1 00:00:00,060 --> 00:00:02,040 - Now, this morning, we have Winn Schwartau, 2 00:00:02,040 --> 00:00:03,630 talking to us about his history, 3 00:00:03,630 --> 00:00:05,340 which is really legendary. 4 00:00:05,340 --> 00:00:09,562 So sit back, enjoy, and please give a warm welcome to Winn. 5 00:00:09,562 --> 00:00:13,645 (audience clapping and cheering) 6 00:00:17,046 --> 00:00:19,650 - Am I supposed to ask for you to do that again 7 00:00:19,650 --> 00:00:20,939 to make me feel really good? 8 00:00:20,939 --> 00:00:22,792 No, no, no, no, no. (audience laughing) 9 00:00:22,792 --> 00:00:27,647 (audience clapping and cheering) 10 00:00:27,647 --> 00:00:30,630 This'll fuck up the audio guy in the rear, right? 11 00:00:30,630 --> 00:00:32,517 Am I fucking it up really bad? 12 00:00:32,517 --> 00:00:35,040 (audience laughing) 13 00:00:35,040 --> 00:00:36,303 This is gonna be a rant. 14 00:00:37,470 --> 00:00:41,520 I haven't spoken at DEFCON I guess in 15 years, 15 00:00:41,520 --> 00:00:45,510 because I'm not the traditional hacker. 16 00:00:45,510 --> 00:00:49,020 Network protocols, I lie, I cheat, I Google 17 00:00:49,020 --> 00:00:53,910 and I have a lot of good friends, a lot smarter than me. 18 00:00:53,910 --> 00:00:57,543 But I began and I didn't really realize that I was hacking. 19 00:00:59,454 --> 00:01:00,287 And what I want to show you 20 00:01:00,287 --> 00:01:05,100 is some experiences that I had starting in 1958. 21 00:01:05,100 --> 00:01:08,400 Anybody alive in 1958? 22 00:01:08,400 --> 00:01:09,330 Fuck you, Barry. 23 00:01:09,330 --> 00:01:12,373 Really, okay. (audience laughing) 24 00:01:12,373 --> 00:01:13,206 - [Barry] Two. 25 00:01:13,206 --> 00:01:14,039 - Oh, you were two? 26 00:01:14,940 --> 00:01:19,940 And I grew up in an engineering family. 27 00:01:20,340 --> 00:01:22,500 My father went to MIT at 15 28 00:01:22,500 --> 00:01:25,470 and worked on radar development during World War Two. 29 00:01:25,470 --> 00:01:28,963 So he gave me a non-optional 30 00:01:28,963 --> 00:01:32,490 education on electrical engineering early. 31 00:01:32,490 --> 00:01:35,700 My mother was the first audio engineer 32 00:01:35,700 --> 00:01:38,460 at NBC during World War Two 33 00:01:38,460 --> 00:01:40,869 and got a whole series of patents on... 34 00:01:40,869 --> 00:01:45,420 (audience clapping and cheering) 35 00:01:45,420 --> 00:01:47,880 Yeah, my mother, I wish she could come to DEFCON, 36 00:01:47,880 --> 00:01:49,980 but she'd like be 140 now. 37 00:01:49,980 --> 00:01:51,930 So not gonna work out. 38 00:01:51,930 --> 00:01:54,783 That was my first DEFCON and my first beer. 39 00:01:57,030 --> 00:01:59,700 And this is my father giving me... 40 00:01:59,700 --> 00:02:01,710 Every week my parents split up, 41 00:02:01,710 --> 00:02:02,910 so on the weekend I went down 42 00:02:02,910 --> 00:02:05,160 to my father's house in Greenwich Village 43 00:02:05,160 --> 00:02:08,580 and watched the tourists get mad at the beatniks, 44 00:02:08,580 --> 00:02:13,020 and he gave me non-optional electrical engineering education 45 00:02:13,020 --> 00:02:14,760 and that went on for years and years. 46 00:02:14,760 --> 00:02:17,190 So that ended up being weird. 47 00:02:17,190 --> 00:02:21,480 But I ended up doing TV repair work at six years old 48 00:02:21,480 --> 00:02:23,103 because how hard was it? 49 00:02:24,060 --> 00:02:27,480 You take the tubes out of the TV, 50 00:02:27,480 --> 00:02:31,530 you go down to the drug store, you test them, 51 00:02:31,530 --> 00:02:34,260 you take the two dollars, get a new 12AX7, 52 00:02:34,260 --> 00:02:35,433 go back, plug them in, 53 00:02:36,330 --> 00:02:39,693 and a neighbor in the apartment building gives me 50 cents. 54 00:02:42,617 --> 00:02:43,450 (audience clapping) 55 00:02:43,450 --> 00:02:45,300 But that was in the 50s and they thought, 56 00:02:45,300 --> 00:02:47,520 oh, how do you know how to do that? 57 00:02:47,520 --> 00:02:49,890 Well, my father told me how to use the tube tester. 58 00:02:49,890 --> 00:02:50,723 That was really it. 59 00:02:50,723 --> 00:02:53,790 That's what our electronic stores used to look like 60 00:02:53,790 --> 00:02:56,610 when we had to build shit. 61 00:02:56,610 --> 00:02:59,703 And this is the world of computers way back then. 62 00:03:00,540 --> 00:03:04,410 So my first hack was in 1958, 63 00:03:04,410 --> 00:03:07,830 and anybody know what these are called other than Barry? 64 00:03:07,830 --> 00:03:11,370 Rotary telephones, of course. 65 00:03:11,370 --> 00:03:13,560 So we had these obviously, 66 00:03:13,560 --> 00:03:16,080 and some of them were four digit numbers, 67 00:03:16,080 --> 00:03:18,930 and this is what a bill looked like back in those days, 68 00:03:18,930 --> 00:03:22,200 when you actually had to pay rental fee for a phone 69 00:03:22,200 --> 00:03:24,603 and a rental fee for the wire. 70 00:03:26,280 --> 00:03:29,100 Phone calls, and this is in New York City, 71 00:03:29,100 --> 00:03:31,470 were still 10 cents a minute, 72 00:03:31,470 --> 00:03:34,650 even if I'm calling just across the street. 73 00:03:34,650 --> 00:03:37,623 So things got expensive very quickly. 74 00:03:38,550 --> 00:03:43,550 And apparently I was an unruly child and talked a lot. 75 00:03:44,040 --> 00:03:49,040 So my mother locked the phone. (audience laughing) 76 00:03:50,640 --> 00:03:55,500 And, well, I wanted to make phone calls. 77 00:03:55,500 --> 00:03:59,310 So what do you do in a non-destructive way? 78 00:03:59,310 --> 00:04:04,110 How do you hack a rotary telephone with no tools, 79 00:04:07,170 --> 00:04:10,950 no destruction whatsoever? 80 00:04:10,950 --> 00:04:13,630 Well, here is the old people up here 81 00:04:15,180 --> 00:04:17,070 and they're all giving me this. 82 00:04:17,070 --> 00:04:20,190 Now, don't interpret that too sexually, please, from them. 83 00:04:20,190 --> 00:04:22,380 That's them. (audience laughing) 84 00:04:22,380 --> 00:04:23,910 Inside of these are what's called 85 00:04:23,910 --> 00:04:26,100 stepper relays, decade relays, 86 00:04:26,100 --> 00:04:27,150 and when you dial, 87 00:04:27,150 --> 00:04:31,230 basically it's click click, three or a seven, 88 00:04:31,230 --> 00:04:33,000 and if you get your timing down 89 00:04:33,000 --> 00:04:35,133 with the lock on the phone just right, 90 00:04:36,570 --> 00:04:38,613 hello operator, may I help you? 91 00:04:39,480 --> 00:04:43,500 And please connect me to this long distance number in Greece 92 00:04:43,500 --> 00:04:45,840 or to my friend across the... 93 00:04:45,840 --> 00:04:47,370 A non-destructive hack 94 00:04:47,370 --> 00:04:50,640 that my mother then on the next bill came along 95 00:04:50,640 --> 00:04:51,990 and it was too much and she goes, 96 00:04:51,990 --> 00:04:54,804 so you figured it the fuck out, did you? 97 00:04:54,804 --> 00:04:57,540 (audience laughing) 98 00:04:57,540 --> 00:04:58,560 Was it smart? 99 00:04:58,560 --> 00:05:02,140 No, it was just a kid not accepting 100 00:05:03,150 --> 00:05:06,300 that there was a lock that I could not bypass, 101 00:05:06,300 --> 00:05:10,260 even though it was a completely non-technical hack. 102 00:05:10,260 --> 00:05:12,480 So I'm screwing around with analog computers 103 00:05:12,480 --> 00:05:14,550 and stuff throughout the years, 104 00:05:14,550 --> 00:05:17,853 and everybody know who Richard Stallman is? 105 00:05:19,230 --> 00:05:20,523 I grew up with him, 106 00:05:21,510 --> 00:05:24,663 but I didn't remember that until I hit 60, 107 00:05:26,340 --> 00:05:30,180 because we knew him as Dickie, Dickie Stallman, 108 00:05:30,180 --> 00:05:33,750 and so he and I built little transistor radios 109 00:05:33,750 --> 00:05:35,430 and all sorts of crap, 110 00:05:35,430 --> 00:05:39,002 and his mother was a MILF, just saying. 111 00:05:39,002 --> 00:05:42,002 (audience laughing) 112 00:05:44,400 --> 00:05:46,023 Shut up, Ben, out. 113 00:05:48,090 --> 00:05:52,080 Now, the neighborhood drug stores back in those days 114 00:05:52,080 --> 00:05:54,090 would hire a bunch of us kids 115 00:05:54,090 --> 00:05:56,700 for like three hours a week each 116 00:05:56,700 --> 00:05:58,020 to spread a little bit 117 00:05:58,020 --> 00:06:01,590 of the 80 cents an hour wealth or whatever, 118 00:06:01,590 --> 00:06:03,300 and inside of there, of course, 119 00:06:03,300 --> 00:06:05,433 you see there's a phone booth. 120 00:06:06,930 --> 00:06:08,730 And those were the phones of the day. 121 00:06:08,730 --> 00:06:13,500 And of course, we wanted to make phone calls, 122 00:06:13,500 --> 00:06:16,710 but we're like 10 years old, how do you do it? 123 00:06:16,710 --> 00:06:18,933 How do you do it for free? 124 00:06:20,550 --> 00:06:22,890 Well, that's the way these things used to work. 125 00:06:22,890 --> 00:06:23,850 Stick them in the slot, 126 00:06:23,850 --> 00:06:25,710 and this is the US system, it was different, 127 00:06:25,710 --> 00:06:26,760 and you couldn't do this hack 128 00:06:26,760 --> 00:06:29,520 in other countries and not everywhere. 129 00:06:29,520 --> 00:06:32,463 So here are the pieces to the hack. 130 00:06:34,260 --> 00:06:38,583 Chinese laundry cardboard and a penny. 131 00:06:40,890 --> 00:06:42,510 What we did, and there was 132 00:06:42,510 --> 00:06:46,110 a design feature or fault by AT&T, 133 00:06:46,110 --> 00:06:48,210 depending upon how you look at it, 134 00:06:48,210 --> 00:06:51,750 you take a sliver of one of those cardboards, 135 00:06:51,750 --> 00:06:56,750 slide it down the dime slot, all the way to the bottom, 136 00:06:58,320 --> 00:07:03,320 pick up the receiver, put a penny in the nickel slot. 137 00:07:04,080 --> 00:07:08,832 It registers as a dime and you get your penny back. 138 00:07:08,832 --> 00:07:10,410 (audience laughing) 139 00:07:10,410 --> 00:07:13,350 So if you have a pocket full of pennies, 140 00:07:13,350 --> 00:07:15,630 calling Greece with the operator, 141 00:07:15,630 --> 00:07:19,230 long distance operator on the phone, is a no brainer 142 00:07:19,230 --> 00:07:23,490 and they're getting a legitimate money trigger. 143 00:07:23,490 --> 00:07:27,300 And we lived at that drug store for years 144 00:07:27,300 --> 00:07:28,710 making those kind of calls. 145 00:07:28,710 --> 00:07:31,800 And again, it was a stupid, stupid, 146 00:07:31,800 --> 00:07:36,800 but highly effective way to bypass the security, 147 00:07:37,290 --> 00:07:40,800 the features, the controls that were built into that system. 148 00:07:40,800 --> 00:07:42,390 So then I go on to high school 149 00:07:42,390 --> 00:07:44,250 and they've got a computer thing, 150 00:07:44,250 --> 00:07:46,833 and high school and I didn't get along very well. 151 00:07:48,120 --> 00:07:50,970 So I sort of left in 11th grade 152 00:07:50,970 --> 00:07:53,010 and decided to go into the family business, 153 00:07:53,010 --> 00:07:57,690 the recording industry, music, TV and all that stuff, 154 00:07:57,690 --> 00:07:59,463 and I was 16 years old. 155 00:08:00,300 --> 00:08:02,850 So that was the first studio I got to work at, 156 00:08:02,850 --> 00:08:04,530 which was fairly overwhelming, 157 00:08:04,530 --> 00:08:07,950 except for the fact that my father did it, 158 00:08:07,950 --> 00:08:10,380 and I had been exposed to the studios 159 00:08:10,380 --> 00:08:12,450 and it really wasn't all that scary. 160 00:08:12,450 --> 00:08:13,620 Anybody know who that is? 161 00:08:13,620 --> 00:08:15,720 My first recording session. 162 00:08:15,720 --> 00:08:16,953 Shout it out, anybody. 163 00:08:17,820 --> 00:08:19,593 Nugent, it was the Nuge. 164 00:08:22,560 --> 00:08:26,160 He would get naked in the studio and hump the console. 165 00:08:26,160 --> 00:08:26,993 Just saying. 166 00:08:26,993 --> 00:08:29,610 Please don't repeat that and publicize that. 167 00:08:29,610 --> 00:08:33,090 And then this was my first mechanical system. 168 00:08:33,090 --> 00:08:37,620 It was a cyber mechanical system for cutting records, vinyl. 169 00:08:37,620 --> 00:08:39,870 Some of you may remember vinyl. 170 00:08:39,870 --> 00:08:42,213 And this is how we used to do that. 171 00:08:43,080 --> 00:08:48,080 Now, later on in life, I was at the studios 172 00:08:48,150 --> 00:08:49,050 and there was a thing 173 00:08:49,050 --> 00:08:52,020 that used to be called telephone credit cards 174 00:08:52,020 --> 00:08:53,940 and there's one of them. 175 00:08:53,940 --> 00:08:55,350 And once you got the number 176 00:08:55,350 --> 00:08:57,180 and you got the number by paying a guy 177 00:08:57,180 --> 00:09:00,123 on Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street a dollar, 178 00:09:01,380 --> 00:09:03,030 you do that until the FBI 179 00:09:03,030 --> 00:09:06,540 decides to wrap you around their heads a little bit. 180 00:09:06,540 --> 00:09:08,760 So that was my first visit from the FBI 181 00:09:08,760 --> 00:09:10,950 for doing some sort of crime. 182 00:09:10,950 --> 00:09:12,720 So that was 1969. 183 00:09:12,720 --> 00:09:16,290 It was not a hack, it was pure out and out theft. 184 00:09:16,290 --> 00:09:17,970 So then I get involved with Hendrix 185 00:09:17,970 --> 00:09:21,570 and all these guys doing complex systems, Robert Moog, 186 00:09:21,570 --> 00:09:23,550 and that's the first synthesizer 187 00:09:23,550 --> 00:09:26,250 down from Electric Lady Studios in New York. 188 00:09:26,250 --> 00:09:30,750 So I kept seeing and being involved with complex systems. 189 00:09:30,750 --> 00:09:33,450 This is where I learned that assembly language and I 190 00:09:33,450 --> 00:09:35,463 do not get along either. 191 00:09:36,840 --> 00:09:41,840 And I built it, it semi sort of worked, and that was enough. 192 00:09:42,480 --> 00:09:45,300 That was a computer that we used deck computers 193 00:09:45,300 --> 00:09:49,050 to do synchronization for TV shows. 194 00:09:49,050 --> 00:09:50,760 And this one was from Applause! 195 00:09:50,760 --> 00:09:53,640 And trying to make a deck computer back in those days 196 00:09:53,640 --> 00:09:55,710 actually do what you want it to do 197 00:09:55,710 --> 00:09:58,383 was an incredibly slow process. 198 00:09:59,400 --> 00:10:02,580 Back in, this was the day in our studios in New York, 199 00:10:02,580 --> 00:10:05,130 we had our own telephone exchanges back in the day. 200 00:10:05,130 --> 00:10:06,420 So how do you hack that? 201 00:10:06,420 --> 00:10:08,370 Because what we needed to do 202 00:10:08,370 --> 00:10:13,370 was get audio from the New York studios into the LA studios, 203 00:10:14,070 --> 00:10:19,070 but AT&T wanted $1,500 an hour in 1970 dollars, 204 00:10:21,840 --> 00:10:24,480 to be able to do that connection. 205 00:10:24,480 --> 00:10:27,450 But we had a switchboard. 206 00:10:27,450 --> 00:10:30,690 And once you have the switchboard and the PBX system, 207 00:10:30,690 --> 00:10:33,510 you can bypass very easily the controls 208 00:10:33,510 --> 00:10:35,490 and get directly out to LA 209 00:10:35,490 --> 00:10:38,730 and move the audio back and forth. 210 00:10:38,730 --> 00:10:41,343 Again, is it a hack by today's standards? 211 00:10:42,630 --> 00:10:45,813 From our standpoint, it got the job done. 212 00:10:47,370 --> 00:10:51,960 So being broke back in those days and a roommate, 213 00:10:51,960 --> 00:10:55,200 we used to get our utility bills on punch cards. 214 00:10:55,200 --> 00:10:57,150 Did anybody ever do that? 215 00:10:57,150 --> 00:11:01,470 All right, one old guy, two old guys, fair enough. 216 00:11:01,470 --> 00:11:02,688 Is that you, Mark? 217 00:11:02,688 --> 00:11:03,521 - [Mark] Yes, it is. - It is. 218 00:11:03,521 --> 00:11:05,460 Well take your mask off so I can see your face. 219 00:11:05,460 --> 00:11:06,293 Thank you. 220 00:11:07,920 --> 00:11:10,593 Yeah, let's hear it for G Mark, come on, yeah. 221 00:11:10,593 --> 00:11:14,010 (audience clapping) 222 00:11:14,010 --> 00:11:17,970 So, we used to get our bills and what is it we want to do? 223 00:11:17,970 --> 00:11:22,970 Not pay them, and keep the power and the phones. 224 00:11:24,600 --> 00:11:26,100 So we had access of course 225 00:11:26,100 --> 00:11:28,860 to computers at NYU, what have you, 226 00:11:28,860 --> 00:11:33,420 and then we discovered by looking at the punch card, 227 00:11:33,420 --> 00:11:37,173 the dollar amount, let's say it was $7.32, 228 00:11:38,400 --> 00:11:41,613 there were no fields to the left of the number. 229 00:11:43,230 --> 00:11:44,343 So what did we do? 230 00:11:45,930 --> 00:11:47,674 Add a minus sign. 231 00:11:47,674 --> 00:11:49,560 (audience laughing) 232 00:11:49,560 --> 00:11:53,940 Every month, we got a check for the amount of service 233 00:11:53,940 --> 00:11:56,766 that we used the month before. 234 00:11:56,766 --> 00:11:59,766 (audience clapping) 235 00:12:02,370 --> 00:12:05,550 Wait a minute, is this doing a live thing of me? 236 00:12:05,550 --> 00:12:07,125 Oh, shit. 237 00:12:07,125 --> 00:12:09,360 (audience laughing) 238 00:12:09,360 --> 00:12:10,760 I wonder if we can say that. 239 00:12:11,670 --> 00:12:13,257 Oh, shit, okay (laughing). 240 00:12:16,470 --> 00:12:21,470 So, that's how it worked for about two years 241 00:12:21,510 --> 00:12:23,970 and they upped their security at that 242 00:12:23,970 --> 00:12:25,170 a little bit after that. 243 00:12:26,040 --> 00:12:27,960 So then I got hired to do 244 00:12:27,960 --> 00:12:30,930 a build a studio complex for some guys, 245 00:12:30,930 --> 00:12:32,340 and while they wanted to pay me 246 00:12:32,340 --> 00:12:34,950 reasonably good money back in the day, 247 00:12:34,950 --> 00:12:37,863 they had virtually no budget for equipment. 248 00:12:39,000 --> 00:12:41,280 And what we needed to do was tie together 249 00:12:41,280 --> 00:12:46,020 all of these studios throughout the facility, 250 00:12:46,020 --> 00:12:47,880 and there were eight or 10 of them, 251 00:12:47,880 --> 00:12:51,600 and instead of the big patch bay, they couldn't afford, 252 00:12:51,600 --> 00:12:55,200 or the wiring associated, which they couldn't afford, 253 00:12:55,200 --> 00:12:58,323 we decided we have another option here. 254 00:13:01,080 --> 00:13:02,460 Who pictures this? 255 00:13:02,460 --> 00:13:05,460 Yeah, AT&T. 256 00:13:05,460 --> 00:13:06,570 AT&T owned the universe. 257 00:13:06,570 --> 00:13:08,940 Them and IBM owned the universe back then. 258 00:13:08,940 --> 00:13:10,590 And the AT&T building 259 00:13:10,590 --> 00:13:14,790 was about five blocks away on 11th Avenue. 260 00:13:14,790 --> 00:13:15,900 And what did we do? 261 00:13:15,900 --> 00:13:18,123 We did what is now called dumpster diving, 262 00:13:19,170 --> 00:13:22,860 looking for old AT&T equipment that they threw out, 263 00:13:22,860 --> 00:13:25,560 because if there was one little thing wrong, 264 00:13:25,560 --> 00:13:27,690 they would just toss it out, 265 00:13:27,690 --> 00:13:29,610 which meant from our standpoint, 266 00:13:29,610 --> 00:13:30,443 all we have to do 267 00:13:30,443 --> 00:13:33,810 is find the one little thing wrong and fix it, 268 00:13:33,810 --> 00:13:35,523 but it was all free. 269 00:13:36,750 --> 00:13:39,180 So by putting all of this stuff together 270 00:13:39,180 --> 00:13:40,890 and repurposing this equipment, 271 00:13:40,890 --> 00:13:43,980 we were able to build recording studios 272 00:13:43,980 --> 00:13:47,740 and switching networks, using stepper relays 273 00:13:48,900 --> 00:13:50,040 the same way that we used to, 274 00:13:50,040 --> 00:13:52,110 I hacked the phone when I was a kid. 275 00:13:52,110 --> 00:13:53,850 And the stepper relay was the key to it, 276 00:13:53,850 --> 00:13:57,990 because you could dial up anything you wanted to do. 277 00:13:57,990 --> 00:13:59,820 So there was a rack of dials 278 00:13:59,820 --> 00:14:03,150 and it rerouted all of the signals everywhere 279 00:14:03,150 --> 00:14:05,130 throughout the recording complex 280 00:14:05,130 --> 00:14:07,380 and it didn't cost us a dime. 281 00:14:07,380 --> 00:14:09,693 Thank you, AT&T for that one. 282 00:14:11,910 --> 00:14:14,490 My first home computer, where again, I learned, 283 00:14:14,490 --> 00:14:17,520 I'm a really shitty programmer. 284 00:14:17,520 --> 00:14:18,480 I'm awful. 285 00:14:18,480 --> 00:14:22,410 I got it to work semi sort of kind of kludgy 286 00:14:22,410 --> 00:14:24,630 and that was when my wife first said 287 00:14:24,630 --> 00:14:28,770 that she was now a computer widow, and that was in '78. 288 00:14:28,770 --> 00:14:32,438 Oh, there's my wife, and what happened with my wife... 289 00:14:32,438 --> 00:14:34,588 (audience clapping) Well, thank you, Mike. 290 00:14:36,330 --> 00:14:39,429 My wife, she built recording consoles 291 00:14:39,429 --> 00:14:43,050 and this was the first computerized, 292 00:14:43,050 --> 00:14:47,643 automated recording console, 1979. 293 00:14:48,690 --> 00:14:52,020 Never fucking worked. (audience laughing) 294 00:14:52,020 --> 00:14:54,030 I kept blaming my wife for it and she goes, 295 00:14:54,030 --> 00:14:55,800 I didn't wire those. 296 00:14:55,800 --> 00:14:57,380 But it was one of these... 297 00:14:58,410 --> 00:15:02,640 You had to know 700 control commands 298 00:15:02,640 --> 00:15:07,050 and do all phase shift antenna metal 299 00:15:07,050 --> 00:15:10,050 in order to make anything attempt to work and it didn't. 300 00:15:10,050 --> 00:15:11,190 And that was one of the projects 301 00:15:11,190 --> 00:15:12,810 that we were trying to make it work, 302 00:15:12,810 --> 00:15:15,783 and fuck it, just completely gave up. 303 00:15:16,710 --> 00:15:19,740 I had a studio in New York for a while. 304 00:15:19,740 --> 00:15:24,720 So, that was the background on which we started, 305 00:15:24,720 --> 00:15:28,113 or I started learning there's always an answer. 306 00:15:29,280 --> 00:15:30,330 It's like that Apollo, 307 00:15:30,330 --> 00:15:33,273 one of the greatest scenes in movie history, Apollo 13, 308 00:15:34,350 --> 00:15:37,350 this is what they have up there, 309 00:15:37,350 --> 00:15:42,030 that's all you get to work with, nothing else. 310 00:15:42,030 --> 00:15:46,200 So back in these days, I was doing a lot of studio work, 311 00:15:46,200 --> 00:15:49,920 I was on the road with various music artists, 312 00:15:49,920 --> 00:15:52,590 and as we always say at DEFCON, 313 00:15:52,590 --> 00:15:55,620 something's always gonna fuck up completely. 314 00:15:55,620 --> 00:15:58,980 Well, I'm gonna tell you about a couple of those fuck ups, 315 00:15:58,980 --> 00:16:01,413 and we had to hack our way out of them. 316 00:16:02,460 --> 00:16:05,970 1975, 1976, I don't even remember the year, 317 00:16:05,970 --> 00:16:08,700 we were in Kingston, Jamaica, 318 00:16:08,700 --> 00:16:11,160 and it was a thing with the British government 319 00:16:11,160 --> 00:16:12,750 and they were trying to make peace 320 00:16:12,750 --> 00:16:14,610 because there were troubles down there, 321 00:16:14,610 --> 00:16:18,873 and Stevie Wonder and Bob Marley were the big acts. 322 00:16:19,830 --> 00:16:23,440 So we had to build riot cages into the stage 323 00:16:24,390 --> 00:16:29,390 because of the suspected possibility of terrorism 324 00:16:30,393 --> 00:16:32,757 that the British embassy had told us about. 325 00:16:32,757 --> 00:16:36,300 And I remember, I think I'm 23 years old here going, 326 00:16:36,300 --> 00:16:40,233 terrorism, concert, fuck me, get me home. 327 00:16:41,340 --> 00:16:45,720 Well, concert goes on, soccer stadium, 328 00:16:45,720 --> 00:16:50,400 120,000 people in the soccer stadium, 329 00:16:50,400 --> 00:16:55,400 and keep in mind that Jamaican police don't have police. 330 00:16:58,050 --> 00:17:02,010 Ergo, the riot cages built into the stage. 331 00:17:02,010 --> 00:17:06,940 So the chaos was suddenly 332 00:17:08,820 --> 00:17:13,020 all of the lights and all of the sound went off 333 00:17:13,020 --> 00:17:17,733 with 120,000 reggaeing people in the audience. 334 00:17:18,840 --> 00:17:20,537 The fuck do you do? 335 00:17:21,540 --> 00:17:26,441 We're in a foreign country, we don't know where the... 336 00:17:26,441 --> 00:17:28,050 It was like, give us a plug. 337 00:17:28,050 --> 00:17:28,980 It's like what we say, 338 00:17:28,980 --> 00:17:32,250 give me clean internet and I'll take it from there. 339 00:17:32,250 --> 00:17:33,090 That's all we wanted. 340 00:17:33,090 --> 00:17:35,250 Give us some good power. 341 00:17:35,250 --> 00:17:39,000 Except in this case there was so much power, 342 00:17:39,000 --> 00:17:41,043 the pole transformer went. 343 00:17:42,450 --> 00:17:45,450 120,000 people. What do you do? 344 00:17:45,450 --> 00:17:49,683 Well, one of the absolutely stoned out of his mind groupies, 345 00:17:51,840 --> 00:17:56,840 it was his, not mine, CO2 cools things down really quickly. 346 00:17:58,140 --> 00:17:59,948 So we had two of the group... 347 00:17:59,948 --> 00:18:03,840 Not the groupies, roadies, sorry, not groupies, 348 00:18:03,840 --> 00:18:06,450 roadies get the CO2s that we happened to have 349 00:18:06,450 --> 00:18:09,510 because we had two of equipment and it gets hot, 350 00:18:09,510 --> 00:18:11,910 went over to start cooling down the transformer 351 00:18:11,910 --> 00:18:15,753 as they start to get arrested for terrorism. 352 00:18:18,360 --> 00:18:22,980 And it took a few minutes in order to get them to realize 353 00:18:22,980 --> 00:18:27,510 we would like your help keeping this, and it was a... 354 00:18:27,510 --> 00:18:31,980 But we hacked the entire power system for the stadium 355 00:18:31,980 --> 00:18:34,560 with several cans of CO2, 356 00:18:34,560 --> 00:18:37,260 and the concert finally went on. 357 00:18:37,260 --> 00:18:40,890 Sort of like Jeopardy last night, we finally got there. 358 00:18:40,890 --> 00:18:42,570 Took a while, but we... 359 00:18:42,570 --> 00:18:45,243 And again, is this a true hack? 360 00:18:46,110 --> 00:18:48,990 I don't care what word you want to use for it, 361 00:18:48,990 --> 00:18:53,523 it was when the shit really fucking hits the fan, 362 00:18:54,660 --> 00:18:55,800 what do you do? 363 00:18:55,800 --> 00:18:58,800 And you've got to pull out every single stop, 364 00:18:58,800 --> 00:19:01,470 and I get into rants about graceful degradation 365 00:19:01,470 --> 00:19:03,297 and enterprise networks and things, 366 00:19:03,297 --> 00:19:05,400 and I talk to the CISOs, I say, 367 00:19:05,400 --> 00:19:08,610 where's your graceful degradation and segmentation plan? 368 00:19:08,610 --> 00:19:09,560 And I go, say what? 369 00:19:10,620 --> 00:19:13,463 All right, well you've never been in rock and roll, dude. 370 00:19:13,463 --> 00:19:14,440 (audience laughing) 371 00:19:14,440 --> 00:19:16,380 So there's a few takeaways 372 00:19:16,380 --> 00:19:19,330 and the slides will all be available for you guys later on. 373 00:19:20,790 --> 00:19:22,680 I absolutely love Liza Minnelli. 374 00:19:22,680 --> 00:19:25,290 We recorded Liza With a Z, 375 00:19:25,290 --> 00:19:29,670 and what she did in the studio was rather amazing. 376 00:19:29,670 --> 00:19:31,110 She drank a bottle of scotch, 377 00:19:31,110 --> 00:19:33,483 took her clothes off and proceeded to sing. 378 00:19:34,830 --> 00:19:36,990 All right, if that's the way you want to do it, Liza. 379 00:19:36,990 --> 00:19:39,720 So the whole object was gonna be a TV show 380 00:19:39,720 --> 00:19:40,830 called Liza With a Z. 381 00:19:40,830 --> 00:19:45,060 She was coming back and doing, now gonna be famous again. 382 00:19:45,060 --> 00:19:49,740 So live shows, live thing went absolutely fine, 383 00:19:49,740 --> 00:19:51,720 but we need to go back to the studio. 384 00:19:51,720 --> 00:19:56,400 Now, in those days we had film, deck, 385 00:19:56,400 --> 00:19:58,950 we had a video (indistinct) a little bit, 386 00:19:58,950 --> 00:20:00,513 but made mostly film, 387 00:20:01,500 --> 00:20:05,613 and an audio machine with a thing called pilot tone. 388 00:20:06,720 --> 00:20:07,860 Nobody's probably ever heard... 389 00:20:07,860 --> 00:20:10,470 Anybody ever hear of pilot tone? 390 00:20:10,470 --> 00:20:13,080 Oh, Masuchi, of course you have, you're as old as... 391 00:20:13,080 --> 00:20:16,200 I went to high school with this motherfucker up here. 392 00:20:16,200 --> 00:20:19,050 Ninth grade, I've known him 56 years. 393 00:20:19,050 --> 00:20:20,643 Thanks for coming, Mike. 394 00:20:21,660 --> 00:20:23,070 So you get back to the studio 395 00:20:23,070 --> 00:20:25,500 and you expect the pilot tone on the film 396 00:20:25,500 --> 00:20:27,963 and the mag stripe to work with the audio, right? 397 00:20:29,520 --> 00:20:32,010 Well, not so much. 398 00:20:32,010 --> 00:20:33,930 Completely out of sync. 399 00:20:33,930 --> 00:20:38,280 And we have a live broadcast coming up on NBC. 400 00:20:38,280 --> 00:20:42,180 The fuck do you do when you're completely out of sync? 401 00:20:42,180 --> 00:20:44,160 Well, you cobble together. 402 00:20:44,160 --> 00:20:45,930 This is very sophisticated equipment 403 00:20:45,930 --> 00:20:48,060 compared to what we have. 404 00:20:48,060 --> 00:20:51,450 We cobbled together a set of oscillators and power, 405 00:20:51,450 --> 00:20:53,880 two power amplifiers, 406 00:20:53,880 --> 00:20:57,510 to drive a set of hysteresis synchronous motors, 407 00:20:57,510 --> 00:21:00,150 for anybody that may remember what those are 408 00:21:00,150 --> 00:21:02,850 before the DC motors came along, 409 00:21:02,850 --> 00:21:06,510 and that (indistinct) pattern, the one that you see there, 410 00:21:06,510 --> 00:21:10,860 we had to take dials on the oscillators and the machines 411 00:21:10,860 --> 00:21:13,500 because they introduced friction into the system, 412 00:21:13,500 --> 00:21:16,920 and maintain that (indistinct) pattern 413 00:21:16,920 --> 00:21:19,683 for four hours by hand. 414 00:21:21,150 --> 00:21:23,220 Did it always work? 415 00:21:23,220 --> 00:21:24,690 No, sometimes the high hat 416 00:21:24,690 --> 00:21:26,970 and the video was off a little bit, 417 00:21:26,970 --> 00:21:30,510 but in general it was the best that we could do. 418 00:21:30,510 --> 00:21:33,360 We cobbled together some equipment that didn't exist 419 00:21:33,360 --> 00:21:35,340 and we went to the shop and did it. 420 00:21:35,340 --> 00:21:37,140 Again, is it a hack? 421 00:21:37,140 --> 00:21:39,330 We got the job done when otherwise 422 00:21:39,330 --> 00:21:42,330 there would not have been a TV broadcast at all. 423 00:21:42,330 --> 00:21:45,150 Synchronization failures were a disaster 424 00:21:45,150 --> 00:21:47,730 in the early days of the recording industry 425 00:21:47,730 --> 00:21:50,610 because everybody in the late 70s and early 80s is saying, 426 00:21:50,610 --> 00:21:54,330 we're gonna go digital, digital will fix everything. 427 00:21:54,330 --> 00:21:57,150 Except for those of you who remember what digital was like 428 00:21:57,150 --> 00:21:59,280 in the late 70s and early 80s, 429 00:21:59,280 --> 00:22:01,743 it was really highly experimental. 430 00:22:02,760 --> 00:22:04,590 So we did a lot of experimentation 431 00:22:04,590 --> 00:22:08,070 of how do you get, instead of just 24 tracks, 432 00:22:08,070 --> 00:22:10,860 how do you get 48 tracks? 433 00:22:10,860 --> 00:22:14,430 And can I record 24 of the tracks live in LA, 434 00:22:14,430 --> 00:22:17,250 the other 24 live in New York 435 00:22:17,250 --> 00:22:19,590 and keep them all synchronized with equipment 436 00:22:19,590 --> 00:22:21,240 that doesn't work from England? 437 00:22:21,240 --> 00:22:24,480 No offense to my British friends out there. 438 00:22:24,480 --> 00:22:28,182 Well, synchronization was awful. 439 00:22:28,182 --> 00:22:30,933 Remember the song, Do You Think I'm Sexy? 440 00:22:31,845 --> 00:22:33,240 With Rod Stewart. 441 00:22:33,240 --> 00:22:38,240 We were on that session for 72 hours, 72 straight hours, 442 00:22:40,200 --> 00:22:45,200 just trying to keep the drum tracks from that song from LA 443 00:22:46,410 --> 00:22:49,260 in sync with the audio 444 00:22:49,260 --> 00:22:52,440 and the voice being recorded in New York. 445 00:22:52,440 --> 00:22:56,100 That was 72 hours of absolute hell where we had to, again, 446 00:22:56,100 --> 00:22:58,620 revert to graceful degradation 447 00:22:58,620 --> 00:23:03,030 and a manual mode of working, completely manual, 448 00:23:03,030 --> 00:23:06,750 and you could grab a few seconds of sync 449 00:23:06,750 --> 00:23:07,950 and it would fall out again. 450 00:23:07,950 --> 00:23:10,680 So it was an absolute nightmare. 451 00:23:10,680 --> 00:23:13,350 But synchronization in our world 452 00:23:13,350 --> 00:23:16,170 is about what makes everything work, 453 00:23:16,170 --> 00:23:17,760 and getting the timing right. 454 00:23:17,760 --> 00:23:21,570 We've all heard the stories of, well, my clock was on CST 455 00:23:21,570 --> 00:23:24,690 and their clock was on Central European Time. 456 00:23:24,690 --> 00:23:26,160 We were eight hours off. 457 00:23:26,160 --> 00:23:28,620 Or I'm using an Imperial measurement system 458 00:23:28,620 --> 00:23:30,870 versus a Metric system, 459 00:23:30,870 --> 00:23:32,910 and everything completely fucks up. 460 00:23:32,910 --> 00:23:37,350 The synchronization issues that we faced are very similar 461 00:23:37,350 --> 00:23:40,710 to the types of synchronization issues that we face today, 462 00:23:40,710 --> 00:23:45,710 but are much more profound aspects of what can go wrong. 463 00:23:45,870 --> 00:23:47,670 And that's why thinking synchronization 464 00:23:47,670 --> 00:23:50,040 is so incredibly critical. 465 00:23:50,040 --> 00:23:51,990 Charlie Daniels, I got flown in from LA 466 00:23:51,990 --> 00:23:55,440 to record him in Madison Square Garden. 467 00:23:55,440 --> 00:23:56,703 My crew was there. 468 00:23:57,630 --> 00:24:00,750 Everything should have gone very smoothly. 469 00:24:00,750 --> 00:24:04,440 However, what we were supposed to do 470 00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:08,160 was record Charlie Daniels and the event and the bands 471 00:24:08,160 --> 00:24:12,300 through a fairly large console onto a 16 track tape machine. 472 00:24:12,300 --> 00:24:16,173 Fairly normal activity for us back in those days. 473 00:24:17,100 --> 00:24:21,060 So you have 40 microphones go into the console, 474 00:24:21,060 --> 00:24:23,310 branch them out and record them properly 475 00:24:23,310 --> 00:24:26,880 on the appropriate channel on the audio machine. 476 00:24:26,880 --> 00:24:31,080 Except, and no offense to any union people in this room, 477 00:24:31,080 --> 00:24:34,550 but back in the day, Madison Square Garden, (indistinct), 478 00:24:36,360 --> 00:24:40,200 hired the most incompetent people known to man 479 00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:43,473 to assist us in our professional recording endeavors. 480 00:24:45,840 --> 00:24:50,840 Every single microphone signal was ground looped. 481 00:24:51,030 --> 00:24:52,920 So every single input, 482 00:24:52,920 --> 00:24:57,920 all 40 of them had exactly the same signal. 483 00:24:59,970 --> 00:25:01,560 Right. 484 00:25:01,560 --> 00:25:05,520 No isolation, no differentiation, 485 00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:08,680 and we actually had to do it all live 486 00:25:09,570 --> 00:25:13,620 with massive amounts of equalization and digital filtering, 487 00:25:13,620 --> 00:25:16,920 such as existed in 1981, 488 00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:20,220 to be able to get it down to a mono machine, 489 00:25:20,220 --> 00:25:21,660 and then have to go to the studio 490 00:25:21,660 --> 00:25:24,360 and rebuild the whole thing from scratch. 491 00:25:24,360 --> 00:25:27,090 So audio quality, if anybody's interested, 492 00:25:27,090 --> 00:25:29,580 I actually have the vinyl from that, 493 00:25:29,580 --> 00:25:33,450 the audio quality is absolutely awful, 494 00:25:33,450 --> 00:25:36,510 but the radio stations didn't seem to give a shit, 495 00:25:36,510 --> 00:25:38,400 because they were broadcasting on AM 496 00:25:38,400 --> 00:25:40,890 and the quality was so bad anyway. 497 00:25:40,890 --> 00:25:44,370 So this was about preparation and architecting 498 00:25:44,370 --> 00:25:48,840 and never really trusting folks to do it, 499 00:25:48,840 --> 00:25:50,430 do the jobs that you expected, 500 00:25:50,430 --> 00:25:53,670 especially in that environment back in those days. 501 00:25:53,670 --> 00:25:55,530 So there's plenty of realities, 502 00:25:55,530 --> 00:25:58,230 and I spent a lot of time doing remote work, 503 00:25:58,230 --> 00:26:00,930 and remote work is where if it can go wrong, 504 00:26:00,930 --> 00:26:03,270 it's gonna go fucking wrong 505 00:26:03,270 --> 00:26:05,520 and it's gonna go wrong in a big way, 506 00:26:05,520 --> 00:26:07,720 and these are just a couple of the examples. 507 00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:12,030 There was a studio we worked at called R One 508 00:26:12,030 --> 00:26:14,490 and it was a jingle studio back in the days 509 00:26:14,490 --> 00:26:18,240 and the money making for the recording industry 510 00:26:18,240 --> 00:26:20,130 that would support artists 511 00:26:20,130 --> 00:26:22,623 was from the jingle houses for advertising. 512 00:26:23,460 --> 00:26:25,413 So it was pretty straight ahead stuff. 513 00:26:27,389 --> 00:26:30,270 So the studio was roughly like this 514 00:26:30,270 --> 00:26:32,340 and 40 musicians out there, 515 00:26:32,340 --> 00:26:35,400 the producer from whatever company it was, 516 00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:37,260 like I said, this one was Alka-Seltzer 517 00:26:37,260 --> 00:26:39,873 and the jingle house, they're all sitting there, 518 00:26:41,730 --> 00:26:43,030 and then they'd say to me, 519 00:26:44,040 --> 00:26:47,109 Winn, is there supposed to be smoke 520 00:26:47,109 --> 00:26:49,023 coming out of the console? 521 00:26:50,430 --> 00:26:51,783 Oh, fuck. 522 00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:54,990 So we got 40 guys and we got a console 523 00:26:54,990 --> 00:26:57,033 that just went up in smoke. 524 00:26:58,320 --> 00:26:59,173 What do you do? 525 00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:02,160 What do you do? 526 00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:03,873 Well, you panic. 527 00:27:04,800 --> 00:27:07,107 And back in those days, we had these things, 528 00:27:07,107 --> 00:27:08,970 and I think some of the AV guys still use them, 529 00:27:08,970 --> 00:27:10,380 they're called SM. 530 00:27:10,380 --> 00:27:14,400 They're mixers, little tiny, sure, four channel mixers. 531 00:27:14,400 --> 00:27:15,510 So what did we have to do? 532 00:27:15,510 --> 00:27:18,480 We had to get all the gophers in the studio, 533 00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:23,010 extend all the microphones, wires about 100 feet, 534 00:27:23,010 --> 00:27:24,390 wire them into the studio, 535 00:27:24,390 --> 00:27:27,750 put them into the back of these little mixers, 536 00:27:27,750 --> 00:27:30,960 take those mixers, bypass the console, 537 00:27:30,960 --> 00:27:32,310 go into the tape machine 538 00:27:32,310 --> 00:27:35,760 where we can manually control the levels 539 00:27:35,760 --> 00:27:37,390 throughout the entire session 540 00:27:38,310 --> 00:27:42,030 and never be able to hear what was going on 541 00:27:42,030 --> 00:27:45,210 until we did a playback to see how good it was. 542 00:27:45,210 --> 00:27:47,070 That was sheer chaos. 543 00:27:47,070 --> 00:27:51,120 But again, there was a way to do it. 544 00:27:51,120 --> 00:27:53,850 We understood the architecture 545 00:27:53,850 --> 00:27:56,580 of what we were trying to achieve. 546 00:27:56,580 --> 00:27:59,040 We understood what we had in the consoles, 547 00:27:59,040 --> 00:28:02,850 how do we replicate the console feature set 548 00:28:02,850 --> 00:28:06,390 into something else in under 20 minutes? 549 00:28:06,390 --> 00:28:08,880 And it's a bitch, but these are the things 550 00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:11,940 that have brought me into the security industry, 551 00:28:11,940 --> 00:28:15,930 always thinking of what the hell can go wrong? 552 00:28:15,930 --> 00:28:17,400 And maybe that's why I wrote 553 00:28:17,400 --> 00:28:19,200 several of the books on these topics 554 00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:24,200 of what can go wrong when you don't really think about it. 555 00:28:25,260 --> 00:28:26,093 Charlie... 556 00:28:26,093 --> 00:28:28,053 That's Hank Williams Jr. 557 00:28:28,920 --> 00:28:30,540 We were doing a thing in New York. 558 00:28:30,540 --> 00:28:33,780 Anybody ever hear of the Lone Star Cafe in New York? 559 00:28:33,780 --> 00:28:34,613 Yeah. 560 00:28:34,613 --> 00:28:36,840 We had a studio in the basement of it, 561 00:28:36,840 --> 00:28:41,800 and every week we'd record whatever the act was live 562 00:28:43,020 --> 00:28:47,760 to 570 radio stations across the country. 563 00:28:47,760 --> 00:28:49,470 Not really a big deal technically, 564 00:28:49,470 --> 00:28:50,430 we knew what we were doing, 565 00:28:50,430 --> 00:28:53,013 we had the tie lines and everything went well. 566 00:28:53,970 --> 00:28:57,840 Hank Williams is up there, and he's playing, 567 00:28:57,840 --> 00:29:02,280 and a couple of guys whose particular orientation 568 00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:04,263 he was not thrilled with, 569 00:29:06,330 --> 00:29:11,330 decided to have a beer fight and throw beer on him on stage. 570 00:29:11,760 --> 00:29:14,583 It's a little tiny stage, smaller than this. 571 00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:18,600 And he up and walks out 572 00:29:18,600 --> 00:29:21,813 and we hadn't been through 30 minutes of the live show yet. 573 00:29:22,860 --> 00:29:25,980 Gone, no act. 574 00:29:25,980 --> 00:29:27,183 What do you do? 575 00:29:28,290 --> 00:29:29,640 What do you do? 576 00:29:29,640 --> 00:29:31,290 Well, we had the radio announcer, 577 00:29:31,290 --> 00:29:33,390 Mike Fitzgerald was his name, 578 00:29:33,390 --> 00:29:35,310 he was the New York radio announcer 579 00:29:35,310 --> 00:29:37,830 for the station that sponsored all this, 580 00:29:37,830 --> 00:29:42,120 and I said, Mike, vamp, vamp. 581 00:29:42,120 --> 00:29:44,010 And I said, I need 10 minutes. 582 00:29:44,010 --> 00:29:45,300 So what did we do? 583 00:29:45,300 --> 00:29:47,160 We were live recording everything. 584 00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:52,110 So I rewound the tape to the very beginning 585 00:29:52,110 --> 00:29:56,343 of when we began recording, when we introduced him live. 586 00:29:57,450 --> 00:30:01,980 I pressed play and replayed for the second half of the show 587 00:30:01,980 --> 00:30:04,953 exactly what was done in the first half of the show. 588 00:30:05,910 --> 00:30:07,743 Nobody seemed to give a shit. 589 00:30:08,857 --> 00:30:10,797 Again, back in those days 590 00:30:10,797 --> 00:30:12,600 and I think it's still the same rules, 591 00:30:12,600 --> 00:30:14,250 if you don't fill the air time, 592 00:30:14,250 --> 00:30:16,830 the FCC's gonna get on your ass. 593 00:30:16,830 --> 00:30:20,250 So whatever it was, fill the air, fill the air, 594 00:30:20,250 --> 00:30:23,913 and again, we kind of got through that one as well. 595 00:30:28,020 --> 00:30:28,983 The live stuff. 596 00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:34,593 When you're doing any technical stuff at all, 597 00:30:35,520 --> 00:30:38,850 and you say, oh, this is gonna be really easy, 598 00:30:38,850 --> 00:30:39,873 the answer is no. 599 00:30:40,890 --> 00:30:43,710 How many years of hacker jeopardy have we had 600 00:30:43,710 --> 00:30:46,590 where we, ah, we've got it wired this year 601 00:30:46,590 --> 00:30:51,590 until somebody decides to put Vista on a machine for us, 602 00:30:53,419 --> 00:30:54,870 and the first time I think anybody 603 00:30:54,870 --> 00:30:57,660 ever yelled at jeopardy, hacker jeopardy was, 604 00:30:57,660 --> 00:31:02,130 hey, does anybody have a non-Vista machine we can have now? 605 00:31:02,130 --> 00:31:04,263 And I finally worked our way through that. 606 00:31:05,280 --> 00:31:08,310 As we build our systems, 607 00:31:08,310 --> 00:31:13,310 complexity is our enemy, absolute enemy. 608 00:31:13,950 --> 00:31:15,690 And we want more features. 609 00:31:15,690 --> 00:31:20,690 So we see the increase of sophistication of software. 610 00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:24,300 We see the increase of sophistication of hardware. 611 00:31:24,300 --> 00:31:27,420 Not necessarily so much because we need it, 612 00:31:27,420 --> 00:31:30,210 but the vendors want to be able to say, 613 00:31:30,210 --> 00:31:32,190 we have 22 new features 614 00:31:32,190 --> 00:31:34,285 and it's worth another thousand dollars 615 00:31:34,285 --> 00:31:36,093 for us to give it to you. 616 00:31:36,960 --> 00:31:41,960 And we're increasing our complexity without due thought, 617 00:31:44,070 --> 00:31:46,680 without proper planning. 618 00:31:46,680 --> 00:31:51,213 Again, what do you do when the IT hits the fan? 619 00:31:52,140 --> 00:31:54,480 And that's why I go back to these presentations, 620 00:31:54,480 --> 00:31:58,020 and my prior career of it was all analog, 621 00:31:58,020 --> 00:32:02,310 we had nothing digital that worked in those days at all, 622 00:32:02,310 --> 00:32:05,040 with the exception of a couple little pieces of equipment, 623 00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:09,810 everything was guessing, trial and error and it was a mess. 624 00:32:09,810 --> 00:32:13,263 And today we're still doing this trial and error, 625 00:32:14,730 --> 00:32:16,350 but we should learn from history 626 00:32:16,350 --> 00:32:20,730 that a little bit more planning in when the IT hits the fan, 627 00:32:20,730 --> 00:32:21,870 how do you function? 628 00:32:21,870 --> 00:32:25,563 What is your minimal viable operating capability? 629 00:32:27,154 --> 00:32:27,987 Do we plan about that? 630 00:32:27,987 --> 00:32:30,270 The businesses go, no, IT, you take care of the business, 631 00:32:30,270 --> 00:32:32,310 folks don't understand enough. 632 00:32:32,310 --> 00:32:34,620 You guys do. 633 00:32:34,620 --> 00:32:37,230 And that is part of the hopefully the lesson here 634 00:32:37,230 --> 00:32:40,920 is to be able to plan for absolutely everything. 635 00:32:40,920 --> 00:32:43,980 One of the things we used to do back in the day, 636 00:32:43,980 --> 00:32:45,000 get a recording console. 637 00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:46,560 Let's say a new recording console's in 638 00:32:46,560 --> 00:32:50,853 or we've done an overhaul of a particular part of a studio. 639 00:32:51,990 --> 00:32:55,590 One of the things, as we called it, turn all the knobs. 640 00:32:55,590 --> 00:32:58,410 What we did and the reason we did it, 641 00:32:58,410 --> 00:33:00,720 we wanted to crank up the volume 642 00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:03,840 in every single circuit on the console, 643 00:33:03,840 --> 00:33:08,840 and we're looking, oh, 4,000 knobs maybe on a good console, 644 00:33:09,270 --> 00:33:12,210 because we wanted to stress it to the point 645 00:33:12,210 --> 00:33:14,880 we wanted it to break under our lab conditions 646 00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:18,720 versus break in a live situation, the TV situation 647 00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:20,673 or live recording in the studio. 648 00:33:22,260 --> 00:33:27,210 So cranking all the knobs for us helped identify problems 649 00:33:27,210 --> 00:33:30,870 similar to where airplane engine design is done, 650 00:33:30,870 --> 00:33:33,630 stress the hell out of it. 651 00:33:33,630 --> 00:33:37,020 And one of the things that I think I've missed in our field 652 00:33:37,020 --> 00:33:39,060 and if somebody's doing it really well, 653 00:33:39,060 --> 00:33:40,710 I would love to know about it, 654 00:33:40,710 --> 00:33:45,480 is do we have any sort of protocols for stress testing 655 00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:49,080 of our networking infrastructures to be able to say, 656 00:33:49,080 --> 00:33:52,530 okay, we need to put a limiter or a compressor 657 00:33:52,530 --> 00:33:54,480 or a restriction control, 658 00:33:54,480 --> 00:33:58,620 because it cannot handle all the traffic, all the thing. 659 00:33:58,620 --> 00:34:03,620 So back in '91, we were building this... 660 00:34:04,260 --> 00:34:06,450 Steve Katz, the world's first (indistinct), 661 00:34:06,450 --> 00:34:10,500 brilliant guy and a dear friend from J.P Morgan, 662 00:34:10,500 --> 00:34:15,203 they wanted to do the first single sign on system, 1990, 663 00:34:17,070 --> 00:34:19,230 and I was on that team 664 00:34:19,230 --> 00:34:24,230 and we tied together security dynamics which became RSA. 665 00:34:24,240 --> 00:34:27,183 There was Sun Microsystems with Solaris, 666 00:34:28,388 --> 00:34:33,360 Delphi Project from MIT was involved. 667 00:34:33,360 --> 00:34:36,273 So we built this whole single (indistinct) system. 668 00:34:37,230 --> 00:34:39,210 We were so proud of ourselves. 669 00:34:39,210 --> 00:34:40,500 So proud. 670 00:34:40,500 --> 00:34:42,450 We're showing it at a couple conferences 671 00:34:42,450 --> 00:34:45,060 and it works brilliantly. 672 00:34:45,060 --> 00:34:48,393 Where single (indistinct) is finally a reality, 673 00:34:49,290 --> 00:34:51,750 until it fucks up. 674 00:34:51,750 --> 00:34:55,200 So Steve says, let's deploy it. 675 00:34:55,200 --> 00:34:56,033 Deploy it where? 676 00:34:56,033 --> 00:34:58,440 Well, we're gonna do it at J.P Morgan. 677 00:34:58,440 --> 00:34:59,273 Cool. 678 00:35:00,390 --> 00:35:02,883 They deployed it company wide. 679 00:35:05,310 --> 00:35:06,783 Sounds good, right? 680 00:35:07,980 --> 00:35:10,330 Well, what we had not considered 681 00:35:11,370 --> 00:35:15,240 was the time factor of authentication 682 00:35:15,240 --> 00:35:17,970 when 10,000 people try to log on 683 00:35:17,970 --> 00:35:20,073 at 9:00 AM at the same time. 684 00:35:21,570 --> 00:35:24,090 What happens to your network 685 00:35:24,090 --> 00:35:26,640 when you don't have accelerators, 686 00:35:26,640 --> 00:35:29,640 you don't have spread bandwidth, 687 00:35:29,640 --> 00:35:31,500 you don't have balancing circuits? 688 00:35:31,500 --> 00:35:34,440 All the shit we have today, we didn't have 689 00:35:34,440 --> 00:35:38,220 and we completely fucked it up by spending all this money 690 00:35:38,220 --> 00:35:41,910 and designing something that was great for 10 people, 691 00:35:41,910 --> 00:35:44,070 not for 10,000 people. 692 00:35:44,070 --> 00:35:47,370 So turning all the knobs, stress the shit out of things, 693 00:35:47,370 --> 00:35:50,970 I cannot impress enough that we need as an industry 694 00:35:50,970 --> 00:35:53,970 to really develop a stress mechanism, 695 00:35:53,970 --> 00:35:55,980 a stress protocol for various 696 00:35:55,980 --> 00:35:57,810 of the environments that we're in. 697 00:35:57,810 --> 00:35:59,400 And it's turn all the V knobs, 698 00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:01,170 we can do the same thing 699 00:36:01,170 --> 00:36:03,390 and we should be able to very easily 700 00:36:03,390 --> 00:36:07,140 automate that stress testing process. 701 00:36:07,140 --> 00:36:10,140 And I see Dave Fiz is up here, he's designing it right now. 702 00:36:10,140 --> 00:36:11,880 Do you have the patent shift for this? 703 00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:12,713 Yeah. 704 00:36:14,430 --> 00:36:17,340 So incident response. 705 00:36:17,340 --> 00:36:19,800 Whether it was the incident response with my mother 706 00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:21,240 and the rotary telephone, 707 00:36:21,240 --> 00:36:22,770 and my response was, fuck that, 708 00:36:22,770 --> 00:36:25,260 I'm gonna make a phone call somehow, 709 00:36:25,260 --> 00:36:28,710 all the way up to catastrophic failures 710 00:36:28,710 --> 00:36:31,290 with a couple hundred thousand people, 711 00:36:31,290 --> 00:36:33,990 live TV, with all of those, 712 00:36:33,990 --> 00:36:36,840 and I didn't even show you some of the really nasty ones, 713 00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:41,250 it's all about incident response and appropriate planning, 714 00:36:41,250 --> 00:36:43,680 understanding your architectures 715 00:36:43,680 --> 00:36:46,200 and then making sure that you have a way 716 00:36:46,200 --> 00:36:50,460 to degrade and a methodology to recover. 717 00:36:50,460 --> 00:36:53,520 And on that note, I wanted to thank you so much. 718 00:36:53,520 --> 00:36:55,740 I'm here for some questions if you like, 719 00:36:55,740 --> 00:37:00,000 but that was my hacking career beginning in 1958. 720 00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:03,840 I am still a really, really shitty programmer. 721 00:37:03,840 --> 00:37:06,270 I have no idea how to do it anymore. 722 00:37:06,270 --> 00:37:07,860 And you guys have been wonderful. 723 00:37:07,860 --> 00:37:09,540 Hope to see you tonight at Hacker Jeopardy, 724 00:37:09,540 --> 00:37:11,554 and if you have any questions or comments, 725 00:37:11,554 --> 00:37:14,763 there's a goon with a microphone out there. 726 00:37:16,945 --> 00:37:17,778 (audience clapping) 727 00:37:17,778 --> 00:37:18,611 Oh, thank you. 728 00:37:27,450 --> 00:37:28,920 All right, if there's no questions, 729 00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:30,360 again, thank you very much, 730 00:37:30,360 --> 00:37:31,830 I'll see you tonight at Jeopardy. 731 00:37:31,830 --> 00:37:32,943 I appreciate it all.