Hacker interview-Gummo

my name is gumo i'm i'm a hacker i've been a hacker for the past 36 years and i'm here to tell my story my story started pretty um pretty young right i was born and raised in jacksonville florida grew up absolutely dirt poor and i had an older brother i had two older brothers one half brother and a natural sibling and all of us grew up in jacksonville growing up in jacksonville uh you know we we were we only had a mom our mother she raised us by herself all three of us the best bet

the best that she could uh she was um she was an alcoholic and uh she did the best raising three boys uh [Applause] my mom passed away when i was 12 years old in 1985 and i actually actually woke up on december the 7th 1985 and pulled the covers back and uh there was my mom uh and so uh ever ever since then i've been on my own um my brother and i we went to go live with my aunt but she failed at that miserably and my father was in prison so there was no

choice really but to live with friends of the family which which we did uh for a little while and uh my brother uh he was about a year and a half older than me so he was much more the free spirit and uh so he he uh he just went on went on his way um went on to do his thing at 16 years old by that time i i'm 14 and a half and you know really on my own and that's when i discovered computers right actually i discovered computers about three years earlier before

my mother passed away uh never really gave any consideration to it other than you know any other normal kid at at uh at the age of eight nine ten so it sat until my mother passed away and before she passed away the night that the night actually that she passed away she had come home from graduation on my brother my half brother had graduated basic training at fort benning and the the thing she told me before she went to bed was uh she asked me how my my computer studies were coming along and um i

lied to her right and i said they were going great uh you know actuality i really wasn't doing anything um then she passed right and then i i um you know you deal with what you can deal with when when you're you know 12 13 years old and my outlet was computers uh first you know withdrew like any other kid does uh i guess i don't know uh and second of all i um i began to master my computer i had a trs-80 model too and i taught myself to uh i taught myself how to

code uh code basic and um for a couple years that's where that's where i i was right when when people would ask me if i was fine yeah i'm fine yeah but you know my grades were really disastrous um you know i had a couple friends that i really engaged with but no one two in particular but i did withdraw i did withdraw even more into my computer right that uh i i got an acoustical modem connected that uh to a local bulletin board and begin to meet other people begin to meet other people like

me um and then you know people ask about you right you know they they want to know who you are and you know back then the internet was the internet really wasn't what people think it is now it was more or less dial-up boards uh arpanet uh closed-loop systems such as things of that such uh and but uh i set up a bulletin board uh on a local bbs system uh and uh at at the ripe old age of uh 14. i started to meet other other hackers online uh and i i started to learn

a lot of uh cool things like um like telephone freaking like how to make free phone calls um i discovered a subculture of people who existed on the phone lines on the telephone lines where they where you could talk to someone uh you know in in in london or in in paris or in georgia or l.a and you can meet these people on on the telephone on the the these telephone um party lines so to speak and so that was so um you know 14 years old i'm learning how to freak telephone systems uh freaking

telephone systems was a way to actually access the old telephone systems the old bell systems with special instructions and codes and and and methods uh which are which have long since expired since the telephone system has gone digital but um so 14 years old i'm learning you know i'm learning how to uh you know code myself i've set up a bulletin board i'm meeting hackers and i'm getting advice i'm learning how to do things i'm learning how to get the things that i need right because i'm living with friends of the family and they really

you know they they too themselves were barely able to support me uh much barely themselves as well so i everything that i had to do was for myself right um everything um from food to money for for money for clothes for school um everything my entire existence depended on my willingness to make sure that i was taking care of myself and so that's what i learned how to do i learned how to at the age of 15 years old i took a bell and howl language master and i i learned how to reprogram credit cards

uh to use them in stores and and um and atms back before atms really had a dedicated atm line to verify that a transaction um and of course i would understand the batching process and all that um but those that was that was 32 years ago and i just learned how to manipulate things to get the things that i wanted uh whether it was printing a a upc code for food for from the store which i needed or doing the uh the the the magnetic gas handle flip back in those days uh when you needed

gas for your car there was a dial on the on the gas pump and you would flip the dial on and off well if you were to take if you took a sp an old-fashioned speaker magnet and set it next to the the handle that would flip it up and engage the pump the pump would begin to run to distribute gas in in the hose but it would the numbers wouldn't turn and so that was uh so i kept learning these tricks right i kept learning little tricks to survive survivor ability tricks learning how to

social engineer people um to get what i wanted uh whether it was access to a specific computer that i wanted to dial in to steal some files from or whether or not it was to convince the supermarket manager that i'd actually had left some food behind when in turn i actually hadn't just so i could eat that night um so you know just growing up letting meeting hackers on the online people people giving me uh what i felt like was worthwhile advice to survive to to be able to you know not not wind up in

a bad situation uh and that's um that's exactly how i i kept my uh myself from uh falling apart from going under um living with in all all of the while right i'm still living with uh friends of the family 1989 comes around i'm i'm 16 17 years old the friends of the family really had enough of me living there so the official parting of ways right so there i am i just turned 17 years old and i'm on my own um i have a uh i had a chevrolet chevette a 1984 chevrolet event no

in 1982 chevrolet chevette powder blue and all of my stuff was in there and including including my trs-80 model too and i i went uh i lived in my car for for um for the better part of the entire year of 1989 and it was tough right it was uh you know i dropped out of school i i began to lose focus i i began uh began stealing cars began using my skills in very very unique fashions to obtain money quickly because when you're living in your car what choice do you have um so yeah

i did that for about a year and then then i met then then i met a girl and she became my girlfriend and ultimately she became a wife and she helped me she helped me realize what what i was capable of of doing and um her family took me in and um i went and i went and got hurt we got a job you know just bagging groceries and and um just kept doing that right you know someone someone believed in me you know and uh still sticking to computers uh i had a daughter my

daughter who turns 30 this december my daughter my wife and i had a daughter and uh i i realized that uh you know i needed to needed to do better needed to do more provide more for um for my wife and my daughter and so uh there i am bagging groceries um working working in retail stores uh and actually working hard and continuing my computer studies teaching myself how uh c uh cobalt fortran all of the old languages teaching myself computer languages uh and taking care of a wife and a kid on five dollars an

hour and uh kept doing that and about uh about two years into that i got the opportunity i saved up enough money to go um to the chaos congress in germany which is an annual conference of hackers from all around the world and um i i met some some some some hackers like me who had uh who had not only been through a struggle but were continuing to go to a struggle and uh i met i met a good i met he i met a friend of mine his name was boris florik he went by

the hacker named tron and we became really good friends and um boris and i we we worked on a lot of smart card systems together he taught me about smart cards that the little chip card in your wallet that everyone carries around you know that thing what's in your wallet um and at the time no one really knew what smart cards were they were only used extensively in europe at the time and so boris taught me about smart cards these things that have a computer and microprocessor in them and he taught me that these things

control many things from um from television access to telephone access to making and receiving long distance calls and so we worked on a crypto card scheme together to where we were able to actually reverse engineer about five different providers who issued chip card smart cards for their services we successfully decrypted those services and with that knowledge um you know after we became friends um after a couple years um we we began to converse back and forth uh you know at that at that point this is 94 and uh now i'm attending uh the chaos congress

each year and uh meeting with boris and we're we're chatting back and forth on uh this all kinds of technology most specifically smart cards about that time here in the united states [Music] hughes space systems was ready to launch a system called directv um back then actually was called dss the digital satellite system and and hughes built the system from the ground up uh and i was interested in that uh the reason i was interested in that because at this point it's 1995 my father has just been released from prison and so i go to

visit him and he's watching television i said oh dad what is that he's like oh it's a satellite system called directv and i was amazed by the the picture quality and and how how great it looked and and it all came on a little small 18 inch dish so that that was pretty fascinating and and i i looked at the system and and i'd i'd realized that was um it was it was controlled all of the authorizations were controlled by you know you guessed it a smart card uh so i it really took very little

to no effort between boris and i to collaborate on the directvf card which basically was a smart card that allowed authorization for customers to receive hbo all of the channels right pay-per-views etc and um we successfully created a a quite little humble system to reprogram those cards and um yeah laughed it off uh really didn't think anything of the wearers after that uh and then several months passed right a busy busy couple years i'm going i'm going to school uh and and actually um working at a uh at a carpet cleaning company and um just

really just surviving paying the bills and continuing to enhance my skills and um i'm like well you know the hell would it you know let's i really need some more money you know my daughter's getting ready to go into school and so i wanted to put her into school and so i i decided to sell my wares for programming directv satellite access cards and so that's what i did i i realized that it was very easy to make money doing doing providing a service for people who did not wish to pay their bill uh so

i really i really tried to i really wanted to one-up my game right so uh boris and i we worked together on some extensible ideas and uh we created some software that we sold to the canadians um and uh we we made some money right we made um we made you know 10 million dollars each and i was able to get everything that i wanted uh and so did boris uh and it was great but uh there was there were a lot more factors than just boris and i releasing code there were other mitigating factors

you had an entire battalion of hackers from rupert murdoch's end trying to actually circumvent other services and competitors out there uh to destroy them which they ultimately did but that's a whole other story so uh hacked direct tv for a few years uh and made some money went to uh got caught um and then uh after i got caught i was uh i was offered offered an opportunity right uh rather than to go and sit in prison for a long time i was asked to consult in helping a company at that time called nds to

help them solve their conditional access problem which at that point you know their entire the entire directv system was completely compromised um and nds was looking for a way to um close stamp out piracy so consulted with uh some good minds uh in haifa israel for a couple years and went on my way came back to jacksonville uh after hanging out consulting securing the the directv period 4 card helping helping a lot with that technology moving on uh coming back home my name sort of floated out in the wrong direction uh this this uh guy

who was uh doing the direct tv cards he his wife was a um a dispatcher and and she was she had actually she had she obtained my information uh and then my wife's information and then my family's information and and and pretty much doxxed me at that point and back then doxing someone was really uh a terrifying thing as such it is now right when when someone doxes you and posts your information on the internet uh it's it's a shitty thing to go through and um in my in my circumstance i had a lot of

um a lot more a lot more things that i was involved with with the government so um with with a lot of help from the government and my own self my self motivation now it was time i moved i moved to indiana um packed up the kids uh packed everything and moved to indiana uh it's just gonna really kind of lay low for a while um you know i just got back from israel i moved from florida to indiana and really just kind of you know chilled out i got a little job i got a

job at a newspaper and you know handled their websites and all of that real low-key reload tech job nothing fancy living in the middle of a corn field so to speak and and uh enjoyed it enjoyed the life uh for a couple years and then i was asked to and then a gentleman i met in indiana invited me up to chicago to take a look at his business to see what sort of technical advice i could give him for his business and so i traveled to chicago sort of got to know him within several days

he got to know who i really was about my my background and i went to work for him and uh at this point right you know now i have a job and he's done and i'm doing um i'm setting up you know i.t infrastructure for his company and and making sure that all of his offices connect and not only that but securely right cyber security really wasn't a thing then uh it it was barely even mentioned um but you know but cyber security to me right to what exists now or what people realize that cyber

security now to me is just an afterthought or was an afterthought still sort of is mentally speaking um because you know things that people are writing papers about talking about creating solutions about um these are all things that um are built on technologies that were built when the internet uh was created right your everybody's you know talking about 1970s technology and no one's really trying to fix the problem uh but uh yeah so i provided cyber security uh for him his company set up the whole deal um and then just started meeting new friends along

the way in chicago uh that's how it is in chicago um and uh one thing led to another i met a gentleman named willard harper willard buddy harper uh and he um he worked at the uh cme in chicago he was one of the uh largest hog traders in um in the world really and he gave me an opportunity to create some special networks for the cme uh to connect to the nyse and so with that after doing several of those you know meaning you know they were really simple for me but i created some

ultra high speed private networks that only the cme and the nyse um still use and so he was impressed with that and he's like what else can you do and i'm like so people know the chicago mercantile exchange and the new york stock exchange that is correct yes yeah so i set up um two bi-directional uh unique fiber lines um specifically for those two exchanges and secure them so yeah he asked me what was next uh so i'm like hey there's this thing called bitcoin uh i'm kind of it kind of piques my interest and

uh he asked me what i needed uh i said you know about a million bucks would work and he literally opened up a file cabinet it had a million dollars and it's like all right go to it and um that's what i did uh at that point i built uh i built a supercomputer that was able to mine bitcoin uh at mined about 5000 bitcoin and at that point i believe they were bitcoin was trading at 200 to 300 a coin and so he was impressed and so was i actually and so we built three

more over the next eight months i built three more uh and had them right there at 107 west van buren street uh across from the cme uh and just sucking up electricity um but uh at the at the end of that year and a half run uh we were able to mine uh close to 80 000 bitcoin so yeah i kind of uh kind of you know after a couple years of doing that it really felt uh a little a little sense of accomplishment but i really didn't feel like it was done so i ran

into a gentleman um so i'm just kind of i'm squandering around chicago right i've made you know some bitcoin you know i'm hanging out you know walking around the loop you know hanging out in millennial park and just hanging out with my friends uh and it kind of kicking back and i met a gentleman and he said hey you know our company needs a webmaster right and a webmaster is just basically someone who just does web work for a company i'm like okay yeah sure yeah i'll come and be your webmaster right because having a

job having a legitimate job completes who i am right i could sit around and and do whatever i want to make money but in the end i think it's about working an honest 905 and so yeah yeah hey jackson i'll go and work you be a webmaster at your software company and so i went to work there uh as their webmaster and it was it was hilarious right they're they're they're vice presidents they're like well this is a very important job and you should blah blah blah yes sir and you know and and uh yes

ma'am and and i really kept the ruse up as long as i could but uh i was outed by um a friend of mine uh that worked there um and uh he outed me to the marketing manager and the marketing manager she outed me to the entire staff and eventually i became responsible for their cyber security practice and so i'm like well i guess i'm doing cyber security so here i am doing cyber security for a software company in chicago unintended rights but honing my skills right figuring out um figuring out the best method for

to to stand up uh specific protocols and systems and and things of that nature from a cyber security perspective and so uh that's what i did and i did it pretty well um but uh then they fired me uh then they just they fired me and so uh yeah it was kind of a thing between the owner and myself uh he didn't like me and i surely didn't like him so now that that's public i really didn't like him um so after that right uh i just uh took a couple gigs as cyber security um

you know just kind of uh you know just did my thing packed up my stuff the entire time in chicago and came back to jacksonville and uh again you know i'm doing consulting with the company for cyber security and i enjoy it but um the that that's what led me to where i am now right from from some of those angles i've been responsible for putting some heavy hitters away i've worked with law enforcement uh in in the past some real heavy hitters uh they you know uh i'm really good at hunting hackers and finding

people and finding and not finding not finding just people just but finding the real the real the real hacker right the real hacker that's really causing him i'm that guy that looks for that hacker and i do that i do that very seriously and continue to do that because i provide my service not only for companies right but for uh celebrities and and stars right they they consult with me i i i work with them personally uh and uh to solve any cyber security questions or issues that they have you know some of the some

of the things that people don't understand is that everyone carries around a smartphone you know watching watching edward snowden you know do all of this ridiculousness hiding under covers and everything everyone should know that your smartphone is is a pc is a portable computer and the things that that smartphones are capable of doing are are are very terrifying um there there just recently was an exploit that i had used for years for ios that allowed me to actually listen in on your phone conversations to read your sms messages to read your email to actually see

everything that you do on your ios device um and those those those sort of those sort of exploits exists everywhere in everything almost everything has a gps chip in it almost every device has a chip in it and if it has a chip in it it can be exploited and when when things are exploited sometimes things devices things systems and people are exploited for one reason or another you know there's there's a lot of things that are very scary out there there there are right now there's there are people selling your information they are selling

your they are selling your wi-fi network they're selling your wi-fi credentials they're selling your ancestry.com genealogy you know data they're selling all of that there's the the thing that people don't really understand is that there really is no more privacy in this world uh unless you go and live on an island somewhere in the south pacific with no electricity and no other people there there are things to be taken advantage of in systems and devices and and so on you know it takes it takes a a professional car thief about 30 seconds to steal a

car now because you really don't need to hot wire anything or use a screwdriver or even a laptop you can use an rf interceptor intercepting device which could do a man-in-the-middle attack with just a key fob and you can steal someone's you know 150 000 car with that there there the the technology stacks out there are endless to that are being taken advantage of most most notably are the cellular systems the the mobile systems what people care around most are contain the most value and the most data putting your information on putting your information on

tick tock you know creating a tick tock account and and and filming from so many locations you don't realize what you're really doing is you're really you're really giving everything that you you hold possessive and private out to the world and that's where we see people being attacked people being um their their bank accounts being compromised etc speaking of bank accounts a lot of people realize that you know that when you log into your bank and a lot of banks will really deny this but banks actually have back doors into their in into your accounts

into your system just think about it for a moment you log in to your bank accounts you know through such and such dot com and you have to answer all of these ridiculous questions and get a two-factor sms message sent to you so you can enter in the code but people really don't realize is that their banks also have backdoor access to where applications like your turbo tax and your your your your money management software all of that how do you think that connects to your banks and so with these backdoor connections into banks uh

things continue to be in inherently insecure um you we see data breaches every day where millions of people have their information stolen and not only stolen but you know sold and used against them uh one of the one of the things that we also have to realize is that we have quantum computers coming quantum computers will make all current and former encryption algorithms absolutely obsolete so if you have something that you've encrypted in the past or you have some encrypted files and they've been anywhere on the internet in a book wherever someone else can access

your encrypted files well very soon those files won't remain encrypted long and so hopefully you know your those uh those secrets were quite well encrypted websites websites have so many flaws in them if you go everybody needs a website nowadays everybody has a website to go to their favorite website right now about 90 percent of the the web and the technologies that support them in your applications and websites they're they're insecure they're inherently insecure whether or not it's a web server running an open port or a misconfigured file on your server there's something that there's

there's there's a little bit of something out there for everyone to take advantage of and there's and now everyone is paying the price everyone now is becoming victims to these crimes to where they thought they weren't a victim uh they where they never thought that they would actually be potentially be a victim um you know the more mobile applications the more people that are using the phones that we just you know the more more people that use mobile devices require more mobile applications require more more data centers require more servers for those applications to connect

to and those are all at risk you know it it really all you have to do is you know do a dns query on anyone's web domain and you can begin to uncover the pieces of of how insecure most organizations and individuals are uh people don't realize that uh they are you know when they're at home they they put a password on their their router and they think that's it that's you know i'm safe i'm secure but no one no one really understands the context of you know using an additional layer of protection like a

vpn or or some sort of ad blocking technology and and people don't realize that their ip address is is basically like a flag out there on the internet for them and for them to be discovered for them to be stalked harassed intimidated uh swatted it doesn't matter and so it all comes it all comes with uh understanding you know these these technologies and understanding how to protect ourselves and how to protect yourself against bad people wearing hoodies and cloaks as i said not all hackers are bad people [Music] most hackers everyone is a hacker if

it weren't for hackers we would not have wi-fi we wouldn't have cameras we wouldn't have many things that we take for granted today criminals are the ones that give hackers of bad names criminals are the ones who are breaking into systems and stealing information and creating data breaches criminals are the ones who are stalking people and bad contacts and stealing from others who don't who don't belong not hackers and so you know it's been said before and here i am saying it too right hackers are not bad people the criminals are bad people but hackers

and no my thing now right is to to tell my story to tell people that you know hackers really aren't bad people hackers really have a story to tell too you know i i have a story to tell and i'm telling it and i'm almost done telling it but you know we're just like anyone else we we we live we breathe we we have feelings we we actually we actually over indulge in our feelings because we wonder what people are always doing and what the next best thing is you know i um painted my my

pinky pink back in 2006 because a friend of mine i was visiting a friend of mine in uh in fort myers and her daughter came and tugged on me she said hey why are you such a bad hacker why don't you be a good hacker and do good things and ever since then man you know i've advocated for doing good things with your skills helping people helping others you know not not doing something for yourself doing something for others making sure that making sure that you know your mom and dad wakes up in the morning

without their being you know sold on a dark market and to help and to help people right to help people achieve their goals to help people understand who they are not just by where they've been or what they've seen in the that they've been through but to under to help people understand how to get to where they're going by telling them what what i've been through the that i've been through you know i've been through some real serious in my life but that that's never deterred me from becoming who i am and who i expect

to be and it really hasn't stopped me from helping others and and showing other people the way you know with this pink with this pink pinky nail now you know that young lady just got married this year and that's that's my goal right to help as many ladies as many women as as many females getting get into cyber security to to it's not just a guy's thing it's just not where a sausage fest of guys walking around saying they hack something it's about people who are critical thinkers who contribute who care and have empathy and

share their knowledge that's what it's about and that's what i'm here to help people understand and to help people and encourage people to do with their skills yeah man um i've seen a lot i've been through a lot i i have my jump bag right here with with my bitcoin collection on them and i'll show mark after but the only thing that the only thing that i can encourage people to do is never give up always hold your head high and never ever ever ever consider giving up no matter how tough things may get because

one way or another you'll find a way you'll find a path and so hopefully what i've said hopefully my story helps i don't know but if it reaches one person and it gives someone that motivation to say hey you know i can do that too you know i get from living in cars to consulting with you know celebrities and and governments you know well then you can do it too so there's nothing that you can't do there's nothing that we can't do it's only it's only about what you choose to do and the decisions that

we all make and so i choose to do the right thing i choose to make the right decisions and i choose to make the right call and so that's my story all right thank you thanks you