WEBVTT

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JACK: You ever see something on TV or in the news and it just really gets under your skin?

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Like, something that really upsets you and you can’t just sit there and do nothing

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about it now that you know it’s going on.

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So, you get up to do something but what do you do?

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You could make a call to complain to someone, you could write a letter to complain, or even

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go there in person to complain.

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Maybe a lot of other people are mad too, so there might be a protest outside and everyone’s

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shouting.

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This is the story about a guy who got really worked up over something he read about and

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decided to take matters into his own hands.

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JACK (INTRO): [INTRO MUSIC] These are true stories from the dark side of the internet.

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I’m Jack Rhysider.

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This is Darknet Diaries.

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[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

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JACK: This story is about a young man named Cameron, or Cam for short.

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CAM: My name’s Cam and I live in Gloucester in the United Kingdom.

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JACK: But Cam grew up in the picturesque area of Cornwall, in England.

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[MUSIC] It’s in the bottom-left corner of England, sort of like the toe of the country.

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I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of Cornwall; it’s a quiet area, lots of farms all about,

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there’s some beautiful cliffs there, and fishing boats that come in and out of the

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port.

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It’s an extraordinarily beautiful part of England.

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Oh, and I just learned there’s a massive GCHQ satellite dish installation in Cornwall.

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It’s there to collect signals intelligence and to do mass eavesdropping.

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It’s called GCHQ Bude if you want to look it up, but that’s totally unrelated to this

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story.

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Now, when Cam was fourteen, he got a PS3, a PlayStation, and he loved playing video

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games on it, things like Modern Warfare, Call of Duty or COD for short, and lots of other

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online first-person shooters.

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CAM: I ended up to the point where I was like trying to be competitive and obviously being

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fourteen, you’re usually not as good as all the adults that play.

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I’d get frustrated with being beaten so I’d try and find cheats and then glitches

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on how to get better.

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I’d see people cheating and glitching against me and then I’d be frustrated with that,

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so then I would take it to the next level again and try and compete with them.

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JACK: He made a few people upset as he played Modern Warfare; either from winning or talking

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trash or using cheats.

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Some people got mad at him for this and said hey, stop, or I’ll knock you offline.

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Cam’s like yeah, whatever, and just kept playing.

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But lo and behold, he did get kicked off the game.

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But not only that; the internet was down for his whole house.

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Huh.

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Fourteen-year-old Cam was intrigued by this.

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CAM: I was kind of like, they someone had booted me offline or disconnected me from

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the internet from their side.

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JACK: When you’ve already been downloading cheats to play your favorite game, it’s

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not far of a stretch to take it to the next level and learn how to boot someone right

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off the internet entirely.

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Cam had researched some options and was ready for revenge.

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CAM: Then to the point when I’d try and get them back, so I started LOIC.

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JACK: Ah yes, good old LOIC.

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LOIC stands for Low Orbit Ion Cannon.

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It’s an application you put on your computer and it has the capability to send millions

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of packets to whatever IP address you want to send it to which can flood that user’s

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internet connection so bad that they can’t get to anything online, kind of like causing

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a massive traffic jam right in someone’s driveway so they can’t pull out or go anywhere.

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[MUSIC] This is called a denial-of-service attack, or DoS, because you’re jamming up

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someone’s internet so bad, they don’t get service.

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Cam loaded up [00:05:00] LOIC and was ready to fire at an IP to knock it offline but there’s

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one big problem; how do you find the IP of a certain player in the game?

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This is quite a challenge because without the IP, LOIC just won’t do anything.

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The game itself does not show you the IP address of your opponent specifically for this reason;

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to keep them safe from DoS attacks and from people wanting to know more about you.

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So, Cam devised a plan.

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His plan was to send his victim a link to a website that he had control over so from

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there, he could then capture his victim’s IP address which he could then put into LOIC,

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and fire away.

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But still, how do you get your in-game opponent to click your link?

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CAM: It was basically like a Bitly link, then you send it in and call the caption like ‘I

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caught you doing this’ or whatever, or something to make them click on the link.

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JACK: Ah, pretty clever.

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By telling his opponent that he caught him doing something and to click this link to

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see what it was, that was enough to get them to click it.

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Once they did, he’d see their IP address visited their website and he’d copy and

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paste that IP into LOIC, and boom.

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CAM: You put it in LOIC and then you hit their IP address, you put it in and just hit LOIC.

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Then you type in like, bot53 or – obviously if you hit DNS, it’s probably the best way

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to go about it to knock them offline or do it less so you can make them lag.

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JACK: With these online shooter games, when two opponents see each other, it’s kind

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of like a game of who can draw their weapon fastest and have better aim?

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Since Cam could slow down the opponent’s internet connection, they might not see Cam

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for just a half a second after Cam saw them, which is called lagging in an online game,

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and this would be enough just for Cam to outdraw them and kill them.

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CAM: Well yeah, ‘cause it makes them stand still on my screen.

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They disconnect from the server, the video game server.

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Then I could kill them.

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[MUSIC] They think they’re shooting at me.

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Then they come back and they – it not lags anymore and then they’re dead.

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JACK: He says that a few times he would talk trash in the game, people would message him.

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He’d keep talking trash and then they’d take it to a one versus one match.

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That’s when he’d hit them with the Cannon and make them lag or disconnect which might

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not sound like a big deal but let me tell you; if you were in the middle of a heated

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argument with some fourteen-year-old kid online and you decide to battle him one-on-one just

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to show him how bad he is, and you lag exactly five seconds into the game starting, only

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to come back and see that you’re dead on the screen.

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It would make you furious.

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You’d say go again!

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The game would start again and just at the worst possible time, you would lag again and

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die. You’d say go again!

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Again, you would lag and die and just get increasingly upset to the point you might

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just punch your own keyboard and scream.

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Aargh!

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All that would just be really funny to Cam.

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CAM: Overall, on the video game side of things, you’ve not beaten them ‘cause that’s

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like kind of like you’re admitting that they’re better than you.

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But on the grand scale of everything that went on, you kind of trumped them.

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That’s kind of where I got the satisfaction from.

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It was like you may be better than me at the video game but I’ve just completely trumped

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you so therefore I win, sort of thing.

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JACK: This was cool but it still required people to click that link to get their IP

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and not everyone would click it.

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So, he thought up ways to improve this.

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He figured out when players compete against each other on some PS3 games, they directly

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connected to each other’s PS3s and didn’t go through some central server or something.

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This is known as peer-to-peer connections.

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CAM: Yeah, a lot of them were peer-to-peer on PS3, that’s what happened on the old

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generation consoles.

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JACK: Knowing this, he realized that all his opponent’s IP addresses were actually routing

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through the network in his house which meant if he could look at what IPs were connecting

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to his PS3, he might be able to figure out whose IP was whose.

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[MUSIC] So, he unplugs his PS3, plugs it into a computer to be in line of the PS3 which

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could then sniff all the traffic that was going through it, and then he’d watch all

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the IP addresses connecting to his PS3 in the game.

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In these games he would play, some people would be able to do voice chat and talk with

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each other, so he would do clever things like mute everyone except the one person he wanted

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to know their IP.

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CAM: If you mute everyone else but one person, there’s a significantly more amount of traffic

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coming from one person that’s your target’s IP address ‘cause their mic’s on.

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JACK: Clever kid, huh?

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Because with this, he could start matching in-game names to the IP addresses since that

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person talking simply had more traffic coming over than any other IPs.

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CAM: Then you could just boot them offline that way.

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Do the same thing with LOIC.

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JACK: Now, when you’re a fourteen-year-old kid doing this kind of stuff, your friends

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think it’s funny.

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When you’re just [00:10:00] learning from things like YouTube tutorials and stuff, there’s

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not always a warning telling you not to do it.

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It just seems normal.

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CAM: It was just totally okay to be doing everything I was doing.

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There was no doubt in my mind that it was illegal or anything like that at this time.

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JACK: Well, have we gotten into anything illegal yet?

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CAM: Well, booting people offline is illegal.

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JACK: Okay. How so?

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CAM: Well, ‘cause you’re disconnecting them.

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If you’re Dossing them, that DoS is illegal under The Misuse of Computers Act.

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JACK: [MUSIC] Cam spent a lot of time playing PlayStation.

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There was this one kid though; he was a few years older than Cam.

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They actually went to the same school in Cornwall.

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For some reason, he didn’t like Cam.

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He would give Cam a lot of trouble in the game, getting angry with Cam about being jealous

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that a mutual friend was playing with Cam but not him.

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Cam didn’t like this attitude he was getting from this kid.

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CAM: So, I booted him offline.

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His mom called my friend’s mom who then called my mom, and that’s when I realized

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oh god, this is more serious that I’ve realized.

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I kind of just thought like, it’s a bit pathetic.

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I mean, I didn’t realize it was serious.

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I didn’t of anything other than the kid not being able to play Xbox for three minutes

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or whatever.

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But obviously there’s wider facts to be considered like they’re paying for that

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and that sort of thing.

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But I had a whole speech from my mom about why I shouldn’t do it, but my mother didn’t

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really understand it.

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She kind of just said like, don’t do it, whatever it is you’re doing, sort of thing,

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‘cause my mom doesn’t really deal with computers or anything similar.

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JACK: Okay.

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So, did you take warning here or did you keep doing it?

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CAM: Yeah, no, I didn’t take warning from it.

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Just because my mom was kind of like – she kind of took it as though I were just beating

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him on the video game.

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JACK: [MUSIC] So, Cam kept at it, refining his methods and strategies to boot people

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offline in a more effective way.

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But think about where someone like him might hang out online at this point; hacker forums,

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chat rooms, gaming forums, or other places that might talk about hacking.

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I mean, the kid is inquisitive and he wants to know more about how all this stuff works.

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He’s thirsty to learn more.

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He starts meeting other hackers online and makes some friends with them.

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Then in one of these chat rooms, a hacker friend gave Cam a stressor.

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CAM: I was given a free stressor by someone that I knew.

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They took part in the Operation Fun Kill.

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They gave it to me.

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They were just like yeah, have fun with it.

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‘Cause I bet you he said I could never afford it.

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JACK: Okay, so what’s a stressor?

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Up until this point, Cam has been doing all these DoS attacks using LOIC, right?

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Well like he was saying, this is illegal so not everyone wants to run a denial-of-service

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attack from their own house.

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Yeah, sure, he could run it through a VPN or something but hey, Cam doesn’t want to

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bog down his own network, right?

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If he were to attack some other people, he might lag himself which is not what he wants

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to do.

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So, sending a huge amount of packets to someone else online just to make them lag isn’t

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exactly the best idea.

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This is where a stressor solves that problem.

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[MUSIC] A stressor is simple DoS as a service, so someone sets up a botnet or a bunch of

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servers capable of sending gigs and gigs of data to an IP address.

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It generates even more traffic than the Low Orbit Ion Cannon that Cam was using.

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You pay someone to use this service; you just go there, put in an IP address, hit go, and

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whoever’s IP that belongs to is now facing tons and tons of incoming traffic which will

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probably knock them offline.

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People call these things stressors to try to market it as some stress testing tool to

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test if your site can handle a denial-of-service attack but really, these things are just weapons

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and they’re used to attack victims.

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This guy lets Cam use his stressor for free.

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CAM: He basically started sharing stuff on Twitter.

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As I mentioned, he was involved in Operation Fun Kill which is part of like, Anonymous

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Operation.

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It has to do with Sea World and these zoos.

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ANON: Greetings, citizens of the world.

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We are Anonymous.

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Greedy corporations are destroying nature and the corruption of governments allow it.

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99% of this is happening for one reason only; money.

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There is no excuse for animal abuse and now the animals will fight back.

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This power will stand for animal rights and as long these rights are disrespected, we

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will be here ripping through your servers, hacking, leaking, deleting, and defacing as

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we go, spreading our message without mercy or restraint.

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We are Anonymous.

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We are legion.

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We do [00:15:00] not forgive.

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We do not forget.

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Abusers, expect us.

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CAM: It was just like the whales being slaughtered in the ocean and the whales dying at Sea World

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and the blood in the water.

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I really remember this; this is honestly the truth.

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I remember I felt so sick.

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I just thought, that’s awful.

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But it wasn’t an immediate thought yeah, I’ve gotta DDoS them.

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There’s more of like a, I wonder what I can do?

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I can’t sign petitions because I didn’t have any help from my mom.

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It was kind of like animal rights sort of thing.

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They’re not able to defend themselves.

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It was quite a big impact on me.

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He says you can join in by DDossing them offline using the stressor.

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JACK: DDossing Sea World in California?

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CAM: Yeah, Sea World.

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He just sends me this entire attack list that they’re all going for.

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He’s just like yeah, see what you can do.

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I just basically started pressing buttons.

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JACK: Now, keep in mind, this was happening in 2014 and this was just after the documentary

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Blackfish came out.

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[WHALE SINGING] This was a film which exposed the cruel practices that Sea World and other

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wild animal parks were doing.

00:14:40.490 --> 00:14:43.260
SPKR1: I’ve been expecting somebody to be killed by Tilikum.

00:14:43.260 --> 00:14:47.550
SPKR2: We weren’t told much about it other than it was trainer error.

00:14:47.550 --> 00:14:48.750
SPKR3: It didn’t just happen.

00:14:48.750 --> 00:14:49.790
It’s not a singular event.

00:14:49.790 --> 00:14:51.910
You have to go back to understand this.

00:14:51.910 --> 00:14:54.620
JACK: It had a huge impact on many people.

00:14:54.620 --> 00:14:57.670
[BACKGROUND TALK] As it turns out, it also affected Cam.

00:14:57.670 --> 00:15:02.509
So, here he was, upset that this was going on.

00:15:02.509 --> 00:15:09.430
In his hands was essentially a cannon which he could use to attack Sea World or other

00:15:09.430 --> 00:15:11.839
places conducting this bad behavior.

00:15:11.839 --> 00:15:17.459
SPKR4: We stored these whales in what we call a module which was twenty feet across and

00:15:17.459 --> 00:15:21.579
thirty feet deep, and the lights were all turned out.

00:15:21.579 --> 00:15:24.350
Probably led to what I think is a psychosis.

00:15:24.350 --> 00:15:31.550
SPKR5: All whales in captivity are all psychologically traumatized.

00:15:31.550 --> 00:15:32.820
It’s not just Tilikum…

00:15:32.820 --> 00:15:34.560
JACK: [BACKGROUND TALK] It all builds up for him.

00:15:34.560 --> 00:15:38.139
He decided to take action and start pushing buttons.

00:15:38.139 --> 00:15:43.790
[MUSIC] He would access the stressor, put in an IP of one of the animal parks, and start

00:15:43.790 --> 00:15:46.850
hitting it hard with a denial-of-service attack.

00:15:46.850 --> 00:15:53.060
He was knocking websites offline with a few simple clicks of a button which had a real-life

00:15:53.060 --> 00:15:54.760
impact on these parks.

00:15:54.760 --> 00:16:02.611
CAM: But once I started getting good at it, it was definitely like I was being egged on

00:16:02.611 --> 00:16:09.240
by them to – it was like, the one man DDossed the bank and all that, sort of nicknames.

00:16:09.240 --> 00:16:13.440
They just sent me what they want to take offline and I’d do it.

00:16:13.440 --> 00:16:14.440
It would be offline.

00:16:14.440 --> 00:16:24.209
It’s because I had one stressor and then I’d barter with someone and then eventually

00:16:24.209 --> 00:16:25.645
coerce them to give me their stressor as well.

00:16:25.645 --> 00:16:30.700
So, I’d eventually just go around from one stressor to the next stressor, ‘cause I

00:16:30.700 --> 00:16:32.310
have the power of two stressors.

00:16:32.310 --> 00:16:39.759
I get the third stressor and then just move forward like that until I have like, ten accounts

00:16:39.759 --> 00:16:40.800
on different stressors.

00:16:40.800 --> 00:16:45.670
JACK: Keep in mind, these stressors cost like, a monthly fee or something to use them.

00:16:45.670 --> 00:16:49.440
Cam didn’t have the money; he was fourteen years old, and that’s why he traded with

00:16:49.440 --> 00:16:53.130
these people to get access to more of them for free.

00:16:53.130 --> 00:16:57.110
He would be able to keep the heat up by hammering on these places that were mistreating their

00:16:57.110 --> 00:16:58.360
animals.

00:16:58.360 --> 00:17:01.020
This would result in websites going down.

00:17:01.020 --> 00:17:03.540
CAM: Oh, it was definitely great.

00:17:03.540 --> 00:17:05.020
It was great.

00:17:05.020 --> 00:17:07.970
You feel like an omnipotent god or something.

00:17:07.970 --> 00:17:10.110
It was like yeah, I’ve done that.

00:17:10.110 --> 00:17:11.110
That’s the result of my actions.

00:17:11.110 --> 00:17:14.370
JACK: After he would knock a target offline, he’d watch to see what they’d do after.

00:17:14.370 --> 00:17:19.400
CAM: They didn’t directly do anything such as like, change their ways or try to improve

00:17:19.400 --> 00:17:23.500
their animals’ health or anything, or try and get people to stop it.

00:17:23.500 --> 00:17:27.059
It was more like – we’ll get like, Akamai CDN involved.

00:17:27.059 --> 00:17:31.520
That’ll stop this, and stuff like that.

00:17:31.520 --> 00:17:35.980
JACK: Akamai CDN is a company that is a content distribution network.

00:17:35.980 --> 00:17:40.550
By signing up for CDN, it makes your website significantly more resilient and it’s kind

00:17:40.550 --> 00:17:43.740
of shielded and has bigger bandwidth so it’s harder to take down.

00:17:43.740 --> 00:17:48.850
But this didn’t slow down Cam; with ten stressors at his ready, he could still make

00:17:48.850 --> 00:17:52.169
a pretty significant impact on some of these sites.

00:17:52.169 --> 00:17:56.570
Again, what he was really upset with were how these places were mistreating their animals.

00:17:56.570 --> 00:18:00.920
He didn’t believe animals should be mistreated this way and this was the main reason he was

00:18:00.920 --> 00:18:01.960
doing all this hacking.

00:18:01.960 --> 00:18:05.700
CAM: Yeah, like I say, it started out being like that.

00:18:05.700 --> 00:18:10.460
It still was towards the end but it was also a good thing for me ‘cause like I said,

00:18:10.460 --> 00:18:12.210
it gives you a buzz.

00:18:12.210 --> 00:18:15.950
You end up being egged on and then you get support and you gain a following.

00:18:15.950 --> 00:18:25.070
I gained a following of about 27,000 [00:20:00] on Twitter, I believe, on one of my Twitter

00:18:25.070 --> 00:18:27.070
accounts. Then…

00:18:27.070 --> 00:18:29.590
JACK: Your own Twitter account got 27,000 followers?

00:18:29.590 --> 00:18:35.600
CAM: Yeah, it got 27,000 followers when I was fourteen.

00:18:35.600 --> 00:18:37.370
JACK: How did you get so many followers there?

00:18:37.370 --> 00:18:42.920
CAM: Like I said, it was just vegan, vegetarian communities and also anonymous people.

00:18:42.920 --> 00:18:45.950
They followed me and supported what I was doing.

00:18:45.950 --> 00:18:51.900
JACK: So, you were publically saying on your Twitter account look, I’m taking down this

00:18:51.900 --> 00:18:54.140
website and then you were tweeting a lot about it?

00:18:54.140 --> 00:18:55.350
Is that what was going on?

00:18:55.350 --> 00:18:57.929
CAM: Yeah, that was my main weakness.

00:18:57.929 --> 00:19:01.360
I was just straight-up on my Twitter page just saying what I was doing.

00:19:01.360 --> 00:19:03.730
I’d post all that #tangodown stuff.

00:19:03.730 --> 00:19:07.030
JACK: Were you nervous when you were hitting the attack key?

00:19:07.030 --> 00:19:09.240
CAM: No, I wasn’t, no.

00:19:09.240 --> 00:19:10.730
I was never nervous about it at all.

00:19:10.730 --> 00:19:12.309
JACK: Was there a hesitation at all?

00:19:12.309 --> 00:19:14.700
CAM: No, not even once.

00:19:14.700 --> 00:19:19.250
JACK: Okay, now you’ve taken it down and you’re on Twitter.

00:19:19.250 --> 00:19:22.630
Is there any sort of hesitation or nervousness about publically tweeting it?

00:19:22.630 --> 00:19:25.720
CAM: Nope, not at all.

00:19:25.720 --> 00:19:30.090
JACK: So, was there a sense of pride then or something?

00:19:30.090 --> 00:19:36.590
CAM: Yeah, it’s definitely more a pride thing, especially with Sea World and the other

00:19:36.590 --> 00:19:38.060
sites I was talking about.

00:19:38.060 --> 00:19:41.630
It was definitely more of a pride thing than it was a nervous thing.

00:19:41.630 --> 00:19:48.240
JACK: Yeah, I mean, I’m trying to balance this with the real world again, right?

00:19:48.240 --> 00:19:52.780
After doing – I don’t know if this a night of attacks or something; now you have to go

00:19:52.780 --> 00:19:56.000
back to school at fourteen.

00:19:56.000 --> 00:20:02.309
What is class like for a person who has like, 37,000 followers on Twitter, hacking Sea World

00:20:02.309 --> 00:20:05.270
at night, and then in the morning going to math class?

00:20:05.270 --> 00:20:09.909
CAM: That’s actually quite funny, to be fair.

00:20:09.909 --> 00:20:15.500
I remember sitting in classes and we’d be like – this is how bad it got; we sat in

00:20:15.500 --> 00:20:18.740
class, me and my friends, and be like – the teacher would say alright, we’re using this

00:20:18.740 --> 00:20:19.740
site today.

00:20:19.740 --> 00:20:20.820
It’s a quiz website, for example.

00:20:20.820 --> 00:20:23.929
They’d be like yeah, everyone go to this website, we’ll do a quiz.

00:20:23.929 --> 00:20:28.210
I’d sit back with my friends and then I’d be like guys, watch this.

00:20:28.210 --> 00:20:34.080
Then I would like go on my phone and I’d remote in to my server and then I’d launch

00:20:34.080 --> 00:20:37.600
an attack against this website for no reason at all.

00:20:37.600 --> 00:20:44.390
Then it’d go down, the teacher would stand there all awkwardly and be like oh, this website’s

00:20:44.390 --> 00:20:47.500
gone down so we can’t do that today.

00:20:47.500 --> 00:20:49.539
I’d immediately stop it and then it would come back up.

00:20:49.539 --> 00:20:53.299
Yeah, it’d be quite funny in that sense.

00:20:53.299 --> 00:20:57.470
JACK: Oh man, yeah, I see.

00:20:57.470 --> 00:21:01.419
Yeah, this can’t have a good ending.

00:21:01.419 --> 00:21:02.690
Let’s back up a second.

00:21:02.690 --> 00:21:03.789
You said the word activist.

00:21:03.789 --> 00:21:07.460
Did you feel like an activist when you were doing things for the animal rights?

00:21:07.460 --> 00:21:08.460
CAM: Yeah, definitely.

00:21:08.460 --> 00:21:11.170
‘Cause I obviously didn’t like the photos that I saw.

00:21:11.170 --> 00:21:18.140
Honestly, I shouldn’t have seen the photos that I saw, what they were doing, at fourteen.

00:21:18.140 --> 00:21:19.559
It was gruesome.

00:21:19.559 --> 00:21:24.490
Honestly, that was what it was.

00:21:24.490 --> 00:21:27.390
Even at that time it still was, like I said, about being power hungry.

00:21:27.390 --> 00:21:32.240
There were still – most of the attacks I was doing was based on activism and trying

00:21:32.240 --> 00:21:33.760
to do everything I could to help, to be honest.

00:21:33.760 --> 00:21:39.890
Obviously, a fourteen-year-old going to California to stand there and protest with a sign, nobody’s

00:21:39.890 --> 00:21:43.909
going to listen to me standing there shouting about how bad they treat animals.

00:21:43.909 --> 00:21:51.039
I guess they’d listen to me more if I was doing something to affect them.

00:21:51.039 --> 00:21:56.169
JACK: [MUSIC] Cam kept getting new IPs as targets to attack with his stressors and he

00:21:56.169 --> 00:21:58.450
kept taking down sites.

00:21:58.450 --> 00:22:02.680
He flat-out attacked anything he could; in the Japanese town of Taiji, where an annual

00:22:02.680 --> 00:22:07.880
dolphin hunt takes place, and he hit Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Department

00:22:07.880 --> 00:22:13.070
of Agriculture in Thailand, China’s security ministry, and a few zoos.

00:22:13.070 --> 00:22:19.030
But Sea World is where he spent a lot of time trying to cause as much damage as he could.

00:22:19.030 --> 00:22:23.100
He continued to DDoS Sea World over and over.

00:22:23.100 --> 00:22:25.179
CAM: I remember seeing them post about it.

00:22:25.179 --> 00:22:29.549
They’d say like, we’re bringing in incident responders to deal with this.

00:22:29.549 --> 00:22:33.710
We backed up the website, we’re backing up reservations and all this.

00:22:33.710 --> 00:22:39.880
Right, so I saw them post and say yeah, you can’t book your stuff and we’re really

00:22:39.880 --> 00:22:40.880
sorry.

00:22:40.880 --> 00:22:47.070
Even at that time I had no idea it was illegal, even when I saw them apologizing to customers

00:22:47.070 --> 00:22:50.659
about not being able to book their visits to Sea World and such.

00:22:50.659 --> 00:22:56.380
JACK: Well, that had to have a feeling of like, you were winning as an activist hacker,

00:22:56.380 --> 00:22:57.460
a hacktivist.

00:22:57.460 --> 00:23:03.130
CAM: Yeah, it was an overpowering feeling of winning rather than any – that’s what

00:23:03.130 --> 00:23:06.140
overpowered the feeling of nervousness.

00:23:06.140 --> 00:23:11.390
JACK: Now typically when he would take down a website, he would only take it down for

00:23:11.390 --> 00:23:13.630
like, a half an hour or a couple hours.

00:23:13.630 --> 00:23:20.230
CAM: It was Sea World and then it became – I remember distinctly a Dutch zoo.

00:23:20.230 --> 00:23:23.080
[00:25:00] Then I did Sea World.

00:23:23.080 --> 00:23:27.630
I fell asleep and that was that; it was never heard of again.

00:23:27.630 --> 00:23:33.429
Then I was like, Jesus, Sea World and this zoo have been down for a very long time.

00:23:33.429 --> 00:23:37.660
JACK: Yeah, he accidentally forgot to turn the attack off.

00:23:37.660 --> 00:23:40.780
He fell asleep and left it running all night.

00:23:40.780 --> 00:23:44.080
This was a mistake; he didn’t mean for it to run that long.

00:23:44.080 --> 00:23:48.510
This must have caused a big panic at Sea World and the Dutch zoo to have their site down

00:23:48.510 --> 00:23:49.860
for so long.

00:23:49.860 --> 00:23:56.690
The stressors kept running for weeks until Cam finally noticed and turned it off.

00:23:56.690 --> 00:24:01.020
But this wouldn’t be the last mistake that Cam made.

00:24:01.020 --> 00:24:05.600
After the break, we’ll hear what happened with the Cornwall Police.

00:24:05.600 --> 00:24:11.320
Now, Cam lived in the area of Cornwall in England at the time which is quite a big county.

00:24:11.320 --> 00:24:14.910
But it shares a police department with Devon, the neighboring county.

00:24:14.910 --> 00:24:18.909
It’s one police department but looks after multiple areas.

00:24:18.909 --> 00:24:22.110
Fourteen-year-old Cam was not happy with the police in Cornwall.

00:24:22.110 --> 00:24:24.590
CAM: We’d hang around in a park.

00:24:24.590 --> 00:24:27.990
They’d be like, well, you’re too old to hang around in the park ‘cause you’re

00:24:27.990 --> 00:24:29.350
fourteen and to go somewhere else.

00:24:29.350 --> 00:24:30.480
So, we’d go somewhere else.

00:24:30.480 --> 00:24:34.340
Oh, you can’t stand outside this shop because people want to walk in the shop.

00:24:34.340 --> 00:24:35.560
Okay, we’ll go to the field, then.

00:24:35.560 --> 00:24:38.020
You can’t stand in this field because there’s houses nearby.

00:24:38.020 --> 00:24:43.779
So, they’re basically like moving us – I felt like at the time, it was just moving

00:24:43.779 --> 00:24:44.840
us on from everywhere.

00:24:44.840 --> 00:24:51.910
It was definitely for good reason looking at it, but at the time I just felt slightly

00:24:51.910 --> 00:24:52.910
oppressed.

00:24:52.910 --> 00:24:54.460
Then I’d protest against it.

00:24:54.460 --> 00:24:57.890
JACK: Cam felt like he was being oppressed by the police.

00:24:57.890 --> 00:25:01.660
The police chased him out of the children’s park or the parking lot for just being too

00:25:01.660 --> 00:25:04.610
noisy and he felt frustrated by this.

00:25:04.610 --> 00:25:10.669
Combine this with his godlike powers that he felt like he had online; I mean, there’s

00:25:10.669 --> 00:25:14.669
27,000 people on Twitter cheering him on for some of the attacks he’s doing.

00:25:14.669 --> 00:25:17.140
This has gotta fuel a kid to go bigger.

00:25:17.140 --> 00:25:23.309
So, he decided to take down the Devon and Cornwall Police Department’s website.

00:25:23.309 --> 00:25:26.309
CAM: [MUSIC] I pinned it, right?

00:25:26.309 --> 00:25:28.809
Grabbed their IP, Dossed it.

00:25:28.809 --> 00:25:32.809
I DDossed it, sorry, with an NTP attack.

00:25:32.809 --> 00:25:37.290
JACK: At this point he’s been doing denial-of-service attacks for seven or eight months.

00:25:37.290 --> 00:25:41.070
He’s learned a lot and he’s graduated to more advanced techniques.

00:25:41.070 --> 00:25:46.010
For this one, he had his own dedicated server doing an NTP amplification attack.

00:25:46.010 --> 00:25:47.669
NTP is a Network Time Protocol.

00:25:47.669 --> 00:25:51.490
It’s how computers can check the time and there are thousands of computers in the world

00:25:51.490 --> 00:25:53.390
who act like public timekeepers.

00:25:53.390 --> 00:25:55.800
You can ask any of them hey, what time is it?

00:25:55.800 --> 00:25:56.960
And they’ll tell you.

00:25:56.960 --> 00:25:59.960
But it can also be used as a weapon.

00:25:59.960 --> 00:26:05.679
Suppose instead of asking what time it is, you ask for the time in every time zone in

00:26:05.679 --> 00:26:06.679
the world.

00:26:06.679 --> 00:26:11.330
You send one small request and you get back a huge chunk of data.

00:26:11.330 --> 00:26:18.570
Now, take that concept but spoof your IP so with that, you can ask the NTP server hey,

00:26:18.570 --> 00:26:22.740
what time is it for every time zone in the world, and by the way, when you respond, please

00:26:22.740 --> 00:26:26.820
tell this IP over here instead of me.

00:26:26.820 --> 00:26:30.419
Now the NTP server is sending a ton of traffic to your target victim.

00:26:30.419 --> 00:26:35.860
If you do this over and over again against thousands of NTP servers around the world,

00:26:35.860 --> 00:26:42.000
your victim gets overwhelmed with all these NTP servers telling them what time it is.

00:26:42.000 --> 00:26:46.159
Cam had built this system up himself so he could conduct these types of attacks.

00:26:46.159 --> 00:26:51.390
He launched it against the police department in his own town, but he was hesitant on this

00:26:51.390 --> 00:26:52.970
and only hit it for a little bit.

00:26:52.970 --> 00:26:57.500
CAM: No, no, I stopped it for like – I did it for like, five minutes and then it just

00:26:57.500 --> 00:27:01.120
stayed down for like, thirty-five minutes.

00:27:01.120 --> 00:27:07.320
JACK: [MUSIC] Even though he stopped his attack, the website stayed down.

00:27:07.320 --> 00:27:09.730
It wasn’t coming back up.

00:27:09.730 --> 00:27:12.560
[00:30:00] Something weird was going on.

00:27:12.560 --> 00:27:14.350
CAM: Then there was a bit of hesitation.

00:27:14.350 --> 00:27:17.510
I was like oh, damn.

00:27:17.510 --> 00:27:23.190
JACK: What likely happened was that somebody within the IT team at the police station just

00:27:23.190 --> 00:27:28.870
null-routed this incoming traffic, essentially taking down their own website temporarily

00:27:28.870 --> 00:27:32.059
just so that the rest of the network wouldn’t be impacted.

00:27:32.059 --> 00:27:36.500
CAM: It wasn’t like I had done something illegal; that was more like I’m gonna have

00:27:36.500 --> 00:27:37.780
to pay to fix that.

00:27:37.780 --> 00:27:40.690
Like I said, I stopped the attack.

00:27:40.690 --> 00:27:46.230
Before every time they’d come back up, after I stopped the attack – I stopped it and

00:27:46.230 --> 00:27:53.269
it just didn’t come back so then I thought oh my god, if they catch me, I’m gonna have

00:27:53.269 --> 00:27:55.250
to pay to fix the hardware.

00:27:55.250 --> 00:27:59.169
JACK: But whatever, Cam had to go to school or go on to do other things so he just left

00:27:59.169 --> 00:28:00.169
this alone.

00:28:00.169 --> 00:28:01.440
He tried to stay low for a little bit.

00:28:01.440 --> 00:28:04.250
[MUSIC] A few days go by; all seems okay.

00:28:04.250 --> 00:28:09.649
Then one day, he’s walking to school in the morning and a few people start following

00:28:09.649 --> 00:28:11.100
him on the way to school.

00:28:11.100 --> 00:28:16.220
CAM: They’re walking behind me in suits and they just go, Cameron.

00:28:16.220 --> 00:28:17.910
I’m like, turn around.

00:28:17.910 --> 00:28:20.450
I’m like what does he want?

00:28:20.450 --> 00:28:22.140
I just go yeah?

00:28:22.140 --> 00:28:27.279
JACK: Cam turns back around, keeps walking towards school, and away from these guys.

00:28:27.279 --> 00:28:30.080
CAM: He said my name again.

00:28:30.080 --> 00:28:33.350
I’m like god, who is this guy?

00:28:33.350 --> 00:28:35.690
He’s like, you’re under arrest.

00:28:35.690 --> 00:28:36.690
I was like what?

00:28:36.690 --> 00:28:38.120
Then there’s two more men in suits behind him.

00:28:38.120 --> 00:28:40.240
I’m thinking this is the foreign FBI.

00:28:40.240 --> 00:28:44.480
I have no idea who they are ‘cause they’re not police.

00:28:44.480 --> 00:28:45.929
They’re not in police uniform.

00:28:45.929 --> 00:28:48.529
Then they’re like yeah, don’t try and run.

00:28:48.529 --> 00:28:53.420
I turned around and there was like a net of police officers across the grass, a good ten

00:28:53.420 --> 00:28:56.690
of them with like, tasers, vests.

00:28:56.690 --> 00:29:04.990
One of the police officers was about seven-and-a-half feet tall and I was like, oh my god.

00:29:04.990 --> 00:29:06.640
I felt like I was so closed in.

00:29:06.640 --> 00:29:11.720
It went from my high horse to being so small.

00:29:11.720 --> 00:29:15.380
My whole feeling just crashed.

00:29:15.380 --> 00:29:23.269
JACK: The police and men in suits surrounded him and arrested him.

00:29:23.269 --> 00:29:28.110
CAM: I got in the car, drove back to my house.

00:29:28.110 --> 00:29:31.399
I remember this; this is really imprinted in my mind.

00:29:31.399 --> 00:29:34.820
I knocked on the gate and my mom’s like, can I unlock the gate?

00:29:34.820 --> 00:29:36.519
‘Cause the latch wouldn’t stay on.

00:29:36.519 --> 00:29:38.320
I knocked on the gate.

00:29:38.320 --> 00:29:40.840
My mom was like, who is it?

00:29:40.840 --> 00:29:42.279
I’m like, it’s me.

00:29:42.279 --> 00:29:43.360
I’ve been arrested.

00:29:43.360 --> 00:29:46.960
She was like oh, shut up, or something like that.

00:29:46.960 --> 00:29:51.620
I’m like no, no, I’ve actually been arrested.

00:29:51.620 --> 00:29:56.630
Then she’s like – then she just opened the gate and there’s me with, like I said,

00:29:56.630 --> 00:29:59.159
with the Trojan horse of police officers around me.

00:29:59.159 --> 00:30:05.964
Then the guy comes up to her, opens this warrant in my mom’s face and he’s like we’ve

00:30:05.964 --> 00:30:06.964
got a warrant, and just walks in.

00:30:06.964 --> 00:30:07.964
Then, yeah.

00:30:07.964 --> 00:30:12.669
JACK: The police searched his home, started seizing all his electronics, and asking him

00:30:12.669 --> 00:30:14.710
questions and filling out paperwork.

00:30:14.710 --> 00:30:17.010
CAM: They took everything electrical in the house.

00:30:17.010 --> 00:30:18.260
A bit honestly, they raided it.

00:30:18.260 --> 00:30:25.640
They took like, empty CD drives, they took rewriteable CDs, rewriteable DVDs, USB sticks,

00:30:25.640 --> 00:30:28.809
anything that had a USB connection.

00:30:28.809 --> 00:30:35.850
They took everything in my room apart from the TV and then they’re like, is that a

00:30:35.850 --> 00:30:36.850
PSP?

00:30:36.850 --> 00:30:37.850
I was just literally like, oh please don’t.

00:30:37.850 --> 00:30:38.850
But there’s nothing on here.

00:30:38.850 --> 00:30:41.179
The lady was like, alright, let me have a quick look now.

00:30:41.179 --> 00:30:43.300
If I don’t find anything, then you can keep it.

00:30:43.300 --> 00:30:47.350
JACK: They let him keep his PlayStation and while they were looking through his video

00:30:47.350 --> 00:30:49.410
games, something strange happened.

00:30:49.410 --> 00:30:54.179
CAM: Then it ended up being me playing COD against the arresting detective.

00:30:54.179 --> 00:30:55.419
JACK: You playing what?

00:30:55.419 --> 00:30:58.679
CAM: Call of Duty against the arresting detective.

00:30:58.679 --> 00:31:00.480
JACK: How did that happen?

00:31:00.480 --> 00:31:03.919
CAM: He asked me if I wanted to play COD.

00:31:03.919 --> 00:31:08.860
JACK: What cop comes in your house, says you’re under – we have a warrant for your arrest,

00:31:08.860 --> 00:31:10.260
you’re under arrest, you’re coming with us.

00:31:10.260 --> 00:31:11.870
Do you want to play video games with me?

00:31:11.870 --> 00:31:13.460
Like, that doesn’t happen.

00:31:13.460 --> 00:31:18.269
CAM: A good cop, bad cop that does that, that’s who does that.

00:31:18.269 --> 00:31:19.490
They were very good at it.

00:31:19.490 --> 00:31:22.690
It kind of baffled me; I was fourteen.

00:31:22.690 --> 00:31:29.149
I didn’t understand what this good cop, bad cop routine was, but I kind of – I set

00:31:29.149 --> 00:31:32.179
the whole thing up and that was part of their routine, I’m pretty sure.

00:31:32.179 --> 00:31:35.180
JACK: His mom was in shock from all of this.

00:31:35.180 --> 00:31:36.529
His dog was freaking out.

00:31:36.529 --> 00:31:41.860
More officers showed up and began doing forensics on his computer and network, plugging devices

00:31:41.860 --> 00:31:46.100
into his computer, plugging ethernet cables into his router, asking for his passwords

00:31:46.100 --> 00:31:47.570
to all his stuff.

00:31:47.570 --> 00:31:50.870
They took all his stuff, and they put him in the police car, and took him to the very

00:31:50.870 --> 00:31:54.390
station that he waged a denial-of-service attack on.

00:31:54.390 --> 00:31:58.190
They took most of his things, gave him some Crocs to wear instead of his shoes, and held

00:31:58.190 --> 00:32:00.240
him at the police station all day.

00:32:00.240 --> 00:32:01.470
CAM: I was just in there all day.

00:32:01.470 --> 00:32:06.070
I was in there from like, 8:00 a.m. to about 8:00 p.m.

00:32:06.070 --> 00:32:07.100
I got put in custody.

00:32:07.100 --> 00:32:11.149
They gave me a glass of water but it was the [00:35:00] smallest glass of water you’ve

00:32:11.149 --> 00:32:12.149
ever seen.

00:32:12.149 --> 00:32:13.149
It was like a shot glass.

00:32:13.149 --> 00:32:14.190
It was like this Styrofoam.

00:32:14.190 --> 00:32:18.669
For like, the next seven hours, that was my whole drink for seven hours.

00:32:18.669 --> 00:32:21.649
JACK: At this point he’s starting to regret what he did.

00:32:21.649 --> 00:32:25.169
CAM: I regretted all of it straight away.

00:32:25.169 --> 00:32:30.840
It was horrible ‘cause basically, my mom was in absolute tears and I just felt awful.

00:32:30.840 --> 00:32:32.200
That was the worst thing.

00:32:32.200 --> 00:32:33.330
She was just crying the whole day.

00:32:33.330 --> 00:32:36.110
I was like, I’m so sorry, mom.

00:32:36.110 --> 00:32:38.890
I kept saying I’m so sorry, mom.

00:32:38.890 --> 00:32:43.280
She didn’t know how to handle herself and I was like – she was just totally in shock,

00:32:43.280 --> 00:32:44.280
I bet.

00:32:44.280 --> 00:32:48.750
There was nothing I could do, obviously, nothing she could do.

00:32:48.750 --> 00:32:55.529
I think we both just felt completely powerless and that was the worst part of it all.

00:32:55.529 --> 00:32:59.010
JACK: He got out on bail that night and went back home.

00:32:59.010 --> 00:33:02.690
A few months later, he had to go to court to see what his punishment was.

00:33:02.690 --> 00:33:05.210
CAM: Yeah, I had a trial.

00:33:05.210 --> 00:33:11.683
I had a trial and it was honestly – I think it was genuinely, to this day, I think it

00:33:11.683 --> 00:33:12.683
was an unfair trial.

00:33:12.683 --> 00:33:14.149
I admitted to the DDoS attacks.

00:33:14.149 --> 00:33:19.149
The other thing I was accused of in the trial was the – there were bomb threats made against

00:33:19.149 --> 00:33:25.720
Delta Airlines, American Airlines, the White House, and the FBI.

00:33:25.720 --> 00:33:29.799
[MUSIC] It was a very, very complex court case.

00:33:29.799 --> 00:33:35.080
They charged me for this right before I went to court.

00:33:35.080 --> 00:33:39.540
JACK: He tells me he had nothing to do with these bomb threats, so he had to plead not

00:33:39.540 --> 00:33:44.049
guilty to the case which made the case go on longer.

00:33:44.049 --> 00:33:48.550
His lawyer didn’t know that much about cyber-security but was trying real hard to study up on it

00:33:48.550 --> 00:33:52.910
because the more the lawyer could know about computers, the more he might be able to convince

00:33:52.910 --> 00:33:55.980
a judge that he didn’t do the bomb threats.

00:33:55.980 --> 00:34:00.390
Cam was pleading guilty to the denial-of-service attacks against the police station but kept

00:34:00.390 --> 00:34:02.230
saying he didn’t do the bomb threats.

00:34:02.230 --> 00:34:08.389
The evidence they had on him, well, his Twitter account tweeted at Delta and American Airlines

00:34:08.389 --> 00:34:12.419
saying, “There’s a nice tick-tock in one of those lovely Boeing planes.

00:34:12.419 --> 00:34:13.419
Hurry, gentlemen.

00:34:13.419 --> 00:34:14.980
The clock is ticking.

00:34:14.980 --> 00:34:17.629
High quality.” End quote.

00:34:17.629 --> 00:34:19.190
Cam denied sending that tweet.

00:34:19.190 --> 00:34:21.680
He even denied that it was his Twitter account.

00:34:21.680 --> 00:34:26.060
He tried to explain to his lawyer the technical details of how all this got erroneously linked

00:34:26.060 --> 00:34:31.200
to him but his lawyer wasn’t tech-savvy enough to know how to disprove all this.

00:34:31.200 --> 00:34:33.810
CAM: They charged me as guilty for that, everything.

00:34:33.810 --> 00:34:36.570
They charged me as guilty for literally everything that was…

00:34:36.570 --> 00:34:38.869
JACK: They charged you guilty for the bomb threats, too?

00:34:38.869 --> 00:34:42.399
CAM: Yeah, yeah, I got charged for the bomb threats as well.

00:34:42.399 --> 00:34:46.710
But luckily, since the FBI classed it as not a risk and more of like a hoax.

00:34:46.710 --> 00:34:52.990
It was under civil disruptions rather than a terrorist thing.

00:34:52.990 --> 00:34:55.950
I was so lucky in that department.

00:34:55.950 --> 00:34:58.400
But it could have ended up a lot worse.

00:34:58.400 --> 00:35:03.560
JACK: Now that he’s been found guilty for sending in bomb threats to the White House,

00:35:03.560 --> 00:35:05.640
US authorities wanted to get involved.

00:35:05.640 --> 00:35:09.401
CAM: They, yeah, the Secret Service and the FBI, I believe they put in two requests to

00:35:09.401 --> 00:35:11.470
get me extradited.

00:35:11.470 --> 00:35:17.630
Then it was the court said no, but they overruled it ‘cause he’s fourteen years old.

00:35:17.630 --> 00:35:20.950
I got up to the High Court, and the High Court said no.

00:35:20.950 --> 00:35:28.060
I believe in the UK, the law is if you ask the High Court and they say no, that’s final.

00:35:28.060 --> 00:35:29.060
Then it stopped there.

00:35:29.060 --> 00:35:33.380
If I was older, I would have been extradited, I’m sure of it.

00:35:33.380 --> 00:35:37.109
JACK: Eventually, the UK judge gave Cam his sentence.

00:35:37.109 --> 00:35:42.670
CAM: They gave me 120 hours community service so I spent about seven months every Saturday

00:35:42.670 --> 00:35:44.660
morning – I’m sure I had school as well, so I couldn’t ditch out of school.

00:35:44.660 --> 00:35:49.339
But I had to spend every Saturday morning for seven or eight months doing charity shop

00:35:49.339 --> 00:35:52.569
work; doing assistant work at a charity shop.

00:35:52.569 --> 00:35:55.800
On a brighter note, I did all that.

00:35:55.800 --> 00:36:01.950
I got five years of intensive surveillance from the NCA.

00:36:01.950 --> 00:36:04.690
JACK: Cam was not sentenced to any jail time.

00:36:04.690 --> 00:36:10.540
His probation allowed him to use computers but like he said, UK’s National Crime Agency

00:36:10.540 --> 00:36:13.150
would monitor his online behavior.

00:36:13.150 --> 00:36:18.020
I’m not exactly sure how they do it but that was part of his punishment.

00:36:18.020 --> 00:36:22.980
Now, this whole incident scared Cam after that and because the NCA was watching him,

00:36:22.980 --> 00:36:26.910
he just decided to not use computers at all after that except for school.

00:36:26.910 --> 00:36:29.830
He had a probation officer who would check on him to make sure he wasn’t getting into

00:36:29.830 --> 00:36:31.000
any more trouble.

00:36:31.000 --> 00:36:36.360
His probation officer saw that Cam was doing well on probation and knew Cam was good at

00:36:36.360 --> 00:36:37.360
computers.

00:36:37.360 --> 00:36:42.160
So, the probation officer suggested that Cam go to this computer networking event in Bristol.

00:36:42.160 --> 00:36:46.050
CAM: The police told me to go to it, and I started my school so I was like well, everyone’s

00:36:46.050 --> 00:36:47.270
saying that I was gonna go to it.

00:36:47.270 --> 00:36:52.540
JACK: But it wasn’t just his local police telling him to go; the NCA which is UK’s

00:36:52.540 --> 00:36:57.890
National Crime Agency actually phoned up Cam and invited him to the event which was about

00:36:57.890 --> 00:36:59.060
three hours away.

00:36:59.060 --> 00:37:03.920
CAM: There were about thirty companies there in this museum in Bristol.

00:37:03.920 --> 00:37:07.310
[MUSIC] They all came together and they were like yeah, yeah, we’ll take you on.

00:37:07.310 --> 00:37:09.700
You’ll do this and do that, a career [00:40:00] road map, and all that sort of stuff.

00:37:09.700 --> 00:37:12.900
We did Capture the Flag but I had no idea how to capture a flag, obviously.

00:37:12.900 --> 00:37:14.250
I was just a script kitty.

00:37:14.250 --> 00:37:17.310
The whole time, I was a script kitty.

00:37:17.310 --> 00:37:21.520
JACK: Capture the Flag is a legal hacking challenge; a digital flag is hidden in the

00:37:21.520 --> 00:37:25.600
computer and companies want to see if you can find where it is by hacking into that

00:37:25.600 --> 00:37:26.600
computer.

00:37:26.600 --> 00:37:29.640
Because if you can do it, it kind of proves to companies that you know your stuff.

00:37:29.640 --> 00:37:35.619
But beyond that, what Cam saw there was that all these companies were looking to hire IT

00:37:35.619 --> 00:37:36.619
people.

00:37:36.619 --> 00:37:39.369
Not just that; some were looking to hire teenagers.

00:37:39.369 --> 00:37:46.730
But not just that; some had made a deal with the NCA to have reformed hackers do an apprenticeship

00:37:46.730 --> 00:37:50.420
with their company and Cam fit this.

00:37:50.420 --> 00:37:55.910
Being eighteen years old at the time and a reformed hacker, he picked up some information

00:37:55.910 --> 00:37:59.000
for a company that he could do an apprenticeship with.

00:37:59.000 --> 00:38:03.119
So, he became interested in taking on this apprenticeship for this IT company.

00:38:03.119 --> 00:38:07.960
CAM: So essentially, they were working with the NCA in partnership to launch this cyber-skills

00:38:07.960 --> 00:38:09.030
apprenticeship program.

00:38:09.030 --> 00:38:17.050
That’s ultimately a conglomeration or something called Hack which is like a program they set

00:38:17.050 --> 00:38:23.470
up to bring young hackers towards security, and had bug bounties, and stuff like that.

00:38:23.470 --> 00:38:27.270
It wasn’t like a major bug bounty scheme but it was like, paying them a few hundred

00:38:27.270 --> 00:38:30.060
pounds to find bug bounties.

00:38:30.060 --> 00:38:35.400
It was easier to score the bug bounties rather than Bugcrowd and stuff like that.

00:38:35.400 --> 00:38:40.520
But I didn’t go in to apprenticeships; they gave me an apprenticeship in networking security

00:38:40.520 --> 00:38:44.140
and then monitoring on the SIEM.

00:38:44.140 --> 00:38:47.710
JACK: Cam got this apprenticeship with this company and they wanted him to look after

00:38:47.710 --> 00:38:48.710
their SIEM.

00:38:48.710 --> 00:38:52.190
A SIEM stands for Security Information and Event Manager.

00:38:52.190 --> 00:38:56.339
Basically, this company had a lot of logs and alerts coming into this application and

00:38:56.339 --> 00:39:00.920
it was Cam’s job to watch it and tell someone if something serious showed up on the screen.

00:39:00.920 --> 00:39:04.240
It’s a great experience for someone just starting out in security since you get to

00:39:04.240 --> 00:39:07.030
see a lot of alerts and get familiar with each of them.

00:39:07.030 --> 00:39:10.210
But I want to pause here and just kind of underline something.

00:39:10.210 --> 00:39:15.140
I think it’s incredible that the UK tried to reform a teenage hacker.

00:39:15.140 --> 00:39:18.069
To my knowledge, this kind of stuff just doesn’t happen in the US.

00:39:18.069 --> 00:39:21.790
As a teenager, if you get arrested for hacking, chances are you’re not gonna be able to

00:39:21.790 --> 00:39:24.050
use a computer again for years.

00:39:24.050 --> 00:39:28.480
It’s almost like the system is trying to steer you away from using computers ever again.

00:39:28.480 --> 00:39:32.770
But in the UK, it’s like they recognize that some of these teenage hackers have some

00:39:32.770 --> 00:39:37.340
real talent and just need some guidance to use it for good.

00:39:37.340 --> 00:39:40.569
Cam liked this job he was doing and he was doing well there.

00:39:40.569 --> 00:39:41.849
CAM: It was good.

00:39:41.849 --> 00:39:48.750
I actually – we did like, SIEM monitoring, firewall management, we did actually quite

00:39:48.750 --> 00:39:49.750
a lot and it’s very broad.

00:39:49.750 --> 00:39:52.030
But I actually ended up leaving the apprenticeship.

00:39:52.030 --> 00:39:59.440
I left the apprenticeship about ten months in out of the one year.

00:39:59.440 --> 00:40:02.609
That was due to a job offer I got here in Gloucester.

00:40:02.609 --> 00:40:07.150
It was in a different city as where I was before.

00:40:07.150 --> 00:40:10.570
JACK: The next job he tried to get was for a company called CSA.

00:40:10.570 --> 00:40:12.700
SEAN: So, my name’s Sean Tickle.

00:40:12.700 --> 00:40:16.800
I’m the SOC manager at the CSA which is Cyber Security Associates.

00:40:16.800 --> 00:40:19.800
We’re based in the UK, primarily.

00:40:19.800 --> 00:40:24.319
We do a lot of managed services, a lot of Red Team-, Blue Team-type stuff, you know,

00:40:24.319 --> 00:40:25.319
protecting clients.

00:40:25.319 --> 00:40:27.220
JACK: Sean is Cam’s new boss.

00:40:27.220 --> 00:40:31.100
SEAN: [MUSIC] Do you want me to give you the breakdown of how we kind of on-boarded him

00:40:31.100 --> 00:40:32.100
in the first place?

00:40:32.100 --> 00:40:34.010
‘Cause it all kind of came up in his interview.

00:40:34.010 --> 00:40:35.010
JACK: Yeah.

00:40:35.010 --> 00:40:38.920
SEAN: So, basically, we were doing a new recruitment drive for some analysts and Cam kind of just

00:40:38.920 --> 00:40:42.740
came through one of our recruiters who we knew.

00:40:42.740 --> 00:40:47.880
The first thing that hit us about him was his passion for the industry.

00:40:47.880 --> 00:40:52.730
Everything he spoke about was just with such passion about like, the latest technologies,

00:40:52.730 --> 00:40:59.470
the latest processes, some of the stuff in the industry that we always face like user

00:40:59.470 --> 00:41:05.050
error, like senior C level executives just not getting security, that sort of stuff;

00:41:05.050 --> 00:41:07.140
the sort of stuff that’s kind of partial to the industry.

00:41:07.140 --> 00:41:09.490
It was really cool to talk to him about that.

00:41:09.490 --> 00:41:14.580
Then we always ask this one question which is, is there anything that may stop you from

00:41:14.580 --> 00:41:17.619
possibly being eligible for security clearance?

00:41:17.619 --> 00:41:19.930
Obviously with Cam’s past, he spoke about it.

00:41:19.930 --> 00:41:24.410
We weren’t aware of it at that time but we went through it all and basically, when

00:41:24.410 --> 00:41:32.250
he was around fourteen years old, he was responsible for quite a few things, but primarily it was

00:41:32.250 --> 00:41:33.730
the Sea World DDoS.

00:41:33.730 --> 00:41:38.940
The way he explains it, is it’s actually quite funny; the kids always get a laugh out

00:41:38.940 --> 00:41:39.940
of it.

00:41:39.940 --> 00:41:44.720
He ran the command to DDoS them.

00:41:44.720 --> 00:41:51.670
This is kind of what got me with Cam; he wasn’t just some kind of black hat looking to extort

00:41:51.670 --> 00:41:54.140
them or looking to just wreck them for no reason.

00:41:54.140 --> 00:41:58.940
Obviously, it was kind of a hacktivist thing for him because he didn’t believe in, obviously,

00:41:58.940 --> 00:42:05.850
Sea World’s practices and all that horrible stuff they were doing around that time and

00:42:05.850 --> 00:42:06.850
are still doing.

00:42:06.850 --> 00:42:11.460
He DDossed [00:45:00] them and he took their website offline, all the rest of it.

00:42:11.460 --> 00:42:18.109
What he forgot to do was – he fell asleep and he woke up to a blank terminal thinking

00:42:18.109 --> 00:42:21.002
that the attack had stopped and it hadn’t.

00:42:21.002 --> 00:42:24.960
It went on for about four weeks, I believe he said, until we realized what was going

00:42:24.960 --> 00:42:29.690
on and it cost them about 1.5 million or 1.3 or whatever.

00:42:29.690 --> 00:42:34.290
Not just in loss fees, obviously; you’ve got according specialists and active response

00:42:34.290 --> 00:42:37.230
and incident response and stuff like that.

00:42:37.230 --> 00:42:38.410
They took the hit there.

00:42:38.410 --> 00:42:43.349
But then there was – he said that’s when it started getting wrong for him from a power-hungry

00:42:43.349 --> 00:42:44.670
point of view.

00:42:44.670 --> 00:42:48.010
He had a minor disagreement with a police officer once ‘cause they were in a park,

00:42:48.010 --> 00:42:51.930
so he decided to DDoS their entire website and take it offline.

00:42:51.930 --> 00:42:55.410
I think that’s when he started realizing he was going wrong, and this is all the stuff

00:42:55.410 --> 00:42:57.810
the had said.

00:42:57.810 --> 00:43:02.079
Looking back at it now, he started making those errors and he really shouldn’t have

00:43:02.079 --> 00:43:05.440
‘cause they didn’t do anything to him and obviously it’s the police; people do

00:43:05.440 --> 00:43:09.119
need to get in touch with them and that sort of stuff.

00:43:09.119 --> 00:43:13.980
So, then this is all – this all came out in one interview, so it was quite full-on.

00:43:13.980 --> 00:43:17.940
JACK: Yeah, this is interesting because I’ve been in a couple interviews and if you were

00:43:17.940 --> 00:43:22.800
to ask me what’s a mistake you’ve made in the past or what’s, you know, what’s

00:43:22.800 --> 00:43:24.579
a problem that we should know about?

00:43:24.579 --> 00:43:29.410
And he starts telling you about how he’s been arrested and he did this attack and this

00:43:29.410 --> 00:43:31.369
cyber-attack and all this stuff.

00:43:31.369 --> 00:43:34.050
What are you thinking when you’re listening to him say this?

00:43:34.050 --> 00:43:37.550
Like okay, nope, or what’s your thought process?

00:43:37.550 --> 00:43:42.420
SEAN: No, actually, maybe I’m one of the – I found it really interesting ‘cause

00:43:42.420 --> 00:43:50.970
for a lad of fourteen to be able to do this sort of stuff was like, insane, you know.

00:43:50.970 --> 00:43:55.490
What got me – if he said to me oh yeah, I just did it for a laugh or something like

00:43:55.490 --> 00:43:58.710
that, I would have been like okay, well, he’s obviously not passionate.

00:43:58.710 --> 00:44:02.050
He’s just doing it for kudos or whatever.

00:44:02.050 --> 00:44:06.380
But because he did it obviously from a hacktivist point of view, I actually started getting

00:44:06.380 --> 00:44:07.380
interested.

00:44:07.380 --> 00:44:10.930
Then it was kind of the genuine ‘I really shouldn’t have done this.’

00:44:10.930 --> 00:44:16.069
But yeah, I think initially for probably about the first five minutes I was probably like

00:44:16.069 --> 00:44:18.541
oh my god, who have we got in on this call?

00:44:18.541 --> 00:44:23.550
‘Cause the recruiter didn’t know anything about it anyway.

00:44:23.550 --> 00:44:28.280
We blitzed through the – ‘cause I was – we did a pretty rugged two-round interview

00:44:28.280 --> 00:44:34.599
process, the first round which he was in was like super technical on a whole array of stuff.

00:44:34.599 --> 00:44:36.960
He blitzed every single thing.

00:44:36.960 --> 00:44:37.960
He did amazing.

00:44:37.960 --> 00:44:42.030
We were like oh my god, this is it, we definitely need to get this guy in, especially ‘cause

00:44:42.030 --> 00:44:43.030
Cameron’s nineteen.

00:44:43.030 --> 00:44:48.210
For him to go for all this over this period of time, you’d have to have been pretty

00:44:48.210 --> 00:44:49.440
young to do it.

00:44:49.440 --> 00:44:51.200
Obviously, Cameron was like, fourteen.

00:44:51.200 --> 00:44:56.780
But yeah, after that, and I think talking to him and saying to him like, well, why did

00:44:56.780 --> 00:44:57.780
you do it?

00:44:57.780 --> 00:44:58.780
What did you think about it?

00:44:58.780 --> 00:44:59.780
Do you regret it?

00:44:59.780 --> 00:45:02.970
And all the rest of the stuff that you kind of go through your head at that point.

00:45:02.970 --> 00:45:07.540
He showed genuine remorse for it, that he shouldn’t have done it.

00:45:07.540 --> 00:45:12.780
He had kind of the right way of going about it in terms of what Sea World were doing,

00:45:12.780 --> 00:45:15.440
but he had very much the wrong methods.

00:45:15.440 --> 00:45:19.010
That’s what hit us with that.

00:45:19.010 --> 00:45:20.200
JACK: Yeah.

00:45:20.200 --> 00:45:22.059
Was this the first hacker you’ve hired?

00:45:22.059 --> 00:45:24.569
SEAN: Oh yeah, yeah, for me.

00:45:24.569 --> 00:45:30.380
But that mainly comes from the company I’m with now because a couple of the companies

00:45:30.380 --> 00:45:31.829
I was with before, they didn’t have this mentality.

00:45:31.829 --> 00:45:39.350
I think that goes for a lot of companies; people don’t give these sorts of hackers

00:45:39.350 --> 00:45:41.130
another chance.

00:45:41.130 --> 00:45:48.380
Cameron was very lucky just to get his apprenticeship and to then continue into the industry.

00:45:48.380 --> 00:45:53.819
But also, I wouldn’t say it was lucky for him to come to us because I think we were

00:45:53.819 --> 00:45:58.069
lucky to get him, really, because of just the sheer amount of passion he’s got and

00:45:58.069 --> 00:45:59.349
the technical skill.

00:45:59.349 --> 00:46:01.619
This guy is gonna do well in the industry.

00:46:01.619 --> 00:46:03.359
I already knew that.

00:46:03.359 --> 00:46:09.770
I was quite concerned that I had to put this guy forward to my directors.

00:46:09.770 --> 00:46:16.350
It was pretty cool; at the end of the day, I joined CSA because of all the stuff that

00:46:16.350 --> 00:46:21.630
they do around cyber-security as well, ‘cause I got sick of constantly being so guarded

00:46:21.630 --> 00:46:24.560
with other companies and communities and that sort of stuff.

00:46:24.560 --> 00:46:29.329
But the old companies I was with, they really garnered that sort of ‘don’t tell anyone

00:46:29.329 --> 00:46:32.450
anything, always look out for yourself’ type-thing.

00:46:32.450 --> 00:46:37.090
Jamie and Dave, the directors of CSA, thought that the opposite of that; they want to be

00:46:37.090 --> 00:46:38.250
involved.

00:46:38.250 --> 00:46:43.030
But I was still like okay, well, I’m actually gonna try and hire an ex-hacker here.

00:46:43.030 --> 00:46:46.259
I don’t know how cool they’re gonna be about this, you know.

00:46:46.259 --> 00:46:51.310
But I went to them and I said listen, this guy’s legit.

00:46:51.310 --> 00:46:52.869
He knows his stuff.

00:46:52.869 --> 00:46:59.300
Listen to his story and all the rest of it, and I’m sure you’ll agree.

00:46:59.300 --> 00:47:03.980
They did; we had a quick chat with them all and kind of reiterated his story to them and

00:47:03.980 --> 00:47:05.670
they were the first to jump on board.

00:47:05.670 --> 00:47:09.569
They actively encouraged it ‘cause they wanted to – not only from [00:50:00] a,

00:47:09.569 --> 00:47:13.050
like, ‘oh yeah, it’ll help us because of his technical expertise.’

00:47:13.050 --> 00:47:16.660
They wanted to give him that second chance and really get him in.

00:47:16.660 --> 00:47:19.150
JACK: I’m just kind of flabbergasted by this.

00:47:19.150 --> 00:47:24.050
I mean, I once was in an interview and I asked if they validated parking.

00:47:24.050 --> 00:47:28.290
I kind of lost sleep over this wondering if they just thought I was some poor soul or

00:47:28.290 --> 00:47:29.290
something.

00:47:29.290 --> 00:47:33.880
Here’s Cam not only saying he knocked out Sea World, but caused a million dollars in

00:47:33.880 --> 00:47:38.660
damages and he did it because he was passionate about animal welfare and he hacked the police,

00:47:38.660 --> 00:47:40.589
and also went to jail for this.

00:47:40.589 --> 00:47:44.640
Well, somehow, despite all of that, it went great.

00:47:44.640 --> 00:47:51.680
Cam got the job at CSA and it might be because of how much CSA likes helping the community.

00:47:51.680 --> 00:47:52.680
Like for instance…

00:47:52.680 --> 00:47:59.050
SEAN: They create this entire cool cyber-zone area, like this entire office just for kids.

00:47:59.050 --> 00:48:02.140
Well, not kids; like, for students.

00:48:02.140 --> 00:48:03.940
They did it all off their own dime.

00:48:03.940 --> 00:48:08.410
They invested like, twenty grand into this – well, twenty grand just for the architecture

00:48:08.410 --> 00:48:10.441
bit, let alone all the equipment and all the rest of it.

00:48:10.441 --> 00:48:11.720
JACK: Who invested in this?

00:48:11.720 --> 00:48:15.880
SEAN: CSA did, but they did it for the NCSC.

00:48:15.880 --> 00:48:20.560
The NCSC came to them and said we’d really love for you to do something like this.

00:48:20.560 --> 00:48:27.200
JACK: Okay, so NCSC is the National Cyber Security Center which is a UK government organization

00:48:27.200 --> 00:48:30.030
simply there to help educate people on cyber-security.

00:48:30.030 --> 00:48:34.510
ANNCR: [MUSIC] Cyber-attack is now a critical threat to our national security.

00:48:34.510 --> 00:48:39.420
The government has responded to this threat by doubling investment in cyber-security,

00:48:39.420 --> 00:48:44.609
creating a world-class national cyber-security center leading the UK’s defense against

00:48:44.609 --> 00:48:45.609
cyber-attack.

00:48:45.609 --> 00:48:51.880
Together, we will make the UK the safest place to live and work in cyber-space.

00:48:51.880 --> 00:48:57.570
JACK: Jeez, that’s an ambitious mission.

00:48:57.570 --> 00:49:01.240
I think it’s incredible that the UK government is driving this.

00:49:01.240 --> 00:49:08.369
But yeah, the NCSC partnered with CSA to help hold classes and teach students and teenagers

00:49:08.369 --> 00:49:10.780
more about cyber-security.

00:49:10.780 --> 00:49:17.119
This makes CSA a pretty progressive company and once Cam got a job at CSA, he told them

00:49:17.119 --> 00:49:18.800
about another hacker he knows.

00:49:18.800 --> 00:49:21.369
CAM: He accidentally did credit card fraud.

00:49:21.369 --> 00:49:25.820
JACK: Both Cam and this guy Jack worked together in their last job and they were both there

00:49:25.820 --> 00:49:28.970
as an apprenticeship set up by the NCA.

00:49:28.970 --> 00:49:31.349
Jack applied to work at CSA, too.

00:49:31.349 --> 00:49:35.670
SEAN: Yeah, he went down to base and they were both from the same apprenticeship and

00:49:35.670 --> 00:49:39.730
this is how we found out about Jack, ‘cause we were still continuing our recruitment drive.

00:49:39.730 --> 00:49:43.960
Obviously, Cameron knew him by association.

00:49:43.960 --> 00:49:46.799
We were like oh, yeah, of course.

00:49:46.799 --> 00:49:50.040
We’re like, we’ve hired one hacker; what’s two?

00:49:50.040 --> 00:49:56.950
Basically, he stole like, seven thousand credit card details and databases around the world.

00:49:56.950 --> 00:50:00.619
I’ve always spoken to him about it ‘cause I find it fascinating, ‘cause he is very

00:50:00.619 --> 00:50:02.119
blasé about the whole situation.

00:50:02.119 --> 00:50:04.590
He talks about it in a very matter-of-fact way.

00:50:04.590 --> 00:50:08.240
It’s really strange to hear all of that.

00:50:08.240 --> 00:50:13.720
But he said I just did it because I could and I did it because they had bad security

00:50:13.720 --> 00:50:17.800
and I’d tell them about the security and that sort of stuff and then I’d just go

00:50:17.800 --> 00:50:18.800
out.

00:50:18.800 --> 00:50:20.180
So, it’s very grey hat-ish.

00:50:20.180 --> 00:50:23.859
He was very explicit; he never used the credit cards.

00:50:23.859 --> 00:50:24.970
He never touched them.

00:50:24.970 --> 00:50:26.329
He never did anything with them.

00:50:26.329 --> 00:50:32.070
He just saw them as this – he just took them.

00:50:32.070 --> 00:50:34.619
Obviously, he got caught as well.

00:50:34.619 --> 00:50:37.890
He got caught by the red light; they had all this data on him and they couldn’t catch

00:50:37.890 --> 00:50:38.890
him.

00:50:38.890 --> 00:50:44.920
Then he turned out – he used his card to pay for some virtual private server somewhere

00:50:44.920 --> 00:50:47.310
and they just back-traced it from that, eventually.

00:50:47.310 --> 00:50:52.859
He did it once and that’s how they got him which was fair play to the NCA and the Regional

00:50:52.859 --> 00:50:54.260
Cyber Crime Unit for that.

00:50:54.260 --> 00:50:58.220
JACK: I tried to get Jack on the show but he was just a little too hard for me to wrangle

00:50:58.220 --> 00:50:59.220
in.

00:50:59.220 --> 00:51:01.049
SEAN: He definitely is.

00:51:01.049 --> 00:51:05.680
He’s got burner phones and alternate e-mail addresses.

00:51:05.680 --> 00:51:10.579
I’m his manager and even I struggle to get in touch with him sometimes.

00:51:10.579 --> 00:51:14.430
JACK: But during the interview, Sean asked Jack the same question as Cam.

00:51:14.430 --> 00:51:18.930
SEAN: The question is; we always ask it at the end and it’s, is there anything that

00:51:18.930 --> 00:51:21.980
would stop you from possibly being eligible for security clearance?

00:51:21.980 --> 00:51:29.600
Obviously, he hit us with this knowledge of yeah, I stole seven thousand credit card details.

00:51:29.600 --> 00:51:36.320
He wasn’t officially charged, thank God, because it turns out – Cam was charged,

00:51:36.320 --> 00:51:40.550
obviously, and had about five years of hell.

00:51:40.550 --> 00:51:44.940
But Jack luckily didn’t get charged because he was saying that every single one of those

00:51:44.940 --> 00:51:49.299
charges carried two years in prison and there’s no limit.

00:51:49.299 --> 00:51:56.440
So, at one point, the prosecutor said to him you’re facing 14,000 years in prison.

00:51:56.440 --> 00:52:00.690
He just laughed at that point which is pretty ballsy, really, in that situation.

00:52:00.690 --> 00:52:06.730
[MUSIC] But yeah, no, again, he was telling us that story and I was sat with the same

00:52:06.730 --> 00:52:08.170
guy who was in Cam’s interview.

00:52:08.170 --> 00:52:13.990
We [00:55:00] were like oh my god, where are we finding these people?

00:52:13.990 --> 00:52:15.990
You have to take a chance; don’t get me wrong.

00:52:15.990 --> 00:52:20.300
If he came to me and he was like yeah, I used them to go on the dark web or I used them

00:52:20.300 --> 00:52:24.549
to finance something, I’d be like no, straight away ‘cause obviously he’s in it for criminal

00:52:24.549 --> 00:52:26.319
gain.

00:52:26.319 --> 00:52:31.450
Jack and Cameron, they did it because they could, ultimately, and they were probably

00:52:31.450 --> 00:52:32.450
a little bit misguided.

00:52:32.450 --> 00:52:37.760
That’s why, I think, the kind of stuff we were doing with the students is so important

00:52:37.760 --> 00:52:41.099
‘cause you’re all like another one of those, like one of the students.

00:52:41.099 --> 00:52:45.790
Luckily, or unluckily, sorry, we didn’t get to him in time but he ended up DDossing

00:52:45.790 --> 00:52:47.150
his school.

00:52:47.150 --> 00:52:51.049
They went down the police route and he was thirteen years old.

00:52:51.049 --> 00:52:55.359
You just think like, it’s just not worth it, really.

00:52:55.359 --> 00:53:00.180
JACK: This was a potential student that was gonna come take classes for the NCSC at your

00:53:00.180 --> 00:53:03.119
place but didn’t actually come to take your guidance?

00:53:03.119 --> 00:53:08.559
SEAN: No, unfortunately not ‘cause he couldn’t, obviously, ‘cause it happened before he

00:53:08.559 --> 00:53:09.559
was coming in.

00:53:09.559 --> 00:53:11.859
They only take certain year groups.

00:53:11.859 --> 00:53:18.059
We take whatever year group they want to give us but they can only take certain ones.

00:53:18.059 --> 00:53:21.440
They were telling us about it and they just said it was really unfortunate because he

00:53:21.440 --> 00:53:24.960
had such a knowledge base and that sort of stuff.

00:53:24.960 --> 00:53:27.540
He just didn’t know what to do with it and he was just online all the time.

00:53:27.540 --> 00:53:29.599
There’s no ethics there.

00:53:29.599 --> 00:53:34.339
There’s not someone to tell you it’s right or wrong when you’re reading tutorials or

00:53:34.339 --> 00:53:35.470
that sort of thing.

00:53:35.470 --> 00:53:38.030
That’s where it was so important for us.

00:53:38.030 --> 00:53:44.500
It was unlucky, really, that he didn’t get that chance to talk to us.

00:53:44.500 --> 00:53:47.940
But yeah, but that’s literally like – you couldn’t hit the nail on the head any harder.

00:53:47.940 --> 00:53:52.340
That’s the sort of stuff that we need to protect against in future generations.

00:53:52.340 --> 00:53:56.730
We need to get them on our side before they turn to black hat.

00:53:56.730 --> 00:53:59.000
JACK: Wow.

00:53:59.000 --> 00:54:02.609
The UK is just so forward-thinking on this.

00:54:02.609 --> 00:54:07.150
By being proactive and trying to get young teenagers some guidance before they do something

00:54:07.150 --> 00:54:09.869
wrong is just so much more effective.

00:54:09.869 --> 00:54:15.839
It doesn’t just stop there; in 2017, the NCA launched a boot camp to reform teenage

00:54:15.839 --> 00:54:20.220
hackers, so when a teenager gets in trouble for hacking in the UK, they might get to go

00:54:20.220 --> 00:54:24.440
to this boot camp which is not there to scare them straight and to never use a computer

00:54:24.440 --> 00:54:29.799
again, but instead it teaches them that their passions and skills are really in demand right

00:54:29.799 --> 00:54:34.280
now and you can have just as much fun doing it but getting paid for it and being legal

00:54:34.280 --> 00:54:35.500
at the same time.

00:54:35.500 --> 00:54:39.850
Here’s an interview I found of some of these black hat teenagers who went through it.

00:54:39.850 --> 00:54:45.040
TEEN1: I’ve learned what I could do, what courses I could take, how I can proceed about

00:54:45.040 --> 00:54:46.290
going around cyber-security, what professions.

00:54:46.290 --> 00:54:49.900
TEEN2: Now I know that it exists, it sounds like something that I’d really, really like

00:54:49.900 --> 00:54:55.559
to go into because you get the same rush, you get the same excitement, but you’re

00:54:55.559 --> 00:54:59.430
doing it for fun still, but it’s legal and you get paid.

00:54:59.430 --> 00:55:04.340
TEEN3: I found out my true passion was actually stopping those attacks from happening.

00:55:04.340 --> 00:55:06.790
That’s how I now get my enjoyment.

00:55:06.790 --> 00:55:09.060
I stop them before they even happen.

00:55:09.060 --> 00:55:10.200
JACK: Incredible, right?

00:55:10.200 --> 00:55:13.089
Once again, nothing like this is in the US.

00:55:13.089 --> 00:55:17.780
Teenagers who get in trouble for hacking get kicked out of school, banned from using computers,

00:55:17.780 --> 00:55:21.460
and have an extraordinarily hard time finding a computer job later.

00:55:21.460 --> 00:55:26.569
But the UK is trying something different here, leaning into the problem, understanding that

00:55:26.569 --> 00:55:30.720
these kids really do have a passion and a skill that’s helpful.

00:55:30.720 --> 00:55:36.089
It’s just a matter of rehabilitating them to become more productive with these skills

00:55:36.089 --> 00:55:42.060
instead of destructive, or counselling them to be inspired and use these skills for good.

00:55:42.060 --> 00:55:46.330
But I should mention that some of these programs are still experimental in England.

00:55:46.330 --> 00:55:50.940
I’m not sure if this boot camp was just a pilot program and stopped, or if it’s

00:55:50.940 --> 00:55:51.940
still going on.

00:55:51.940 --> 00:55:53.670
There’s not a lot of information about it.

00:55:53.670 --> 00:55:58.140
These programs keep changing to try to figure out what the best way is of tackling these

00:55:58.140 --> 00:55:59.140
problems.

00:55:59.140 --> 00:56:03.360
Oh, and I should say that apprenticeship program that Cam got into which got him his first

00:56:03.360 --> 00:56:07.930
job, it’s not just for teenage criminal hackers; it can be used by non-criminals who

00:56:07.930 --> 00:56:11.510
want to get started in InfoSec, too.

00:56:11.510 --> 00:56:15.710
At CSA, through their CyberFirst programme where they teach students about the dangers

00:56:15.710 --> 00:56:21.039
of cyber-security, they now have Cam get up and tell his story in front of these young

00:56:21.039 --> 00:56:22.039
teens.

00:56:22.039 --> 00:56:24.839
Is Cam a role model or a cautionary tale?

00:56:24.839 --> 00:56:28.200
SEAN: It’s turning into one, it is.

00:56:28.200 --> 00:56:30.020
It’s that lovely mix of both, isn’t it?

00:56:30.020 --> 00:56:33.540
We try and hit him with like – he answers like, five questions and it’s always like

00:56:33.540 --> 00:56:34.560
who am I?

00:56:34.560 --> 00:56:35.840
Why did I do it?

00:56:35.840 --> 00:56:37.910
What were the implications?

00:56:37.910 --> 00:56:40.099
What did I learn from it?

00:56:40.099 --> 00:56:42.609
And that sort of stuff.

00:56:42.609 --> 00:56:48.280
It starts off and you can see that the students, they know it’s serious when he starts talking

00:56:48.280 --> 00:56:51.990
about all the stuff he’s done ‘cause that’s what we hit them with hard first.

00:56:51.990 --> 00:56:56.740
Then they talk about the FBI coming after him, the Secret Service wanting to extradite

00:56:56.740 --> 00:57:01.760
him, all of this stuff, all the money he cost people.

00:57:01.760 --> 00:57:05.359
It’s not just like, sorry, it’s not just companies; it’s people’s livelihoods.

00:57:05.359 --> 00:57:10.760
If they lose that amount of money, they have to lay [01:00:00] people off or people will

00:57:10.760 --> 00:57:11.880
– you know, it happens.

00:57:11.880 --> 00:57:15.520
JACK: It seems like Cam has learned his lesson from all this and doesn’t want to get in

00:57:15.520 --> 00:57:16.520
trouble again.

00:57:16.520 --> 00:57:19.990
CAM: If I get arrested a second time though, I’m gone.

00:57:19.990 --> 00:57:20.990
That’s it.

00:57:20.990 --> 00:57:23.570
I’m never ever gonna get back into the industry.

00:57:23.570 --> 00:57:30.079
Obviously, now as well, I can see the damage it causes, so like Sea World; people had lost

00:57:30.079 --> 00:57:31.079
jobs.

00:57:31.079 --> 00:57:35.920
It costed Sea World like, one and a half million dollars as a result of my attacks.

00:57:35.920 --> 00:57:41.620
That would have cost people jobs and that means that they couldn’t have fed their

00:57:41.620 --> 00:57:44.990
families and such, and the butterfly effect goes on.

00:57:44.990 --> 00:57:50.780
That’s the only reason, as well, it’s just what I didn’t see.

00:57:50.780 --> 00:57:55.170
JACK: So, it seems like this system works, huh?

00:57:55.170 --> 00:58:00.821
Spend a little time and money on some of these troubled teens and presto, change-o, they

00:58:00.821 --> 00:58:05.869
become not only a productive person but also an inspirational role model.

00:58:05.869 --> 00:58:12.349
CAM: I feel kind of bad ‘cause essentially, I’m nineteen now and I’m a senior SOC

00:58:12.349 --> 00:58:13.349
analyst.

00:58:13.349 --> 00:58:15.720
I skipped past uni ‘cause of being arrested.

00:58:15.720 --> 00:58:22.770
People that have gone to uni, how do I feel that I’ve cheated it and I’ve gone up,

00:58:22.770 --> 00:58:26.630
because of where I’ve come from which is technically not a good thing.

00:58:26.630 --> 00:58:29.950
It’s kind of like waving to people that – do you know what I mean?

00:58:29.950 --> 00:58:34.760
Because of the apprenticeship, the apprenticeship is giving people this amazing opportunity

00:58:34.760 --> 00:58:37.200
for free when I’d done something bad.

00:58:37.200 --> 00:58:40.789
SEAN: I’ve never seen anyone harbor any resentment against it.

00:58:40.789 --> 00:58:44.559
The team loved the guys.

00:58:44.559 --> 00:58:45.660
We all get on well anyway.

00:58:45.660 --> 00:58:50.400
We all do it like – the company we’re with encourages loads of social events that

00:58:50.400 --> 00:58:55.619
they pay for and that sort of stuff, so we all go carting and go out for a drink and

00:58:55.619 --> 00:58:56.619
all the rest of it.

00:58:56.619 --> 00:59:00.510
The team’s really molded together anyway, and I’ve never seen any resentment.

00:59:00.510 --> 00:59:05.390
I think they appreciate it more because Jack and Cameron always get back to them.

00:59:05.390 --> 00:59:07.460
They always try and impart their knowledge.

00:59:07.460 --> 00:59:12.869
They always show them the bigger picture when it comes to alert investigations or how to

00:59:12.869 --> 00:59:16.690
do something or some kind of technical aspect that they’re not quite getting their head

00:59:16.690 --> 00:59:17.690
around.

00:59:17.690 --> 00:59:22.150
I think that makes them really appreciate the fact that those guys are there in the

00:59:22.150 --> 00:59:23.150
first place.

00:59:23.150 --> 00:59:26.799
JACK: [MUSIC] Wow, that’s one way to diversify a team, right?

00:59:26.799 --> 00:59:28.390
Security is a game of cat and mouse.

00:59:28.390 --> 00:59:32.020
You have to know what the enemy knows and think like them so you can be a step ahead

00:59:32.020 --> 00:59:33.020
of them.

00:59:33.020 --> 00:59:36.569
Who better to turn to than someone who’s actually done that stuff?

00:59:36.569 --> 00:59:40.260
Yeah, I think this kind of team will work out in the long run.

00:59:40.260 --> 00:59:45.410
Now that I think of it, I’ve seen many criminals in the US actually get hired by US authorities

00:59:45.410 --> 00:59:47.589
to help track and catch criminals.

00:59:47.589 --> 00:59:52.880
Like, there’s art forgers and scammers and counterfeiters, and yeah, hackers who felt

00:59:52.880 --> 00:59:57.099
remorse for what they’ve done and now work with the police to help catch criminals.

00:59:57.099 --> 00:59:59.250
Huh, I like it.

00:59:59.250 --> 01:00:04.040
In this tech-focused world, I think it’s important to embrace it and not ban it.

01:00:04.040 --> 01:00:08.940
It’s important to spend time and money educating teenagers on cyber-security and especially

01:00:08.940 --> 01:00:11.060
focus on the teens who use it as a weapon.

01:00:11.060 --> 01:00:16.500
Those are some of the really clever kids who have a real passion for technology and other

01:00:16.500 --> 01:00:17.500
things.

01:00:17.500 --> 01:00:19.640
They don’t always aim to do bad.

01:00:19.640 --> 01:00:24.680
They just got wrapped up in the frenzy of it all and I’m sure all of us as teenagers

01:00:24.680 --> 01:00:27.490
have been in the battlefield of good versus evil.

01:00:27.490 --> 01:00:30.620
It’s not easy to be a teen.

01:00:30.620 --> 01:00:36.829
Everyone has two sides; good and evil, and it’s how you treat that person will determine

01:00:36.829 --> 01:00:39.250
what you see.

01:00:39.250 --> 01:00:51.240
JACK (OUTRO): [OUTRO MUSIC] A big thank you to our guests this episode Cam and Sean who

01:00:51.240 --> 01:00:53.430
both work at CSA.

01:00:53.430 --> 01:00:57.890
This show is made by me, the royal key-presser, Jack Rhysider.

01:00:57.890 --> 01:00:59.539
Production assistance by Janet BB.

01:00:59.539 --> 01:01:03.410
Sound design was done by his grace, Duke Andrew Meriwether.

01:01:03.410 --> 01:01:08.039
Editing help this episode by her Highness Damienne, and our theme music is by the Earl

01:01:08.039 --> 01:01:10.670
of Melody, Breakmaster Cylinder.

01:01:10.670 --> 01:01:16.430
Even though the F3 key on my keyboard hasn’t done a single thing for twenty years, this

01:01:16.430 --> 01:01:20.549
is Darknet Diaries.