actually be done
about making two factor authentication
a little easier to enable.
Andy, how do you feel about Hank at this point?
I can totally understand where he came from.
I mean, keep in mind it was nothing
that I would ever expect.
Again, you buy these cameras with the full intention
of having the security
but I shut the camera off and decided that
it's never anything I ever want to have in my home again.
Do you still think that Hank is a violator?
No, what I was safe with was knowing that
he came forward to me,
explained where he was coming from
whereas the other guests on your show
may not have had that type of situation.
Well, Hank, I'll ask you.
Brooklyn and Eddie are here and they were contacted
and this person told them they were a Canadian researcher
and then ultimately threatened to kill her.
You don't do that kinda thing, right?
(laughing)
No, and I wanna say sorry to Brooklyn
about the interaction you had.
That's terrible.
You guys don't deserve that
and that kid's an idiot.
(laughing)
(audience clapping)
Kevin, any comment or question to Hank
that would help us understand more about any of this?
Yeah, why access it without authorization
and kinda scare the target?
Maybe there would've been a better way
to advise them rather than breaking in?
Thank you for asking that, and you're right.
I'll start by saying I'm one of your biggest fans, and.
(laughing)
(audience clapping)
I'm really happy to be here.
Wow.
Secondly, you're right.
This was done carelessly
and not with the thought of people's privacy in mind.
But you learned from it so that's the good thing.
So obviously you're not gonna be doing
the same thing again.
Right?
No I won't be doing
this any more. Okay.
Andy, Hank, thank you both for talking about this
and Hank, I really appreciate you coming
and letting us have some insight into what was going on.
You didn't have to do that
and I appreciate you doing it.
Thank you so much for having me on the show.