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- [00:01]
A
Hector Monseager was responsible for some of the most notorious hacks ever committed.
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Special Agent Chris Tarbell. Hackets and FBI informants participated in some
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of the world's most infamous hacks that caused up to $50 million in damages. A life in the shadows.
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Cyber attacks on the rise.
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Welcome to Hacker the Fed. I'm Chris Tar, former FBI special agent working my entire career in cybersecurity. And I'm joined, as always, by my boy, Hector Monstegor. Hi, Hector.
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B
Hey, what's up?
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A
Oh, sexy voice. Oh, boy. Hector is a friend and podcast co host, but also a former black hat hacker who once faced 125 years in prison for his many years of hacking under the codename Sabu. Our stories collided in June 2011 when I arrested Hector, but then I convinced him to work with me at the FBI. Hector's now a red teamer researcher, cybersecurity expert, one hell of a guy, a sicky poo. And also a co founder at Safe Hill. All right, guys. Heck's voice is all banged up. He's got his big beautiful smile. He thinks he's hiding in the dark there, but I can still see him smiling away. Heck, can I just get a little. Little, little sexy voice time?
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B
Yeah, no, listen, you know, a little banged up, a little sick, guys, you know, I'll be back soon. I just gotta get over this flu, cold, whatever it is.
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A
Us one too many Ds and that's what you sound like. People be careful. That's how it gets it. So. That's right. No, you're running ragged, brother. You gotta take care of yourself better. You gotta eat right. Get out. Because, you know you gotta get some D. I don't mean that D. I mean vitamin D. Get some sunlight. I know. You sick bastard. Get out there and enjoy yourself and love life and enjoy things. Eat right, be good. But you'll get better soon. We'll be back next week, guys. We're just gonna take a week off, but we wanted to give you a little something something. We? I just did a Patreon episode. So if anybody wants to listen to Chris tarbell talk for 45 minutes straight by himself with no one saying anything back. Oh, join the Patreon. Might not be a good. Nah, it was good. The Patreon listeners sent in a bunch of questions. I answered a bunch of stuff about the FBI, how to get into the FBI security. We talked about what's going on with Anthropic. Is it for real or is it just a hype machine? I don't know how we'll get. Maybe get Hector's ideas on that one next week, but we, we're going to take the week off. We're going to go and replay episode one. We've done now 100 and this is 128th free show. Maybe some people don't know our origin story. And so it's how Hector and I started, um, from that story, we started doing speeches, corporate speeches, from those corporate speeches. We were out in Las Vegas, we said, man, we should sit down and record some of this shit, because people love it already. You know, we were sitting in the green room talking to a bunch of CEOs, and they're like, man, this is better than what you guys do on stage. And so the birth of Hacker and the Fed right there. Thank you guys for helping us again. The Patreon keeps the show alive. Hector and I are getting slammed left and right about wanting to advertise. I guess we've hit a certain number of listeners now. They really want to advertise on our show. We say bullshit on that. We, we only want products that we really, truly love, so we're staying away from them. So, you know, help us on Patreon. You guys are really hitting the merch store. I mailed out a few shirts yesterday.
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B
Nice.
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A
Yeah, things are going well with that. But hit it harder if you guys have merch you want, you know, so I know heck wants a picture of my balls with a tan meter on it. Anything from Betty White to Barry White.
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B
Yeah, that's a good one.
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A
But hit us up@hackerthefed.com Also, this was your questions, so help us out where you can. We love you guys. You guys are great to us. We love having our listeners, but unfortunately, we just can't have a show this week. I don't think anything happened in the cybers this week anyway.
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B
Hector, same as usual. Nothing major. There's. There's that one big story of. There's a claim that the Chinese super clusters were hacks and someone exfiltrated ten petabytes. I think that's ten petabytes.
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A
Ten petabytes of what?
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B
Whatever the hell the Chinese are, you know, are clustering. I don't know.
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A
I think the Chinese are just collecting encrypted information. So when they finally get a quantum computer, they're going to crack it all open. The only thing you're going to get is a bunch of encrypted data. They'd be smart if they encrypted it with their own shit. Once they got It.
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B
Yeah, that's right. That's right.
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A
Say, love you. Whatever it is, guys, Hacker, the Fed loves you. Please share us on with social media, Tell your friends about us, tell us your lovers about us, and hopefully you guys can enjoy the origin story. Heck, you get better. Take care of yourself, and I will see you next week, brother.
- [05:14]
B
All right, brother. Cheers.
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A
Cheers. Love and respect. Hector, how's it going?
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B
I'm pretty good. How about yourself?
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I'm doing good. But before we begin, introductions are due. I'm Chris Tarbo, former FBI cyber agent, cybersecurity expert, and founding partner at naxo. I met my friend and podcast co host, Hector Monsieur, in a very unique way. I arrested him. Hector, why don't you introduce yourself?
- [05:40]
B
So, as. As Chris said, my name is Hector Monseger. I am a director of research now. But at one point in my life, I was the bad guy. I'm a former black cat. What that really means is that at, you know, at some point in my life, I used to break into machines without permission.
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A
That breaking into machines is what I arrested Hacker for. And then for the next eight months, we sat side by side fighting cybercrime together, learning from each other, mostly me learning from Hector.
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B
And I have to say that during that time frame, I learned not only that what I was doing was wrong, but I also got to find myself. And within that timeframe, I also became very good friends with Chris, and we started to build a solid relationship. Now we are, you know, 11 years ahead, and here we are. We have a podcast. I'm super excited about that.
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A
Close friends and podcast co hosts. Hector, how are you?
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B
Pretty busy. There's a lot of major breaches happening this week, so it's just a lot of reading documentation, reading incident response reports, you name it. It's. It's a bad time for the victims, for sure, but it's an interesting time for the researchers and practitioners to kind of learn from those breaches. So I've been. Okay.
- [06:49]
A
Yeah. Lots of interesting cyber security news this week. Lots of good stuff to read, which normally in a podcast episode, that's what we're going to cover. We're going to talk about cybersecurity in the news and how you can protect yourself and protect your family and protect your cybersecurity footprint. But today we're going to talk about how Hector and I became friends and podcast hosts together and kind of go through that story. So, Hector, you're ready to relive this adventure that we've been on for the last 10 years or so?
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B
Yeah, I think we're going into year number 11 now. Yeah, I'm definitely down. I'm excited. And it's the first time that you and I have been able to really talk to the general audience about this story and kind of, you know, quell some of the falsehoods that we've seen in the media and the public and in books and films that we've seen our story in. Right. And it gives us an opportunity to kind of share the reality of it. You know, it was. It is an interesting story, and I think it's much more interesting than what you've probably read out there.
- [07:50]
A
Yeah, I think that's right. I think it's great to hear it in our voice, not in some other made up media form or something like that where they embellish or do it. But the stories don't need to be embellished. They're great as they are. So, Hector, why don't you start off? Why don't you give a little background of Sabu and how Sabu came to be formed?
- [08:11]
B
Yeah, yeah, 100%. Well, there was a point in my life where I was basically at home. I was pretty sad and depressed because I had lost my family to the war on drugs, man. You know, they just all went to prison. There was a time in the nineties in New York City, for those of you that remember those days in New York, Mayor Giuliani, he kind of went on a rampage. And depending on what side you stand on on the war on drugs, you could say that he did a great job or he did a terrible job, but he would go through entire neighborhoods, you know, one at a time. Like the Lower east side, for example, where I was from. And he just had the cops sweep entire groups of people, hundreds of people, into these. These massive conspiracy cases. It was effective, don't get me wrong. I'm pretty sure that he's responsible for cleaning up a lot of those neighborhoods in those days. But of course, my family were involved in the drug game. They all went to prison, including my grandma. And I was, you know, in the streets for a couple months now when my family was able to bail my grandma out. And, you know, I was home with her all day, every day. It was. I remember it was like the summer, the end of summer. And it was. It was a pretty down time, I'll be honest with you. I did get access to computer. I was able to get online thanks to my cousin. Kenny did a great job at introducing me to something different. And, you know, I went online, I Started watching some films on tv. I saw War Games and I saw Hackers and so on. And I was like, wow, I'm interested in this. I want to. I want to be a hacker, whatever that means. I had no idea what it meant, by the way, to be a hacker. And I read a manifesto called the Hackers Manifesto, or a conscious of a hacker by the mentor. And very similar to his fate, he knew he was going down by the FBI. This was back in the 80s. And so he kind of wrote this, this write up on, you know, his philosophy on hacking. What is a hacker? I read that and, you know, I went down the rabbit hole. And I eventually realized I needed to create a Persona that was sample and thanks to 1990s, 2000s era of, you know, the hacking scene especially, or specifically in relation to the Cult of Dead Cow, I became introduced or I was introduced to hacktivism. And that's kind of what led me down the path of meeting you eventually, you know, 10 years after that. Right?
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A
Yeah. So my upbringing was much different than yours, Hector. I did not grow up in New York City. I grew up in Virginia. I actually grew up next to the chief of police for the city I lived in. So a lot of influence there. When I'd be outside and he would come home with his gun and his badge and his car, and I thought it was pretty cool, but nobody in my family was in law enforcement. So, you know, I went to college. I went off from high school to college. Smart kid, got good grades and all that. I kind of got bit by the law enforcement bug again, you know, growing up next to the chief of police and that influence. And so at my local university, I joined some groups that were involved in law enforcement. It was called the Campus Cadets. It was a way to be a safe way home for people late at night. But. But we also had a police radio and keys to all the buildings. So, you know, a lot of interaction with law enforcement. So that led me to stay at my university once I graduated, because, again, I didn't want. Now didn't want to go to medical school. So I. I stayed and got a master's in computer science. I did that because there was a local cop that I became friends with, Sid Hartman. And Sid said, you know, this was 1998. Sid said, you know, computers are the wave of the future. They're going to be involved in every sort of crime. So I said, all right, then I'll stick around and I'll get a master's in computer science and I'll get Some experience in law enforcement, and that's what I did. So I graduated. I got a gun, a badge, and a piece of paper. And then I went to night school, working my way through, learning my ones and zeros. At the end of that, I had a good experience, a little bit of computer knowledge, and tried to put the two together. So I decided to put in my app for the FBI. And so then I found myself in the FBI, going around the world doing cybercrime. I was on a fly team out of Quantico that was traveling, like two weeks of it every three and got pretty busy. And so. But then I decided to go and head to New York City and become an FBI agent on what at the time was the premier cyber squad in all of the FBI. CY2 did criminal cyber intrusions. And around that same time, the word hacktivism was everywhere in the news. There were hacking people hacking in and trying to change the world through what the media labeled. And hacktivism, unfortunately, in the world I was in, hacktivism was the same as someone breaking into a computer to kiff it. Nefarious acts, which activism is. It's a violation of USC 18, 10, 30. Hacking into computer systems. Oh, yeah. So hacktivist is. Yeah, that's where we kind of met up. Around that time. There was a guy on the Internet that was raising all hell, going by the name Sabu. I've labeled it number of times as the Kaiser Sosei of hacking. Kind of the guy we were looking after. So let me ask you, why Sabu and what other names did you go through before you landed on Cebu?
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B
Well, that's funny. That's a great question. Well, when I was a baby, I've always been a big boy. Even when I was born, I was close to 10 pounds. My family originally used to call me Buddha. You know, like the. Like the Tibetan or Chinese Buddha, or whichever one is the. The, you know, the fat little one that you rub the belly, Right, Sure. So when I. When I first got online, my pseudonym was like, Buddha 13. It's funny that I remember getting. Getting online at. When I was 12 years old, and I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna put 13, because maybe I could lie about my age, you know, add a year to it, right? But I found another hacker at the time called Buddha as well, and we both agreed to change our names. He became Shot, so. Shot. You ever listen to this, you know, shout out to you? And then I became Sabu. Now, where I got Sabu from was. I was really big into wrestling. And back in those days, I'm not sure you remember, Chris, we had like an East Coast. It was like Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, maybe some other states. But they used to be, you know, wrestling organization called ECW or Extreme Championship Wrestling. It was very specific to the East.
- [14:57]
A
Yeah, sure, I know ecw. Absolutely.
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B
Yeah. Yeah. So ECW was very specific, like the east coast. And they would come on at two in the morning on, like, the MSG channel for me, I'm not sure what it was for you. And there was a guy named Sabu, and he was absolutely ridiculous and absurd, and he would, like, jump off of buildings and stuff. It was ridiculous. And I was like, well, I think my personality, or rather my Persona should probably be a reflection of this guy's, you know, hardcore, you know, whatever it is. So I kind of ran with it. I went with Sabu and, you know, kept it up.
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A
Homicidal, Genocidal.
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B
Ladies and gentlemen, this is sa.
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A
That's interesting that you want. You wanted a different Persona online. You wanted to match another guy who used a fake name and sort of a fake Persona. I'm sure the Sabu had a real name. I have no idea what it is. Do you know?
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B
Yeah, I know his name. Something Brunk or Brunt. He has, like, a normal name. It's like Richard or something.
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A
Yeah, it's like, is he still alive?
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B
Yeah, he's still alive. He's still doing this. I would love to meet him because
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A
he got to make that happen.
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B
I remember one day he was on Twitter and he was kind of pissed off that someone had. They were using the name Sabo, and he made a comment on Twitter. It was like, many years ago, and I wanted him up, like, dude, that's me. I'm sorry.
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A
Oh, okay. Now I know what we do all evening. Tried to see if we can book an event with him and see if we can get a picture. All right, so that's how Sabu was born. You saw wrestling and you wanted to bring it in. So bring me from Sabu to how you got involved in it with Anonymous.
- [16:41]
B
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And by the way, going back to Sabu, his actual name is Terry Brunk. I remember. I remember now. Okay, so how did Sabu join up forces or join forces or participate? Anonymous. I'll be honest with you. This is something I've mentioned before, maybe once. I don't think folks really paid attention at all. But the reality is, is that the hacking scene of, like, the 90s, early 2000s, there's a lot of hacking of Other hackers, that was kind of the thing. There were a lot of zero days in those days. And so if you were not trading zero day exploits or finding or developing them yourself, then what you want to do is, you know, compromise. Other hackers that, you know, they had their own toolkits. You know, this is like the time before metasploit where you would get a packaged platform console application that had a bunch of modules. You would have essentially your own toolkit within you and your group and you guys would have your own set of exploits. And almost every group had this. I had my own set of exploits with my own team. Back in those days they were called Purely. And then after Pure Lead, I joined forces with Pantera, was a Canadian hacker from Hackweiser. So I would spend some time with those guys for a little bit. But for the most part I was a loner. I looked at Anonymous as a potential, you know, pot of gold, right? You gotta remember that by the time Anonymous came into fruition or came into existence and they started hacking things, quote unquote, hacking things, 10 odd plus years had passed since I got involved with activism. My first hackers operation was in 2000 against the Chinese government. It was very close to my first major official activist operation, which was against the government of Puerto Rico and United States Navy. But that whole time I was a loner. I had built my career as a systems administrator. I spent a lot of time with unix. I was very hardcore into Unix and especially here in New York City in the scene. But you know, 2010, my grandmother passed away and that lady was like, you know, my everything. You know, when she passed away, you know, it just happens, I became a false apparent literally at the same time. And you know, I was going through a lot of emotional changes and it was a very difficult time for me. So the difference is, right, if you're a single man by yourself, you would probably shut yourself down or go see, go see a therapist or whatever. You, you would, you would deal with the problems however you dealt with it. My, my, my dealing with problems is shutting myself down for a while, okay? But at that point, 2010, I had the two little girls with me. You know, I was a foster parent and, and I couldn't. You can't just shut down when you have kids as a responsibility. So I kind of needed my alter ego back, my Persona. And I brought Sabu back from kind of like that semi retirement. And I looked at Anonymous, they were doing some big things in the news and I said, okay, well maybe I'll have some fun compromising these guys and see what kind of exploits they have. The joke's on me, though, because when I got involved with Anonymous, there were maybe, maybe at most two actual hackers. And one was Kayla, you know, Ryan Aykroyd, a good friend of mine. And the other one was probably, you know, one of the guys from like, Brazil or Slovenia, sorry, Slovakia, or who knows where. I forgot where. Where they came from. So with that being said, I started hacking with Anonymous. I grouped up with Kayla, and I was recruited by, you know, some dork that asked me questions about NMAP and SQL injections. And he had put together a group of people and they all had different skill sets. Okay, now the reason why I say the jokes on me is because by the time I joined up with Anonymous, it was already compromised by every special agents with Internet access from here to Italy. I remember the Italians had. They had their own cyber police within Anonymous. The Netherlands had their own special agents within Anonymous. So, yeah, so by the time I joined up, I was already compromised. Everybody was compromised. And in the beginning of the AN ops IRC network, there was very little obfuscation and operational personal security going on. So it kind of makes sense why most of us went down anyway. And I'll be honest with you, Chris, now maybe jumping the gun here a little bit, but I didn't care. I think that I needed something. I needed a reality check. And thankfully, that was when you knocked on my door.
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A
Yeah, we're not quite there. So you are jumping the gun, Tad. So I'm sitting in the FBI. I'm on CY2. I'm one of the new agents on there, and we're working on cases. And again, you know, we have this Anonymous crew that's going around doing any. Anything and anything they want to and then forms a group that comes out of Anonymous. They call themselves Lulser, laughing at your security. And then they start hacking into everything. They're in the news every single day. This is a hacking crew that does not care what, what, what they're doing. They want the media attention. They're taking cryptocurrencies as people can donate to them. People can make suggestions to them. They really started going crazy. And then they started hacking into an FBI site, Infra Guard, which is an affiliate of the FBI. So it really raises the attention internally. And so, you know, bosses start talking about this sort of thing, kind of putting pressure. You know, we need to get some. Do something about this. You know, field offices all around the country are starting to really go pay attention to this LulzSec, this, this hacking crew online. Around that same time, I'm given a lead by my boss. And the way that works is, you know, each squad has a supervisor. Leads come into that, that squad and the supervisor assigns it, you know, who would be good and makes a decision and who would be good for it, who can do it. I got a lead that a local hacker, which I'm not going to name is, was hacking into aol. And we knew he's local to New York and so my assignment was to go out in there and find him and ask him what the hell he's doing. So in the FBI, you always take someone else with you, you never go cover leads yourself. One of the reasons for that is it's a code called 18 USC 1,100, where it's illegal to lie to an FBI agent. So you would bring another FBI agent. So if they lie to you, you have a witness for it, for the crime. So you're the victim and perpetrator and then the other witness. So anyways, Olivia Olsen, great agent, I think she's a supervisor out in LA now. She's a really, really good agent. Her and I headed out and we heard them. So it was in Staten island, so we headed out that way. We drove around and we tried all the different places where we had addresses for his dad or his mom. All over town, knocking on doors and they didn't know who the hell we were talking about. We finally showed up at his grandmother's house, which is in. Was kind of a known rough part of Staten Island. Didn't expect it. We had a long day, didn't expect any answers. Knocked on the door, no answer. Finally, a woman sticks her head out the upstairs window and, and says, who? You know, who the hell are you? What are you? We show him the badges and we talk and we say we're looking for so and so. And she says, I don't know where he is. And I said, okay, well, I'm just gonna leave this business card in the mailbox. And if, if you find him or see him, tell him I'm looking for him, give me a call, go back to the office, take care of everything that head home. And later that night, about 9 o' clock or so, I got a call from an unknown number on my FBI cell phone. And I answered it and it was the guy I was looking for. I said, you know this, I'd like to talk to you and, and see what's going on. And he says, okay, I'll Meet you Tomorrow at the McDonald's across the street from the FBI in. In Manhattan. So, okay, so Olivia Olsen and I and another agent named Jordan Lloyd, we went over, and there and behold, this guy shows up. And he sits there, um, and he starts talking and going through. And he's. He's telling lies and half truths. And that's kind of why I knew. I knew he was a criminal. And at one point, he even admits to three or four different felonies. I said, let's just keep letting. Keep talking. Maybe we'll see what happens. But eventually, he says. He says what I was looking for. He said, you know, I can give you Sabu. Now, like I said before, Sabu at that time was the Kaiser sosei of hack. And he was the guy everybody was looking for. He was the one the bosses were putting pressure on. You know, he was the leader of Lulsex, the leader for what we saw at the time, the leader of Anonymous, the guy with all the hacking power. And so my. This guy said exactly what we were looking for. You know, Sabu. He said he knew Sabu in real life. And we would see, you know, let's see what we can do. So we send him off. We go back and brief the bosses. And we're like, now we have a plan. Let's. Let's use this guy to lure out Sabu and make an arrest. Let's send him into a bar. Let's wire him up. We'll wire up the bar. We'll have agents in there. We'll see what we can do. But because this guy who lived in New York City knew or said he knew my. He said he knew who Sebu was. We said, let's go back in history, too. So make your plan for the bar and luring outside, but let's also look at all the old hacks of Lulsek and see what we can find. What we can find that leads us back to New York City. What's the connection? You know, needle in a haystack. So we go through all the logs, and there's this one hack into Fox. Fox News. Or it was a television show. No, it was a television. It wasn't Fox News. It was a television show on Fox. And tens of millions of lines, all except all of them lined up and everything good except for this one IP address. And a subpoena was sent out, and it came back to Hector Montegor of New York, New York. So that was our lead, our investigative lead when we started looking into maybe there was a connection between Sabu and Hector Monsignor.
- [26:51]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's funny how life works. It's a small world. And by the way, for the audience, I. I didn't know who that guy was. Like, I had no personal relationship with him. He was kind of like what you would call, like a groupie in that. In that culture in that scene. But he was right, though.
- [27:06]
A
I was like a bacterial leech on. On that group.
- [27:10]
B
Yeah, no, absolutely. He was trying to get some Internet clout. That was a thing still back in those days. And. But he was right. I was from New York City, and that was enough to kind of lead the FBI into that one direction. And it was also people at the time, like, doxing me online and they found little tidbits. And, you know, the reality is I kind of. I kind of expected to knock on the door. Right. I didn't know exactly when that would be, but the day that it did happen, I'm telling you, man, you know, I'm not, I'm not. I'm no religious person, by no means, but I did feel all sorts of feelings and premonitions.
- [27:45]
A
And your feelings were right because you had a covert FBI team following you around all day. So, you know, a group of people of agents that don't look like agents were following you around. And then that day, about 6 o', clock, someone who I guess we won't name, but they know who they are, put your information or your docs online. And to be honest, then, you know, we didn't have a whole lot to go on, but it scared the out of us that you would pack up and we'd never see Sabu again because, you know, we felt you would follow online and if they were dead on to the information we had saying, Sabu is this person. To be honest with you, I did not understand until, you know, long into our relationship that people did that all the time, that that wasn't a big deal to, you know, get doxed in real life. And then you just social engineer your way out of it and say it's not really you.
- [28:37]
B
Well, at that time, they, you know, I would say the people that were involved in that, you know, usually people that are not really hackers, they want to be part of the scene. They still, you know, those kind of people still exist. Like, there was a big story recently, like Kiwi Farms, they got, you know, kicked off of Cloudflare. And when you looked at that form, it was nothing but people like that that sat there all day, every day, looking for information on people. And Just like putting people's names out. And I never really understood it. Have I done doxing in the past? Yeah, there was at least one occasion where I did, and that was to scare somebody off. But the reality is, is that I didn't expect the amount of people that hated my guts because I admit, my Persona, I was a. I was an asshole. Okay, I get it. Saboo and Hector Monser, two completely different people.
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A
Did Sabu have to be an asshole, though, to we. We like power online? Did people have to be scared of you?
- [29:32]
B
Well, you got to understand that when I was quote, unquote, growing up, right, the guys that I looked up to were groups like L8. You know, those are the guys that created the original anti movements. And many of them were very funny. But there's at least one guy I can't mention. His name is a very inappropriate name, but that guy was super aggressive. And if I were to say that Sabu was a culmination of two or three things. Maybe let's say Sabu the wrestler, right? And then maybe fiber optic, because he was like that very smart guy and masters of deception. And I, you know, when I read the books and I heard the stories and I went online and started downloading all the old zines and. And finding old chat logs from IRC back in the 80s, you know, I started looking at him and he wasn't aggressive. He was pretty, pretty chill. I liked him. And I. And I studied, you know, UNIX because of that guy. But then this other guy from that original anti SE movement or phc, the frack Height council or whatever, that guy was super aggressive. And I was like, maybe Sabu needs to be like that, you know? And at the same time, I'm getting my own personal internal frustrations out in the world because I was confused, right? And my grandmother passed away. I didn't know how to deal with it. So I created a very, I would say tactical in operation, but also aggressive in personality Persona. And that's what Sabu ended up being.
- [31:13]
A
So back to that day when you got doxed and we got scared. So the team's outside your house, they know you're inside your house. They tell us you're up on the sixth floor and you haven't seen any movement for a while. Our boss, like I said, the. The squad supervisor, he's on vacation and just breaks bad. So we get our boss's boss and his boss online, give him the explanation, and they say, just go. We're gonna go. We're gonna get this guy. We're gonna sit down and we're gonna see we can find out. So, I mean, we're in shorts and T shirts and sneakers. We do not look like FBI agents. Still the. The short cropped hair and the, you know, the gun in the side. But outside of that, you know, so we're race up to the Lower east side. There was very few agents still in the squad. At six, like I said, six o' clock at night, we get out and all we have is our. Our turtle shells. They're called turtle shells.
- [32:02]
B
They.
- [32:03]
A
It's a green bulletproof vest with big gold letters across the back. FBI. I'm sure you've seen them on the news. So again, shorts and T shirts and sneakers and a turtle shell. The boss's boss, a guy named Dan, he stopped at the local NYPD and got us some ballistic shields and a sledgehammer. I don't know why. I mean, we didn't have a search warrant. If you didn't open the door, it's not like we can knock it down. But we had it. And we arrived in the Lower east side and people thought it was kind of strange, all of us there. Somebody held the door for us at your building. So they got you partly on that way. But then we had to make a decision. Are we going to take the stairs? Are we going to take the elevator? We had been trapped in an elevator before, and there's nothing more embarrassing when the New York City Fire Department has to come again. A bunch of FBI agents out of an elevator. So up six floors, turtle shells and ballistic shields. We get to the top, and luckily you had a hallway that kind of turned around where we could kind of hide down the hall, around the corner. And then we decided that my partner and I. Milan, I went up and I knocked on your door, and that's when your door opened just a crack. And it's the first time I saw you.
- [33:15]
B
Yeah.
- [33:15]
A
Yeah.
- [33:15]
B
I mean, I found it weird that when you guys first knocked on the door, you said police. And that wasn't you, it was your partner. And it was like, police. Why the hell are the police here? And, yeah, I remember I walked out into the hallway and I closed the door behind me, and I was like, okay, well, I'm gonna have to face reality. And I knew that was gonna happen, by the way, because I felt that I crossed the line with Infragard for sure. There was an Infragard hack that happened like that same week or the week before, and I had a feeling that was gonna stir a bunch of drama. So, you know, it was an interesting time. And I'll be honest with you, when you first knocked on the door and we started talking in the hallway, I remember the first thing that you guys said is, well, something, something, something, the IP goes to this address. I was like, yeah, well, I offer free Internet to the entire building. They're like, no, no, no, it's you. You know, and that was, that was a fun one for me because you guys, you know, you, I'm looking at you guys, you guys, you, you're the first one I noticed all aside because you look so out of place. Like, like you had shorts on or something. And you had like a, like a white, you had like a white tee or something. Then he had the bulletproof vest, a
- [34:23]
A
white T shirt, an undershirt, sneakers and a bulletproof vest. That's all I had.
- [34:28]
B
And I was like, this is not what I see on TV when you see an FBI.
- [34:31]
A
We were planning on doing something that night. It wasn't supposed to happen like that.
- [34:35]
B
Well, I'll tell you, man, it was interesting and then.
- [34:38]
A
But you definitely did try to talk your way out of it sitting out in your hallway.
- [34:41]
B
Yeah, you know, listen, you know, it's. I mean, I'm a social engineer at heart, so I still had to try at least something for a minute or two, you know.
- [34:49]
A
But then we asked you if we could go inside and you let us go inside. What, what crossed your mind? Did you think you had to let us inside?
- [34:55]
B
No, I, I'll be honest with you. I'm a realist. And I knew I was. I was fucked, right? Yeah, I knew that was my honest opinion. I knew I was fucked. And so I realized, and this is something no one's ever heard before, so this is going to be some zero day information, but I kind of had a mitigation plan, if you noticed, without going into details, you don't have to talk about it because I know there's some national security stuff, but when you guys came inside and, and you know, I gave you guys my laptop.
- [35:24]
A
No, that. You're getting too ahead of yourself, but go ahead.
- [35:26]
B
Yeah, well, whatever. The point is that once, once, Once we got to the point, right? I am going ahead of myself, but once we got to the point where we agreed it. Let's, let's kind of talk and there was a discussion about, you know, it may not even been. There may have been back in the office, but it was a discussion about like, you know, hey, by the way, I have this thing, right? There was a thing on that computer.
- [35:50]
A
Yeah.
- [35:51]
B
But there was nothing else in that computer.
- [35:53]
A
Well, that thing was pretty big, so. Yeah.
- [35:55]
B
Yeah. Well, that was. That was my mitigation plan. Right. But I figured I've. I've learned enough about the FBI that they're willing to work with you. If you're not an asshole and you're not, like, a pedophile or like a terrorist, they're willing to work with you.
- [36:08]
A
Yeah. I will say that, you know, I set up my initial opinion of you, you know, a little bit, trying to find you. But then when you were invited us into your house and we sat at your kitchen table to have a discussion, you stepped up and you said, let's sit down and let's discuss it. Now, I will say, on my way over to your kitchen table, I noticed that a laptop, a charger, was on the floor, but there was no laptop to be found. And eventually we got to the conversation. I said, where's the computer? He said, there's no computer here. A blinking Verizon, the WI FI connection, and a laptop computer in the middle of your family room floor. So a little bit of lies. But. But again, I appreciated sitting, you know, coming into your home. You invited me into your home, sitting at your kitchen table, and we talked like men. Oh, yeah. And I think that was my approach for the rest of the way.
- [36:58]
B
Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, that's. That's kind of what I mean. That. That was. Listen, when you. When. When you face a point where, like, you know, you've crossed the point of no return, you're gonna have to just deal with it. You're gonna have to suck it up. I messed up. I knew exactly what I was doing. I messed up. And, you know, this is why I had that thing, you know, ready and available. But not only that, the. The reality is that at that moment, I was still a foster parent, and I was thinking about the girls, and I was like, okay, well, you know what? I'm gonna have to eat this and deal with it. And there's one thing that people don't realize, and I wish that more law enforcement, if I. And I'm hoping there's any cops listening to this, I hope they take. Take a note here. And. And I'm sure they know this stuff already. This is not. This is not new. But because you spoke to me like a man, and we had mutual respect for each other, we were able to kind of figure the situation out. And the one thing I always tell people is that, you know, the reason why Chris and I are Friends is because not only was Chris real with me, and, you know, he also kept his word. That goes a long way. And I'm sure law enforcement, you know, did more of that. They would have much better relationships with the community. And, And I mean, look, every situation is different. In our situation, at least in mine, you and I figured that out. And, you know, I had a reality check, and I knew that, you know, I had to do the right thing.
- [38:23]
A
As a cop, you can be an. It's real easy to be an. You've got authority, you've got a gun, you've got backup, you've got friends there. Really hard to undo being an. So you should never be an unless you're provoked. To have to be an, you know, law enforcement goes quick, too quick to. To. To be mean. You can't undo it. And so you showed that respect. And I, I think, you know, in my position, that was the only thing I could do back is to have to show that, show that same respect. That's what, that's what you responded to. That's how you. Your personality worked out. So that's what I responded back to. And so it worked out. So. So we sat there for about two hours again. We finally got the laptop, talked about. What'd you do with the laptop? When I knocked on your door, the time before you answered it, and before I went inside, there was only a few seconds. What'd you do with that laptop?
- [39:14]
B
Okay, so that's a great question. So I am, again, I'm going to tell you guys something that you. You may. You may not know. I think, you know, I think I've told you this before. So basically, he was. His was gonna happen. I knew the knock was gonna come. I knew that I had something I could work with, but I wasn't 100% sure. So the idea was, you know, as soon as, like, let's say you guys raided me or something, that laptop was going right out the window. It's gonna smash into pieces. And the hard drive would probably be destroyed from all the shock from the, from the drop, but it required a second person. And, you know, at the time, as you remember, I was taking care of my brother. He's mentally, you know, has mental issues. I did not want to involve my little brother in that and get him locked up, too. Yeah. So I aborted that mission. I said, you know what? Yeah, just, you know, I, I'll. I'll, I'll. I'll play with them a little bit and let them know there's no laptop Here and kind of see where they at. There was something that you did show me that immediately changed my perspective. Right. And I realized, okay, let's. Let's just deal with this situation as is. This is around the time that you and I sat down on the table and I'm not sure we want to get into. That was basically the Facebook messages, right?
- [40:23]
A
Yeah.
- [40:23]
B
Well, for whatever reason, Facebook decided to keep my data in retention. And the reason why I bring this up is because I deleted my Facebook account. Like, I went through all the steps and I, you know, I deleted and I pressed buttons. I did everything I had to do. But my old Facebook had some real, like, stupid messages. And once I saw that, I was like, okay, cool, I know where I stand now. And let's just face this funny story,
- [40:47]
A
though, on that laptop. Just to go back to that real quick. After your arrest became public and all that, we're talking a year later, so we actually got calls from museums that wanted that laptop to go into a museum, which I thought would be interesting, but the FBI didn't allow it because it was. It was. You know, it's weird. Did you give it up? Is it still your property and all that? So they just kind of dropped it after a while. But pretty interesting that they wanted your laptop for a hacker. A hacking section of a museum. Big museum in D.C. yeah, no, I know.
- [41:19]
B
They. They opted to use someone else's laptop in return. Well, they use. They got two laptops, one laptop. One of DC has. What's that guy's name? The Jester. There you go. They have his laptop. And then somewhere else, I think the spy museum in New York, they have someone else's laptop that wasn't even a hacker. I don't know why they have his laptop there, but yeah, whatever you guys would have decided to do, the laptop doesn't matter. I would have went over there to pictures with it. The.
- [41:45]
A
The stuff in Facebook that we had. Did you think that we only had you on that and didn't have you connected to Sabu? Did you think you could wiggle out of the Sabu stuff?
- [41:53]
B
No, I already. I already pinpointed all my failure points again. You gotta remember, I didn't care at that point. I was really depressed. I knew that I had a co worker who was working for the government in New York City that immediately flipped the switch on me. That was one guy. And by the way, I saw that guy in a gas station, and he just, like, ran, like. He just, like, drove off in his car. And I'm like, Bro, I'm not gonna risk going to prison for you. That's for sure. But, yeah, so I had that one guy that he wanted to be junior FBI agent himself, and he figured he could do that. And then there was. There was several other, you know, pieces of the puzzle to kind of figure out. This is something I didn't. There's a woman online by the name of Theodore Michaels. I much love to her. She took me to Broadway a couple years ago. She's a wonderful lady. Big shout out to her and her husband, that lady. She did her own external investigation. She's an attorney. She did her own internal investigation, and she did a whole bunch of research, and she identified, like, 12 different points of failure for the Sabu personality. Some of them were people. Some of them were like the docs, for example. And I was impressed with that research. You know, the point is that Saba was going down regardless. That's the point.
- [43:01]
A
Yeah. That's interesting if you. I think, to read that sometime. So anyways, we sat at your kitchen table, and I think it was about two hours. I mean, my boss's boss was out in the hallway and would send in a messenger every once in a while to see where things were going and what was happening. And we're getting. We're getting midnight now here. So by the time we finally get there and, you know, you come around and you finally say the words, I am Saboo. You know, it took a little bit to finally get to that. Which probably was tough to free on your end, right?
- [43:30]
B
Well, it was tough because not only am I thinking about myself, I'm thinking about the two girls.
- [43:33]
A
Yeah.
- [43:34]
B
And you and I had that conversation.
- [43:36]
A
Yeah. Trust me, I was thinking about the two girls, too. I mean, I'm not. You know, I'm not. I have children. There's no way I was, you know, not thinking about, you know, the parent side of things, but, you know, again with my boss's boss and his boss out in the hallway, it's.
- [43:47]
B
Yeah, it's hard.
- [43:48]
A
Sort of gets out of control there. So we. We do our thing. I think we. We got the girls into some family member to come over. Right. Or something to. To watch them.
- [43:59]
B
Yeah, we had a family member come over, the kids, stood with them overnight, and then you and I went off into the. Into the sunset.
- [44:06]
A
We headed downtown, and that was a strange I for. I don't know who's driving, but you and I sat in the backseat. And while. From the. The ride from your house down to FBI, which is what at that time of night, you know, 10, 15 minutes at most. I got three phone calls from FBI agents all around the country saying I got the wrong guy. That's not the right guy. That's not Cebu. That's how competitive it was. Like, you know, because like I said, the bosses wanted the. The Lulzec stuff. And I was like, I'm pretty sure it's the guy. And they all wanted, like, why I thought it was. And I was like, well, he said he was him, so. So, you know, it kind of helps. It's kind of a clue. But again, they still didn't believe me. So it was a strange ride.
- [44:45]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [44:46]
A
And we get down to. Down to the FBI and we start talking and you start telling about some things. Like, you said you had some information. Your laptop. And you were part of a crew. Like, we Talked with the LulzSec. There were six guys. You guys had a contingency plan, right? If one of you guys wasn't online for a certain amount of time?
- [45:03]
B
Yeah, yeah. There was like, you know, Operation Sabo and Operation Kayla. Like, we were not. We were not. I think there was a more better name. There was a better name, rather, but it was basically, hey, if Sabu disappears, let's just wreak havoc and release everything in one shot. Because we did a lot of hacking. I would say that over a period of like, let's say a month, 30 days or something.
- [45:25]
A
We.
- [45:26]
B
When I say we, I'm about Ryan Akro tonight because the other four couldn't hack themselves out of paper bags. But, you know, Ryan and I, we went on a rampage. We were compromising and we followed a methodology. You know, that's. That's what made us successful as adversary group. We followed methodology, was compromising a ton of assets. And the point was, if Cebu disappears, if X disappears or Y disappears, then we would just wreck havoc and just release everything. That's kind of the idea.
- [45:52]
A
And how do we keep that ticking time bomb from going off?
- [45:55]
B
That was a great question. I think. I'll be honest, I forgot the detail. Maybe it was something as simple as, hey, you know, I couldn't pay my Internet bill or something.
- [46:02]
A
I think it was it on Twitter or irc.
- [46:04]
B
It was on Twitter. I posted something. Yeah, yeah, right. I posted something like, hey, I'm. I'm. I'm taking a break or some shit. I forgot exactly what it was.
- [46:10]
A
Yeah. The next day, these guys were all over your ass about things like. But you, You. You engineered them about, you know, dealing with your grandma and stuff like that, oh yeah. So then we sat down and kind of explained. Now I will say this is sort of a different thing for the FBI. You know, the FBI has a history of, you know, arresting a guy very low in the mobile and then working his way up to the boss and all the way up to the head of the mafia. That's sort of how we did it. But now in our eyes at the time, we sort of had, we had again, same, same thing. Kaiser Soze of hacking. We had the great Sabu in our, in our possession. So normally we would, you know, historically we would just say this is our guy. Look what we did, we stopped crime. We're the greatest thing ever. But we decided to sit down and kind of really understand what's going on in the hacking world. You know, what, what better inside than, you know, having Sabu with us? And so I think I sort of explained what it would look like and what it would be like. Was it different from that first night to what it really was? Or did you. Was your experience? You know, would you have done it differently?
- [47:16]
B
In regards to making the decision I made because of my circumstances, I more than likely would have made a decision regardless.
- [47:23]
A
But I didn't give you a choice, to be honest with you. I mean, really, you know, I was telling, explaining to you you were facing 125 years. Or you can sit here and work with the FBI and tomorrow, tomorrow morning before the girls even wake up, you'll be sitting back in your house. I mean, yeah, anyone that blames you for making that decision is an asshole.
- [47:39]
B
Oh yeah, Well, I mean, some of these knuckleheads that they still to this day make threats or call me a, you know, racial term or whatever it is. And you know, these guys in their minds and their fantasy minds in their, in their minor fantasies rather, if they were in my position, they would have fought you and got to a fist fight with you and like shot it out with you and like, you know, because there's, they're stuck in that, that bullshit anarchist mentality. The reality is, is that 99.9 of them would fold. In fact, you know, when I went to MCC several months later, and I know I'm jumping the gun a little bit, I remember walking into MCC and there was literally writing on the wall somebody, they must have boofed a marker. We could talk about boofing some other time, but they must have boofed a marker into the prison and they wrote a mess on the, on the wall. As soon as you walk in, it says something like you know, 75% are snitching. 5% are about to. 5% wish they could. And the other 10 are like, whatever, they're. They're lifers. Whatever, they're done. It was some. It was something like that.
- [48:40]
A
I remember the math went on, accounted for then, so be careful.
- [48:44]
B
Yeah. And 5%, whatever. Right. But it was. It was something. It was something like that. I had a really. Had a reality check. I'm like, wow. You know, regardless of what people are saying online, most of them would have. They folded for free anyway. A lot of people folded online without even have to. Even have to go to jail.
- [48:58]
A
People would fold for some media exposure.
- [49:01]
B
Yeah. No. So, you know, for me, my concern was my family. It was my girls. That's one. Two was my little brother. I didn't want my little brother to get caught up in this. And then three, going back to his Facebook messages would really put me in a hot, hot seat with you guys. On the Facebook messages wasn't about necessarily. Well, some of it was hacking, but not really. It was some other stuff that I had a very stupid family member, you know, communicate back and forth with me. And as much as I really disliked that guy, I didn't want you guys to bother him, you know, like, go knock on his door and. Because he. I know he wasn't mentally right. So I was like, okay, I'm going to have to just deal with this. But yeah, it was. It was interesting. The whole experience was interesting.
- [49:45]
A
Oh.
- [49:45]
B
So going back to your question directly, I did not. I expected something different. I'll be honest with you. I think that what you guys realize is that I didn't really know anybody. Right. Like, I didn't know these people's identities. And that's something we discussed literally on day one. Would you guys seem more interested in, was like, methodology, why we do things, how we do things, how we are organized, how we're not organized, and of course, exploits and stuff like that. It seemed like the intelligence of it was more important to you than. Who is kayla? Right?
- [50:16]
A
Yeah. 100%. 100% knowing what was going on in the hacking world, how victims were targeted, how, you know, groups came together, you know, the. The ideas behind what really. I mean, we had the results. We had, you know, Company, ABC was hacked into. They came in this way. We. We knew that, but we want to know why that company was picked, why that, you know, how is that exploit. You know, how is that exploit being used? And, you know, the intelligence that came out of that, the people, man, that was Side, you know, that's for show and flash and be able to make the news. But the intelligence really is, is. Was the key to the whole thing. So it, it grew quickly for me. I mean, so we had that. That night where we sat and we talked and you know, the next day the lawyers got involved and we sat down and we offered what's called a proffer session where you tell us everything bad that you've ever done and we, you end up having to plead guilty to it and, you know, we can't use it against you later on. That was odd for me. So I've arrested people before, and when you arrest someone, the next day they go, or that day they go before a magistrate judge. Well, because you had decided to work with us, we had to go to the head of the courts, the chief justice of sdny and she allowed us to have you go before a magistrate judge in a non public forum. Never heard of it before, never seen it, didn't even know that could even happen. So your experience of being walked into a courtroom and then walked right back out by the FBI, no handcuffs or anything, that is a very unique experience.
- [51:50]
B
Yeah. And I just want to say this, this is not related to what you just said at all, but a big shout out to the chief judge. She was a. It's a wonderful lady. I sent her a letter many years ago thanking her for, for, you know, seeing the situation as is and giving me an opportunity as a second chance at life. But yeah, so that, that was, that was weird to me too, because again, I've never seen that in movies. Right. Usually it's just like, you know, there's some sort of court, there's something that takes place and, and even though it did, walking into that empty courtroom was very weird.
- [52:20]
A
Yeah, it was weird for me, dude. I, like, no one had ever heard about this. Nobody I worked with had ever seen anything like this. So very, very strange situation. So, I mean, that was the start of the next eight months where you and I sat side by side and you know, we lost count. At one point there was over 300 hacks that you had stopped into US government agencies or entities, military and all that. Thousands of hacks into companies where we tried to, you know, let them know what was happening without blowing the source. The intelligence of how hacks happened, how crews came together. You know, you did a lot of good. All that eight months of hard work that we spent together there every single day. And I put a lot of pressure. I mean, it was your job. You know, we were Together for eight, nine hours a day, I take you home. You'd raise the girls and have your main job there. I'd go back and have to do, you know, write all this up and go crazy with it. You know, that's why at your sentencing, the, the same judge you just talked about, she thanked you for your service. I mean, you went from facing 125 years in prison to being thanked by the chief justice of one of the toughest court systems, you know, in the country because of all the, the hard work and effort you put in. I mean, you had a lot of major, you know, results. You know, you, you didn't promise anything in the beginning. You did say you didn't know anybody, and that was true. You didn't know anybody. You just, I mean, you thought Kayla was a 17 year old girl. I truly believe you thought that turns out to be Ryan Aykroyd, 34 year old guy. But, you know, we worked hard. You, you, you gave everything you had and you, you earned, you know, that, that appreciation from the judge.
- [54:10]
B
Yeah, yeah. No, it was, it was definitely surreal because when it came out to sentencing, my attorney, big shout out to Peggy, Peggy's off the hook. And her speech was so wonderful, made me emotional. And then as soon as the judge started speaking, I stood up and my attorney was like, no, no, no, sit down. And the judge was like, no, it's okay, I respect that he wants to stand up. And I was like, okay, cool. But she's such a. I don't think people realize that when you're facing the chief judge of the Southern district of New York. Like you said, it's one of the toughest districts in this country or court systems in this country. I was like, she's still gonna throw the book at me because this lady is very strict.
- [54:56]
A
Did you think you're going to jail that day?
- [54:58]
B
Yeah, I thought I was gonna do at least another five years or something. I'll be honest with you, that's between us because again, it's not like I'm facing a little rinky dink judge. We're looking, we're talking about the judge of judges. And you know, and I was, I was, I was like, wow, you know, I, I understand, I get it. So, yeah, it was definitely surreal, that entire experience. And then I remember the media circus outside. As soon as I walked out, people like following me around to the car. It was very weird.
- [55:25]
A
Yeah, the, when you went into court, I didn't know if you're going to jail or not. I mean, Then no one told me. I mean, it really is just. The judge knows. I mean, the lawyers don't know or anybody. So it scared the shit out of me. All that time together, you know, I had watched in my mind you transformed from Sabu, the guy I was chasing down, to just a man that let me in his house and sat at his kitchen table and discussed, you know, a hard topic for. For two grown men to discuss, you know, from. From different sides. And then we spent eight months together, and that's when I got to know Hector. Monsignor Sabu was something we typed into on the computer, but Hector Monster was the guy sitting next to me. So, you know, the evolution changed, and I really liked Hector Monster. And so, you know, because of legal reasons and the. I was an FBI agent. You were, you know, going through the court system, you know, we couldn't really communicate too much. But after that day when she let you, you know, she thanked you for your service, and you walked out of the court, you know, I was really excited about our friendship that we started. Well, we were working together in the FBI, was going to blossom. And so, you know, I don't remember who reached out to who first. I think maybe you reached out to me, and we started talking, and then this friendship grew, and now, you know, you're one of my closest friends that, you know, which, going back to that June night, it seems strange for me to say, but, you know, we talk about personal things. You know, you. You know, my family, you know, you know, I know your family. We. We get together. We. You know, I've been in your home, and so now we have this podcast together. So I'm excited.
- [57:05]
B
Yeah, no, 100%. Like, I. I never expected that. I'll be honest with you. Like, I definitely considered you a friend by the end of those eight months. And I. I'll be honest with you as well. I was always so bummed, also bummed that we couldn't speak anymore. You know, I was like, damn. Oh, that sucks. I had a friend for eight months, and that's. That's it. It's over. But then I remember, like, once my case was done and once, like, you know, you left the FBI, at some point, you retired. That's when we were able to really talk. And honestly, that was one of the best things that happened to me because, you know, I don't think a lot of people, a lot of folks understand that regardless of what you think about me or how the case ended or whatever, I still did time, and I still had to deal with the consequences that other prisoners have to deal with. I had supervised release and it was extremely hard for me to get a job or even get, you know, a foot in the door anywhere. And I was stressed out and I was dealing with that by myself. And I remember that when I was finally able to speak to you, like after everything, you know, you gave me a lot of inspiration and motivation and you always reminded me of my character, who I am as a man. It helped me a lot, Chris, believe it or not, dude, like that helped me it keep me going. That's my point.
- [58:13]
A
Well, I mean, you do the same. I bounce ideas off you. You know, I formed this new company, Naxo, and you know, you were my biggest cheerleader when I was thinking of the idea, you know, it's, you know, you support in anything. I mean, you were the first one to say, you know, anything you need, I'll help you with it. So, yeah, again, close friend and now podcast co host.
- [58:34]
B
Oh yeah.
- [58:35]
A
I think our vision for the podcast is that we're going to get on here once a week and give you new episodes every Thursday. We're going to talk about cyber security. We're going to talk about cyber in the news. We're going to tell fun hacking stories. We'll tell stories where we've messed up good FBI stories, good hacking stories from Hector. He's always an encyclopedia of hacking. And then we're going to look for users questions. People listening to the podcast can, you know, will have an email address or they can call in and they and leave us questions and we'll answer your cyber security questions. Really looking forward to the, the next who knows how many years, but I definitely think years of making this podcast together and just being friends, to be honest. That first 10 minutes when we sign on before we hit record that that's the best time just to, to catch up and see what's going on with each other.
- [59:26]
B
Oh yeah, 100 man. I completely agree. And you know, the one thing I'll say is that, you know, what I thought was cool about this project is that, you know, you and I could be ourselves, which again, most people don't really know what they know about you is from what they read in the newspapers. What they know about me is what they read in newspapers or read the newspapers. So it's going to be interesting, you know, a fly in the wall scenario. And then we could also talk about, you know, the thing for me as a security practitioner and someone is an enthusiast, I've always wanted to be able to sit down with folks and just chat about. Wow, did you hear about that latest act with X, Y and Z of here's how it happens. What do you think about that in terms of remediation, how to deal with that? And I know we're going to touch on that stuff. So we're going to nerd it out and we're going to have some fun stories. And I'm looking forward to that. And I think every Thursday is a solid, solid release day for sure.
- [60:17]
A
Well, I think that's great. I think there's a good first episode of Hacker in the Fed. We'll kick it over to our great producer Phineas and leave it for him. So, Hector, I look forward to talking about the latest news in Cyber and telling some fun stories next week. I will talk to you next week.
- [60:34]
B
All right, Cheers.