#74: How a Computer Hacker Optimizes Online Dating, Opens Locked Cars, and Hijacks Drones

Samy Kamkar is one of the most innovative and notorious computer hackers in the United States. He's also a well-known whistleblower. If you want how Samy hacks everything from online dating to car alarms, this episode is for you. He is best known for creating the fastest spreading virus of all time, a MySpace worm named "Samy." He got raided by the United States Secret Service for that one. More recently, he's created SkyJack, a custom drone that hacks into any nearby drones, allowing him (or any operator) to control a swarm of devices; and Evercookie, which appeared in top-secret NSA documents revealed by Edward Snowden. He also discovered illicit mobile phone tracking by Apple iPhone, Google Android and Microsoft Windows Phone mobile devices, which were transmitting GPS and Wi-Fi information to their parent companies. His research and findings led to a series of class-action lawsuits against these companies and a privacy hearing on Capitol Hill. To see Samy help me hack my online dating, check out the "Dating Game" TV episode here: http://itunes.com/timferriss Here is Samy's site (http://samy.pl/), his outstanding YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4m2G6T18_JcjwxwtwKJijw), and his Twitter (https://twitter.com/samykamkar). This episode is brought to you by two companies I use myself: 99Designs — http://99designs.com/tim Mizzen & Main — http://mizzenandmain.com/collections/tim Enjoy!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  This podcast is brought to you by Mizzen & Maine. Don't worry about the spelling. All you need to know is this. I have organized my entire life around avoiding fancy shirts because you have to iron them, you sweat through them, they smell really easily, they're a pain in the ass. Mizzen & Maine has given me the only shirt that I need. And what I mean by that, and Kelly Starrett loves these shirts as well, is that you can trick people. They look really fancy, so you can take them out to nice dinners, whatever, but they're made from athletic sweat-wicking material. So you can throw this thing into your luggage in a heap or on your kitchen table like I did recently, and then pull it out, throw it on with no ironing, no steaming, no nothing,

• 0:42Tim Ferriss?

  walk out, and you could probably wear this thing for a week straight, or make it your only dress shirt, and take it on trips for weeks at a time. Never wash it, it will not smell, you will not sweat through it. You gotta check these things out. So go to fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, fourhourworkweek.com/shirts. Check it out, fourhourworkweek.com/shirts, and you'll see some of my favorite gear, including the one shirt that I've been traveling with. This episode is brought to you by 99designs, your one-stop shop for all things graphic design-related. I have used 99designs for everything from banner ads to book covers, including sketches and mock-ups that led to The Four Hour Body, which later became number one New York Times, number one Wall Street Journal.

• 1:26Tim Ferriss?

  And the brainstorming, a lot of it took place with designers from around the world. And here's how it works. Whether you need a t-shirt, a business card, a website, an app thumbnail, whatever it might be, you submit that project, and designers from around the world will send you sketches and mock-ups and designs. You choose your favorite, and you have an original that you love, or you get your money back. It's that straightforward. And many of you who are listening have already used it and created some amazing things that I'll be sharing in the future. But in the meantime, if you want to see some of my competitions, some of the book covers, as well as get a free $99 upgrade, go to 99designs.com/tim. That's 99designs.com/tim.

• 2:32Tim Ferriss?

  Hello ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show where I deconstruct world-class experts, whether they be chess prodigies, incredible billionaire investors, celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger, or, in this case, one of the most capable and notorious computer hackers on the planet, who happens to also be a good buddy of mine, Samy Kamkar. He is a beast. He's also a well-known whistleblower and entrepreneur. So, we could start with what he's probably best known for, which is creating and releasing the fastest-spreading virus of all time, which was the MySpace worm called, aptly enough, Sammy. And, of course, he was subsequently raided for it by the United States Secret Service. Yes, he was prevented from touching computers for three

• 3:15Tim Ferriss?

  years, but he's also done many other things. He created Skyjack, which is a custom drone that can hack into other nearby parrot drones, and basically create a swarm of drones that someone like Sammy can control completely. He's also known for creating Evercookie, which appeared in top-secret NSA documents revealed by Edward Snowden, and he has also spotted some what you might consider bad behavior. So, he discovered illicit mobile phone tracking, where Apple, in the case of the iPhone, Google Android and Microsoft Windows phones were transmitting GPS and Wi-Fi information to their parent companies. And his research on this has led to a series of class-action lawsuits against the companies and a privacy

• 3:55Tim Ferriss?

  hearing on Capitol Hill. So, he is a controversial figure, and for those interested, after this interview, in delving more into a lot of what I've done with Sammy, he is one of the experts that I relied on in the Dating Game episode of The Tim Ferriss Experiment, which is the number-one TV season on iTunes. As I record this, he helped me to hack my online dating and test a bunch of things that seemed ridiculous and ended up working. And, of course, we had Neil Strauss of The Game, and a high-end matchmaker, and other people that we tested. But you can check out that episode, which is really fun, on iTunes.com/TimFerriss, two Rs and two S's, it's iTunes.com/TimFerriss, T-I-M-F-E-R-R-I-S-S.

• 4:39Tim Ferriss?

  We also have some bonus footage from the episode with Sammy that is on Vessel. And if you're interested in content distribution, this is also just a cool site to check out. And you can go to vessel.com, that's V-E-S-S-E-L dot com forward slash Tim Ferriss. And you can find a bunch of videos, I'll be adding more. And you can see all of these for free for the next 30 days, just have to sign up. So without further ado, I want you to enjoy the very thought provoking, terrifying, and instructive conversation with Sammy Kamkar. Sammy.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Tim.

• 5:15Tim Ferriss?

  Welcome to the show.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Thank you. Awesome.

• 5:18Tim Ferriss?

  It is so great to see you again. It has been a while since our adventures in TV land.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  It has.

• 5:24Tim Ferriss?

  And I've wanted to, I've wanted to introduce you to my fans and this audience for so long already. And I think a great way to do that is to explain a few things that are right in front of me. So you have a necklace on.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Yes, I do.

• 5:38Tim Ferriss?

  Can you explain what is on your necklace? And I hadn't seen this before today.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Sure, sure. So this is something, it's actually a microcontroller. So it's basically a little mini computer that sits around my neck that I've programmed to into something that I call USB drive by. And basically what USB drive by is, is it's something that I wear around my neck, obviously. And any computer I plug this into, it, within about two seconds, takes it over forever. Essentially, if you've ever plugged in a keyboard into your computer, you know that you can just start typing keys. Well, the awesome thing about computers are that, and keyboards, is that you can do anything from a keyboard. You can open, you know, if you're on Windows or OSX, you can open like a spotlight or the start menu and start typing. You can say, open a terminal, go into the network preferences, make all my network

• 6:27Speaker 01

  traffic go to another server. So now, if you plug this in, all of your internet traffic, whatever website you go to, any email you check, goes through my computer. So I can see where you're doing, where you're going. Additionally, it evades a firewall. There's like a firewall where it actually asks, do you want to allow this connection to this random server, sammy.pl that you've never heard of? Well, you can, thanks to this firewall, you can just hit enter, right? To hit the accept button. So it's like, oh, I'm just gonna hit accept. And this thing is, you know, it's like two inches, you know, two inches by an inch or something.

• 7:00Tim Ferriss?

  Oh yeah, you barely even notice it as anything other than decorative, but of course, you're not a steampunk burner, last I checked. So it actually has a function.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Right, right. So I've, you know, I've actually made a video on this. I've released it entirely open source for anyone to see how it works, actually use it. And the idea is not to actually be malicious and use this against people, but to demonstrate sort of the flaws that exist in our everyday computers in system like USB that have existed for years and years and years that we don't really think about.

• 7:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I've, you know, and there's, there's another toy I want to get to in a second, which also blew my mind, although didn't entirely surprise me, given the conversations we've had in the past. But I, I at one point was chatting with a former intelligence officer for, I think it was MI6, and he now does private security in Silicon Valley and other places. And he said that if you, if you were to go to, say, a Facebook or a company like that and drop off malicious USB drives that were branded with the company logo on them and just drop them in the lobby where people check in, that, you know, 75 to 80% of them will get picked up and plugged into a computer.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm sure.

• 8:08Tim Ferriss?

  On campus somewhere.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it seems like a high percentage, but I believe that. I mean, man, the problem is you'll plug in, I'll plug in almost anything.

• 8:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, the lobby is key because you also get visitors who think they're getting, they've found something valuable.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 8:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 8:25Tim Ferriss?

  All the dignitaries, oops.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a couple, there's a couple of music artists, you know, I love going to, to shows and there's a couple of artists, I think like Basin Actors has thrown out USB sticks, which I think is great, right? With like unreleased music. And I just want to go to Coachella and just throw these things out.

• 8:40Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, God.

• 8:42Tim Ferriss?

  The drive-by USB.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:43Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, Jesus. Sammy, you terrify me. But you also delight me. Tell me about this other toy. And it is a toy, right?

• 8:51Speaker 01

  This is a toy. I mean, it's not a toy.

• 8:53Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's a toy.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  It was a toy.

• 8:55Tim Ferriss?

  It was a toy.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  OK, so this is, you know, I haven't released any of this stuff out yet.

• 8:59Tim Ferriss?

  Well, and where can people find the video? Just to backtrack for a second.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Sure, sure. My website has everything. So sammy.pl, that's S-A-M-Y dot P-L.

• 9:10Tim Ferriss?

  And I will link to all these things in the show notes as well for everybody.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  So this is called the Mattel iMe. This is a product for essentially tweens. And it's this pink, you know, I call it, I think it's fuchsia. But it says Girl Tech on it. And you can essentially text your friends. And it's Mattel, you know, came out with this many years ago so that sort of teen kids could text their friends without, you know, finding, you know, running into the wrong creeps and the wrong people. It's restricted to who you can communicate with. But it happens to have a really cool wireless chip that a couple of other people out there, Mike Lossman and a few other people, have found that this wireless chip is actually really, really powerful. Much more powerful than texting teenage girls.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  It's actually able to listen and transmit on a wide number of frequencies, including some things that I found recently, like a ton of, almost all garages, high-end luxury vehicles. Have you, if you've ever used, let's say, a remote, you know, a lot of cars these days, you hit a remote to unlock your car.

• 10:15Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Quick, quick.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  So that's all with radio frequency. And normally that's supposed to be encrypted, or at least it's supposed to be really hard. And the thing about security that I've learned over time is that if we don't see it, we just assume it's safe. Right? If you can't see it.

• 10:35Tim Ferriss?

  Right. If it's not an open door to your house.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. Right? As long as you don't know it's happening, this is kind of, and I mean, it's true ignorance is bliss, but not until someone steals your car. So this is something that I've been working on too. And that's something I've been demonstrating and will come out with pretty soon, with being able to take this Mattel toy, which is now discontinued, but you can get on eBay for pretty cheap, modify it so like here, we're actually seeing just different frequencies.

• 11:07Tim Ferriss?

  And I'll take, and I'll take a photo of this for you guys as well.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  So like, Michael Osman is another hacker who builds amazing stuff and he's built this spectrum analyzer which shows us frequencies and I've modified it here to actually record things. So like if I take a car key, we'll actually see a spike here whenever I hit the button. And a lot of cars, you hit a car, you hit the key to unlock and then you get in your car and you just press a button now. And that's wirelessly communicating with your key as well. You don't even have to put a key in the ignition in most cars.

• 11:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it was very confusing to me when I first used it. Yeah, you just leave it in the center console or whatever.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were stuck in there for like thirty minutes.

• 11:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, trying to figure out how to turn the car on, yeah.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Where's the hole?

• 11:47Tim Ferriss?

  Showing my age.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  So essentially, that's also with radio frequency. You press the button and it sends a signal to your key to ensure that it's there. So this device, I've essentially programmed it to record that information. And it has to do a few more tricks, get over a few hurdles, and then I can now start your car, unlock it, and drive away. And fortunately, this only works on nicer cars.

• 12:11Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you know, this is, I remember when we did some of our experiments in online dating, and we'll definitely talk about some of your amazing adventures in the world of online dating. But when I did an episode that involved breaking into cars, which is a whole separate story, but noticed that a lot of the higher end, in this particular case, Japanese vehicles were really easy to break into. Easier than like old, broken-down pickup trucks in some cases. And it's just astonishing to realize that in certain cases, the security with the most expensive category of a product is the most vulnerable.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 12:57Tim Ferriss?

  It just, it really, it really astonished me to realize that.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Well, you find in a lot of nice neighborhoods, the doors are unlocked.

• 13:03Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. No, exactly. And what I found, in this particular case, this was a week of experimenting with urban evasion and picking locks and getting out of handcuffs and all this stuff. And by the end of two or three days with a very minimal set of tools, I could open all of the cars that the staff had rented, who are working on the show, including like GMC Yukons and like some very... Expensive, higher-end cars. How did you learn to do this kind of thing? I mean, where did you start to develop this interest in this skillset?

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:42Tim Ferriss?

  Because you have such a breadth. I mean, you have familiarity and comfort with software, obviously, and programming. But now with hardware, where did all that start?

• 13:50Speaker 01

  The hardware or just the software?

• 13:53Tim Ferriss?

  The hacking.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  The hacking, okay, the hacking. The hacking, I mean, it started, it started early on. So yeah, I just lived with my mom when I was younger and she worked a lot. You know, she had typically two jobs and she got me a computer one day. I was probably like eight or nine. She got me like a brand new computer. And I said, hey, Mom, you know, can I have internet? Can I go and, and she spent all her money on this, on this brand new computer. Cause she knew that I had nothing to do.

• 14:23Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Right, I was at home this summer. I had no summer camp or anything, I was just at home. So she knew I liked computers and she spent everything she had to get me a new this computer. And I got the internet and that was one of the best days of my life. And I go on there and I find that, man, there's like so many amazing websites dedicated to the X-Files, which, which was awesome because I love the X-Files. So I spent all day on, on these websites about the X-Files. And I thought, man, I'd love to really talk to people about the X-Files. So I got into, I found a message board and I about the X-Files. So I posted on there, I was like, hey, guys, I really like the X-Files too, let's talk. And I kept hitting refresh, right? It was back, back in the day of message boards.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  I guess we still have them, they're called forums now. And I was refreshing and refreshing and I just wasn't getting the immediate response like I would on, you know, Yahoo or Metacrawler back then when I'd search. So I found something called the chatroom IRC. And I got in there and I went into a chatroom and I was like, hey, guys, who wants to talk about the X-Files? And which is my favorite show at the time, if it's not obvious. And someone said, get out. And I said, what, what do you mean? I just wanna, I just wanna chat, right? Let's just hang out and chat about stuff. He's like, get out. And I said, no. I mean, I'm not sure if I said no, but I didn't. And then he said, you have 10 seconds to get out. And I was like, okay, random person I don't know on the internet, what are you gonna do?

• 15:52Speaker 01

  And 10 seconds later, something happened, my computer crashed.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  And I panicked. I turned beet red. I couldn't speak, sweating. And I'd never encountered a computer crash before, especially on the first day that my mom had just bought this and spent all of her savings and money on this thing.

• 16:14Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  That I just destroyed potentially. I waited for like 10 minutes. Didn't want my mom to find out. Disconnected from the power, connected back in. Thank God it still worked. And as it was coming up, adrenaline rushing, kind of like fighter flight mode. I said, that was the coolest thing ever. How do I do that?

• 16:36Tim Ferriss?

  You were hit by a wizard.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:37Tim Ferriss?

  How do I develop my own magic?

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. And not that I want to destroy people's computers, but the ability, the power. I mean, there's something really intoxicating about that feeling about being able to do that. And that's what got me down to say, okay, well, how do I do that?

• 16:52Tim Ferriss?

  And then what was the next step after that?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  The next step, I learned about these things called DOS attacks and denial of service. And this was like Windows 95, right? It was a long time ago.

• 17:00Tim Ferriss?

  I was gonna say, it's a pretty good one to attack.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I downloaded a program that did this. And then Windows.

• 17:08Tim Ferriss?

  A DDoS program?

• 17:10Speaker 01

  No, just a DOS.

• 17:11Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, not distributed.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  DDoS is new. DDoS is like a newer thing. Maybe that came out in like 10 years ago because DOSs were no longer effective.

• 17:18Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  So this was just a DOS attack.

• 17:20Tim Ferriss?

  Denial of service.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Denial of service.

• 17:22Tim Ferriss?

  Making a website unavailable to other people.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  Exactly. Website or computer.

• 17:26Tim Ferriss?

  Or a computer.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this wasn't even overwhelming. It was just a specially crafted packet that you had sent to somebody. And Microsoft patched it one day. And I was like, oh no, my wizard.

• 17:36Tim Ferriss?

  My electronic letter bomb doesn't work anymore.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I said, well, someone devised a way to create this program. How can I do that? How can I make my own? It was called WinNuke. How can I make my own WinNuke? So I then learned how.

• 17:48Tim Ferriss?

  WinNuke.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  WinNuke, exactly. So back then you called it nuking, not dosing, nuking. And I started learning how that specially crafted packet, modified memory on a Windows computer improperly corrupted something in the kernel and then would cause it to crash.

• 18:04Tim Ferriss?

  What is the kernel? Just for those not familiar, which might include me.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:09Tim Ferriss?

  I've heard the word a lot.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Sure. The kernel is basically just the brain. It's the brain of a computer typically. So typically more advanced operating systems like Windows, Mac, Linux, they'll have a kernel that handles all the system functions. Like it makes sure your keyboard works and your monitor works versus your normal software that sits on top of the kernel.

• 18:29Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  And that, from there, I mean, I had learned how to, uh, learned how to start writing software. And a lot of it also came from gaming. Um, you know, I played Counter-Strike a lot. I actually got into Quake and Doom, then Quake, then Counter-Strike. I was probably like 14 playing Counter-Strike all day and all night. And I was, you know, I played so much that I got good, but I wasn't the best. I thought, how could I be the best? And I was playing one day and I had two speakers, left and right. And someone comes up behind me. And in Counter-Strike, you can see where all your teammates are. You have like a little radar, a heads-up display where you can see your teammates, but you can't see enemies. And I heard footsteps. They came from my right speaker and then came, and then, you know, panned to my left speaker,

• 19:15Speaker 01

  but I didn't see someone on my radar. So I knew if they're not on my radar, it must be an enemy. But since I couldn't see them, they must be behind me. And I thought about that for a moment. There's information going from my right speaker to my left speaker. That means there must be positional information about the enemy. How do I get access to that? So that's when I learned the fact that these packets from these other players are coming to my computer over the internet and they have positional information of where to play footsteps. So if you have surround sound, you'll properly hear how far, how, you know, the amplitude, the volume of those footsteps and where it should be panned. And once I understand, understood and learned about packet sniffing, where you can just see the packets, see the, the actual traffic going over the internet, I could then locate

• 19:57Speaker 01

  every person that I, on the map, enemy or friend. So I then created my own cheat software. And that- Placed everyone on the map. I mean, I could see through walls. I actually added opacity. I started learning about how to reverse engineer the OpenGL, which was the graphics library that was used. So all the graphics that are displayed, when, when something says it should be a wall, I said, you know what? You should actually have a 50% alpha transparency. I should be able to see through it a little bit. So you see some guy crouching.

• 20:26Tim Ferriss?

  Turn you into Superman.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. You see some guy crouching and behind a box and I know exactly where he's crouching. So I just run and do like a, you know, matrix flying jump and shoot, you know, headshot. And then the game wasn't fun anymore.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  And, and actually, you know, soon after that, I was probably 15 at that point.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  There was a software called Punkbuster.

• 20:50Tim Ferriss?

  And just, just to take a quick pause, you were in Pittsburgh? Where were you at the time?

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Okay, so, so I was born, I was born in Pittsburgh, correct? When I was 13, my mom was like, do you want to move to LA? And I said, okay. And we got in our, we got in her car and moved to Los Angeles because she wanted to be in LA. And I thought that was cool.

• 21:11Tim Ferriss?

  It's a hell of a drive. Okay, so 15, not to interrupt, so now you're in LA at this point.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, 15 in LA, in like Arcadia Pasadena area. And at this point, it was about far enough that I had kind of had enough of high school. Not for any good reason, I just didn't enjoy it. So I just stopped going.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  My mom was working a lot, so she like, she was at work, I mean, she couldn't tell me not to. So I would go, I would just stay home and play Counter-Strike and then work on cheats. And Counter-Strike immediately became unfun. I don't know if you ever played with cheats, but like when you have cheat, when you have this god mode, it's not fun anymore. And fortunately.

• 21:49Tim Ferriss?

  God mode should be the name of your memoir, by the way. When you write it.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Awesome. So as soon as this.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  As soon as I was using the cheat, I would also release it as open source so anyone else could use it and see how to do this kind of stuff. I found they actually created this software called Punkbuster that prevented my cheat from working. And all of a sudden it became fun again because now it was like a cat and mouse game. How do I modify my software so that they can't detect it? And we went back and forth. So I'd release a new version of my cheat software.

• 22:25Tim Ferriss?

  That's fun. So the game became the cloak and dagger defeating of the Punkbuster.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:31Tim Ferriss?

  And similar applications there, similar software.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  And I mean, it was that, you know, at this point, I'm fighting against a, you know, a company full of employed developers and, you know, engineers. And I get to sit in my room and just play against them. And that, I would say, taught me to understand this stuff kind of pretty, you know, at that point, just understanding how to break down a problem and how to break down those types of problems. Reverse engineering, you're trying to modify something that you don't actually have the source code to. You know, Counter-Strike was an open source.

• 23:05Tim Ferriss?

  So when you hit a wall or had a block of some type, how would you learn? How would you problem solve? How would you, how would you try to address that?

• 23:17Speaker 01

  If I hit a block of some sort, so I think, I think I've broken down things to, I pretty much, if I have a problem, whatever that may be, whether it's technological or in life, and I will take something and I will try to look at two things, inputs and outputs. And that's how everything in a computer works. And that's, that's why I think this way, probably. There are always a number of inputs, puts, sometimes none, but there's typically something that goes in and something that comes out. And I usually want something to come out a certain way. And I look at that and I say, what else comes out that way? Under what input conditions can I make something come out this way? Have I actually tested all the possible input conditions?

• 24:00Speaker 01

  You might think with a computer, okay, well, if I give it, you know, if I want to take something out of memory, if I want to like read a program that I'm not supposed to, what are all the inputs? I can like mash the keyboard. I can send every possible keystroke. Uh, maybe there's no keyboard. How can I, you know, use the mouse in a certain way? But then you think, you just think a little bit further, like what if you take all those easily readily available inputs away? What other inputs are available? And then you start to think about like the environment. What about the temperature? You know, if you actually freeze, if you actually take like nitrogen and apply it to a memory, you can freeze memory. And then you can pull it out. Uh, you know, they didn't have to do this with, uh, with, uh, Ross Albridge, uh, Albrecht.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  If I'm pronouncing that properly, uh, the Silk Road.

• 24:47Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, yes.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Didn't have to, but.

• 24:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, indeed.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  If you.

• 24:50Tim Ferriss?

  That's a whole separate story. Who was apprehended of less than, you know, five miles from my house. It's insane. Such a crazy story. Yeah.

• 25:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. No, definitely. Sorry. Continue.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Oh, um, so yeah, say pretty much looking at all the possible ways I can send information or I can control the input. That's, that's how I, uh.

• 25:13Tim Ferriss?

  What would be an example of that from your Counter-Strike days or any other days? What would be sort of a real world example of, of how you say, all right, hold on a second. Let me look at the inputs and, and outputs in this particular scenario.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Okay, sure. Um, so let's take, uh, something new and new that I'm working on right now. Uh, there's some demonstrations up, um, and that's hijacking cars.

• 25:40Tim Ferriss?

  Perfect.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  So, uh, first it was, how can we start cars? Like how, what, what is my goal, right? What is my intention? Um, and obviously my goal is not to steal cars, but to show fallacies in ways that we can protect against this as well. Uh, but to protect against it, you have to understand it.

• 25:58Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  So how do I start a car normally? And I'm looking at these cars where, uh, you either use a key or you don't use a key. Now, when cars that use a key, it's actually pretty simple because it's pretty easy to replicate keys. Uh, there's plenty of bump keys available. There are a number of ways to break into the car.

• 26:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Bump keys make, make getting into cars really easy.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  You've learned that? You've learned that? My car safe out there?

• 26:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. It's gone, that's alright. I won't have it for long.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  So, that's, and that's, that's actually really interesting. A lot of hackers, you know, every year, there's a really big conference in Vegas called DEF CON. It's been going on over 20 years now. And they actually have a huge lock picking area.

• 26:47Tim Ferriss?

  So cool.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's not even, you know, a lot of them are hackers, a lot of them aren't. A lot of them are just straight lock pickers. That's what they do. They want to be able to break every type of lock. And it's very much the same as hacking, right? It's how, what, how can we control the environment in a way to produce the output that we want? This, you know, tumble lock churning, even though I don't have the proper equipment, the key. So, for the car, it's like, okay, well, I'm pushing a button, that must be doing something. And I know that it communicates with my key somehow. I don't, I don't know how. Because there's nothing else. Because when my key's not there and I push a button, the car does not start.

• 27:22Tim Ferriss?

  I see. You're talking about the non-insertion key, in this case?

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, correct. For, in this case, I'm talking about the non-insertion key, just because the, doing it with the insertion key has been done over and over again.

• 27:32Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  So now, it's, the newer models of everything are now, you don't have a key that you insert, you just keep it in your pocket. So as long as you have the key on you, you can start the car. So, I wanted to say, okay, well, how's that communicating? And I look at the key, and in some cases, the key will actually have like a model number. In the US, you actually have the FCC. You're actually regulated where you can, what you can transmit and receive. So pretty much any device you have-

• 27:56Tim Ferriss?

  So you know what the band is?

• 27:58Speaker 01

  You know what the band is. If you look at the back of any phone, it'll have an FCC ID. And, at least in the US.

• 28:03Tim Ferriss?

  Oh yeah, look at that. Looking at the back of an iPhone.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Yep, and because it transmits or receives. So from here, you can actually look, look up that band, like you said, right? The frequency band. Then, you look at, how can I listen to that frequency band? And I found some devices, I found some awesome-

• 28:19Tim Ferriss?

  Now, would you just Google, "How do I listen to XYZ band"?

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Like I mentioned earlier, I Google everything.

• 28:27Tim Ferriss?

  Can you share what we were talking about?

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  So, my car's really small, and it's-

• 28:34Tim Ferriss?

  It's, well, let's, can we be specific?

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 28:37Tim Ferriss?

  It's very low, it is low, it's a Lotus. It's a Lotus. Which I just like scrambled and struggled to get out of earlier. And just looked like a complete idiot trying to get out of it. It's a great car, but it's very hard for me to get out of.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  So yeah, the top is on. It's pretty hard to get out of when the top is on. And I, man, when I got it, I loved it. That's another time I really used Google immediately because I'd never driven stick before. So they shipped it to me. They delivered it at like someplace in Hollywood and I had to drive it home and I'd never driven stick. So I'm sitting, I'm sitting in it on my iPhone, looking at like WikiHow.com, I think. Some, you know, I Googled, how do I drive stick?

• 29:21Speaker 01

  And that's, so I learned on the way. I didn't learn well.

• 29:24Tim Ferriss?

  That's a hard, that's a, that's a really rough entry. Into manual transmission.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, drove, drove home, stalled a few times on the one and a half miles home. But I got out and just was an idiot and just like stumbling out for five minutes, trying to figure out how to pull myself out of these bucket seats. Because, yeah, it's just.

• 29:46Tim Ferriss?

  It's kind of like, imagine that you have like your pants pulled down to just above your knees and you go down to a full squat and then you have to like dive forward. It's, it's like ergonomically very similar. So you Googled.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so I, you know, I drove it around the first week and man, I pulled up somewhere. Nice place, bunch of people. I had my brand new car. This, this felt good.

• 30:11Tim Ferriss?

  Not just a brand new car, a brand new Lotus.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Brand new Lotus and I'm like, this, this feels good. I opened the door and I like struggle.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  And I'm like, should I just get back in and drive away? I think some people saw me. So after a week of this embarrassment, I Google, how do I get out of a Lotus?

• 30:37Speaker 01

  And to my surprise and delight, people have documented how. I found a YouTube video that was very instructional. I gave it a like. I did not leave a comment that I needed to learn, but I learned how to get out of my car through the YouTube video and online, because it was, it's just really embarrassing. And yeah, I learned how to use one arm, you use one hand on the steering wheel and you pull that because that is firmly connected to the car. The other hand on the side of the chair and then you just thrust, thrust your arms as you emerge.

• 31:09Tim Ferriss?

  You Superman out of the phone.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, Superman and then smoothly catch your balance.

• 31:15Tim Ferriss?

  And the, so the parallel here with the band, if you look at the back of a phone or device or the back of a key and you're like, oh, look at this, there's an FCC registration.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:26Tim Ferriss?

  And I can identify what the band is, the frequency band is.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 31:29Tim Ferriss?

  For this, uh, this wireless key.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:32Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, for whatever brand X car happens to be.

• 31:38Tim Ferriss?

  And then the next step is Googling or determining how to listen in on the frequency.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Correct. And you know, you don't, if you don't know, and I don't know much about frequency bands, but I know that, you know, when you're listening to FM radio, that's a frequency band. FM, that's actually frequency modulation. It's a type of, it's a way to communicate data.

• 31:56Tim Ferriss?

  What is AM, amplitude modulation?

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. Amplitude modulation. They actually adjust the way that they're sending data. Amplitude is like volume, so they're changing the volume to send data. Where frequency, they're actually changing the frequency. So when you're listening to 105.9 FM, you're listening to 105.9 megahertz. And your, the, the frequency is actually changing from like 105.8 to 105 point, uh, you know, or 106. That's actually why, you know, you can listen to FM radio a little bit off. Right? Sometimes you hear FM if you're a little off. So, uh, that's, that's another frequency. And a lot of these actually, car keys use AM. They're not an AM that a radio in a car would listen to, but they are AM.

• 32:38Tim Ferriss?

  So it's the size of the wave, not the number of the waves in a given timeframe?

• 32:42Speaker 01

  For amplitude, it's essentially like how much, how powerful that wave is.

• 32:47Tim Ferriss?

  I see.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  It's like volume, right? It's like yelling versus being quiet.

• 32:50Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  So that's the difference in amplitude and modulation is just a fancy word for change. So.

• 32:57Tim Ferriss?

  And, and then what would be the next step after that?

• 33:02Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so I found a few different devices that I can use that are low cost. And a couple of people, you know, a couple of security researchers have made a lot of this stuff readily available. I mean, it was other researchers who found that you can use this Mattel toy to actually listen to a wide number of frequency bands. Rather than, you know, in the past, just a few years ago, it cost thousands, thousands of dollars to get something that could listen to all of the frequency bands that like something like this would output and for you to actually access all that data. So, once I got a device like this, I'm actually able to see the data. I can actually get turn, turn that when you press that button and it sends a signal on 433 megahertz.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  That I can see that data, what that binary data is. And if I send it a bunch, if I hit the button a bunch of times, then I see it over time. And I see what changes, what doesn't change. And I can make assumptions because then I can compare it to another car and say, oh, wow. This beginning is always the same between these two cars. So that must mean it's this type of car. But this part here is different between the two cars. So that must mean this one specifically for this car and this other identifier is for this other car. And usually there's actually, there actually is decent security in most cars. It's called rolling codes where the code changes every time.

• 34:16Tim Ferriss?

  It's kind of like a Google Authenticator or something like that.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, yeah, it's like an additional factor of authentication where the, the number changes. So if I, let's say there's only a thousand possible IDs or passwords that would work to open this car or turn this car on. If you send ID 10. It turns on, but the next, but if I listen to that and replay it, replay that 10, it says, oh, I've already seen 10. We're on a new code now, so it's not going to allow that. So that was the first problem I ran into where I can't send the same code. So if you go up to your car and you turn it on, I can listen and I can store that. But if I replay it, it's not going to work because the car knows that that's been, that code's been used.

• 34:57Tim Ferriss?

  Now, is the car recognizing, is it the frequency or the tune effectively of that like that type of stuff electronically, like a bird song that is triggering the car? Therefore, if it didn't change from a 10 to whatever was next, you'd be able to replay that sound auditorily?

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Not, not with audio.

• 35:21Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  I mean, so, um, audio is, is essentially vibration of air.

• 35:27Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Where, uh, this is radio frequency.

• 35:30Tim Ferriss?

  I see. Right. So the audio is really just a cue for the human to be like, oh, my key, my key did something.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. It's just a really silly sound that they use.

• 35:39Tim Ferriss?

  Which I like to reenact. As some of you may have noticed, that will increase with the more wine that we have, most likely.

• 35:46Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. So you ran into the problem that this is, this is, this is a rolling code.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 35:51Tim Ferriss?

  Some kind of prefix or whatever it might be that's changing over time.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Right. But there's, there's a couple of exploits here. There's a couple of possible vulnerabilities. If you're away from your car, if you're not close to it and you hit the button and I capture that, I can play it. So if I came into your house and I had my device and I pressed the button on your key, I could then record it because your car is far enough that it didn't see that code. So now I can use the code.

• 36:13Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  But that's not good enough because now I'm in your house, I have access to your key. That seems, uh, it seems like I already have physical access. I might just live here.

• 36:23Tim Ferriss?

  It's a brute force.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a brute force stack. Uh, so. That's just not good enough of an exploit, really, at least for me. So I want to take it further.

• 36:31Tim Ferriss?

  It's not very elegant.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  It's not elegant at all. So how can we make this better? Now, another thing that I've seen is that a lot of these devices are very inexpensive. They don't want to spend too much on these parts. They want to make it work and work well. So if you actually send a bunch of other data on that frequency, it will not work because now the car is confused and it sees too much information. Now, you could call that jamming. And you don't need to send a big signal, but if you take another car that communicates on the same frequency with the key and you just hold down your lock button while someone else is trying to get into their car, you will prevent them from getting into their car.

• 37:07Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my God.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  So you can actually hold, and for totally different manufacturers, most of them are using the same frequency, because there are only certain frequency bands you can use for this type of stuff. So if you see someone and you have, like, I was using a Cadillac car key, and it transmits so far. If you have one of those really powerful transmitters that hits your car from far away...

• 37:27Tim Ferriss?

  And you just hold lock.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Just hold it down.

• 37:30Tim Ferriss?

  So you could just sit in the parking garage, drink in your coffee, holding down the lock button, watching people lose their shit.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Not being able to turn on their cars.

• 37:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, right.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Just sitting in there.

• 37:41Tim Ferriss?

  So ostensibly, is there a way, and this is just me with my science fiction cap on, or conspiracy theorist cap on, perhaps, is there ostensibly a way, if they're limited, if that band is so uniform, that someone could deploy some type of wide-reaching jamming to incapacitate cars over an extended period of time?

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Yes. I mean, you need a lot of power, right? The further you want to go, you need a lot of power. That's why FM stations, right, they have such big towers. AM can actually go longer. And so there are a couple of ways that you can do this. But yeah, you could, with enough power and an antenna, you could prevent a lot of cars from starting.

• 38:31Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  At least if it requires, if it's using the radio frequency-based stuff, right? Not a normal key. Normal key will work fine.

• 38:38Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm sure there are people out there listening to this who are asking themselves, "Why on earth would these security researchers make these exploits known to the general public?" You know, isn't that just giving a blueprint to be blue want to exert malice in the world or create chaos? And how would you, how would you respond to that?

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, that's a-

• 38:58Tim Ferriss?

  I'm now, keeping in mind, in full disclosure, I'm one of those kids who bought the anarchist cookbook and was looking at like improvised munitions and put himself inadvertently on every watchlist on the, in, in, in the domestic United States. But, uh, so I'm fascinated by exploits. I find them infinitely interesting, but at the same time, you know, this is a question that comes up. So-

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll first say, well, when I was a kid, I was like 12 and, and once I was 12, I had my own website and I found the anarchist cookbook. So I put a copy of it up because I thought this was awesome. And then one day my mom comes home from like whatever jobs is like, Sammy, like someone at work was look, you know, found this thing on your website. And, uh, he was actually looking up this thing anarchist cookbook and found it on your website. Like, why are you, why do you have this thing? I was like, "Well, it's awesome, but why was he looking?" Like, he had found it inadvertently, not on my site, but just through-

• 39:47Tim Ferriss?

  He was searching for it.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Searching for it. It's like, "I don't know. I'm not sure." And I mean, it's interesting information, but you ask a question, uh, you ask a good question, right? Um, is this a blueprint for, you know, malicious people to, to act upon? And it can be, but I don't think so. And the reason I say this is I've been doing, I've been in security and hacking long enough that many years ago, what I would do is I've, if I found a new exploit, I would, sometimes I would contact the company, uh, and I would let them know about this and say, "Hey, like totally freed. Just, just want to let you know I found this vulnerability. You guys should patch this because it's, uh, you know, bad for your customers. Your customer data could be leaked. You could be hacked. It could hurt you. Um, I haven't done anything. I just found it." And sometimes you get a

• 40:32Speaker 01

  response. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes they fix it. Sometimes they don't. And then I found, I found some other vulnerabilities and then I would write publicly about it. And I'd say, hey, like, here are some things that we need to fix. This is a general problem, not something I can just email a company about. And, you know, nothing would really happen. A couple of security people would read my blog and say, oh, neat. That's like some really interesting information. Thank you, Sammy. Nothing changes. And then one day I said, you know what? Like, nothing ever changed. A lot of these things don't change when I, when I talk about them, when I contact the right, the proper people who have the

• 41:03Tim Ferriss?

  When you're going through official channels.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  When I, you're going through official channels. So I released, this time, not only a blog, and this is, there was something I released a few years ago, and it's called EverCookie. And essentially, what this does is, it plants a tracking cookie on your computer. Kind of like when you go to a website and, you know, if you go to Google and you make a search, and then you go back to Google a week later, it knows who you are, it knows that you did that search last week. And that's through a cookie. But you can delete your cookies. And I found that some companies were also doing, they would install a different type of cookie called like a flash cookie. So that if you deleted your normal cookies, they would still know who you are. It's a bit surreptitious.

• 41:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's creepy.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a little creepy. And, you know, a number of people knew about this for many years, and it got talked about and talked about and talked about for years. I thought, I mean, these aren't, you know, someone had released a little bit of software to try to prevent it. And I thought, there's some other ways of doing this. And I was in Dublin at the time, first time I left the US, we were talking about earlier. And I, I thought it'd be cool to create something that can really plant itself, like in every possible way that I can think of. And I sat down, I was like, there's gotta be at least four or five ways. And I thought about fourteen or fifteen ways to plant software, or not software, but a unique identifier that will then track you every time you come back to that website, or any site that has, that tries to attract you using that software.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  So it would install a unique identifier in your cookies, in your flash cookies, in your Silverlight, in Java, in your history, in your cache, just everywhere. And if you deleted almost everything except one, it would then respawn, it would recreate everywhere. So you could never get rid of it. Literally, most browsers could not get rid of this. So if someone wanted to track you, they would always be tracking your web presence, at least on those sites that host it. And this got

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Press. This, I mean, this was interesting to the security community because the security community had been talking about this for years, but no one really listened. People had been demonstrating companies that were doing more mediocre measures of this.

• 43:06Tim Ferriss?

  Junior varsity versions.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah. That they were going JV. This was finally something that anyone could use, entirely open source, I mean entirely free, and got a lot of hate mail for. But what was interesting was, it was a few months later that every browser vendor had changed. Every major browser had changed. I don't know if you remember, a few years ago, when you want to delete your history, you deleted it in one place. If you want to delete your cache, you have to go into a different dropdown and delete it there. If you want to delete your recent downloads, you go somewhere else. All of this stuff was segregated and no sane person would actually go through all this effort. Now, when you delete your privacy information.

• 43:48Tim Ferriss?

  It's all centralized.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  You go to file, privacy.

• 43:50Tim Ferriss?

  One checklist.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  One checklist. And that's, I saw that change. That was probably the biggest thing that made it, you know, that impacted me to understand this actually produces change. Yes, maybe someone will be able to use it maliciously for a little bit, but you know what? People have been using it maliciously for years and no one actually knows that because talking about it doesn't do enough.

• 44:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's not just enough to talk, yeah. And you need people to listen. And there are definitely different levers you can pull to make that more effective.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 44:20Tim Ferriss?

  So, speaking of which, and I do want to, if you're open to it, chat about MySpace at one point.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 44:31Tim Ferriss?

  Because that's a hell of a story. Oh my God, folks. Don't go away. Coming right back. The next subject I thought we could dig into a little bit is online dating. So getting people to listen.

• 44:46Tim Ferriss?

  We had a lot of fun with the episode on Tim Ferriss experiment, which is now digitally available by the time people are listening to this, which is amazing after so much effort and lawyering and everything. We had a lot of fun on that episode and you take this same scientific approach. And I really feel like what you do is using the scientific method really at a high level to attack some of these engineering problems and challenges. In the world of mating and dating. So could you talk about some of the, some of the ways you have thought about online dating and improved your prospects in online dating?

• 45:31Tim Ferriss?

  And we can dig from there.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  All right.

• 45:33Tim Ferriss?

  I don't even know where to begin. My, my mind is flooded with, with all the possibilities that we could discuss.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Okay. So, so I used, I used online dating, maybe a long time ago, 10 years ago, 11 years ago. I, I met someone great and had a great relationship for a few years and that was awesome. And I think I got back to it, maybe, let's see, I think five or six years ago. I had gotten my, you know, meeting people is frustrating. I wanted to meet, meet more women. So I thought, okay, I'll, I'll do online dating again. I had good experience. It was paint, it was hard, it was a lot of work, it was painful, but also fun at times. And it was successful. So I thought, okay, I'll, I'll do it again.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  So I went on sort of the hip dating site at the time and I-

• 46:25Tim Ferriss?

  What was that?

• 46:26Speaker 01

  That was OkCupid.

• 46:27Tim Ferriss?

  OkCupid.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I made a profile on there a few years ago and I started reaching out to people, doing searches and that, you know, I was doing a lot of, I had also a lot of work. I had a lot of stuff to do in my life, a lot of stuff I liked doing. I did not like going messaging people, not getting messages back.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  Scrolling, just like scrolling through endless lists, having so much, so much data to go through. And then not even knowing whether, I mean, I guess the biggest problem was I wasn't getting messages back. Right? I'm like, what happened?

• 47:03Speaker 01

  I thought I was eligible.

• 47:05Tim Ferriss?

  What's the failure point there?

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Right. I'm like, damn it. So I thought, okay, well, you know, how would I, how would I approach this? And this was after a few frustrating weeks. I thought, how would I approach this if this were a problem with my, let's say my company's website or something. What if I were trying to make sales online? How would I approach this differently? And I thought, okay, well, if I, if I were doing something for my own company or my own business or my own product or whatever, I would probably, I'd start with some basic A B testing, some multi variable testing. I would try comparing what one group of people did versus another group of people. So I didn't have, I didn't want to spend too much time in this, but I wrote a little script. And all that did was every day that would cycle, that would change my photo, my primary photo.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  And, uh, okay, Cubid will also show you how many hits you would get that day. So every day I'd check back and that would store it in a database. And, you know, I had it, I had throw up a couple of my, you know, bad photos just as a, I don't know, control or something and had my, my best photos and some medium photos. My best photos were awful. They were terrible.

• 48:11Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, performance wise.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  What a performance wise, what I thought looked great with this stupid smirk on my face. It was terrible.

• 48:19Tim Ferriss?

  Just bombed.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  It bombed, right? No one clicked, right? And this is in searches and probably in messages as well. Nobody clicked. The photos that I thought were good. And a couple of these photos that I just thought were mediocre, subpar, just good. They got clicks and there are certain, certain things I learned that, I mean, I will say are chick crack.

• 48:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Things that, you know, when guys see certain things on a website, they click. Hey, their brain shuts off and they click and not, they were the same things for girls.

• 48:49Tim Ferriss?

  So what are, what are some of those things?

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Well, uh, the thing that did best, I mean, just a landslide was, uh, a picture of me and a cat sitting on my shoulder.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  So they weren't clicking for me and this had nothing to do with me. Let's be clear.

• 49:06Tim Ferriss?

  It is.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  They saw a cat. But that's okay. I'm just trying to get you one step further, right? One step further where then you can learn a little bit of my personality. Maybe you'll, you know, you'll try to read this, uh, this text I put up. So that was that instantly after learning that I was just blown away. I was like, wow, I've been doing this wrong. I am not as, uh, I have no idea what other people like apparently.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  And that's fair. I mean, I don't, so I should use data and try to help, help myself and help other people. I mean, I think this is beneficial.

• 49:38Tim Ferriss?

  And we did some absurd permutations of this.

• 49:44Tim Ferriss?

  For the TV show, I'm not going to spoil it, uh, but we, uh, we went for the gold with some of these profile pics. The

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Of you.

• 49:52Tim Ferriss?

  Of me, of me, of me, to be clear. And there were other people involved like Neil Strauss, who really was not in favor of, of any of this. But, uh, he was the author of the game for those people who don't know. The, the, what are, what are some of the? Now, at one point you, didn't you create a female profile to observe what came in as inbound in terms of?

• 50:18Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I mean, I'll, I'll start with this. I'm, I'm not, um, I try to be as transparent and, and honest with people. I, you know, I hate deception and I don't try to deceive people, but for AB testing, it's, it's, it's for science. So I created a profile of, uh, of what I thought would be someone I would like to date. Right? Someone who's attractive.

• 50:40Tim Ferriss?

  What did you, what did you call her? Do you remember?

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Oof, I, I don't know. I'd have to look that up.

• 50:44Tim Ferriss?

  All right.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  I'm pretty sure I stole, I'm pretty sure I stole another girl's username and then you changed a number.

• 50:50Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  I used text from a profile that I really liked. I used a friend's pictures who allowed me to, and, uh, I put that up just to see what, if I were a female that, you know, I personally would be attracted to, what are they experiencing on an online dating site? Because I have no idea. I thought my witty messages would, would really work and they weren't. So, you know, I'd, I'd always start with the subject, hello, and then a really great message. And, uh, after the first day I got over, uh, no, close to a hundred messages, close to a hundred emails. As this, you know, attractive, interesting female. That's, I mean, terrible. There's no possible way anyone's going to go through all those messages.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  And now I'm looking at the messages and the first thing I see is the same subject over and over and over that I probably used over and over and over. They're all saying basically four things, three or four things. Hello.

• 51:50Tim Ferriss?

  That's yours.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  My line, yeah, that's my line.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  Hey, wink, winky face.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  Thought we should chat. And wanna fuck.

• 52:04Tim Ferriss?

  Nice. It's a strong, it's a strong opener.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  And it's actually, all of those were used a lot. It was surprising and I felt, I was offended. Mine's a fake female on this website. I was offended.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  And I thought, wow, like, these are all the, A, they're all the same, right? Even if it were interesting, if it's all the same, then it's irrelevant. So I immediately learned, okay, my subject line has to be different. It has to be interesting. It has to be, you know, not offensive and it has to be not boring. So then I went into another city. I went into actually another state and I tried mailing lots of people, different subject lines as a man, right? As my own profile in a state that I wasn't even in. I'm not actually going to meet these people. I'm sorry if I emailed you. But I just wanted to know what subjects had the best read rate and then response rate.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  I found a little exploit that allowed me to get the read rate because normally you can't see how many people open your message.

• 53:01Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  And once I found this, I found how many people opened a message and then I can also track how many people responded, right? And that, the open rate allows me to measure how well, how good is the subject doing, the subject line? And I tested a ton of different subject lines to see what worked best. And I'm sorry to say it, and I've been trying to curse less, but the best subject line was fuck you.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Now, I'm not saying that that obviously not elicit a positive emotional response. But that's not immediately the goal. That's not immediately the goal. And, and that's okay, because. And I found if you're still a dick in the email, the response rate is zero. Or very little and some mean things. And I don't think you should ever be mean to someone. And my intention again is not to be mean. I was, I'm trying to see.

• 53:52Tim Ferriss?

  It's like clapping in front of their face. Really, really hard.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Open this. And I found the best, the best way to get a response and a positive response is to say, I only did that so you'd read this message. You're probably getting a ton of emails from other guys that are saying, hey, or wanna fuck.

• 54:14Tim Ferriss?

  And she's like, how did he know? How did he know?

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Exactly. So, so it's really, I mean, it's just trying to understand what someone else is going through. And how can I, how can I maneuver that better? And then also ultimately, I'm always transparent, you know, whenever I meet anyone, I tell them. Whenever I meet anyone, I tell them, you know, exactly all the, all the tactics. Just because, I mean, if anything else, it's interesting conversation, especially with a woman. It really, it is the best first date every time. You just get to talk about something like immediately you have something to talk about. You're both on this dating site, you're both trying to meet somebody and you're both upset about the results.

• 54:52Tim Ferriss?

  How inefficient the whole thing is.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  So immediately that, that was always really positive. So, yeah, you know, I, I'm not, I'm not suggesting be an asshole, but I am suggesting that it's good to learn about ways to, you know, just be a maneuver past and, and actually get someone to read you, read that letter and see whether you are an interesting person, whether you would jive.

• 55:13Tim Ferriss?

  We know with.

• 55:18Tim Ferriss?

  With online dating, for someone who does not have technical chops, so, so for someone who cannot personally, doesn't have the capacity to write scripts or whatnot. What would your advice to them be in this day and age?

• 55:30Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 55:31Tim Ferriss?

  Because there's, there's a wide variety of toolkits available, right? You have the OkCupid's, the match.com's, Tinder.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 55:38Tim Ferriss?

  Of course.

• 55:40Tim Ferriss?

  What would your advice to, to a non-technical person? B. And let's assume for the sake of argument that since they would waste as a guy, you're going to waste hundreds of dollars on drinks and dinners that go nowhere. So let's assume they have a budget.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 55:58Tim Ferriss?

  A little bit of a budget, like 500 bucks.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 56:00Tim Ferriss?

  What would your advice to them be?

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Okay, so the first thing you do is you get a record player and you take you take your iPhone and you attach one of those those pens that have the conductive tip so you can draw on your iPhone with it and you attach it to the record player and you put Tinder beneath it so the record player just spins and just checks, you know how you swipe on Twitter?

• 56:24Tim Ferriss?

  Swipe right?

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Swipe over and over. I saw a video of this and it was the funniest thing I've ever seen. Just somebody who attached this little nub to a record player that would just swipe on Tinder. I thought that was really funny. Okay, no, so realistically, you know, I don't know, the site might not be around anymore, but instead of writing a program, you could use a site like Hot or Not, or if there are any sites like that that, you know, unfortunately, measure appearance, but that's important. It's very important. Your photo is the most, I learned, it is the most critical.

• 56:57Tim Ferriss?

  Which allows you to upload the photos, to do my Cupid or my best face.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Oh, right. They have that now. Correct. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So my best, you're right. My best face on OkCupid allows you to essentially do the same thing where you can upload a number of photos. You rate other people's photos essentially and other people rate yours. So it's a really cool system where you learn what, you know, what photos of you are most attractive. And I found the photo of Brad Pitt was my most attractive photo.

• 57:28Tim Ferriss?

  All right, the picture of my picture of Jason Statham with just doing a Scrooge McDuck backstroke in a pool of money was.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Surrounded by kittens.

• 57:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, right. Surrounded by penguins. I don't know about why the penguins work so well.

• 57:43Tim Ferriss?

  So first identify which photos work the best for you.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  The photo is the first thing anyone sees.

• 57:49Tim Ferriss?

  And we did this in the episode too. So for people who want to see how off I was, how incredibly off I was in my predictions, you can check that out. It's on iTunes probably at this point. But so you identify your best photos.

• 58:05Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 58:06Tim Ferriss?

  What's next?

• 58:06Speaker 01

  Okay, so now, if you're like me and had a terrible photo, you're now receiving messages. So you're already like happy. But that's not enough. You need to, because you know, you're, you need to be a little bit more selective. So what's next is, I would say, testing different subject lines. You know, I wanted to test so many people that I went to a different state and I automated that. But you can, you can test it yourself, right? You can use the same message. And some of these services allow you to pay a little extra to see read rates and open rates and essentially analytics for your dating profile. Pay that extra amount and make changes. Make changes often and record that data.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  Always record it. Keep it in an Excel spreadsheet. You will learn so much. So the next thing is, how do you communicate? This is just the way it is. If you're a guy, you need to be reaching out to people, right? And you should be...

• 59:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. If you haven't figured that out yet, the hot chicks are not gonna come knocking on your door. I hate to tell you.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, if you want to be selective, you need to work for it. So, so, testing different subject lines. And another thing that I learned that you should use immediately is, while messages are great, what I found was very, was really, really effective is you could go messaging for weeks with someone who's really interesting. And if you're, if the service you're using has chat, like OkCupid has chat, chat. You know, select people as your favorites so you see them whenever they're online. Don't stalk them. Just like when you see them once, then talk to them, communicate with them. And...

• 59:47Tim Ferriss?

  What's a good opener? In your experience.

• 59:50Speaker 01

  Uh, I, I, I try to make it relevant to their profile, right? You, you, you don't want to appear like, you don't want, you don't want to be the people who don't actually read the text, right? You actually want to learn about that person, right? There's a high probability she's looking for someone who has read the text, who has read her profile, right? She put in time on that, you put in time on that. So, read it. Don't, you know, if you're just, you might find you might not like this person. So, read the text and then try to, you know, try to make some simple conversation. I would say immediately, the best thing I learned is it's not even about the opener at this point, because you're chatting. So, where a message, the subject line is so critical, because if it's not good enough, she's not going to open it.

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  In a chat, the chat's open, you can get a couple lines of text before she closes. She closes it and says, "I'm not, I'm not listening to this."

• 1:00:39Tim Ferriss?

  A little bit more, more margin for error.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I find the chats are always read, right? If you're saying something in chat, it's always read. Do not sit around and talk and just wait for them to respond to everything. Instead, have an interesting story. It should be a legitimate story in your life, but everyone has, everyone has something. And if you don't, I mean, go and talk about your life more. Find an interesting story in your life.

• 1:01:04Tim Ferriss?

  Or do something interesting.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  Or do something, absolutely. Go.

• 1:01:08Tim Ferriss?

  If you don't have at least one good story, you need to get outside more.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  You need to go running naked in the quad, okay?

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  So, have a short but sweet story prepared, you know, a true story about your life, and just dish it. Just start talking. Who cares? Who cares what the other person thinks right now? Because they're probably not going to respond anyway, right? If you're, if you're listening and you care about this, this is probably because it hasn't been working, so try this.

• 1:01:37Tim Ferriss?

  So, I have to ask, and feel free to, to, to reject this question, but what was, what was your go-to story?

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Oh, uh, go-to story? Okay.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  Uh, okay. I think, I think we may have done something similar. Um, was it on point tactical?

• 1:01:59Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. With Kevin Rave.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  Yes. So I had recently done this urban escape and evasion class that it sounds like you have taken and are an expert in.

• 1:02:10Tim Ferriss?

  Well, well, amateur. I'm like, I'm like a green belt.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  You, you've actually, you've done more things than I learned, I learned when I went to him. So, um, he, he's, he's up, up the game and, and that's really cool. I'm gonna ask you some questions later. Um, but I, I took this, this course, urban escape and evasion is three days in LA. And, uh, like you mentioned, I mean, the, he taught me how to escape out of LAPD handcuffs, right? Get out of riot flexi cuffs. Um, you know, I, my time when I went to, he did not, we didn't learn about the newer cars. We learned about older cars. So I was stuck in like 70, you know, 75 Hyundai. So, uh, you know, that, that I stole. Um,

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  and that was, I mean, the fact that on the, on the third day of this class, you know, we got, I got picked up in a van and they, they put a hood over my head. Uh, strange cause it's kind of like the, the eco-friendly, the green environmentally friendly type of like, of like.

• 1:03:12Tim Ferriss?

  They put like a Whole Foods bag over your head.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  Exactly. It was exactly that. They put like a whole green Whole Foods bag over my head. So I couldn't see. They took my wallet and phone and, and drove around LA and I had to get out, escape from the handcuffs and run around Los Angeles without money. And I would tell some tidbits of the story about, you know, how I.

• 1:03:31Tim Ferriss?

  Now, this is all in chat.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  All in chat.

• 1:03:33Tim Ferriss?

  So, so it's like, hey, what's up? And then you're like, let me tell you about the time I got, got out of LAPD handcuffs. What's the transition?

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah. Good question.

• 1:03:42Tim Ferriss?

  No, I'm like, I'm so into the specifics because when it comes to all of this.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:03:46Tim Ferriss?

  I remain to this day a complete, like a three finger monkey fumble, all of this stuff. I'm such a fucking idiot. So I'm really interested in the specifics.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  Okay. Sure. Sure. So, so I say, hey, what did you do today? That's, that's pretty much the, that's pretty much how I would start that conversation. What did you do today? Not what do you do? No. No one cares. It's not, it's not an interview, right? What did you do today? If, you know, she's either gonna say something interesting and you can add on that, or, or you're too afraid to comment on what she said, or she's not saying much. She's saying, went to work, right? Went to school, you know, did nothing.

• 1:04:24Tim Ferriss?

  Not much, lol, winky face.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  See, I tried that, that didn't work well.

• 1:04:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  When I answered that.

• 1:04:34Tim Ferriss?

  So, okay, so you ask, what did you do?

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  What did you do today?

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  You're saying, you know, she's saying something, she's saying something. Often, it's, it's irrelevant. Often, it's the same thing that everyone else says, right? As a guy, you're also receiving a lot of the same thing, too. So as a girl, you know, if you really care, then also, you know, pay attention to be different. Be different if you can. Be, and, you know, interesting, because you probably are. So, show that. So, what did you do today? And then maybe they'll ask, what did you do? And if they don't, it doesn't matter. You can still say. Because at this point, if she didn't ask, she's not interested, she only was, she's already not interested. It can only go up from here.

• 1:05:17Tim Ferriss?

  Right, there's the only upside.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  Exactly. And if she asks, then she asks, so answer. And I said, you know, oh, well, just recently, this happened. And if it's six months ago, fib, say, just recently, this happened. And, and that's, that's the transition.

• 1:05:33Tim Ferriss?

  Got it, got it.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  Say like, last weekend, or, yeah, you know, I've just been going over this crazy class that I took.

• 1:05:40Tim Ferriss?

  Cool, definitely.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  And, and talk a little bit, right? Do, do more talking. Offer some, something interesting.

• 1:05:47Tim Ferriss?

  So, we've never talked about this, but I, I will ask anyway. The jump to in real life, to IRL.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  Quick, quick.

• 1:05:56Tim Ferriss?

  All right, quick.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  Quick.

• 1:05:57Tim Ferriss?

  Tell me more.

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  Every time I do.

• 1:05:59Tim Ferriss?

  And how do you, and what's? What's the verbiage? What's the transition?

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  So every time I would have like emails, messages, go back and forth. It would be great because the emails you actually get, you know, you get good information back. And if you're doing back and forth emails, you're actually communicating a lot. And a lot of people are, I mean, I think it's not so much anymore. Right. I started, you know, I was, I did online dating maybe three times in my life. And it was all great. Like it actually was successful every time and glad, I'm glad I always did it. And back then, I mean, when I first started, I was 18, I'm like 29 now. So it was 11 years ago. And people were more fearful of meeting someone on the internet. Right. That was a little different. It was different back then, right? You didn't use your full name. It's not until Facebook came out that people use their full name because they had to.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  But you didn't want to miss out on the social network. I mean, I didn't. So I'm sorry, what was the question?

• 1:06:56Tim Ferriss?

  The, the, the jump to in real life.

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  The jump to I R L. Okay. So what I learned was messaging back and forth was comfortable. And it actually made it more difficult to jump into a meeting. On chat, you've quickly communicated. If you had an interesting story, you've quickly communicated that you have interesting things to talk about. You're, you know, confident enough to talk about it. You've at least, if you have other stories like this, you're probably an interesting person. I mean, you're probably already are an interesting person. And after about five minutes, and don't, don't linger, don't wait till the conversation dies down. There's a Seinfeld episode where I think George Costanza found that it was best when he left at the top. The height.

• 1:07:41Tim Ferriss?

  Just like the Rocky Marciano approach to dating. He's like, all right, that was my best joke and I gotta go.

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  And I'm out. Exactly. Right? Because you let it linger, then it's just boring. You're just remembering how it ended. Well, make it end good. Right. You just had this awesome story. You know, the edge of her seat and she's like, oh, wow. That's like, that's really cool. It's really interesting. It's like, hey, you know, I have to run. I have to go do some other interesting thing.

• 1:08:05Tim Ferriss?

  I have to go rescue some kittens down the street.

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  From some penguins.

• 1:08:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  And from there, you say, you know, I have to run right now. You know, get some information because you don't want to meet someone just because they said LOL smiley face, right? You also, they need to feel like they've, they've earned that value as well.

• 1:08:26Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  No one wants to, I don't like it when someone comes up and just offers me a bunch of stuff for no reason. Like, what do you want from me?

• 1:08:32Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  Right? You want something from me? So that's, just try to think in their position. Try to put yourself, like, reverse the role and what would happen if that happened to you? So I conversate a little bit more, try to, you know, learn some interesting things about them, ask them questions that are not common, and you can learn some questions from the emails, right? If you, if you create a fake profile in another state, don't respond to people, I think that's deceptive, just let emails come in, right? And see what people say and learn from those because you'll see the same, the common questions, the questions that you think are really unique that everyone else is asking. Don't ever ask those. You'll learn those over time. Instead, try to think of something different. And I didn't, I thought I was being unique, but I was asking the same.

• 1:09:15Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any unique questions that you relied on consistently?

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  Uh, I mean, you, I would say I would just ask about thing, things that I actually wanted to know, like, I want to know.

• 1:09:26Tim Ferriss?

  Would you rather lose your front teeth or cut off your thumbs? Would you ask them questions like that? No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. This is like a, that's a dude wine type question. It's probably not appropriate for online dating.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  No, I'd just ask, like, how was your day? Not, not what did you do today? Or like, what was the most, I mean, implore them to give you the interesting information about your life, about their life. What is the most interesting thing that happened to you in the last week?

• 1:09:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  And now they're going to recall and re-feel, like, have the same emotions that they felt at that most interesting time of their life, in the last week.

• 1:10:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Got it. So I have to go to do this other interesting thing? And then what?

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  Uh, so I have to go, I have to go and do X. Make a joke if you can. I have to go save some penguins. That's, that's funny, right? I think that's funny. Maybe it's not, right? A B test that.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  But you know, let's, let's grab a quick coffee this week. You know, I did dinners a few times and I quickly ran it, ran into having dinners with a bunch of people I really didn't want to have dinner with.

• 1:10:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's a one to three hour plus.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So then it's coffee. It's coffee. It's, you know, it's easy to, easy to leave. It's quick. You don't, you don't have to, uh, it's not a big deal if you pay for it, right? You're not setting any stage or anything. You can pay for it and be nice and it's not a big, you know, it's not a big event.

• 1:10:51Tim Ferriss?

  What if, if those, some people listening to this, almost certainly of the male variety,

• 1:11:01Tim Ferriss?

  but not definitely, hello ladies, I know you're listening to, but just try to go out and hit on guys for a day and you will see how brutal that side of the game is. It's fucking terrible.

• 1:11:14Tim Ferriss?

  Let's just assume that there are guys listening to this, maybe women, could be either. And they're saying, you know, I need a Sammy. I need someone to help me automate this, to swipe right on all these profiles, to automatically like all these people, to simplify this process because dating online seems to be a sort of high volume, low yield proposition. I want to stack the deck. How would they find someone to help? What would they look for, ask for?

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  Sure, sure. I mean, I don't know of any because I haven't used any, but I would look specifically for dating services that use analytics. If you like to play with this kind of stuff, if you like to, you know, if you like to be analytical, or if you like to see how you can stack the deck yourself. If you think playing cards is interesting, uh, use existing dating services like OkCupid or Match and pay for their, pay for their additional software. They're, they're, they're.

• 1:12:09Tim Ferriss?

  Their premium services.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  Their premium services.

• 1:12:11Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Now, if you wanted to find, say, a freelancer, a programmer, what are the qualifications that someone would look for? If you're like, okay, I want you to write a script to say, Hypothetically, if I, if I live in Chicago, I want to auto like everyone in Chicago who fits the following specifications, but I don't know how to do that because I'm not a techie. Who would I look to hire? Like if I went to Elance or one of the, one of these sites, what would my sort of project request?

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  Okay. I mean, there's two things I'll say to that. The, the first thing I'll get quickly out of the way, you, it's, that always seems like the best idea and that's what I want to do. I want to get as many people, I want to cast the widest net as possible. And until you do it, you think it's a great idea. And I would tell you not to, but you're going to. So do it. Learn that you're then spending all your time with people you don't care about. So then you actually have to spend time filtering and I spent the next half of my, that time filtering. But to answer your question, because I understand like if someone told me not to, I still would. So to get that need out, you have to sometimes. I would look for somebody, I'd go on Elance,

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  I'd go on Craigslist. I would try to find someone who's developed software, who can develop web crawlers, who can develop backend web software and who can develop, you know, maybe basic analytics software. You don't need, they don't need to be a genius. This is, this is very simple stuff that you're doing programmatically.

• 1:13:46Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. If you were using, do you, I don't even, if you were on Tinder hypothetically or otherwise, does any of the advice change?

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  You know, I don't, I don't use Tinder. I'm not on Facebook, but if I were to use Tinder, what would I do? Let's see. Well, I mean, lately I've been playing around with computer vision algorithms. A computer vision that lets you actually see, you know, lets you make a computer actually see things and interpret things. But on Tinder, I mean,

• 1:14:24Tim Ferriss?

  Meaning, meaning that you could have the computer decide hot or not for you after putting, adding in some inputs?

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  I, I think you could, you could do some. I guess, yes. The answer is yes. You could do some basic things there. But I think what I'd want to do is, does Tinder have descriptions of people? I'm not sure.

• 1:14:43Tim Ferriss?

  They're very short descriptions.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  Short descriptions. So, the thing you want is a data set, right? You want to know, who are the people? And maybe you have girlfriends who are on Tinder. Like, look them up, look up their information, look up anything that would help provide information to people who you think you would like to date and people who you think you would not like to date. Because you need to be able to have information on both, so you can write some sort of algorithm. Because Tinder has such little information, I would say, you know, for a friend, I wrote actually a Tinder script that would essentially swipe, until I saw that video. And that video was hilarious. So, if you want to just swipe, you can use a record player and one of those nubs,

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  iPhone nubs, to swipe for you. But then after that, I believe it's chatting. Is that right?

• 1:15:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's all chatting.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  Okay, so, most applications on mobile, iPhone, Android, they're actually web-based. So, you're actually dealing with a lot of the same web software or web protocols. So, if you wanted to automate some of that, man, I guess what I would personally do, if I were on there, I would create or hire someone to create a bot that would swipe yes, swipe correctly, yes, I want to communicate with this person. And when we were matched up, then I would have it automatically communicate. And then I would have it text me. And I could probably, what I might do, is actually automate a few, like, have a story or two

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  that I could text back to this device, so wherever I was, like, if I was on a date, if I were on a date, I would be able to text back and say, "Turn this story on." And it would just communicate with someone.

• 1:16:33Tim Ferriss?

  Right, go unpointagical.

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  But you would still see the messages, so you could still actually communicate with that person live, from your phone, right? You might not be, or, I guess you could open the app at that point. But yes, I would again, find the same type of person, someone who can create web software, not just a website, but a web crawler. I think that's the differentiation. Someone who knows how to sort of crawl and automate, right? Produce something that's autonomous, that can communicate with this website, with this app.

• 1:17:01Tim Ferriss?

  How would you vet the people who respond? So if you go to, say, Craigslist, or an oDesk, or an Elance, and you put up, "Looking for web crawler specialist for dating project", and you describe roughly what you're trying to accomplish. So you get 37 responses from people who are saying, "I can do this. Yeah, no problem." Is there something that you could have them do as a test to assess their competency?

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  I would ask them, I would find a website that you like, maybe, you know, a news website or something, and I would, something that has other content on it, and I would say, "Write me a script," or, "Don't write me a script. You know, if you can do this quickly, I will hire you. Please have it go to every news article for the last week," right? Something that has to click back, right? And take these elements of the page, take the headline, and take the fifth word, and put those in an XML document. Something that clearly is not that valuable. Make it not valuable, right? You don't want them to work too hard.

• 1:18:18Speaker 01

  You don't want to abuse their time. And you don't want to suck value from them, right? If someone, I would not want to do free work for someone. But if it's a test that they clearly get no value out of, I'm more likely to do that. So I'd say, something that you can't actually use, that doesn't really benefit you.

• 1:18:32Tim Ferriss?

  That's interesting. That's interesting. So it's not even a time issue, it's really a utility question.

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel like if someone, you know, if I'm working with someone, I'd...

• 1:18:38Tim Ferriss?

  Right. If I were asking for something that gave me a real ROI, you'd be less inclined to do it. But if I'm saying, "Hey, this is just a test of your competency," you know I can't use the output.

• 1:18:46Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, I'm happy to, I'm happy to demonstrate that, my capabilities. I'm not happy to provide free services.

• 1:18:52Tim Ferriss?

  Free, right. Value in exchange for nothing.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:57Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, that's really interesting. I never thought about that before. Uh, very cool. So, uh, two things. I think we should definitely talk about MySpace.

• 1:19:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:19:06Tim Ferriss?

  And it looks like we've, we've temporarily run out of wine. So I'm going to, uh, pause this for just one moment and we shall be back. Don't go away.

• 1:19:18Tim Ferriss?

  We are back after a bathroom break and an alcohol refill with Sammy. Sammy, how the hell are you?

• 1:19:24Speaker 01

  I'm great.

• 1:19:25Tim Ferriss?

  And hey, I promised the fine people at home that we'd talk about MySpace and, uh, so I don't even know where, how to introduce this story. Uh, tell me a little bit about your involvement with MySpace.

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  Okay. So my involvement, I'm, I was a user of MySpace. Um, so back in the day, this was, this was probably, this was 10 years ago. So I was 19 at the time, uh, and MySpace, it was 2005. MySpace was the number one site on the internet, number one above Google, above anything else. And I thought this was interesting. This is kinda cool. Um, all of my friends used it. Pretty much everyone, you know, yeah, pretty much all my friends used it and I hadn't used it yet. Um, and I thought, okay, you know, everyone's using it. I should get on here to see like, see what it's about. Right? A little social proof and check it out. And I created a MySpace, added a couple of friends, uh, made a profile. I was like, this is kinda cool.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  And I like started uploading photos. I, I finally had a digital camera and I took a bunch of random photos, my friends and would post them. And once I uploaded the 12th photo and I tried to upload the 13th, it said, "You have hit our limit." Now today, today that's insane. That's insanity. If a website told you, if Instagram said, "Oh, 12 photos, you've hit our max," you'd, no one would use it.

• 1:20:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it'd be gone.

• 1:20:54Speaker 01

  Right. But back then it wasn't, it wasn't relevant. Uh, not that many people had that many photos. I mean, digital cameras were getting cheaper and, um, but for, for the most part, that wasn't an issue. And I thought it was an issue. So I said, okay, well, how do I get around this? I don't like having 12 photos. I want, I want 14. I think that's, that's a solid number.

• 1:21:20Speaker 01

  And I found a way to upload a 13th photo. So I uploaded a 13th and it wasn't a big deal. It's just I wanted to, I didn't like the limitation. So I went around it. And on the, the front page, you have, um, you know, sort of description of yourself, like your bio, your relationship status, uh, your favorite books and stuff. And I thought, okay, well, it'd be cool to, to change, um, there's the relationship status. And, uh, I was dating someone and so I had in a relationship and that was a dropdown. You could choose from like single, divorced, married, et cetera. And I thought it'd be funny if I could change that to in a hot relationship. Subtle change, but if someone saw it, that'd be funny. They might think it's interesting or funny.

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  At least I do. And they wouldn't let me do that. So I thought, I wonder how I could get around this. So I played around on the website, you know,

• 1:22:13Tim Ferriss?

  How, how old were you at the time?

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  I was 19.

• 1:22:15Tim Ferriss?

  19.

• 1:22:15Speaker 01

  Um, it was on my second, second year of my company. So I was working full-time, uh, in LA.

• 1:22:22Tim Ferriss?

  What did your company do?

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  Uh, my company, uh, did and still does, uh, phone systems. So cloud-based, actually now it's cloud-based phone systems, but we started a voice-over IP company, uh, called Finality about, wow, 11, 12 years ago now.

• 1:22:39Tim Ferriss?

  It's like 700 internet years ago.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  That was so many internet years and cats ago.

• 1:22:45Tim Ferriss?

  So you were 19.

• 1:22:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was 19 and I would work sort of night and day. So I'd actually, you know, go to work, go to the office, come back at night and I'd play around on the Smyspace site because that was the cool thing at the time. That was the hip thing. So I was messing around on the site and I finally found a way that I could execute JavaScript. And JavaScript is a web coding language and, um, JavaScript allowed me to modify the page. So MySpace never allowed you to insert JavaScript, but I found a vulnerability within the MySpace filters and within web browsers that allowed me to inject JavaScript. And this allowed me to just modify the page more than you'd be able to. Unfortunately, MySpace gave a lot of creative freedom back then.

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  So you could actually make the page look really ugly, but not do things like change the relationship status like I wanted. So, once I figured out I could do this, I actually realized this exploit I found is actually extremely powerful. I can actually do a lot more. I can make the user do virtually anything in the web browser without their consent. I could, in fact, steal their bank details. I have no interest in their bank details, but I could take their bank, you know, their bank details and have a bunch of people's bank information. So what I found was that whenever someone visits my profile, I could make it say "in a hot relationship." And I was like, "That's cool. What else can I do?" And I played around further and further. And finally, I realized, well, I can actually, since I can control their browser,

• 1:24:15Speaker 01

  I can make them add me as a friend. It's kind of funny. So if someone visits my profile and they're not yet my friend, they just add me. So that's, you know, it's just cute. I'm just playing around on here. It's a social network. And I thought, well, the next day, I had like one new friend. I was like, "Well, that's not that cool. Like, what else can I do?" And there's different, there's different sections. For example, your favorite books, movies, TV, heroes. And I thought it'd be funny if I added something. And there was this heroes section. Most people didn't use it, but some people did. And you could list your favorite heroes. So someone might have like, you know, Buddha and Tim Ferriss.

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  Some people might not, I'm not sure. So I found a way that when someone would visit my profile, not only would they add me as a friend, but they would add me as a hero. And it wouldn't delete their existing heroes. So if their heroes said, you know, "My mom, my dad, and my grandma." And Sammy. It would add, it would append to the end. "My mom, my dad, and grandma." But most of all, Sammy is my hero. It would append that to their heroes section. That was kind of funny. I thought, you know, this would happen to a couple of people and, you know, I'd show off to my nerd friends and we'd get a laugh and that was that.

• 1:25:37Speaker 01

  And the next day, you know, I had so few friends on there that one person had hit it and one person had this. I was like, man, how do I make this go a little faster? I just want to show a few friends like, hey, I made 10 people say this on their profile. So I thought, okay, well, if I can make someone add me as a friend and I can make them add me as a hero. Well, the code's on my profile. I could probably make them add the code to their profile. So Tim, if you visit my profile, you would add me as a friend and add me as a hero, but you'd also add the code to your profile. If then someone visited your profile, they would add me as a friend, add me as a hero, and also the code would go onto their profile. So it became a worm. I believe that's like the technical definition of a worm or virus. And it's not a big deal.

• 1:26:21Tim Ferriss?

  Are worms and viruses different?

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  Ah, man, that's a good question. I'm not sure what the technical difference is.

• 1:26:29Speaker 01

  I think usually when they're, when they're referred to, at least online that I see, you know, viruses or viri are usually referred to when they're kind of malicious and destructive and worms are, they just spread really quickly and not necessarily.

• 1:26:42Tim Ferriss?

  With malicious intent.

• 1:26:43Speaker 01

  Not necessarily with malicious intent, but I guess there aren't too many, too many things out there that spread without malicious intent.

• 1:26:51Tim Ferriss?

  Not to interrupt though. So, so, all right. So you're like, hey, let me make this move a little faster.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I made it move a little faster and I figured, okay, in a month, maybe I'll have like 50, 50 new friends and heroes and someone will complain, right? Someone unintended will hit it and complain and they'll, my system will remove it. That sounds not like a big deal. And I put it up. I put this, this worm on my, on my profile and I woke up and thought I'd have like probably four new friends. And I had 200. And I said, oh shit.

• 1:27:26Speaker 01

  And an hour later, I had another 200. And I said, oh, no, because after eight hours, it was 200, but it was exponential. So it's, at first, I thought it was, oh, like, gonna be 1,000 in a day after I saw the 200. But no, it's exponential. An hour later, I had another 400. An hour later, another 800. These are people who have, A, add me as a friend, and then B, add Sammy's my hero to their profile. And then the worm spreads to them. And, you know, it, it wasn't malicious, right? There was no malicious intent. It's clearly a prank gone wrong. And I didn't know what to do. So immediately, I emailed MySpace anonymously. And I said, hey, something weird just happened to my profile. Someone

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  just added me. Their name is Sammy. And it says Sammy is my hero. And I found this weird piece of code that's on my profile. And it seems to do this detailed explanation of exactly what this crazy big piece of code is doing.

• 1:28:25Tim Ferriss?

  I'm no professional, but here's my, my, this, this slice of code appears to be doing the following 17 things.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  If I took this, yeah, if I had to make an assumption about this obfuscated piece of worm, and I think you can fix it most easily and efficiently by doing this one simple change. This is what I'd suggest. One simple change to stop it in its tracks. I don't know if it ever got to anyone. I have no idea to this day. An hour later went by, it doubled. And I figure at some point, it's going to stop, right? At some point, you're going to hit, you know, you're going to hit a maximum, because there are only so many people on MySpace, right? You can't get it twice. You can't get the cold twice at the same time, right? So you're going to hit a max, and that's gonna be that. So

• 1:29:15Speaker 01

  at about 1,000, I think it was gonna max out. And I get to work, and it's 2,000. And I'm just refreshing. And I'm like, man, okay, I should at least delete my profile. It's like, man, I should delete the worm. So I immediately delete the worm. But like a cold, you might be cured, but you've spread it. Doesn't matter. All these other people now have it. And you can't stop that. For a moment, I thought, okay, maybe I should like, write another worm that then go transmits to all these people, and then deletes the first one. I thought, I shouldn't write two worms in like, a 24 hour period. That's not, I don't think that's a good idea.

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  So I just kind of waited around and I did send that anonymous email. I tried to get it to stop. There's not much I could do at that point. Uh, I did wait, wait more, you know, jumped to 2,000 and then 4,000 and 8,000. So now there's 8,000 people that says Sammy is my hero on their profile. And now I'm getting messages from people because they're deleting me. They're like, uh, who's this Sammy guy who's on my profile? So they delete me, which when you delete a profile on MySpace, it immediately takes you back to your profile, where the code is, which re-executes and re-adds me.

• 1:30:28Tim Ferriss?

  They must have loved that.

• 1:30:29Speaker 01

  And that was an accident. But I mean, in software, you call it by, you know, a feature when you, when you have a nice accident like that. So you can't delete it really. And it's spreading further and further and further. And I don't know what to do. Just a 19-year-old kid trying to build some software at a VoIP company and voice over IP. And, uh, it just kept going and I decided, okay, I'm gonna have, I called my girlfriend at the time. I said, hey, let's have lunch. It's like, what's wrong?

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  I was like, I just want to see you.

• 1:31:03Speaker 01

  So we had lunch and I said, I don't know what's gonna happen, but, um, this worm thing happened on MySpace and it's been growing pretty quick. Um, and also there's this company called Fox that had purchased MySpace maybe two months prior for over half the billion dollars. So I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't know if, you know, Mr. Murdoch was very happy about this in his brand new company. So I had lunch with my girlfriend and I went back to work. And now it's probably 40,000 people, 40,000 people infected with this. And I'm just like, MySpace, please stop. So I'm like, okay, at least let me delete my profile. So my just picture is gone. And I delete it and it says, are you sure you want to delete your profile?

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  And I was like, yes. It's like, are you absolutely sure? You cannot undo this. I was like, yes. It's like, okay, we are deleting your profile in 24 hours. What? So now all these people are still, the profile's still fully up. I can't do anything about it. It's locked now and online. I say, okay, I just have to wait it out, literally wait it out. So I just sit through the day, can't really do much, can't really think clearly. And by, by the time work is done, like it's probably time to go home. I have, I don't know, half a million followers on MySpace now that all say Sammy's my hero. And I go home and before I go home, like it's probably my last meal.

• 1:32:31Speaker 01

  So I go to Chipotle, have a burrito. This could be my last like delicious dinner. And I drive home and I drive home, I open the browser, 900,000. And like, oh my God, I didn't even know there were this many people on MySpace. This is insane. At this point, I refresh and now I'm just purely interested in how quickly is it growing? So I'm now refreshing every second. It's like, I'll take a snapshot every second, but browsers didn't load that fast back then. So I take a snapshot every three seconds and it was going 2,000 or 3,000 people per second. That fast. I mean, it's insanity. And it hit a million. I took a screenshot to say, okay, cool.

• 1:33:16Speaker 01

  Still scared, don't know what to do. I have nothing to do. I mean, there's no way to stop this. I made a, you know, I've made a horrible mistake. I created a monster. I've created a monster, yes. And at about a million, you know, 50,000, I refresh my profile and it says, this profile's been taken down. And I say, hallelujah, it's gone, it's down. They took it down. Thank you. And I was like, I wonder what happened to the profiles that also said Sammy's my hero. I wonder if they removed it. So I go to another profile. It says, this profile has been taken down temporarily. Uh oh. Uh oh. So I go to myspace.com.

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  The site is down. The whole team is here working on it. That's what it said. The number one website on the internet in 2005.

• 1:34:03Speaker 01

  And I felt bad. I felt awful because A, I know what it's like to have a website, a company that's down. I know what that's like. It's awful. It's an awful feeling, an emotion that I would never want to put onto someone else. And I had done that inadvertently. So immediately I'm like, I need to bring coffee and donuts to these people because they're in LA. I'm in LA. Like, maybe I shouldn't go there and just maybe I shouldn't go there right now.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  I don't know if security is going to tackle me or what, but I can't. So I just sat around and a day went by and a week went by. I thought, okay, I have two options. Maybe I can, you know. I mean, I can talk about this or not. And I didn't really say much about it. And someone emailed me and said, hey, like, I saw this thing on MySpace. Did you make this? And I couldn't really hide because A, I wasn't trying to be anonymous. It was a prank that had gone horribly wrong. And I said, sure. And I did a little interview. And I did an interview for a couple of different web things, you know, little websites. And someone was like, hey, you want to do an interview for our site? And I was like, sure. Like, who's it for? And they're like Wired. And I'm like, oh, I don't know.

• 1:35:13Speaker 01

  I've heard of you guys. Heard of you guys, yeah. And I never heard from MySpace. And a week went by and two weeks went by and someone asked, hey, you know, people are selling shirts that say Sammy's my hero.

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  I'm like, that is awesome. And like, you know, are you making money off that? Like, no, but that's okay.

• 1:35:37Speaker 01

  Good in my book. And a month goes by, two months, three months go by and I'm, you know, I'm, I'm pretty stoked. Feeling free in the clear. Feeling free. I'm feeling great, like never doing that again.

• 1:35:53Speaker 01

  And six months go by and I said, you know, I just bought a new car and company was doing well. And at this point, I walked down to my car. I'm going to drive to work today. Six months later from the worm. And there's two guys standing next to my car and I'm like, oh no, I'm getting carjacked. And I walk up to them and they're like, Sammy, they say my name. Sammy? And I said, no, carjackers don't know your name.

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  And two guys walk up behind me. Very well educated carjackers. No, it's not on my license plate. And two other guys come up behind me and I say, Sammy, we have a we have a search warrant for you. And I'm like, what? And they all show me badges. And one shows me Secret Service. One shows me Electronic Crimes Task Force. Another shows me District Attorney, LADA. Another shows me LAPD. And they say, we have a search warrant. And I don't know anything about, I don't know about anything law, anything about law or search warrant. I'm a high school dropout, right? I served maybe one year in high school. Served like a prison sentence.

• 1:37:05Speaker 01

  I did. I did a bunch of homework and I did some of the tests. And

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  they said, we have the search warrant. And I just, you know, I'm like, what can I do? What can I do? And I recalled an episode of 24 where they said, show me the search warrant. So I said, show me the search warrant. I don't know if that actually applies in law or if it was like CGI. They're like, what? Excuse me? Yeah, they're like, wait, what? Oh, okay. It's upstairs. I'm like, oh, okay. And they started talking to me and they didn't mention any specifics. And I was hoping it was MySpace actually at that point. So as a hacker, you play around, you know, you play around and you go through different things that maybe you're not supposed to go into. Never malicious, never like causing harm, but you want to see what you can get into. It's a puzzle. It's a, it's a real world applicable puzzle.

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  What you can break into.

• 1:38:00Speaker 01

  And after about half an hour, I'm like, guys, you know, do your search. I'm not gonna obstruct. Just show me the search warrant and do your thing. Um, so we go upstairs with these four guys and me and we walk up to my place and my girlfriend's in a wrapped in a sheet crying and my roommate is

• 1:38:17Tim Ferriss?

  This is in your apartment?

• 1:38:18Speaker 01

  In my apartment. You have my apartment at the time in the Marina, Marina Del Rey. My, my roommate's a good friend of mine.

• 1:38:25Tim Ferriss?

  She's like naked weeping girlfriend. Good start.

• 1:38:28Speaker 01

  And my roommate, he's in a bathtub and wet.

• 1:38:31Tim Ferriss?

  What is going on here?

• 1:38:34Speaker 01

  At first I suspected something, but she's, she's, you know, she was in bed in my room and he was in the shower getting ready for work. When a dozen agents busted into my apartment that I had not known. So while I was going downstairs.

• 1:38:50Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, so while you were down at the car, they were already going into the apartment?

• 1:38:53Speaker 01

  While I was downstairs, unbeknownst to me, they were in my apartment going through everything.

• 1:38:58Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, God.

• 1:39:00Speaker 01

  And they finally handed me the search warrant. I read through it and it finally mentioned something of MySpace. And I was like, okay, it's MySpace related, obviously. And after that, they're, they just went through everything. And from, you know, my roommate and girlfriend's perspective, they just came in with guns. It finally, finally, something in the movie hackers was real, like a dozen agents busting into your place to, you know, get a computer crime guy with a bunch of, you know, semi-automatic weapons. And, uh, watch it. What am, what am I gonna do with like a DVD? Like throw it at you? I'm not sure. But they had the search warrant and it said they could pretty much take anything that had data on it.

• 1:39:41Speaker 01

  So they went through my, they took my computer, my laptop, my iPod, uh, my Xbox, any CDs, DVDs.

• 1:39:51Speaker 01

  And sat me down and I'm reading the search warrant further and further. And finally, it comes to this part and it says they can search my body, my car, my, my home and this other address. Like, what's this address? Oh, no. My company.

• 1:40:10Speaker 01

  And at this point, this is two years in, probably had 30 employees, investors. We had, it was a legitimate company, a legitimate tech startup that companies depended on for their phone service. A lot, a decent number of companies depended on us. And I was like, you guys are going to my company? And they're like, no, we're already there. Now, I never, I never knew this, you know, I heard this secondhand from 20 people. But simultaneously, another dozen agents went to my company and said, who runs this place? And Chris, the CEO, came out and he said, and they said, what does Sammy Campcar have access to? He said, well, yeah, his co-founder, I mean, everything. And the guy looks back at another

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  agent says, all right, guys, take everything. And I'm like, no. Right? I don't know what Chris did, but he, I don't know what he did. But for two hours, he somehow, and Chris is, I mean, he like mentored me for years. And I mean, Chris Lyman, this guy's awesome, and taught me so much about. These are not the droids you're looking for. Yeah. I don't know what, what magic he used because I didn't have any. But he got them to ultimately not take the server room and turn down essentially all these companies that are depending on a phone system for their company that are, you know, call centers. They didn't take down all these companies' call centers. Instead, they just took my

• 1:41:31Speaker 01

  computer and my phone and put everyone in, put everyone in the conference room, had guns out and said, you know, get off that keyboard. Terrifying. Yeah. A friend of mine, it was his first day. It was one of my best friends. I didn't, I, I met him online, like, we met online, you know, like a forum or something. And he emailed me and-

• 1:41:51Tim Ferriss?

  What did you do today?

• 1:41:54Speaker 01

  What did you do today? It's the most interesting thing of the week. Let me tell you a story. And I said, I actually, I convinced him to leave his job in Denver. And he came out with a U-Haul to, to come work at my company. And I said, hey, while you're, while you're, uh, you know, come stay at my place. So he was actually crashing at my place. He didn't run into the Secret Service because we had, in my apartment complex, we had two, uh, two, two garages, one for guests and one for residents. So I went to the residence where they were waiting. He went to the guests, drove to work, didn't know anyone, it was his first day, it was Monday. So he goes to like, shake his hand to someone and she's like, hand off the mouse and keyboard, go in the conference room, Secret Service.

• 1:42:39Speaker 01

  And he's like, what? And he has his U-Haul out back, poor Matt.

• 1:42:43Tim Ferriss?

  With all his crap.

• 1:42:44Speaker 01

  With all his crap. He had just quit his job, drove out from Denver to this company, you know, that he met me once.

• 1:42:52Tim Ferriss?

  It's like JT Marling and Associates from Boiler Room.

• 1:42:57Speaker 01

  I hear this, you know, later on, cause he's like not talking to me for a little bit. Comes out to this company that he thinks is getting shut down. He, no one has any idea why a dozen agents are at their company. Nobody. They just know my name was said, they took my computer and they left. Poor guy. He didn't know what to think. I explained it to everyone and it was like, oh yeah, that's weird. That's funny, but unexpected and, um, I, so they took my computer. Worst part was they took my iPod. That was probably the worst because all my music was on my computer and my iPod. And it's just really hard to get music back then.

• 1:43:38Speaker 01

  So I then got a lawyer and, you know, for six months I fought with the DA. And, uh, I, you know, I was, part of me was like, well, you know, I think- It was a bit much, right? I did, I did something wrong. There's no doubt about that. I, you know, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that again. And, uh, but they were being, it was very harsh. Um, I felt it was very harsh. And what they were trying to do was take away my computer use for the rest of my life.

• 1:44:05Tim Ferriss?

  For the rest of your life?

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  For the rest of my life. So again, I didn't have a high school diploma. Uh, I, you know, I, uh, helped my mom, like I send money to my mom. Uh, you know, I moved out when I was 15 and I think, you know, I forged emancipation documents so I could actually live, live by myself and sign, uh, get a cell phone and an apartment. Um, and I had to support myself and help support her a little. And, uh, so I couldn't do anything. Like if I couldn't touch computers, I don't know what I'd do. I'd have to, I don't know, finish high school. I just couldn't imagine that.

• 1:44:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Well, in this day and age also, I mean, just with the exponential growth of these technologies, like how can you possibly avoid not touching?

• 1:44:51Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:44:51Tim Ferriss?

  A computer. I mean, you would, you would have to just go into, uh, live in like with the Pennsylvania with the, uh,

• 1:44:58Speaker 01

  The Amish.

• 1:44:59Tim Ferriss?

  The Amish, yeah.

• 1:44:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:02Tim Ferriss?

  So they, they were trying to take away your access to computers for the rest of your natural life?

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  Correct. Uh, I mean, at first it was like they were talking about prison and all these things. I don't know if they're scaring me or what, but, um, ultimately, you know, I had a choice. I did. I could like spend a lot of time and a lot more money fighting it. You know, I'd spent all my savings, I was 19, to, to fight this and get a good lawyer. And, uh, ultimately we were able to come to an arrangement and that was an agreement where I would not be able to use computers for the rest of my life. However, I would go on probation and I would visit a probation officer, you know, once a week. And if I were on good behavior, I would be able to get that reduced, to get, be able to get her potentially even removed. And it was within reason. It was like, if I don't commit any crimes or release any

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  other worms, then I would be able to get that removed after a few years. I was like, okay, that's reasonable. I could focus on my company right now. At that point, it was bigger. It was another six months later, and I had a team, and I could communicate with my team every day. And I could actually work without necessarily using the internet and doing that much on the internet and on, you know, computers, and just manage, right? And at that point, I kind of just managed. And I took that agreement. And after three years, I went back to court and I said, hey, my probation officer loves me. I paid all

• 1:46:29Speaker 01

  my restitution. I've done my 720 hours of community service, picking up trash. And because of some, you know, they didn't document it properly, so I did another extra few hours. You're welcome. It's like 800 hours.

• 1:46:44Tim Ferriss?

  Uncle Sam, that's on me. That one's on me.

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  Hours later. I was like, wait, what? Oh, man. All this time, 5:00 a.m. every Saturday, you know, means I didn't. It was awful. It was tough.

• 1:46:58Tim Ferriss?

  You have to wear an orange jumpsuit?

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  Yes. It was, I would, I would park, I would park my car, put on an orange jumpsuit at 6:00 a.m., and then walk to the Waste Refuge Management Facility. I made friends with the guys who ran it, though. They were actually pretty cool. And I would, because they liked me, they would let me go on the trash runs, where we would drive around Santa Monica. And that means we got to see the ocean a lot, and drive a dump truck, basically, picking up trash. You think I'd be able to, like, help more effectively, you know? I'd be happy to help in other ways, but...

• 1:47:34Tim Ferriss?

  That was the task lead before you.

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:38Tim Ferriss?

  So you did your community service, your restitution. So after three years...

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  I went back to court. I went back to court, and, you know, I said, I'm a model, computer not touching citizen. And I would love to get some of that access back. And, you know, we got everything removed. And I was able to touch computers again, just kind of randomly, one day, everything came back. I could touch computers. I wasn't a felon. I had no more probation. I had no more community service.

• 1:48:07Tim Ferriss?

  Now, what was it like after three years in technological time?

• 1:48:14Tim Ferriss?

  To get back up to speed.

• 1:48:18Speaker 01

  I was probably 22 or 23 at this point. And I was, I think it was really cool because I was very fortunate. The thing that I had exploited, the thing that I had exploited when I wrote the worm was something called Ajax or some people called Web 2.0. And I don't know if you remember, but this was right when Google Maps came out. Before we had MapQuest and what would happen on MapQuest, you'd go somewhere, you'd make directions. And if you wanted to like zoom out, you'd click a button and you'd, it would refresh the page.

• 1:48:48Tim Ferriss?

  You had to click the plus or the minus.

• 1:48:50Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:48:50Tim Ferriss?

  Huge pain in the ass.

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  And the page would refresh. And like if you wanted to go right, you couldn't scroll right. You'd hit a right arrow.

• 1:48:56Tim Ferriss?

  What is Ajax asynchronous? Help me out here.

• 1:48:59Speaker 01

  I believe it's asynchronous JavaScript. AX.

• 1:49:04Tim Ferriss?

  There we go. AX. Armani Exchange.

• 1:49:10Speaker 01

  Exactly. I believe that's MX. RX, sorry, that's American Express.

• 1:49:20Tim Ferriss?

  So, so were you able to catch up quickly after that?

• 1:49:24Speaker 01

  Well, so, so the, the worm that I wrote actually abused or used Ajax. Because I saw Google Maps came out and you could scroll your map. It was amazing. You could scroll. You didn't have to refresh the page every one, every time you want to go right. This was the coolest thing on, on the web at that point.

• 1:49:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And for people listening who may not be familiar with the term Ajax, and please correct me if I'm wrong. I've had plenty of wine, which leads to overconfidence and matters of my total incompetence. But Ajax would be, for instance, where you, you select from a dropdown, an item. Let's say if you're buying a domain name and you're able to see that value change on the page without refreshing the page.

• 1:50:05Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:50:06Tim Ferriss?

  That would be a consumer experience of Ajax.

• 1:50:08Speaker 01

  Right, right. It used to be you have the refresh, you might hear the click.

• 1:50:12Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:50:12Speaker 01

  Whenever that information would get refreshed. And now you can just seamlessly get new information on your page, updating without you changing pages, right? Without the whole thing refreshing. It was, it was beautiful. And I used that so that, because I could write the worm in a way that it would refresh the page, but that's just annoying. I want it to happen in the background. The, the user shouldn't be bothered that there's a virus running on their computer. It should just happen seamlessly.

• 1:50:38Tim Ferriss?

  Should be very comfortable infiltration.

• 1:50:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it shouldn't, it shouldn't cause them harm or annoyance and that man that clicks annoying. Uh, so that was Ajax and by the time it came back to computers, uh, so three years later, something had come out called drumroll.

• 1:50:58Speaker 01

  The iPhone.

• 1:50:59Tim Ferriss?

  Ah.

• 1:51:00Speaker 01

  Nothing had changed between then. I mean, for, for the most part, the biggest technologies to hit tech was web 2.0. Two, three years later, iPhone. So I came back, I was standing in line at the Grove, waiting for the iPhone.

• 1:51:20Tim Ferriss?

  So you really, you really, uh, in a way threaded the needle. I mean, you really, you, you came, you exited and then re-entered the scene in such a way that you really didn't miss a lot of the major developments.

• 1:51:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wish I could say that was by design, but.

• 1:51:39Tim Ferriss?

  Well, what is it? If I could be good or lucky, I'll take lucky.

• 1:51:43Speaker 01

  Right. Uh, but I will, I will say this, um, you know, before then I was, I was, you know, really introverted. I was an introverted nerd and I'm still, I'm still a nerd and I love that, but those three years, I wasn't allowed to touch computers. The thing that I spent my night and day ever since I was nine years old and got kicked out of a chat room. That, that changed my life, right? I had to spend my time doing something else. So during the day I was working, but then, you know, at that point I was 20, I turned 21. So I started going out and, uh, then I started going, you know, making friends and communicating and socializing. Uh, you know, I went out and

• 1:52:25Speaker 01

  I said, ah, what is that thing? What's that bright thing? Ah, oh, it's the sun. I started going like outside and doing all these outdoors things. And I, you know, learned about what a gym was and I did these things because I had nothing else to do. Right? The one thing was taken away. I mean, they took my, they took my Xbox. That's not cool. Like, okay, let's, let's roll with it, right? And I think

• 1:52:48Speaker 01

  life is good, right? Life is good no matter what. I mean, at least here in the US, I feel pretty fortunate. So let's, uh, let's, we have other facilities available to us, so let's use those.

• 1:52:59Tim Ferriss?

  Now, camp car, just for those people wondering, ethnic background is?

• 1:53:03Speaker 01

  Iranian. So yeah, my mom is from Iran. Um, my dad is, uh, from Dubai, but also Iranian, and they came to the Pittsburgh to study. They came to the US.

• 1:53:16Tim Ferriss?

  Carnegie Mellon or?

• 1:53:18Speaker 01

  Um, down the street, University of Pitt.

• 1:53:20Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 1:53:20Speaker 01

  University of Pittsburgh. Uh, I would have suggested Carnegie Mellon.

• 1:53:24Tim Ferriss?

  Where were they studying?

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  Tech. Um, and my dad, I believe was business. Uh, my mom, I'm not telecommunications, I think.

• 1:53:34Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 1:53:35Speaker 01

  And, uh,

• 1:53:37Tim Ferriss?

  How did they choose Pittsburgh of all places in the US?

• 1:53:40Speaker 01

  That's a great question. I have no idea.

• 1:53:42Tim Ferriss?

  One of the unsolved mysteries.

• 1:53:43Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. Well, one of these things. I mean, little, little kept secret about Pittsburgh.

• 1:53:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:50Speaker 01

  Good sandwiches.

• 1:53:51Tim Ferriss?

  Good sandwiches. It's like Hoagie Haven and Princeton for all those Princetonians listening.

• 1:53:55Speaker 01

  Uh, but yeah, they went to school there and my dad, uh, you know, my dad left, uh, when I was younger and, uh, yeah, so, so they're, they're

• 1:54:06Speaker 01

  they're from Iran. I was born like a year later after they came, came here. My mom was like probably 20. Had me kind of young and yeah, grew up in Pittsburgh.

• 1:54:16Tim Ferriss?

  What, uh, or I should say who, who are some of the people, whether you met them or not, who most influenced your trajectory through life besides your parents?

• 1:54:29Speaker 01

  Hmm. Um, that's a good question. Uh, I would say, you know, it changes over time. Um, I mean, I love, there's so many people out there who've done so such amazing things or even just have a really cool perspective of the world. So, uh, I tried, if I can, if I'm fortunate enough, I try to glean some information from people when I can. Um, I'd say it started when I really, you know, the available information on the internet, right? Just the internet itself. Um, I think it was Al Gore who created the internet. That's what I've heard. So, you know.

• 1:55:01Tim Ferriss?

  He did a great job.

• 1:55:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, he did a great job.

• 1:55:03Tim Ferriss?

  He's tightened it up.

• 1:55:04Speaker 01

  I mean, I, you know, I've, every, everything I've

• 1:55:09Speaker 01

  A lot of what I've accomplished or am learning is from the internet. So thanks to that. But if it were people, then I would say, when I was young, when I was like 15 or 16, I got my first contract on the internet. And just a friend of mine, someone I met online, who had taught me about business. When my mom told me- This is with the cheats, right? This is with the cheat codes. Exactly. Yeah. So I was writing these Counter-Strike cheats and someone said, hey, do you want a job? And this guy, this guy is Stan. He actually taught me a lot about business because then I needed a job. My mom lost her job and she said, Sammy, you're not going to school. You're just playing games all day. You need to get a job and help pay rent if you're going to live here. I said, okay.

• 1:55:50Speaker 01

  So I, you know, I was trying to fill out applications at Starbucks and Ralph's. And someone emailed me named Stan and said, hey, I saw your cheat code. She said, saw your cheat software. Do you want to write software for my company? We're doing some sort of game development stuff. I was like, absolutely. So I contracted with this guy and met him. He was awesome. And he, at that point, I did a little contract for him and then I was contracted for another company and they wanted me to work full time. And my mom said, well, if you're going to work for a company full time, you know, take, you know, if I, I was like, mom, what do I do in the negotiation when they ask how much? If they ask how much? And she's like, just say, you know, whatever you want.

• 1:56:30Speaker 01

  Or just say, you know, tell them this low number and, you know, if they say that's too much, just accept lower. And I had like lunch with Stan. He's like, oh, so you're going to tell them that you have a base expectation of 75K and, you know, their offer that you have, that's what they're offering. And you're going to get, you know, the other offer has, you know, a five-year stock grant with 5,000 shares and that's what you want. And you're like, I like Stan's advice. Well, I'm like, I have no idea what you just said.

• 1:57:02Speaker 01

  And that's all bullshit. And he's like, so? And I'm like, I don't have another offer. And I don't want to lie. I don't want to be deceptive. And I'll say that that's like, you know, besides fake profiles on OkCupid, the other time it's okay to be deceptive is during an interview, because they're being deceptive to you, probably. So during your, during your initial interview.

• 1:57:23Speaker 01

  And so I went into this meeting as a 15 year old kid, just repeating the lines because I had no idea what I was doing.

• 1:57:30Tim Ferriss?

  You're just reading her baiting.

• 1:57:32Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:57:32Tim Ferriss?

  The other offer has a five year stock grant.

• 1:57:36Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:57:37Tim Ferriss?

  What say you?

• 1:57:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:41Speaker 01

  It had a six month cliff and a five year vesting period. That's like, I don't know what.

• 1:57:47Tim Ferriss?

  Word salad. Hopefully that compels you to give me more money.

• 1:57:51Speaker 01

  Stock was.

• 1:57:54Speaker 01

  And I thought in my head, well, the only reason I followed his advice was because he was a very smart and logical guy. I really respected him because of that. And everything he had told me and taught me, I mean, he was pretty much always correct about things. And I'm also okay with taking risks. I'm, that's acceptable. Like, there's always another way to do something.

• 1:58:16Speaker 01

  So I followed his advice and I walked, you know, and actually I went down for this meeting and they said, hey, they had lunch with me and I took the Amtrak to go see them in San Diego, this company that I'd been working with remotely. They'd never met me. And I went, took the Amtrak down and it's really like hoping I got this job. We had dinner, it was really friendly and just kind of casual. And that was that. I was like, guy, and I felt like, it was weird. It's like a slap in the face. Like, we never talked about the job. We never talked about, like, am I getting this job? Are you guys gonna hire me? I really could use a job. And I said, so guys, did you want to talk about, like, I don't know, salary? And I was really timid. Another reason that not having a computer was awesome, because I was forced to talk to people. So.

• 1:58:58Speaker 01

  They're like, sure, let's talk. And they're like, what would you like? And I just repeated verbatim what he told me, what he taught me. And it was, you know, I have a, you know, well, my base expectation is 75K. I have another offer for that at another company in LA. It would be better in LA because that company, I already lived there. In my head, I'm like, please let me leave LA. Like, not LA, I love LA, but please let me move out of my mom's place and get my own place. If I'm making 75K, I can afford a place. And handle my mom's place, right? And cover her. So, and I have this, you know, stock grant, whatever, blah, blah, blah, word, garble. And they looked at each other and said, okay. And I

• 1:59:43Speaker 01

  was flabbergasted. And so, so what he, I mean, he taught me a ton, in my early years, right? That was my first time in a real job, a full-time job. He got me, he got me a 40 gear, 40K a year raise.

• 1:59:57Tim Ferriss?

  Now, this is Stan who had hired you based on your cheat codes.

• 2:00:00Speaker 01

  Correct, yeah.

• 2:00:01Tim Ferriss?

  So he became a mentor and then for the next job, he was...

• 2:00:05Speaker 01

  If it was for that job, he was my mentor. Like, he lived in San Diego, so I hung out with him all the time. He was older, he's probably...

• 2:00:11Tim Ferriss?

  So he was helping you negotiate against his own company?

• 2:00:14Speaker 01

  No, I was contracting for him. I had written some software for him, that was that. Like, he didn't need a lot. So I helped him, you know, did a little contract. And after that, we just remained friends.

• 2:00:25Tim Ferriss?

  God, it's got to...

• 2:00:25Speaker 01

  Older guy, scientist, doctor, like, really, really, really smart guy.

• 2:00:35Tim Ferriss?

  When you think of the word, uh, successful, who's the first person who comes to mind for you?

• 2:00:40Speaker 01

  Successful? Okay. There's a lot of successful people. I mean, I guess it depends how you interpret success.

• 2:00:48Tim Ferriss?

  Well, that's, that's up to you.

• 2:00:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, I'd say lately, it's like, a lot of it's just, how, how can you remain happy? Right? What can you do to actually increase your net happiness while reducing the, the negative, the negatives in your life? And without hurting people? I think that's, that's kind of like, I don't have many morals or ethics. I have like, one pretty strict rule, which is don't intentionally hurt someone.

• 2:01:10Tim Ferriss?

  Ahimsa? Is that what they call it?

• 2:01:15Tim Ferriss?

  I think that's do no harm. It's also the Hippocratic oath, but yeah.

• 2:01:18Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no. Do no harm intentionally.

• 2:01:21Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right.

• 2:01:22Speaker 01

  There's like a fire, there's like a trail of fire. A scorched earth behind me.

• 2:01:29Tim Ferriss?

  As long as it's not intentional, right?

• 2:01:34Tim Ferriss?

  No deliberate harm.

• 2:01:36Speaker 01

  It's not you, it's me.

• 2:01:37Tim Ferriss?

  So who?

• 2:01:38Speaker 01

  Oh, man. I mean, there are people who like, I think, I respect and I try to, I think everyone I meet has someone to teach me, has something to teach me. I think Richard Branson is really cool, just because it's like every time I read about him or learned a little bit about him, he's like having fun and has, you know, he's on an island or on a ship or like racing across the ocean. I mean, he's doing awesome things. He's having fun. He's not necessarily defining success or doing things based off what is expected of you, right? He's, he's doing, I think, what he wants. And that's what I really like. I want to, you know, that's who,

• 2:02:20Speaker 01

  I want to do things that I want and have fun and really enjoy my life and hope. Maybe I can contribute in some ways, but.

• 2:02:30Tim Ferriss?

  Who are, who are some of the people who had the biggest influence

• 2:02:37Tim Ferriss?

  on your worldview besides Stan? Let's just say after Stan.

• 2:02:44Speaker 01

  On my worldview?

• 2:02:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, or just way of thinking about life. Are there other people? Well, let's, let's take it even more granular. In the world of, and this is a term that's become unfortunately very overused, but in the world of hackers, right? People who are finding

• 2:03:03Tim Ferriss?

  non-obvious solutions to problems.

• 2:03:08Tim Ferriss?

  Is there anyone who had a particularly large influence on you?

• 2:03:13Speaker 01

  In the world of hackers, I mean, Kevin Minnick was kind of the biggest well-known hacker.

• 2:03:18Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 2:03:18Speaker 01

  So I've always followed him.

• 2:03:19Tim Ferriss?

  The art of deception.

• 2:03:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:21Tim Ferriss?

  Business card made of lockpicks. So amazing.

• 2:03:26Speaker 01

  But if I had to, if I had to give specific people that I think are awesome, have been doing awesome things. Pablo, Pablo Holman is one guy. He's part of this group called the Schmoo Group. And when I went to-

• 2:03:39Tim Ferriss?

  The what group?

• 2:03:40Speaker 01

  Schmoo.

• 2:03:41Tim Ferriss?

  Schmoo.

• 2:03:42Speaker 01

  S H M O O. Schmoo Group. And I found out about them when I was like, when I was a kid and when I moved to LA when I was 13.

• 2:03:51Tim Ferriss?

  What was his name again?

• 2:03:52Speaker 01

  Pablo's, P A B L O S.

• 2:03:55Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 2:03:55Speaker 01

  Pablo's Holman.

• 2:03:58Tim Ferriss?

  I feel like I went to an event where he spoke and he had a device that he waved across the front row of the crowd and captured all of their credit card information and their wallets.

• 2:04:10Speaker 01

  That sounds like Pablo's.

• 2:04:13Speaker 01

  So this guy is awesome. I mean, he's, he's down to earth, right? Sociable. These are elements that a lot of hackers lack, right? And I really like that. I like the ability to, you know, sit down and sit down in front of like numbers and just unattractive code. And also be able to communicate with people and actually have a real relationship with people and socialize more. Another reason I love being away from computers for three years, right? It forced me to socialize. And if I didn't have that, you know, this conversation would be very different.

• 2:04:48Speaker 01

  So I really like Pablo's just because when I learned about the Schmoo Group, I was 14 years old and I was at, this was the first time at my favorite, at a conference called DEF CON, one of the biggest hacker conferences in the world. It's in Vegas every year. And they had this robot that would drive around and it had, it was two big wheels and a screen. And all it did was show you your passwords.

• 2:05:10Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, God.

• 2:05:11Speaker 01

  Drive up to you wirelessly. And it would just be like, this is your password. And you're like, what? If you had a phone or you're on your laptop, it would just sniff passwords in the air and show you.

• 2:05:22Tim Ferriss?

  It's terrifying.

• 2:05:23Speaker 01

  It was beautiful.

• 2:05:25Tim Ferriss?

  Beautiful and terrifying.

• 2:05:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:05:26Tim Ferriss?

  Like so many things in life.

• 2:05:29Speaker 01

  So, you know, he's definitely a guy and also- Dan Kaminsky is another really, really smart, really a

• 2:05:36Tim Ferriss?

  I know that name for some reason. Why do I know that name?

• 2:05:38Speaker 01

  Really, he's found some huge vulnerabilities in the internet. So if you've heard of the internet and he, he had something called the Kaminsky bug a few years ago, where he found a way that he could essentially control any domain name. If you wanted google.com to point to his website, he could.

• 2:05:56Tim Ferriss?

  That seems reasonably powerful.

• 2:05:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, very powerful. And he, you know, he, he made a huge effort to resolve it very quickly and effectively. So I think he's been someone I've watched at DEF CON ever since I was 14 years old.

• 2:06:09Tim Ferriss?

  And How many people attend DEF CON each year?

• 2:06:12Speaker 01

  Now it's over, it's over 10,000. It's probably like 15,000 per year.

• 2:06:17Tim Ferriss?

  Now, is it from the standpoint of a, a non-tek, I have a severe anxiety related to, so I've heard of DEF CON for quite some time. And we were talking about, you know, the, the magazine that, that you read for quite some time.

• 2:06:35Speaker 01

  2600.

• 2:06:36Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. 2600, which I, which I picked up years ago, but lacked much to my embarrassment. Sort of the technical chops to appreciate, even though I picked it up.

• 2:06:53Tim Ferriss?

  Should someone be intimidated and afraid of going to say a DEF CON?

• 2:06:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:59Tim Ferriss?

  Are there risks involved?

• 2:07:00Speaker 01

  That's a great question. If you turn off your phone, you should not be afraid.

• 2:07:07Speaker 01

  Everyone's actually really cool. I mean, this is

• 2:07:09Tim Ferriss?

  Because I would love to attend. I've never been, but my fear is that as a non-tek, I would just be, you know, caught with my pants down, bent over a barrel, every which way from Sunday, because I am so easy to exploit in that respect.

• 2:07:22Speaker 01

  I would say, I would say, turn, seriously, turn off your phone, turn off your laptop and talk to people. Like people, A, everyone, it's almost like all the hackers are among friends. I know I am. Like when I'm there, it's like, these are my friends. And whether I know them or not, these are, these are people who have similar interests.

• 2:07:40Tim Ferriss?

  Kindred spirits.

• 2:07:40Speaker 01

  To me, and even you, right? If you find it interesting enough that you'd want to attend.

• 2:07:46Speaker 01

  And some really smart people, some really interesting people from all walks of life.

• 2:07:52Speaker 01

  But there are definitely people who are And we call, they're called script kitties in the community.

• 2:07:59Tim Ferriss?

  I want you to elaborate on this.

• 2:08:01Speaker 01

  Alright, so yeah, I mean, I grew up, I was a script kitty. You know, when I learned about a denial service attack.

• 2:08:07Speaker 01

  When I downloaded WinNuke and knew I could crash someone's computer, or that I could open someone's CD-ROM. That was one of the fun ones. I could just open any of my friends.

• 2:08:16Tim Ferriss?

  Just to poltergeist your friends?

• 2:08:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're the ones that came, right? It would just like come out, right? They'd be like surfing the web and boom, CD-ROM open. You're like, what?

• 2:08:30Speaker 01

  That a script kitty is someone who doesn't necessarily, you know, doesn't necessarily know what they're doing, but they've downloaded some program or script that is doing something, you know, out of, out of their hacker pay grade, right? It's out of their technical chops. And that's okay. I mean, that's, that's how, how you learn. That's how you learn anything, right? You, you take what you can and there's nothing wrong with using the tools available. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. So I, I don't think you should be a malicious, I'm not a malicious hacker. I don't want to destroy or, or hurt people. I really want to, you know, sort of, I want to show people the, the lack of security that exists today and hopefully help protect them and teach other people like what they can learn.

• 2:09:12Tim Ferriss?

  So you have, I think in the, let's just say the mainstream perception of hackers, the white hats, right? Just like spy versus spy, you got the good guy.

• 2:09:23Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:09:23Tim Ferriss?

  You got the black hats.

• 2:09:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:09:24Tim Ferriss?

  The bad guys. And the malicious folks. And then you have the gray hats or the people in between.

• 2:09:32Tim Ferriss?

  How do those different groups think philosophically?

• 2:09:39Tim Ferriss?

  Because like, I guess the, the idea being,

• 2:09:44Tim Ferriss?

  if you look at the Stalins of the world, the Hitlers of the world, they absolutely, and I'm not equating that to black hat at all, but I'm just saying they believe themselves to be doing the right thing. Right? So what are the philosophical orientations of those different groups?

• 2:10:03Speaker 01

  You know, I'd say. If you're a black hat, you know, perhaps ignorance, you know, perhaps ignorance is bliss. And I've learned that I'm ignorant of a lot of things when I don't think about it. If I don't actually take the time to sit down and think, how does this, let's say, affect someone? How would I feel if I were in this other person's shoes? I can remain ignorant about something. And sometimes you want to, right? Sometimes I don't want to know that.

• 2:10:27Tim Ferriss?

  Well, right. If you're a guy in Las Vegas who's remotely flying drones in Iraq, blowing up dozens or hundreds of people.

• 2:10:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:36Tim Ferriss?

  You think of it as a first-person shooter game, not as a real-world exercise.

• 2:10:40Speaker 01

  I mean, I gotta be honest, like, every time I eat a steak, I'm like, I don't, I'm potentially not thinking about what happens.

• 2:10:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:48Speaker 01

  Right? More and more, I do think about this now, but I love a steak, so I'm like, maybe I should just be a little black hat in my food, my food etiquette.

• 2:10:55Tim Ferriss?

  Black hat carnivore?

• 2:10:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, oh, man, I love it. So, you know, I'm being ignorant, and now I'm just, I'm just being silly, but I'd say, yeah, black hats are, aren't really, and I think that's true of anything. If you don't think about how it actually affects somebody, then you're doing that. I'm, oh, more wine.

• 2:11:18Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, there's, there's more wine to be had, so I shall pour more wine.

• 2:11:22Speaker 01

  What's this wine called?

• 2:11:23Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, this is, uh, this is a somewhat amusing, uh, label, and I may be abusing my housemate's wine collection.

• 2:11:33Speaker 01

  Sorry, housemate.

• 2:11:34Tim Ferriss?

  Sorry, housemate. So there's a, a very trippy tattooed chick on a, what appears to be a motorcycle on the label, and the brand is F U C K I F Y O U S E E K A Y, which spells, of course, F U C K I E, fuck, which is such a delectable, flexible curse word in the English language. For those interested, there is a book called English as a Second Fucking Language, all about the use of the word fuck, which is really fascinating, but I digress. And we've killed our second bottle.

• 2:12:13Speaker 01

  Can't wait to read the spark notes on that.

• 2:12:14Tim Ferriss?

  Well, well done. Good work, Sammy.

• 2:12:16Speaker 01

  Good work, Tim.

• 2:12:18Tim Ferriss?

  So, we were talking about, uh, black hats, steaks.

• 2:12:21Speaker 01

  Another thing.

• 2:12:24Tim Ferriss?

  Were you ever a black hat?

• 2:12:25Speaker 01

  Oh, man. I mean, uh, you know, I guess people might see black hat differently. I think if you're trying to sort of... A lot of black hats typically what they're doing is they're hacking for financial gain. I've never hacked for financial gain, except for all the jobs I've gotten for hacking, but not hacking maliciously. I would say a lot of hackers and I find a lot of them, a lot of the black hats are actually in Romania and Russia and a lot of countries where maybe they don't, I don't know, hit you so hard for doing that. Maybe there aren't that many laws around that.

• 2:13:00Tim Ferriss?

  Romania seems to be real hotbed for a lot of that. I mean, they have like Western Unions every like half block. It's astonishing. I mean, it's really become a sort of a nexus for a lot of that activity.

• 2:13:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And that's why I'm in Romania nine months a year. Just kidding.

• 2:13:21Tim Ferriss?

  That's where your summer home is?

• 2:13:24Speaker 01

  That's where my first home is. No, just kidding. But I would say, so black hats are typically doing it for financial, financial gain. And there's so many ways to do it for financial gain. And I learned that a long time ago. And

• 2:13:37Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of the ways to do it for, for financial gain?

• 2:13:39Speaker 01

  Okay, so for one, stealing credit cards. Hacking into companies is actually is almost trivial. I'll just say that. Anyone can learn how to hack. Anyone can learn these things. And that's one thing that I'm trying to teach people. It's like how, how computers work, how technology works. And anyone can, let's say, break into a company if you try, a company that, for example, does retail. And if you do retail, then you can, let's say you've saved your credit card somewhere, you can then steal that database full of credit card numbers. And you can then sell that. You can either monetize it yourself and you can, you know, produce credit cards using a mag stripe writer and create your own credit cards and use them.

• 2:14:22Speaker 01

  Or you could sell it to someone else who already has that, has that handled. I mean, there's sort of a little distribution chain that goes down. That's one simple example of someone who could be an entire novice of what you might call a script kitty and who can steal databases-

• 2:14:39Tim Ferriss?

  Just enough to be dangerous.

• 2:14:40Speaker 01

  -full of credit cards and sell it and make money. This is a huge thing. This is actually why, but this is a lot of what the Secret Service does. Besides protecting the president, it's also protecting like money. And online is the easiest way to steal money. Also, like, as you saw Pablo's, right? He probably, you know, he waved, he probably waved something, is my guess, where RFID-based, where he stole your-

• 2:15:02Tim Ferriss?

  Totally.

• 2:15:03Speaker 01

  -credit card number because these are-

• 2:15:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, just to, just to explain one more time to folks. This was many years ago, too. This is not recently. And he had a small handheld device that he waved at the front row while giving a keynote and was able to capture all their credit card information from their wallets.

• 2:15:23Speaker 01

  Amazing. Love that.

• 2:15:25Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, God.

• 2:15:27Speaker 01

  So, yeah, you're just getting credit card numbers. I mean, the beautiful, beautiful thing about that, that RFID, that RF, that's radio frequency, right? Same thing as stealing cars. You can just walk through Times Square and just steal numbers without ever touching a person. It's insane. So you can then sell those, right? There's a black market. There's a market that-

• 2:15:45Tim Ferriss?

  Where does someone go to sell credit cards?

• 2:15:47Speaker 01

  Well, I can give you a list of sites. There's a lot of, there's forums. Typically private forums. There's also government, you know, governments definitely in those forums as well, but yeah.

• 2:16:00Tim Ferriss?

  Governments who buy those credit cards?

• 2:16:01Speaker 01

  Who buy those credit cards, who try to track those credit cards. I subcontracted for a company for 13 years ago that worked with FBI. And what, what we were doing was tracking down a huge thief of credit cards. And they had not only penetrated a company that had credit cards, you know, like a retailer. They had penetrated, this hacker group had penetrated a gateway. A gateway is who your credit cards go through. Today, it would be like a Stripe or a PayPal.

• 2:16:34Tim Ferriss?

  Or an authorized.net.

• 2:16:35Speaker 01

  Exactly. So it's a credit card processor. The people who get all the credit cards from all the money, you know, all the companies online. And they had penetrated one of those servers. And we had found this, the FBI told us, and we investigated and we had- A little bit of authorization to hack these Romanian servers.

• 2:16:58Tim Ferriss?

  Surprise, surprise.

• 2:17:00Speaker 01

  So essentially.

• 2:17:02Tim Ferriss?

  Multumesc. Yeah.

• 2:17:04Speaker 01

  So I, I essentially.

• 2:17:06Tim Ferriss?

  Chifac, be in there. I've spent a little bit of time around the Romanians. They're fun, fun group.

• 2:17:14Speaker 01

  Talk. So they would, and I, you know, essentially that our job was to track them and find them. And we did. After I found this, one of the hackers and found their chat room and chatted with them and became friends. And they'd send me pictures and I saw this guy's new viper in his, in his garage, brand new viper cache.

• 2:17:39Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, wow. Nice.

• 2:17:41Speaker 01

  Romanian cache.

• 2:17:41Tim Ferriss?

  Power move. That's like New Jack City style in Romania. Yeah.

• 2:17:46Speaker 01

  And that's how we found them. And that many crazy thing is so many things are hacked on a daily basis and we just don't know. And a lot of the times, you know, the companies are required to tell their users. Not everyone tells you that you got hacked, right? We hear about hacks all the time now and it's unfortunate, but so many companies are being hacked and don't know it.

• 2:18:08Tim Ferriss?

  What do you think of using services like a OnePassword or LastPass or whatnot to try to improve your security with passwords?

• 2:18:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a, that's a tough question for me, just because I'm unsure how I feel about them. I don't, I personally don't subscribe to them just for the fact that they are, seem like a big target, right? If I were, if I were.

• 2:18:32Tim Ferriss?

  It's a high value target.

• 2:18:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, if I were malicious.

• 2:18:34Tim Ferriss?

  HVT is it's a.

• 2:18:35Speaker 01

  I would be like analyzing their code every day, trying to find a flaw so that when I want, I could then get, when I do hack computers, when I do drop, you know, some malware on a website, I then get all your passwords, not just, you know, not just one. So the idea is, however, in general, I think they're doing a good thing. Because I believe if you're a person who uses the same password for every website, I believe it's superior to use a program like LastPass or, um, yeah, Abine, Abean has a, has another password manager.

• 2:19:08Tim Ferriss?

  One, OnePassword, whatever.

• 2:19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I believe it's better to use those than, they use the same password everywhere. What I would suggest to everyone, something I do. I don't make ridiculous passwords that are hard to remember. I make really easy passwords to remember. And they're just really long, usually lyrics in a song.

• 2:19:25Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, interesting.

• 2:19:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know.

• 2:19:27Tim Ferriss?

  Welcome to the jungle, baby.

• 2:19:29Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:19:29Tim Ferriss?

  Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

• 2:19:30Speaker 01

  Think of your, you know, favorite puff daddy song. You know, Dr. Dre.

• 2:19:39Speaker 01

  Oh, money. You gotta really just choose some lyrics. Uh, it doesn't matter if there's not a, you know, crazy like exclamation marks and like capital letters, you don't need all that. If it's really long, but easy to remember, that's much better than an exclamation mark in the middle.

• 2:19:55Tim Ferriss?

  For a short password.

• 2:19:55Speaker 01

  And you can remember it, right? For your bank, you use stuff related to bling. You know, for a different website, just what's, you know, what makes you think of that website?

• 2:20:04Tim Ferriss?

  What other precautions, uh, you freaked me out. I, I hadn't mentioned my name before, but I will now with the hijacking of laptop cameras.

• 2:20:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:20:15Tim Ferriss?

  So I just got a new computer. I need to cover up that camera. But, uh, what other precautions would you suggest that people take?

• 2:20:23Speaker 01

  Well, I'd say there's a pretty advanced technology that you can actually use to protect you against, um, someone invading essentially the camera. You know, recently someone, uh, um, people have found that they've been able to enable the MacBook cameras without the light coming on.

• 2:20:39Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 2:20:40Speaker 01

  And the, and supposedly the FBI has been able to do this for years, but now it's been found by other people and demonstrated, demonstrated, right? Um, so there's a pretty advanced technology, uh, that came out a long time ago called the Post-it and you can fly the Post-it just above, just over the camera. And when you wish to Skype or FaceTime, um,

• 2:21:02Tim Ferriss?

  You can lift said Post-it.

• 2:21:03Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:21:04Tim Ferriss?

  Or masking tape.

• 2:21:05Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 2:21:06Tim Ferriss?

  Which was my, my go-to.

• 2:21:08Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 2:21:08Tim Ferriss?

  What's, uh,

• 2:21:11Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any software programs or applications that you use to improve security or anonymity on your computer?

• 2:21:22Speaker 01

  This is a weird one, and this is something that I will, this is, it makes me feel funny. There's a software-

• 2:21:30Tim Ferriss?

  Could be the one.

• 2:21:31Speaker 01

  There's a software called TrueCrypt.

• 2:21:33Tim Ferriss?

  TrueCrypt?

• 2:21:34Speaker 01

  Correct, TrueCrypt. This is a software, it's open source. It's been developed to help you encrypt your either hard drive or folder or flash drive. And it allows you to say, okay, if you have information you want to protect, you can encrypt it with this software called TrueCrypt. It requires a password. And no one knows who created TrueCrypt. It's always been open source. It's probably been a team of developers. And that's really cool.

• 2:22:04Speaker 01

  Recently, maybe a few months ago, the website changed. And it said, "TrueCrypt is insecure. Don't use it.

• 2:22:14Speaker 01

  Go use something else." And that was it. The author said that, and it was done. This is one of the craziest things. There are very few, there are very few products or pieces of software out in the world that are anonymous, that are run by anonymous, you know, anonymous group, and that are successful. TrueCrypt is a success. Lots of people, and when I say success, I mean, people who want protection use TrueCrypt. So it's kind of scary to hear the thing that you've been, at least, if you're in my world, you would be using TrueCrypt if you wanted to protect information, because it has a wide base of users, of smart users, who already understand cryptography, and who want to protect their stuff and aren't just using something

• 2:22:58Speaker 01

  random, off the shelf, that just may or may not have flaws. Because it's open source, it can be analyzed and audited by other people. And just recently, probably within the past few days, an audit-

• 2:23:08Tim Ferriss?

  Past few days?

• 2:23:09Speaker 01

  The past few days, an audit of TrueCrypt has been completed. Because for a long time, people have been saying, "We need to audit TrueCrypt just to make sure it's secure."

• 2:23:19Speaker 01

  And an audit has been completed, and there were some minor flaws, some flaws that could be exploited, but nothing, nothing huge, nothing wary, nothing like, "Oh, there's a backdoor in here."

• 2:23:29Tim Ferriss?

  So why do you think that message was put out?

• 2:23:31Speaker 01

  Oh, man, I have no idea. I mean, the question is, did someone- There have been some interesting things that have happened recently, especially with the revelations of Snowden. For one thing, there's these gag orders that we've now learned about, that sometimes the NSA can send a gag order and say, you know, we want information and you can't tell your users, you can't tell the public that we gave you this gag order. So I think some sites are actually employing something where they say, "We have never been asked by the government to provide any information."

• 2:24:06Tim Ferriss?

  Which is completely incorrect.

• 2:24:09Speaker 01

  If they ever do get, well, no, no, they ask this, they put this up before they've ever been asked.

• 2:24:14Tim Ferriss?

  Oh.

• 2:24:15Speaker 01

  So if they're ever asked, they have to take it down.

• 2:24:16Tim Ferriss?

  Ah.

• 2:24:17Speaker 01

  So this hasn't been tested in court. But the idea is-

• 2:24:22Tim Ferriss?

  That's clever, though. So no, no, it's like a plausible deniability thing.

• 2:24:25Speaker 01

  Exactly. Oh, one of the cool things about TrueCrypt is that-

• 2:24:30Tim Ferriss?

  TrueCrypt, T-R-U-E-C-R-Y-P-T. Jesus Christ. All right, let's have some more wine.

• 2:24:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. TrueCrypt. One thing that's really interesting about TrueCrypt is that it has a feature called about plausible deniability. For example, if you're at a border and someone requests you to give them your password, you have to. In border crossings, you have no, I mean, they have full jurisdiction. They can do whatever they want. So if they ask you for your password, you have to give it. Or you could just like go to, you know, Mexican jail.

• 2:25:05Tim Ferriss?

  Not an attractive option, generally speaking.

• 2:25:09Speaker 01

  Right. So you can just-

• 2:25:13Tim Ferriss?

  Comes back to our losing your front teeth, losing your thumbs question.

• 2:25:15Speaker 01

  Right. Or teeth. So if, there's an interesting feature with TrueCrypt where you can apply two passwords to a hidden drive, or I'm sorry, not a hidden drive, an encrypted drive. So let's say you have an encrypted folder, it has a password that unlocks it. And if you go to the border and they say, "Give us your password," you have to give it up. And now those files are for them to use as they please. TrueCrypt has a feature where you can use two passwords. And it decrypts the same drive with two different passwords.

• 2:25:49Tim Ferriss?

  So one is a decoy?

• 2:25:51Speaker 01

  One is essentially a decoy.

• 2:25:54Speaker 01

  And the beautiful part about the way it works is that the data is all randomized when it's encrypted. There's no way to prove that you're using the secondary password. It's impossible to prove. Today, it's impossible. We know of no possible way today with the existing technology to show that there is one or two passwords used. Most people only use one. Most people only need one because they don't care if they don't care if the government gets this information. They're protecting corporate secrets, for example, or they're protecting, you know, private pictures or whatever. Some people do care, and if they do care, they can use this additional feature where it uses essentially the same encrypted method. And when you give up a password, there's no way to prove whether there's a secondary

• 2:26:39Speaker 01

  password in use or not. So that's a really cool feature, I think, and I think plausible deniability is really interesting. It's a really interesting thing to play with.

• 2:26:47Tim Ferriss?

  Super interesting. I know guys who, these are CEOs of companies who go to China and they will always bring a effectively blank netbook with them to China because they assume whenever they check into a half decent hotel in China that their data is immediately being downloaded.

• 2:27:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:10Tim Ferriss?

  From their computers.

• 2:27:11Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:27:12Tim Ferriss?

  And, man, having spent some time in China, that would not surprise me in the least.

• 2:27:17Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 2:27:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:19Speaker 01

  I mean, just recently, I mean, literally in the past few days as well, China's certificate agency, the people who encrypt all the web traffic in China, gave out a fake certificate for Google.com so that they could essentially, well, they claimed that it was an accident. Who knows? But essentially, if you're, if you're using them, if you're in China and you go to a Google.com domain or like Gmail, for example, that you believe is encrypted, they can encrypt everything.

• 2:27:49Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, Jesus Christ.

• 2:27:50Speaker 01

  They can read your email, for example.

• 2:27:52Tim Ferriss?

  That is a very literal example of those of you who speak Chinese. That is "走后门." "走后门" is taking the back door, which is an expression used typically to refer to, say, you know, bribing officials or something like that. Doing something very unofficial that gets official results.

• 2:28:15Tim Ferriss?

  But accident. Come on.

• 2:28:19Speaker 01

  So I'll say when it comes to tools, if you're looking for more tools, I keep a private. It's just my personal list of what I'm using today. And it's if you want to see it, sammy.pl/tools.

• 2:28:31Tim Ferriss?

  This is a rad list. I've looked at this before, guys, so you should check it out.

• 2:28:34Speaker 01

  It's just a Google Doc. I keep it. I usually just send it to my friends, but if people are interested in what I'm using today, this is my updated list of what the software I run, pretty much.

• 2:28:45Tim Ferriss?

  Cool. Sammy.pl/tools. All right, cool. I'll link to that as well. Do you, do you read much? Do you read books?

• 2:28:55Speaker 01

  I don't. I was about to say I used to. No, I never did.

• 2:29:02Speaker 01

  No, I've read, I've read, I read here and there. And I'm, pretty much what I do is like, I'll read a few pages and I love Amazon because they let you read a few pages. And if I'm, you know, if I feel addicted and sometimes I do, then I keep reading and I buy it.

• 2:29:19Tim Ferriss?

  What are the last books that have caught your attention that way?

• 2:29:24Speaker 01

  Caught my attention.

• 2:29:26Tim Ferriss?

  What books have come to mind that have stuck with you?

• 2:29:29Speaker 01

  Okay, I mean lately I've been like into mechanical engineering, so I've been reading mechanical engineering books. But I'd say things that like have affected me and changed, changed me that I think are really cool. I would say one book is called Influence by Robert Cialdini.

• 2:29:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 2:29:49Speaker 01

  I learned that about, I believe it was Stan who told me about that. And when I was 16 and I read that, I mean, this was, this came out before I was born. It was in the early 80s.

• 2:29:59Tim Ferriss?

  Jesus Christ, when were you born again?

• 2:30:01Speaker 01

  Eighty-five.

• 2:30:02Tim Ferriss?

  Good God. Youngin'. Little sea monkey pup.

• 2:30:10Tim Ferriss?

  Continue.

• 2:30:11Speaker 01

  Sure, sure. So influence-

• 2:30:13Tim Ferriss?

  I had my age come crashing down upon me. Please, please, please continue.

• 2:30:20Speaker 01

  So, child, uh, influence, it's a book about influence and how humans can be influenced and persuaded to do things. I mean, I don't know what, I don't recall whether it's a book for salespeople or for like manipulating people or how to protect yourself. It's a little bit of all of it, actually. And I love it because it was a very systematic and analytical approach to the most common ways that human beings have been known to be influenced and persuaded to do something. You could use it for sales, you could use it to attract people, you could use it for, I mean, these are life skills. I believe these are life skills.

• 2:30:57Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely. Scarcity-

• 2:30:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:31:00Tim Ferriss?

  The time restrictions-

• 2:31:01Speaker 01

  Sure, social proof-

• 2:31:02Tim Ferriss?

  I have to run to save some penguins, but-

• 2:31:05Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 2:31:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah, these are, these are common principles.

• 2:31:09Speaker 01

  And that's likability too, right? To save some penguins, like, likability. So, I mean, those like, those shaped me. I mean, to understand how I could, and it's not influence people in a negative way. I mean, it can be used that way, but it's how, how can I socialize with the humans around me and how can I like befriend people and how can I, you know, how can I use reciprocity to have people in my life who I like and respect and appreciate? And I want them to respect me back, right? I want them to appreciate me. So how can I use these tactics and methods appropriately to do that?

• 2:31:45Tim Ferriss?

  What, uh, when you need to be in the zone for coding or anything else, what music do you listen to these days?

• 2:31:54Speaker 01

  Okay, cool. That's a great question. I love, love music. Um, I go to, I listen to a blog, audiomali.com.

• 2:32:05Tim Ferriss?

  Audiomali?

• 2:32:06Speaker 01

  Audiomali.com.

• 2:32:07Tim Ferriss?

  That's an amazing name.

• 2:32:10Tim Ferriss?

  We can take that a lot of directions, but it's amazing there.

• 2:32:12Speaker 01

  It's EDM, so it's a lot of electronic dance music and they have, uh, just sort of like the, it's the latest stuff, but it's not, it's not poppy. It's, man, I mean, I don't care if it's poppy or not. It's just, if it's really good, then I really like it. So I'd say lately I've listened to a lot of electronic music, so.

• 2:32:37Speaker 01

  I know you've had, man, you had someone from the Glitch Mob.

• 2:32:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, Beretta, Justin, great guy.

• 2:32:42Speaker 01

  Man, I love the Glitch Mob.

• 2:32:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, they're great.

• 2:32:45Speaker 01

  Glitch Mob, I mean, they came out with an album maybe a year ago or two years ago. They're one of my favorites. So I would say that kind of music.

• 2:32:54Speaker 01

  Like the Glitch Mob, I mean, Infected Mushroom.

• 2:32:57Tim Ferriss?

  Infected Mushroom?

• 2:32:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:59Tim Ferriss?

  Another, what is this? Audio molly, infected mushroom.

• 2:33:05Speaker 01

  I mean, they're, they're, they're, those guys are amazing. They, they play every year.

• 2:33:10Tim Ferriss?

  I've never heard them.

• 2:33:11Speaker 01

  They're, they play every year at Avalon and they're always in kind of the latest technology. And they use, like, they have these massive, most DJs, they just hit, you know, some people say they hit play, some people say they scratch, whatever. These guys have these massive, like, 42-inch Plexiglas screens in front of them that you, as the audience, can see. You can see what they're doing. They're Plexiglas with projection of what they're doing on top.

• 2:33:36Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's cool. It's very Minority Report.

• 2:33:38Speaker 01

  Oh, so Minority Report. It's, yeah, it's this device called the emulator that they're using and they're tapping so everyone can see what they're doing. They're on the stage live, right, DJing, and it's like so futuristic. It is exactly Minority Report, you know, in EDM. So electronic music is what I listen to a lot.

• 2:33:59Tim Ferriss?

  What was it, Infected Mushroom?

• 2:34:00Speaker 01

  Infected Mushroom. They've been around for many, many years, an Israeli duo.

• 2:34:05Tim Ferriss?

  This is Israelis.

• 2:34:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:34:07Tim Ferriss?

  So proactive.

• 2:34:09Speaker 01

  And they, they're always keeping up to date with sound and I think they, they appreciate quality in their work. Like, I really like that.

• 2:34:15Tim Ferriss?

  Very cool. I'll ask you a question I haven't asked in a while. If you had to conjure a face and a name to correlate to Punchable.

• 2:34:31Speaker 01

  Punchable?

• 2:34:32Tim Ferriss?

  Punchable, yeah.

• 2:34:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:34:34Tim Ferriss?

  What comes to mind?

• 2:34:35Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't, I don't know. I don't, I don't usually want to punch people.

• 2:34:42Tim Ferriss?

  Could be a conceptual Punchable foe of some type.

• 2:34:49Speaker 01

  Tim?

• 2:34:50Tim Ferriss?

  Tim? That's a fair answer.

• 2:34:52Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 2:34:52Tim Ferriss?

  People want to punch me too.

• 2:34:53Speaker 01

  Why are you asking? I don't want to punch you. I don't really want to punch people.

• 2:34:57Tim Ferriss?

  Shake. You want to shake him really hard.

• 2:34:59Speaker 01

  Shake.

• 2:35:00Tim Ferriss?

  Chris Rock style, yeah. You don't want to punch him, you just want to shake him.

• 2:35:02Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, okay, okay. I got, I got one. I don't know who they are. I don't know their names.

• 2:35:07Tim Ferriss?

  Alright.

• 2:35:08Speaker 01

  And I'm not upset at them because I know it's not their fault. But these people making this, these map softwares for our phones.

• 2:35:19Tim Ferriss?

  Just having driven with you recently, this is perfect.

• 2:35:22Speaker 01

  I mean, when iPhone came out, Google Maps was there. And it wasn't Google, it was Apple slash Google Maps, which was one of the like most beautiful harmonies I've ever seen. It was a, it was the most effective map software for a mobile phone ever. And then Apple said, no, we're, we don't want your Google stuff. We're going to come out with our own apps and we removed this original map software. And instead of Apple coming out with beautiful software like they normally do, they're like, here's some shitty software for you. Clap your hands.

• 2:35:55Speaker 01

  And that was awful. And then Google Maps came out and they, they came out with their amazing, their amazing Google backend. And then their, their, they had to design their own app. So they had their UI people and, and their UX people. I'm not sure what UX people, but they came out, their user experience. And they're like, here's like a seal trying to tell you how to like get around town.

• 2:36:19Tim Ferriss?

  Seal, like our, our, yeah.

• 2:36:22Speaker 01

  With amazing backend. Like that's what I think, that's what I love about Google. It's a bunch of engineers, but that's it. I need more. There's more than engineers there. I know it's. So show me more than the engineer, like I, I understand the engineering backend. But there's this beautiful creative front end that's like people who actually sit down and use their software. And it was when I was shaking my phone in anger recently. And I was like yelling at my Google Maps. I was like, why won't you just tell me where to go? Why do I have to seven times to get to a new directions? And it said, do you have a suggestion for us? What are you talking about? What do you mean? Do I have a suggestion? How do you know? You know what I'm saying? Are you listening to me?

• 2:37:03Speaker 01

  That's possible. And a few days later, it happened like a week ago, I shook my phone in anger yelling at it. Google Maps. Do you have a suggestion? And I said, how do you know this? How do you know I'm upset? Are you like reading? Is it like Scientology where they have an E meter and they can like read your like spiritual harmonics or something? And I was like, they must be like listening to me. That's not cool. That's unacceptable. And then I shook the phone and it did it again. Oh, wow. Someone was

• 2:37:32Tim Ferriss?

  The accelerometer best.

• 2:37:33Speaker 01

  Exactly. Someone at Google was pissed off enough that they're like, oh yeah, I shake my, my phone when I use Google Maps all the time. We should implement this.

• 2:37:45Speaker 01

  So, I mean, you know, I do love Google Maps and I love Google and they do some really cool stuff, but I shake my phone a lot.

• 2:37:53Tim Ferriss?

  You want to, you want to punch Google Maps in the face sometimes?

• 2:37:57Tim Ferriss?

  What advice? How old are you right now?

• 2:37:59Speaker 01

  I'm 29.

• 2:38:01Tim Ferriss?

  Oof, man, getting old, getting old.

• 2:38:03Speaker 01

  But I think I can reverse it. We'll see.

• 2:38:06Tim Ferriss?

  You've reversed it?

• 2:38:07Speaker 01

  No, no, I'm working on that. I'm just, I'm just gonna keep up with your blog and

• 2:38:13Speaker 01

  all of my drug regimen.

• 2:38:16Tim Ferriss?

  What would, what advice would you give your 20 year old self?

• 2:38:19Speaker 01

  20 year olds?

• 2:38:23Speaker 01

  Stop committing felonies. You can't use a computer idiot.

• 2:38:29Speaker 01

  You're sitting there.

• 2:38:31Tim Ferriss?

  What about 15?

• 2:38:32Speaker 01

  15? Oh, okay.

• 2:38:38Speaker 01

  Stop, stop wasting time in school.

• 2:38:41Tim Ferriss?

  Stop wasting time in school.

• 2:38:43Speaker 01

  I mean, it depends who, it depends who I'm talking to. If I'm talking to myself, what would I say?

• 2:38:52Speaker 01

  Man, I mean, so, so much I could tell myself.

• 2:38:56Speaker 01

  Invest in apple.

• 2:39:00Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly.

• 2:39:02Speaker 01

  I would say I don't know, just, you know, go with the flow. Like, I've always tried to go with the flow and I learned early on, I think, learning, like, reading about people meditating or something, that just everything's kind of cool and everything's okay if you allow that to... you're pretty much in control of your own destiny. I wish I could say that for myself as much as I like, but, you know, you're in control of your emotions, so try to not worry about things so much. And I really try and, you know, I try not to worry about things, like, try to, try to be good. And at this point in my life, yeah, I guess I would say, I'd say one thing. I would say the same thing I said earlier. Try to do whatever the hell you want to feel

• 2:39:46Speaker 01

  good without intentionally hurting someone else. That's what I'd say.

• 2:39:51Tim Ferriss?

  That's good advice.

• 2:39:52Speaker 01

  That's what I tell myself.

• 2:39:53Tim Ferriss?

  So where can people find you on the interwebs? Whether it's your site, YouTube, all of the above?

• 2:40:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I'm doing, I'm doing, you know, one thing now. I'm doing new YouTube videos and teach, and also just write very, very detailed write-ups and teaching people how to hack, how to code, how to reverse engineer, and also teaching just regular consumers, everyday consumers who have things like phones and computers and cars, how to protect themselves. And then demonstrating them really cool exploits and vulnerabilities, like how to steal cars. So I'd say the best ways to follow me, you can follow me on Twitter, it's @samycamcar, S-A-M-Y-K-A-M-C-A-R. Or follow me on YouTube, which is my really

• 2:40:48Speaker 01

  old username, YouTube username, S4MYK.

• 2:40:52Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, Jesus, that's terrible.

• 2:40:54Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 2:40:54Tim Ferriss?

  Say it again.

• 2:40:55Speaker 01

  Four is like the, is like A in hacker speak.

• 2:40:58Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, wait a second.

• 2:40:59Speaker 01

  Sammy K.

• 2:41:00Tim Ferriss?

  So give it to me again?

• 2:41:01Speaker 01

  It's like Sammy K. But Sammy K. was taken, so I had to take S4MYK.

• 2:41:07Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's not so bad.

• 2:41:08Speaker 01

  It's it's kind of bad.

• 2:41:09Tim Ferriss?

  It's bad, but it could be worse.

• 2:41:11Speaker 01

  It wasn't. It wasn't. He was just like, I never thought I'd use this.

• 2:41:14Tim Ferriss?

  S4MYK?

• 2:41:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I used to play like Halo on Xbox and also was S4MY.

• 2:41:20Tim Ferriss?

  So, quick side note on Halo. I had a chance at one point. I had only played Halo once before. And then I had a chance to play, I think he was the world champion at the time, a guy named Fatality. And just got

• 2:41:33Speaker 01

  Sounds familiar.

• 2:41:34Tim Ferriss?

  Fucking obliterated in. Oh, yeah, he's totally pro.

• 2:41:37Speaker 01

  I think I saw his billboard on, uh, like lost, like Highland Avenue in Hollywood.

• 2:41:43Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah, he's well known. And I got, this was a couple of years ago. And it's like my second game ever. And just got so manhandled. It was utterly embarrassing, beyond embarrassing.

• 2:41:56Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 2:41:56Tim Ferriss?

  All right. So we got you on YouTube. Uh, we have you on Twitter. I will, I will link to all those in the show notes as well.

• 2:42:02Speaker 01

  And just

• 2:42:03Tim Ferriss?

  Anywhere else?

• 2:42:03Speaker 01

  Just my website, um, SAMY.PL, uh, Sammy.PL.

• 2:42:08Tim Ferriss?

  And this is where people can find the tools as well.

• 2:42:10Speaker 01

  They can find all my tools. Almost everything I do is open source. It's free. Uh, I have a mailing list where I just send, you know, sneak peeks of new vulnerability research and tips on how to protect yourself.

• 2:42:22Tim Ferriss?

  Awesome. This is, uh, super fun. Uh, I, we need to do more of these. And, uh, for those interested, also did a TV show where Sammy made a guest appearance. And, uh, that should be available at iTunes.com forward slash Tim Ferriss. T I M F E R R I S S, two R's, two S's, uh, or potentially on YouTube. YouTube.com forward slash Tim Ferriss, also with two R's and two S's. Sammy, thanks so much, man.

• 2:42:52Speaker 01

  Thanks, Tim.

• 2:42:53Tim Ferriss?

  More wine in the future.

• 2:42:54Speaker 01

  All right. Looking forward to it.

• 2:42:58Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs, your one-stop shop for all things graphic design-related. I have used 99designs for everything from banner ads to book covers, including sketches and mock-ups that led to The Four Hour Body, which later became number one New York Times, number one Wall Street Journal. And the brainstorming, a lot of it took place with designers from around the world. And here's how it works. Whether you need a t-shirt, a business card, a website, an app thumbnail, whatever it might be, you submit that project and designers from around the world will send you sketches and mock-ups and designs. You choose your favorite and you have an original that you love, or you get your money back. It's that straightforward. And many of you who are listening have already used it

• 2:43:42Tim Ferriss?

  and created some amazing things that I'll be sharing in the future. But in the meantime, if you want to see some of my competitions, some of the book covers, as well as get a free $99 upgrade, go to 99designs.com/tim. That's 99designs.com/tim.

• 2:43:59Tim Ferriss?

  This podcast is brought to you by Mizzen & Maine. Don't worry about the spelling. All you need to know is this. I have organized my entire life around avoiding fancy shirts because you have to iron them, you sweat through them, they smell really easily, they're a pain in the ass. Mizzen & Maine has given me the only shirt that I need. And what I mean by that, and Kelly Starrett loves these shirts as well, is that you can trick people. They look really fancy, so you can take them out to nice dinners, whatever, but they're made from athletic sweat-wicking material. So you can throw this thing into your luggage in a heap or on your kitchen table like I did recently, and then pull it out, throw it on with no ironing, no steaming, no nothing, walk out, and you could probably wear this thing for a week straight

• 2:44:44Tim Ferriss?

  or make it your only dress shirt and take it on trips for weeks at a time. Never wash it, it will not smell, you will not sweat through it. You gotta check these things out. So go to fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, fourhourworkweek.com/shirts. Check it out, fourhourworkweek.com/shirts, and you'll see some of my favorite gear, including the one shirt that I've been traveling with.