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13140	20160	Welcome to Between Two Nerds. My name is Brett Goldstein. I'm the Director of the Defense Digital Service.
20500	25260	And I'm Will Roper. I run all of the Air Force and Space Force programs.
25260	29020	And we would like to introduce Roro, our moderator today.
29360	34340	Roro is a member of the Defense Digital Service and has mad security skills.
34340	39180	First things first, I wanted to ask you all the question that I've reached out to a bunch of hackers in the community about.
39200	44160	And the most important thing that's on their minds right now is how do you attach the lanyard to the cassette tape?
44160	46400	Well, that's a question for Dr. Roper, I think.
46880	50200	Dr. Roper, considering your advanced work in this space...
51960	55120	Well, I mean, first of all, there's a design issue here.
55120	59480	So, whoever did this, you're fired if you're on the Air Force.
59880	66060	Thing two, there's no place to immediately hook it, so I'd say we just tie it.
66060	72580	We just tie it here, and then we hang it around her neck and get a better cassette next year, whoever did this.
72580	74560	Do you have the duct tape?
74560	77900	I mean, basically, if you have a small neck, you're okay.
78580	82740	Like an actual duck. I could wear this if you don't have duct tape.
83140	89480	So the other question that has also been on their minds is why are you all here at DEFCON Safe Mode?
89680	93940	Sure, well, I mean, you had incriminating evidence on me, so I'm here.
94580	104740	We're going to try to go flat the whole time, Roro. This is Between Two Nerds, after all, the inaugural shooting, so no laughter, no fun. This is serious business.
104740	107080	We're hoping to be syndicated.
107480	113440	Eventually. We can't afford firms yet, but we're headed towards that next step.
113440	121840	Roro, we need a bit more of a positive attitude on this. Like, as we think about sort of our future careers, there seems to be a lot of potential.
121840	132980	Row cubed today, Roro. So, Roro, in all seriousness, because we're being serious here on Between Two Nerds, satellite security is a big deal.
133260	142780	All joking aside, it's a big deal. Our lives depend on space working in a benign, peaceful way that makes life better for everyone.
142780	150720	You need it for the data that's coming to your phone right now. You need it for navigation. You even need it to get cash out of an ATM.
150720	155420	Everyone's lives as we sit here today is connected to space.
155520	160300	Well, you can imagine the military is no exception. We're connected to space.
160300	168520	We use it to move planes from point A to point B, to guide weapons, to plan disaster relief missions. Everything we do.
168720	180700	So, if you're thinking about a way to beat our military, holding space assets at risk is a pretty easy way to take a big leap forward in terms of your capabilities.
180720	185560	And so, we want to know if cyber is something we need to put more worry into.
185560	190220	So, we're here to see if people can hack a satellite, which we think they'll be able to.
190220	196440	And we hope to learn from the community how to be better and more cyber resilient in systems we build in the future.
197400	206160	As an international community of hackers and nerds, how can they help out? What is the call to action here if there is one?
206160	210500	Sure, Rowan. I'm going to try to stay flat. But boy, it's really hard because I'm excited about this.
210660	219060	Anyway, back to Between Two Nerds. Just being here and being interested is a huge deal. We want to learn from you. The military is here to learn.
219980	227920	Historically, we have been secure by hiding behind our fence lines and keeping systems secret until they're used on the battlefield.
227920	235820	Well, that doesn't work anymore. Software is increasingly the delineator in whether systems are dominant or out of the fight.
236160	245880	So we're getting outside of our fence lines and involving communities that can help us, like DEFCON, to see if we need to up our game in cyber.
245980	257340	And so if our satellites have to operate to make the military work the way it's supposed to, we want to expose opportunities to hack them ahead of us taking them into conflict.
257340	266980	So what I hope to learn from DEFCON, from all the amazing community members here, is how good we are today and what we need to do to be better in the future.
267020	278100	So the Department of Defense historically has operated cybersecurity through obscurity. And that is a culture that we're trying to change.
278100	284940	So I'm fortunate I run the Defense Digital Service, which is affectionately known as a SWAT team of nerds.
284940	298120	And we are out there and we are trying to bring the very best in technical talent to the DoD. And part of that is about technology, but part of it is about culture.
298120	309900	So when Will and I went to DEFCON last year, I'd been attending DEFCON for many years, but I brought Will and I said to him, this is a community we need to embrace.
309900	320660	And one, DoD does not need to be afraid of this community. These are folks who we should be friends with. But two, we need to raise our bar.
320660	328880	We need to challenge our software. We need to try and test our systems. And by doing that, we bring the very best in cybersecurity.
329040	339600	So I love this partnership. We learn a lot. We challenge ourselves. Sometimes we learn things that are hard, but this is a community we really want to embrace.
339900	345700	Can you tell me a little bit more about how you got involved with the space or what was the initial ask?
345700	357900	So the first time I went to DEFCON, I was by myself. And I had recently left my first stint in government and people were like, you have to go to DEFCON.
357900	366000	And I went there and I'm like, holy shit. I'm like, there's a gazillion people here. There are crazy things going on. And people said, don't bring a phone in.
366000	380060	And I was completely enamored with this community. And then I came to DoD. And as we're trying to change this culture, which is a obscurity culture, a security by checklist,
380060	389600	I'm like, this is a community that can help make us smarter and help us again, raise the bar even against ourselves.
389600	404440	So by bringing Will and then showing all of the crazy cool things that we're doing, it allowed for that DDS Air Force relationship, which we could then come back and try and do some really cool things.
404620	417160	And the funny part was last year, when DEFCON was winding up, I go to Will, I'm like, we should go back. And Will's like, yeah, we should go back. And I'm like, what do you think we should do?
417160	423820	And dude's like, we should bring a satellite. And that was crazy. But now it's real.
423920	437880	Yeah, it's great when crazy and real can be the same inside the Pentagon. And Brett's exactly right, that this is a community that the department and the Pentagon have been afraid of embracing.
437880	448900	Partly because it's an old Cold War culture that's just behind the times. And another is simply because it doesn't get outside of its five sided walls very often.
448900	458660	And my first trip to DEFCON was amazing. I'm a string theorist by background. I work in physics. I crossed over into defense for really weird reasons.
458660	467680	But it's been an awesome job of getting to run $60 billion of satellites and airplane and cyber capabilities every year.
467680	474200	As I look at this amazing portfolio of programs, everything is driven by software.
474360	488180	And the United States government and our amazing men and women in uniform have put so much time and treasure into these amazing military systems that increasingly operate based on their software.
488180	499140	So if you're looking to defeat us, you don't have to recreate the same systems, build a fighter to match ours, build a satellite to match ours. You just need to be able to hack us.
499200	515140	And so I came last year wanting to see could people who have a great amount of expertise but not a lot of hands-on capability inside the military get inside a system like an F-15 fighter or the systems that enable it.
515140	525340	And so we brought some of those enabling systems and the hacker community got in. But getting in was not the point of being here. It was the learning that happened afterwards.
525340	532780	The hacker community got to learn something about our military systems and we left knowing how to make them more secure.
532860	541360	And so we want to do the same thing for satellites. It's a very different problem than handing you a piece of hardware and saying, can you get in?
541360	554000	The satellite isn't here, it's overhead, moving at 7 kilometers a second. And it only talks to the ground at certain places where we have a ground station that uplinks and downlinks different commands.
554000	566160	This is a wicked hard problem. But I expect the DEFCON community is going to get in again. And the question we're going to ask is what should we learn? What should we do better?
566160	577380	Because cyber is something any country, any terrorist group can try to do against our military. It's quicker, easier, and more seductive than trying to take us head on.
577380	585300	So this dark side of the force is something we're going to have to be able to defeat. And we're here to learn from people who know a lot more than we do.