introduction that has been quite that
musical so I’m here to talk to you about
hacking but hopefully by the end of it
you won’t have such an allure to it or
think that it’s as complicated as it is
because what I’m kind of here to do is
take the mystery out of hacking so you
kind of understand what actually it is
and what’s involved with it and
hopefully be able to apply that in some
new and interesting ways so let’s kind
of talk about the way most people
perceive hacking if I say hacking you
probably think of something like this
right this is something that like WSB
would show is like that little graphic
up in the corner if they’re talking
about info hacking another really
popular one is the guy in the ski mask
typing at a computer first of all
hackers don’t type like this they type
like this and secondly you don’t need to
wear a ski mask you’re at your own house
so that’s just stupid or if you’re
watching a movie like Skyfall you’ll see
like a bunch of computers and they try
to like make it look crazy and you’ll
have like six screens first of all those
are just like raw computers like if I
remember Skyfall correctly there like in
the Mediterranean that’s terrible you
need like cooling and AC and all sorts
of stuff to make a data center work so
that just wouldn’t even work let alone
be useful for hacking and then sometimes
I talk with people and they’re like oh
you must just think in some weird codes
and your your screens must just be
covered with gibberish and no that’s not
the case none of that stuff is actually
what hacking is and I think it’s
important to address this because well
for two reasons one like if you hack
into a bank that’s a lot of work it’s
not like 30 seconds typing really fast
well dubstep plays in the background
right and then you’re like I’m in they
always say I’m in I don’t know why
that’s so lame like it’s a lot of work
to do that and so it kind of like
glosses over and does a disservice to
think that like you could just do it in
30 seconds and the other side of this
that I think is important for you all is
that it makes hacking some artificially
unobtainable thing right like oh I can’t
do that that’s just that weird guy or
that that smart girl who knows this
thing and oh they’re just
computers I could never do that that’s
crap if you think you can’t do it you’ll
never even bother trying it and when we
kind of cloak hacking in this mystique
it really is is preventing a lot of
really smart cool people from even
trying and that’s really sad so I
thought with this talk what I do is I’d
talked to three different hacks that
I’ve done and talk about what I did
during those hacks and how I actually
broke the systems and then we can kind
of dive in and learn a little bit more
about kind of the process of this so the
first hack believe it or not was here at
Walton high school I was a freshman I
was in Miss McKinney’s geometry class
and i was a slacker and i was bored and
I didn’t want to listen to her and I had
a calculator and I’m sure you guys don’t
have ti-85 s anymore what what do you
guys use now don’t even know Wow yeah
see state of the art so I could play
pacman and that was pretty awesome and
so my friend jr. gave me pac-man and so
I’m sitting in a trailer out back by the
baseball fields playing pacman and
juniors like I can get a higher score
than you and I’m like no no I’m gonna
totally win and so when I would play the
game I would notice that it would create
a bunch of matrices would be stored in
the calculator and I thought that was
kind of weird and if I deleted them and
then I restarted the game the game would
take a little bit longer but then it
would start playing and the matrices
would be back and it’s like what are
these things so I started looking at
them this is what it looked like I’ve
kind of oriented it and it kind of just
looks like gobbledygook but I started
noticing kind of reoccurring patterns
one’s a lot of zeros some threes and so
I’m going to go ahead and colorize it we
can start to see what the matrix
actually is it is the game board so the
zeros are dots the ones are walls and
the threes are like the little
superpower balls and so that’s actually
what would happen when the game would
run it would read over this matrix and
the first you know 00 it would like draw
a wall and then if it was a pellet it
would draw a pellet and it just kind of
iterates over all of the elements in the
matrix and draws it on the screen so
basically these matrices that were
created when the game started those were
the levels those were the maps and so I
went back to it and I said okay here’s
what it is and I edited it and you’ll
notice i put
I put a one in the middle right where
the ghost it’s and so when the game
started it and I played it again the
ghost is now trapped the ghost can’t get
out the ghost can’t eat me and Jo is one
of these guys that’s just amazing at
video games regardless but I was able to
get a higher score than junior because I
didn’t have a ghost chasing me the whole
time just because I hacked the batrix so
it all worked so the next story I want
to tell you about was while I was a
student at georgia tech so it was really
late because i procrastinate i had
procrastinated two things i
procrastinate in my laundry and i
procrastinate it studying for a physics
test and so I’m up late and I
desperately don’t want to do physics
because i’m a procrastinator so like
let’s a it’s only two am like in wait
till three and before I have to start
look at this so I’m doing laundry and
I’m thinking and I’m looking and we have
these laundry machines and they’re kind
of these instead of these coins that you
would put into them we actually had a
reader on the wall and we have these
student IDs that basically had mag
stripes on the back like a credit card
and so what happened is is that you
would select what washer you wanted to
use you would swipe the card that reader
would talk back to some sort of
centralized system to be like hey
Billy’s trying to do laundry he needs to
spend a dollar does he have a dollar in
his account and then that centralized
system would call back and say yeah
Billy totally has a dollar in his
account let him go and then what happens
is is it would somehow tell the washing
machine let Billy wash and so when I was
really bored I was watching this I’d go
over and I’d buy laundry and then I’d go
back to the washing machine and the
washing machine had one dollar kind of
in it on a little screen on it and then
as soon as I bought it it would go one
dollar seventy-five 5025 wash and it was
as if I was dropping quarters in the
machine now these things were super old
and they had no concept that they were
attached to some sort of network and
what was literally happing was that the
reader on the wall when it would would
have to tell the washing machine that i
had bought wash it would send these
pulses to the washing machine as if i
were depositing quarters and that’s why
the washing machine would say a dollar
seventy-five 5025 you can now do a wash
because for all it knew I had just put
four quarters into the machine so this
was kind of interesting and I was
thinking about this so i looked at the
back of the washing machine and there
was a wire coming out of the back and
I’m like well let’s see what’s in there
so I got a pocket knife and I cut away
all the insulation and I found some
wires there were four wires in there and
I’m like let’s start crossing some of
these and see what happens and so I
started crossing wires and then on the
washing machine I was doing in it it was
it said a dollar and then suddenly
unlike the third one it goes 75 I’m like
wait a minute click it again 50 25 free
wash and so what happened was is that I
was basically simulating quarter pulses
going to the washing machine I’m like oh
this is awesome I now have free washing
now it’s kind of funny the Georgia Tech
did not catch on until much later
because i could not actually get to the
dryers i can only get to the washers so
for a semester all i did was pay for a
bunch of drying I never paid to use the
washing machine which you think would
have tripped some sort of weird fraud
detection system right like how is this
guy never using a washing machine but he
always need to use the dryers so I went
on to the next level which is hmm you
know what about this little centralized
reader that’s talking to the database oh
so there I pretended to be the reader
and I sent pulses directly to the
washing machine so next thought was well
can I pretend to be that centralized
server can I somehow get in between the
reader and the centralized server so
when it says hey Billy would like to
spend a dollar on something does he have
the money that I could send back Billy
totally has that money in his account
Billy has millions of dollars in his
account don’t worry about it right so
after thinking about it and I went I
read a lot of I had to go well I’m kind
of glossing over it I had to go figure
out how did the reader in the
centralized server communicate what
protocol did they use how did it off
enta Kate who I was and I went and I
read a whole bunch of books to try and
manuals on this system to try to figure
this stuff out but eventually what
happened is that I was able to pretend
to be the centralized server and say to
the reader hey Billy guts this Billy can
have this laundry now what I found out
though is that the system wasn’t just
used for laundry it was used for vending
machine
awesome so now I can be in my dorm room
and make all the you know vending
machines in the library spit out of coke
that’s pretty cool and then it’s like
we’ll wait a minute this thing’s used
for building access awesome i can get
into the cs lab if i left my backpack in
there or oh i could get into this dorm
room or oh wait i could get into the
nuclear research facility that’s on
campus oh crap I’ve stumbled into
something bad because i found this
system and it has flaws and now we need
to tell people about it and so I had
kind of this thing of how do I let
people know that this system that
they’re trusting actually has a lot of
flaws and what can we do to fix it and
that’s a very long story I can’t fit it
in 18 minute TED talk it involved
lawsuits it involved of being scared and
young but ultimately involved the
company hiring me to help them
essentially fix this system so it was a
good story but a interesting experience
but a positive experience at the end so
the finite hack I wanted to talk about
was one that i was paid so after I got
out of college I went to work for a
start-up and we we built software that
did security testing but we also got
paid to do security audits which we call
those pen pen test or penetration tests
but security audits is kind of what we
like to say cuz it sounds it sounds less
conceded right like oh I’m a hacker who
does penetration tests like no I’m just
a dude who works at an office and we do
security audits so there was a
restaurant that a fast-food chain and
every year they do a kind of like a
giveaway coupon giveaway and cars and
stuff like that and it’s based on a
board game and you go there and you can
get you know fries and drinks and get
little tickets and see if you get stuff
well they also have an online version of
this board game on their website and so
what happened is is that we were paid to
basically say is this thing secure so if
you went to the website basically in
your browser you would download this
little game and when you played the game
you’re playing the board game now if you
won what happened is as we noticed your
browser would send a message back to the
website that basically said yeah Billy
just one give him a cheeseburger and
then the server would like a minute
later
you get an email saying hey here’s your
coupon for a free cheeseburger and like
me this is kind of interesting so what
we noticed is that if you lost the game
nothing happened the gain didn’t send
anything back to the web server so it’s
not broadcasting out Billy as a loser
billy can’t play this game it just
wouldn’t tell anybody so that was kind
of interesting so we thought well what
happens if I play the game again and I
win the same prize again what does the
message look like and we saw that the
message was different it was kind of
this just encrypted blob of goop we
couldn’t really figure out what was in
it but we noticed that was changing and
then sure enough a minute later I’d get
an email saying hey you just want
another cheeseburger and so I realized
what was happening here is that there
was actually inside this game that’s
being sent to the browser there was some
sort of encryption key and there was
code inside that game that if I won the
game it would activate this little kind
of you know give Billy a reward kind of
sub routine and that would basically
create a message encrypt it and send it
back to the server and that was the
encrypted thing I was seeing well I’m so
we saw it go through well what that
means is that everything that’s needed
like the server doesn’t know whether I
won it’s just given this message saying
Billy totally won give him a
cheeseburger and so what I realized is
is that we could take this game that’s
being delivered to the browser and pull
out the code that forms the message that
Billy want a cheeseburger and the
encryption key that would encrypt that
message and pull it out and stick it in
a new game that new game doesn’t have to
have a whole board game system it can be
really stupid it can just have a bunch
of buttons called this is the button for
a cheeseburger this is the button for
fries and this is the button for a
milkshake and whatever button you pushed
surprised you just one we would take
that encrypt a message and send it and
then I’d get it a message so we
basically made a game that we like to
call Billy wins a cheeseburger and you
can just keep pushing a button and you
didn’t have to do anything if there was
nothing to win you just would get
coupons for getting cheeseburgers
cheeseburger way you get really fat if
you just eat cheeseburgers how about
have an active lifestyle so
we of course told the company about
these flaws and they resolve them
because they were paying us to figure
these things out but in all of these
stories hopefully you see a kind of a
common trend which is that there’s no
crazy movie style hacking stuff right
like you know I don’t have like 30
seconds to get through some login prompt
or like a bombs going to explode right
there’s none of that there’s none of
this crazy acrobatic it’s depressing you
all are probably too young to have seen
mission impossible but it’s really good
and you should watch it but none of this
crazy acrobatic mission impossible style
stuff it’s really fundamentally thinking
and researching lots of thinking and
lots of reading really dusty manuals
let’s talk about that for a second so
when I was trying to figure out how that
game works they sent a game down to the
browser it was written in flash which is
probably technology y’all don’t know but
doesn’t matter I had a flash game and I
needed to figure out what was inside it
which means I had to go digging around
Adobe’s website to find the
specification of what is this file how
is it structured how does all that game
information get in there what how does
it talk back to the server ID to go read
a bunch of information when I was doing
that stuff at tech right how did I
figure out which wire’s to cross I mean
I happen to get lucky and cross some but
I went back to make sure I was doing the
right ones and so I went and I found a
forum where repair men were talking
about this system and they uploaded the
manual on how these things are wired and
sure enough on the circuit diagram was a
little thing that said these are the
five wires that are coming from the card
reader and here’s what the you know the
red wire means this and the green wire
means this so I basically found it and
you know a manual all of this stuff
everything that I’ve learned it’s always
been having to go out read a bunch of
information so being able to research
and just that be fine reading really
really dry boring technical specs is key
but then you need to synthesize this
information you start actually kind of
doing applied critical thinking so let
me read all this information and
synthesize it down to some few key facts
and let’s let’s figure out which ones
are the most important let’s start
thinking about maybe given that I know
how these parts work how does this
system what do I think this system looks
like I never actually saw that
centralized system at Georgia Tech that
was saying yeah Billy totally has a
million dollars but I didn’t need to
because I knew it was there and I could
just kind of treat it as a black box but
I learned enough about how you talk to
that thing that what was going on I
didn’t really need to know the details I
basically took the system and figured
out what are all these things and how do
they talk if a talks to B & B talks to c
and c always trusts that it gets this
thing from be but it really shouldn’t
because i kind of control that because i
can do things to a you start kind of
figuring things out and so really what
I’m trying to get it is that hacking
it’s just applied critical thinking and
cognitive skills it’s the scientific
method it’s coming up with a hypothesis
what happens if I cross these wires I
don’t know also helps to be pretty
curious I’ll give a great example since
some of you are students as I was pacing
in that hallway there’s a in the middle
of it between the chorus room in the
orchestra room there’s this like 12 inch
by 12 inch metal plate that’s like screw
to the ground and it felt kind of hollow
and it’s held on with phillips head
screws and i’m just sitting there
walking i’m like i wonder what’s under
that plate it’s kind of interesting i
kind of want to know what’s under that
plate so just being curious and then go
I don’t know maybe we should go see
what’s under that plate that’s always a
really good place to start to but being
able to synthesize information process
information form hypotheses test
hypotheses and basically apply cognitive
skills that’s all hacking is now this is
a really cool thing because if you like
that sort of thing you like that those
kind of brain teasers you don’t just
have to go into you know computers or
into hacking because all of those skills
they apply everywhere business
consultants business consultants
literally are paid to come into a
company look at some system right
logistics or you know cash flow or
accounting really boring sounding things
but all they’re doing is saying wait a
min things are flowing through it where
are the inefficiencies where are things
working the way maybe they shouldn’t
properly work and then they get paid to
say yeah you should fix that part right
there that’s bad business consultants
are basically the hackers of the
business world medical doctors
differential Diagnostics right
what’s going on with this person is this
different from their otherwise unhealthy
lifestyle what’s happening they’re kind
of you know Medical detectives and in
fact detectives are perfect example
police detectives right there they’re
dealing with people that are lying to
them they don’t have all the information
they’re trying to figure out what’s
going on and they have to make
hypotheses and go try to collect
information and test it so all of these
skills fundamentally everybody here can
do so if you can only take two things
away from this talk recognize that
everybody here can totally do all the
hacking that I did you might think not
but it just takes time and it’s all the
skills you already know how to do it’s
just implementing them and to you don’t
have to just do hacking if you can be a
hacker you can actually have any sort of
[Applause]
I think he’s supposed to come through
there my first question is you went to
Walton how did you get so cool that’s a
weird question I think that if there’s
something I was actually talking with my
wife about this before I came up here to
speak I think I actually was talking
about you save and I said she’s like
she’s like is there somebody introducing
you I’m like yeah there’s this guy Sam
he’s delightfully dorky and I say that
in a truly way because I think in the
last 20 years or so people that are
interested in kind of weird esoteric
things or people that are are they like
technology or they like whatever it is
it’s we’ve seen a great kind of
equalizing in that hey it’s okay to like
whatever you like and to do whatever you
do and your your hobby doesn’t have to
be sports or this right like drama
wasn’t particularly popular when I was
here maybe it is more so now but I feel
that people are there more understanding
of what people like and don’t like and
so I think that I you only think I’m
cool because it’s cooler now than it was
20 years ago to be into technology like
I’m still isn’t like by the scale of
what I wait here I’m still as nerdy as I
ever was but just that’s more acceptable
I guess have you ever thought of
teaching computer science or anyway um I
I think teaching is super important i
had a lot of great professors at tech
and i think the key is that it’s trying
to maintain that energy level in that
passion and that curiosity and that
those are things that you shouldn’t
suppress if maybe i don’t know how you
can’t really be super creative in
trigonometry right like the theorems the
theorems but like if you can find a
hobby or a channel or something that
lets you do what it is you enjoy I think
that’s key until you can find kind of
like teachers or subject matters that
sort of foster whatever it is that
you’re passionate about everyone give it
up for Billy much