Meet Chris Roberts, IT Security
For episode 131 of the UNSECURITY Podcast, Evan and Brad are joined by long-time friend, Chris Roberts. Chris’s early life and trajectory in IT security both provide countless stories and lessons, so the three of them open the floor to whatever comes to mind! Give this episode a listen or watch and send questions, comments, or feedback to unsecurity@protonmail.com!
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Podcast Transcription:
[00:00:23] Evan Francen: All right. Welcome listeners. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the un security podcast. This is episode 131 And the date is May 11, Joining Me is my good friend. I’m going to call you my info sec buddy, Brad Nigh. I like you, you know, uh and my partner in crime, we gotta go commit some crimes. So bad. Good to see you man. Also joining the security podcast is our special guest, my good friend, absolutely adore this guy. Mr Chris Roberts. Welcome friend. It’s an honor to have you.
[00:00:59] Chris Roberts: How are you? Good. Thank you. So good to be on and hanging out.
[00:01:04] Evan Francen: Yeah man. One of my favorite things every week. You know, we do this shit show on thursday nights. Um man, you just get to know you and Ryan more and more in. It’s awesome. I love
[00:01:18] Chris Roberts: it. Yes, fun, hanging out just talking. I mean that’s the crazy thing about it. We just thought and they’re just kind of wanders. I mean we kind of pick a topic fish. Yeah, but hey, I was speaking of topics, I know what I want to do. I did a I did a What the hell? They didn’t link 10% about last night about crime. I like the whole committing crime thing and I’m like, I really want to do that one. I don’t really want to do that one down there. I want to ask you see if it’s possible still at the plot to actually to be able to get away with it to actually do something and get away with it with all the electronic surveillance, somebody else these days. I’m just like, damn, I was just working it out in the head and I’m like, so we need to do a shit on at some point whenever it’s my turn. What? I will figure it out.
[00:02:04] Evan Francen: What numbers are this week? Mhm. Shit, I don’t remember. You got to be a good one down there.
[00:02:11] Chris Roberts: Uh Yeah, I’m intrigued. That’s um Yeah, I mean, it used to be as I think I said in the in the long term Poets used to be easy, you know, just basically whack over the head of the lump power and just off to the nearest body Big Farm, it’s gonna weigh more freaking complicated these days. My
[00:02:29] Evan Francen: wife watches so many of those crime shows, you know those 41st 48 and also the stuff that I’m certain she could offer me and nobody would ever
[00:02:39] Chris Roberts: know.
[00:02:44] Evan Francen: We went to that axe throwing place, man, they get that axe throwing place in victoria. It’s called for tomorrow. She is a ringer with that damn thing. I’m scared.
[00:02:55] Brad Nigh: I’m
[00:02:57] Chris Roberts: so that’s awesome. That’s awesome. But uh did it the renaissance festival a couple of years ago. I just giggled because I mean I’m used to throwing knives. I mean the buggers are slowly different mostly with the technique that all this is fun. I need, I’m like, okay, I want to get a set of these and I’m like, am I going to fucking deal with them practicing the back garden where the neighbors can see me? I’m like, no, they already think I’m strange enough. It is that
[00:03:24] Brad Nigh: when you get it is just so
[00:03:25] Chris Roberts: satisfying. Yeah. Yeah, I’m pretty good.
[00:03:31] Evan Francen: Really growing the hatchets, but not the knives are
[00:03:36] Chris Roberts: knives and nice. I’ve got, I always keep a set, I’ve got a set that are always close to me. So these are, this is the preset and these are custom made balance. In fact actually also bring these remain Ryan, we’re gonna kick out of these ones. Those are my often set. They always stay up there with me. So there close at hand in case that anything is necessary and needed.
[00:03:57] Evan Francen: You got some cool stuff laying around your house man. So I was putting together, you know, kind of the, not necessarily show notes, but you know, usually read a blog post. I actually forgot to write the one last week for john strand, but you know, whatever. Uh, I was putting together the one with you for uh, and so I like to like go through, well this is chris’s background, right? This is where chris started and I’m like, holy crap man, You, that’s a lot of stuff. So I figured, you know, for our listeners, let’s, let’s talk about like, uh, where did you start? How did
[00:04:32] Chris Roberts: you get started in this industry? I think, I mean, I, you know, I started messing with computers and that was a boarding school. So my parents were still together at the time. They were living over in Sardinia. My father was british airports. And so we were, he was stationed in Sardinia at the time and I go and grow out of the school there. So they sent, so it’s a case that they would either have to come back to the UK or I go to boarding school. Well nine year old kid didn’t exactly get on with his parents. It was like a boarding school. So I ended up going to boarding school and boarding school, like did not get on with each other. We, we, we did not see how to, a variety of reasons. Um, But there was first introduced computers there and it was one of the kids at school family pretty well to do. It brought him like this. It was the ZX 81 at the time. And so, I mean, I was 9, 9, 10 years old, something like that. Um,
[00:05:33] Evan Francen: So you’re talking like 70
[00:05:35] Chris Roberts: nine, basically 8, 79, 80, 81 time Fred.
[00:05:40] Brad Nigh: It’s funny how similar a lot of these stories are because it’s very similar. You know my dad had uh my first computer that I messed with, it was a K pro Yeah, and then had it old. Oh gosh, IBM with the 2 5.5 inch
[00:05:57] Chris Roberts: floppies and oh my gosh, yeah, that kind of stuff. Yeah, everyone’s, yeah
[00:06:04] Brad Nigh: Dossett that, you know, 8 9 years
[00:06:07] Chris Roberts: old. Well that’s, I mean I hit those things at nine kind of got a bit of a bug And then got to like 1314 and we were back in the UK basically boarding school. My disagreed so much that I was removed from boarding school possibly and then parents ended up unfortunately going back to the UK and ended up just a normal regular comprehensive school and got back into computers in the library and stuff like that. But I’m getting one, I got an entirely when we were 6800’s or Christmas and a friend of mine had one of the Commodore 64. So you know, we were comparing notes and the fucking tape decks and winds up basically getting a modern couple which was, that was the end. I mean that was the beginning of the end. All of a sudden there was life outside of our four walls, as long as you knew where to dial which you find in the magazine, you got the old magazines and you know, you go through the magazines to find out where the bulletin boards wearing one board led to another board ledger all of a sudden you’re looking at telephone bills and then you’re trying to figure out how to bypass the telephone bill and well, you know it’s all downhill from there. Let’s face it. Yeah,
[00:07:17] Evan Francen: wow, that’s cool man. So what was your, what was your first like paid security job? Like legal,
[00:07:23] Chris Roberts: Legal has to quantify. My father had been arrested at 14. So. Oh yeah and I and I did not see eye to eye unfortunately. 14 or 15.
[00:07:36] Evan Francen: I had my first felony at 14.
[00:07:38] Chris Roberts: Yeah. Well they never prosecuted because I mean the end of that I’m saying they were fucking, you know the police comes up with all my mother answered the door and she was like Christopher. It’s for you, you know, very nice policeman was sitting there basically facing this kid with a commodore and a fricking modem couple of literally conked on the phone. Yeah. And sitting down my thing and yeah, I’ve got access to the bank and shifted some money around. Yeah, my father and I really unfortunately never really saw right away I think first paid computer job because I didn’t, I didn’t get really get, I guess it was before I went into the military. So I started working at 15 LS score 15, 16. So I did my old in the UK at low levels and I did my own levels um did my CSS and higher levels and my oh, so if you’re crazy enough they let you take A levels a year early. So I did a few of those. Well like always kind of a hybrid in a few of those a year early. And then this will end up having to go to workers and spent the separate ways, all those kind of fun things. So my first job was night shift at a dairy. I was still at school. So I was basically short order cook at the data and then, you know, people coming from the factory line and order normal food and good food and so food. Um So did that first. I mean when I was 15, 16, I mean I worked all over the place. I was in a place called Skibo data graphics. And they made remember those catalogs, the electronic catalogs that he has in front of catalogs. I actually helped build the programs to do all the typesetting for those. So all the formatting and all the alignment. I will really, will I ever forget that. And that was really the first a computer job because I was figuring out how to make sure that when people talk to, then it went into the right places and prompting them for the right stuff and everything. And that was really the first one of those. How can they execute fairly quickly. Because I found out that the people I was training, we’re getting paid more than these. So when you walk into your boss’s office with the print out from the database that’s in a different angle was already being paid more than the doesn’t tend to end very well. Um That’s cool. Yeah, this is a hothead, shall we say?
[00:10:03] Evan Francen: I love people’s past, you know how they kind of weave their way into this industry. So then you went, you went into the
[00:10:12] Chris Roberts: military, I did a bunch of other things before I went in. I mean I I worked in the White House, I worked for one of the british um one of the british side research institute uh who that it was now and it was, I was in public related gossip. It’s, I was in public relations. I was like 16, 17 years old and I’m like, oh this is glamorous. I spend half my time stuff in frickin envelopes Um and the other half the time a filing, so that wasn’t good, a whole bunch of other stuff and yeah, and they’re going into the military. I was 18, 17, 18, 18 that went into the Marjorie did, I was actually going into the Air Force, I was going to, not quite to follow in my father’s footsteps, you know, my father was enlisted um and I was going to be the asshole son and go in as an officer. Oh yeah, but did all the tests, the more like kind of shenanigans and then when they went to do the medical between my hip and my knee were too long to fly fast jets and basically have two big um and so they’re like well you could you know I could go either C one thirties or seeking helicopters and I’m like well helicopters should never be allowed in the air in the first place, 85 physics and they’re scary and C one thirties if you’ve ever been in more or see one of the things they tend to fly straight, they go slightly sidewalks, there literally is just like flying you know 40 ft shipping container and they kind of fly like this nice and low and slow and yeah strange things. So I’m like oh hell no. So I walked literally walked out of, this is in bristol and I walked out of the recruiting office in Jerusalem and everything that walked down the street, there was a downward street walk down the street into and I basically walked into the marines and I said I want to do that. They kind of looked at me like what you’re big europe at balls um and uh you know test it out okay, they send you to the initial camp for a couple of days to make sure you don’t actually sink when they dunk you under the water, you do actually come back up again and that you’ve actually got half a brain and you can do all sorts of other things with that and then spent long time training in a long time doing stupid things in all sorts of interesting places. Uh huh.
[00:12:29] Evan Francen: That’s cool. Yeah my father a child. My father wouldn’t let me
[00:12:35] Brad Nigh: enlist. Yeah my grandfather was Colonel in the marine corps. He found out he was like no if you enlist you will not make it to basic training because I will stop you. Like if you want to go into an officer go for it. I was like cool, I’m not messing with you.
[00:12:53] Chris Roberts: Yeah it’s um it’s really interesting. I mean I’ve talked to a lot of the U. S. But I think that the very big differences the U. S. Marines and the british marine very very different philosophies on how on how they build people on how they, you know I was it was always one of those interesting things uh you know we always used to talk about it as if it’s civil commanding officer was like oh you know charge at that. You know go charge at that. You know we at least guitar and say fuck off. It’s actually slightly better way doing this. Um It felt always felt like the U. S. Marine side of it would just awfully go kind of thing. And it was it was a very very different philosophy on on the house and the wives and the air force. I always felt a lot of petty is probably the wrong way of putting an empathy should we say because the philosophy seems very much to break down the individual and turn it into a unit. Whereas with us it was, it was, yeah, you get turned into a unit very, very effectively. But you all have individual skills, you will bring something different to it. And how do we maximize that? How do we effectively use it? How do we put you could, but I mean we were operating in smaller teams as well, much much smaller teams. You know, we, we got trapped on our airplanes in very, very single digit numbers to go site singles. Mhm. So it was always interesting, different way of looking at things. But still that Kamerad or the effectiveness, the care and love for for everybody. And you know that stupidity of like, oh great. Why am I doing this again?
[00:14:20] Evan Francen: Right, wow. Well, so you gotta, I don’t know how much more I want to spend because we could spend like an entire day. I think
[00:14:31] Chris Roberts: just going to be a week through through the history of this, there’s some history that’s good. There’s some history that’s still so I think I’ve signed the Official Secrets Act quite a number of times quite a number. Yeah, let’s just say, how
[00:14:49] Evan Francen: about the first time you ran a company? So he ran this company called C C
[00:14:53] Chris Roberts: I five. Well I ran to companies in the UK as well when I came out, end up starting up a consulting company and they end up selling one of them. Okay. I mean, there’s enough to pay their well and I’m not having to pay to come over here, but it was enough when I did get over here and I see set some stuff up. um, yeah, around CCF five, I was that was years ago. That was early days. That was uh, what do we end up doing? That was before silence since I think. And that was, that was early days of Guardians L I came out of doing, I came out of doing threat intel for some interesting folks in Virginia and D. C. Neck of the woods and we ended up basically building, it was commercial counter intelligence. That was all CCF five was commercial counterintelligence. And it was the only days of threading salon. I mean, that was early two thousands. Thanks. Um, and we, you know, it was too early. We’re just too early. People like, well, I don’t know what it is, we don’t need it and we have no clue what we need to do. We just need to know what’s inside of four walls and I’m like, no, you don’t. But you know, we’ll figure that, you know, it is what it is crazy
[00:15:58] Brad Nigh: with a small world because I didn’t know you were out of there in D C for any part of time. I lived in Northern Virginia.
[00:16:05] Chris Roberts: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, there’s some time in that general catalyst. I got brought over here because we annoyed the hell out of naval votes. I was working, I was working in the UK for some folks and we were doing war games versus the U. S. And typical, typical attitude was always show the yanks, I think we did. And we broke into some stuff far enough that apparently all sorts of interesting little lights were not in all sorts of interesting places. And this was 1998 in the early mid-98. And apparently they were like, you know, we’re all splendid, impervious and a bunch of bloody weeks from the colonies, you know, had basically had broken in and planted a couple of flags and we initiated shut down on some of some of the U. S. Is nicer toys that floated and they weren’t very happy with that apparently. So we got sent over at the request of a couple of places, the farm being one and another place and basically told to fix this shit, help them figure out what it was and ended up staying over.
[00:17:18] Brad Nigh: That’s really cool. Way better job than I had in 98. I was Find Y two K patches with a floppy dist. Yeah, you had a way more exciting one.
[00:17:32] Chris Roberts: I remember I remember watching y two K from a bunker. Let’s just put it that way. We were all hunkered down in a bunker. It was five by stuff basically. And you know, we’re all basically Australia is the first one to go over the edge. It’s like, well, yes, we lost a few service, that’s it and there’s that sense of relief, but it’s also that sense of damage. It would have been more fun if like the entire place has just gone dog for a few weeks and more fun. But anyway, we did our job, probably
[00:18:03] Brad Nigh: never been interesting,
[00:18:04] Evan Francen: I was still drinking them, so I don’t
[00:18:06] Chris Roberts: remember, I
[00:18:11] Evan Francen: think there was something that
[00:18:11] Chris Roberts: happened. Yeah. Oh my gosh, that whole fucking do you remember when that first came up there was, it was almost like that tap on the shoulder, like I say, there might be a bit of a problem coming up in a couple of years time. No, okay, nothing to worry about and then that sense of oh, uh oh no, no good.
[00:18:41] Evan Francen: Yeah, I didn’t, I didn’t really have to do anything with that and I was network guy at the time, so I was all Cisco shit all the time. I mean, I lived and breathed Cisco for, I don’t know, really, five years at that point
[00:18:56] Chris Roberts: we were probably like, you, we would car, I mean, just the amount of stuff, I mean there was stuff obviously was one part of it, but it’s like, yeah, it should be too bad, but it was, I mean, all of the architecture is, and you know the acres and acres of mainframes and sword was, I mean we had acres literally acres of freaking mainframes that we were, that we were like, we should be all right, find out. Yeah, I mean that was, I mean, you know, it’s among the scenarios, but, and it’s always, you know, the stuff that we ended up losing again, it’s no different. I mean, we’ve almost not learnt our lesson 20 years in the future when you think about it, it’s not necessarily that stuff you focused on, it’s the periphery and the third party of the third party that didn’t think or you didn’t see or they didn’t or whatever it was, it was like, oh God, I mean, that just nailed us.
[00:20:01] Brad Nigh: Well, it’s like you keep saying like here we are 2030 years later and it’s still the basics, people still don’t have the basics down. Yeah,
[00:20:12] Chris Roberts: You know,
[00:20:15] Evan Francen: that’s what I was telling, you know, john Herman, you know, because last week it’s like, I mean, just, just take a recording of me, put it inside a doll, stuff it in there and just push play unlivable and then just give the doll the money, I’ll stop by every once in a while and just pick it up.
[00:20:34] Chris Roberts: Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s what it feels like unfortunately and it has been that way ice and interesting. Um, As one link in a certain Arlington area and one of the big, I won’t put names on this one, You chose different rules as far as I’m concerned, but I’ll be there. But one of the very large security consulting companies. Um The kids advocating for, you know, fuzzy acronym wears of God only knows what that they’re trying to sell people. Um Actually I had a piece on that. It was like we’re okay with fixing the basics like we’re advocating to fix it. I’m like, oh, so you finally got on that bus, You know what I like? Um But yeah, it’s uh, it’s all right because it’s not sexy. You know, it’s not it’s not gonna get you a talk with our essay. Won’t get you talk of black hair, it won’t get you noticed, but it doesn’t mean you gotta roll up the sleeves and get some simple shit done. And I think I wonder if that’s why, you know, you see so many people coming into this industry that like I I want to break things. I want to be the red team male. Why would that shit come in and help us fucking fix some of the stuff and they ain’t sexy but that is the screwdriver and get on with it. Yeah,
[00:21:49] Brad Nigh: it’s a lot more work, let’s be honest.
[00:21:51] Chris Roberts: Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah.
[00:21:55] Evan Francen: Well yeah, it’s definitely utilitarian. The Well it seems like, you know, I don’t hope 90, I don’t have the numbers. Their data sucks in our industry to, but it seems like, you know, 90 plus percent of all the data breaches come from some missing at least it played a role like some basic, something like, I don’t understand how anybody would ever be taken. I came from old school. Right? And so do you guys, but like backups, I don’t understand why would leave my backups online ever
[00:22:27] Chris Roberts: because the cloud will provide, all will provide. It will take care of you. It is there is this nebulous thing, it will always look after you. Trust in the cloud. Did
[00:22:40] Evan Francen: you ever see that that Marcus you just reminded me of Marcus random.
[00:22:44] Chris Roberts: Oh, which one?
[00:22:45] Evan Francen: His cloud video market If you just do Marcus Random cloud,
[00:22:52] Chris Roberts: All right.
[00:22:54] Evan Francen: It’s where, you know, it’s like where your bits, you know, get moist
[00:22:59] Chris Roberts: way. Yeah.
[00:23:02] Evan Francen: So you Google Marcus random cloud, it should be either the top, it was done in 2009. But remember that first came out because when cloud came out right, we were guys like us, we were like um we’ve been doing this forever. I mean, what do we call, what it’s like zero trust now, right, implement zero trust. Um is that like default? And
[00:23:26] Chris Roberts: I exactly like Yeah, I mean that’s okay. No go from,
[00:23:33] Brad Nigh: I was just to say I did that I did a weapon on last week and it was like data science and cybersecurity and going through all the different things that you need to do and somebody goes, well wouldn’t zero trust just fix this. And and I was like, well, I mean, yes, but it’s hard and nobody does it. So it’s a theoretical question. To be
[00:23:54] Chris Roberts: honest,
[00:23:56] Evan Francen: when it comes down to, I mean, I was doing some adversary Obstruction. Adversary obstruction requirements may be ECE issued some things they wanted this adversely instruction requirements. Right? And so You look at it and it’s like there’s so much work that would have to be done in order for you to really get to this default. And I sort of zero trust thing. It’s like, I think maybe we just start over
[00:24:23] Chris Roberts: mm were
[00:24:25] Evan Francen: to build a parallel environment, right? Put your shit in the right places, default, deny and then migrate stuff over into that new environment.
[00:24:34] Chris Roberts: But now, in theory, if you think about it, the cloud gives you, I mean, this is one of those advocacy logics the cloud, if we’d have treated it as a green field environment, I’m on, hey, like this the stuff over here, let’s get somebody in who knows what they’re doing, what they’re doing, how they’re going to be ability to containerized the ability to put all the security and control something in place. I mean, it does offer that amazing ability to do that. However, unfortunately what most people did well, like you storage space and a bunch of other shit department and move their problems from Point A and just basically duplicated the problems that point B and now they wonder why they’re in such a pain in the ass of the space.
[00:25:15] Evan Francen: And some of them were left at that point. And now you got it at point B. Two. So now I got two of
[00:25:20] Chris Roberts: them. Yeah, it’s um you know, it really did offer a very very clean way to say, hey, you know, we can probably move and sort out some of our stuff, you know, back to the Y two K. Thing. I mean we had to, you know, the ability to test y two K. Was, well hang on, we’re gonna have to take some of the production system, move it over here replicates and all this other kind of stuff and we’re gonna have to do this with physical boxes and then see what happens. And by the way, if we do it over here we’re not sure it’s going to work on these other 100 now you just like, fuck it, I’m going to spend a couple 100 up in the cloud, run a couple of tests and we’re in good shape or we’re not, you know, it’s yeah,
[00:26:04] Brad Nigh: there’s definitely a huge benefit to it. But so many people don’t use it correctly.
[00:26:12] Evan Francen: Well, it looks like any tool, right? And that’s one of my big frustrations is, you know, you have a tool you have a hammer yeah, emerged for hammering. Don’t use a hammer to saw shit. Yeah. You know, a saw is a saw use it properly if you don’t you lose a finger or an arm.
[00:26:29] Chris Roberts: Well, I mean the other, I still want to somebody the other day about this and it’s We used to have three tiers that was it. We had web application database. That was it was kind of simple. And now you look at how far we’ve transacted that communicate and it’s like network. Remember the days networking, you didn’t know what the hell is going on. You basically played the game must follow the packet. And I mean you do this thing with application most stuff these days. Your transaction from one end of an absolutely crazy the amount of abstraction and the amount of stuff that we chucked into this thing these days and taking the simple three of their architecture and just not only knows what we’ve done to the poor thing.
[00:27:12] Evan Francen: What was the average web would try to find this average web transaction In 2018. 35 systems.
[00:27:22] Chris Roberts: So that was 35. Yeah, I was so ridiculous number.
[00:27:25] Evan Francen: It’s like how in the hell. And then you think, you know, and then when you consider, you know the applications and all the libraries mm that they’re calling that you have no control over And I hope that’s a lot
[00:27:37] Brad Nigh: of blind trust and his libraries.
[00:27:39] Evan Francen: Oh my God, seriously, How many bases
[00:27:42] Chris Roberts: it hold on. Have you guys from? Have you guys had Mark Miller on at all on this one? You should get knocked Miller on markets. Great. He used to work over at Sona type and we’re talking about libraries and stuff like this. Hang on a second. Might get nosy for say um Mark Miller is he was over at Soma type. He is now what’s the name of the place? He’s now jupiter one but he runs like Deb said cops. Um actually amazing guy. But Soner Type was one of those companies that would go out and basically watch all these are the libraries and the amount of issues and challenges on my mind. I mean it’s crazy. Oh
[00:28:27] Brad Nigh: yeah. You know you’ve done it with you know I’ll do the capture the flag stuff and meet something new. I McCallie box and it’s like you must install,
[00:28:37] Chris Roberts: what did you know libraries. It’s like
[00:28:40] Brad Nigh: 15 because none of the applications use the same version.
[00:28:45] Chris Roberts: Yeah. And then you question is like okay. So what I mean our question is always, what am I putting on this bloody computer? Where did he come from? Who’s Kansas? It’s the same thing as downloading stuff from one of these bloody things? Hey download this new app. Uh no. Uh who made it, what are you doing? And where did it come from? What’s behind it? What’s their ulterior motive? And you know 10 other questions that we ask. But unfortunately 99% of the population tends not to us. Welcome to my love by the way.
[00:29:16] Evan Francen: Hey mellow. Oh
[00:29:18] Brad Nigh: that’s funny. My one of my dogs is milo.
[00:29:20] Chris Roberts: Oh no way.
[00:29:21] Brad Nigh: And my other dog looks just like
[00:29:23] Chris Roberts: that. I was like, whoa, Yeah. So this is my love. We have a His three years, three years and change or daisy is one of the other ones. She’s 5, 5 or six ISH. We’ll take a little bit. We don’t know exactly both. Rescue ones. Yeah. And then we have a puppy equaled notice. We have my lower notice. That’s cool. And he’s going to be about this. So let’s give or take a little bit. Oh,
[00:29:50] Brad Nigh: he sits and watches out the front door when my wife or kids go. He just lays there watching out the
[00:29:57] Chris Roberts: window. You know, dogs are the best
[00:30:02] Evan Francen: only. So, so we had this big thing that happened this week and I don’t want to, we can go wherever we want to go with it. Uh, I haven’t, I haven’t publicly commented anywhere on it because there’s so many damn experts, right? I mean, it’s funny how these, like experts just come out of nowhere.
[00:30:21] Chris Roberts: Yeah,
[00:30:22] Brad Nigh: I’ve been asked. I don’t know how many times and my response is I’m not really surprised. The thing I’m most surprised about is that it took this long for something like this to happen.
[00:30:32] Chris Roberts: Well, so here’s the thing. This is a stupid thing is this isn’t the first time ship to be public. It’s what one to be public secondly on our shorts estonian pipeline. Uh, pipelines has it stands pipelines going down number of others have gone down the factory in Germany, I mean, this is it
[00:30:57] Brad Nigh: was interesting that the malware was checking to see if the language was set to Russian and it’s so leave the machine alone.
[00:31:06] Chris Roberts: Well
[00:31:07] Evan Francen: then that’s the way that’s the way the Russians operate though. You can operate from within Russia, as long as you’re not attacking Russia assets.
[00:31:18] Chris Roberts: Okay, so challenges, got the similar kind of thing going on, let’s be honest. And I mean, yeah, I hate to say it and we all know it’s true is until you can actually find the, you know, if we are going to be, it depends on who we decide to blame on this one. I do love the fact that the, the potential individuals that come up and God, I do apologize, we didn’t actually mean to cause quite a man of chaos we’ve caused. I’m really sorry about that.
[00:31:46] Evan Francen: Well, not just that, but didn’t they didn’t they even say like, we actually give a portion of our proceeds to charity and cite
[00:31:53] Chris Roberts: their ethics.
[00:31:56] Brad Nigh: Yeah, I was at least in fact, hospitals. That’s better than most.
[00:32:01] Chris Roberts: Well, they don’t directly, it’s not anything, it’s there was always that there was for those of you, the reader, I like my terry pratchett, my fantasy novels and there’s one of the terry parenti ones. There was a very interesting novel and it’s it focused around this guy that was in human deception was a fortune. And he was always like, well, I run my forgeries against bounce, I haven’t heard people and if you actually do the calculations and they did it on the they actually said, well actually there you’ve killed 2.5 people through your actions, thanks. And this is what it’s really interesting directly. We they might not have held somebody, but indirectly the consequences of what they did because so many people are about to ship people have had since because so many things that had to happen, stresses all this stuff indirectly, who have you killed? Right, right. It was really interesting. That was
[00:33:03] Evan Francen: yes. Yeah, it couldn’t have happened at a worse time either because I think, you know, our economy in the United States, we’ve flooded it with cash because we’re already sort of headed towards this inflationary thing and now you cut off supply of a commodity.
[00:33:20] Chris Roberts: Yeah. Yeah, No, I mean it’s not really cold supply, let’s be honest right now, you know, I mean there’s a may be disrupted a little bit. There we go, I’ll take disruption. Yeah, cut it off. Big difference. You want to cut off supply. I’ll give you two other five lines, we here do that, right, And we know they’re not secured as well because oh, I don’t know the one that most has had problems and nobody targeted the one down south yet because well maybe this was a practice from, I did a I did a linked in thing, I didn’t know, don’t link him. I did on twitter. It was what I said where the hell is this stupid thing? There it is. I put out I said why are we seemingly surprised about the attack on the pipeline? 88 votes were not. It’s expected 70% got that one. We didn’t think nothing. We didn’t know 1%. This is just the start. 30%. So yeah it’s interesting. I Uh huh.
[00:34:21] Brad Nigh: Yeah I can’t remember who it is. There’s a comedian that has a bit that I think relevant to what you mentioned about the security of the pipeline and he’s like what are these talking heads? Go on the T. V. Show on sunday and they’re giving these Attackers ideas. They’re like hey here’s this critical piece of infrastructure. If you remove this one bolt it takes down everything and it’s only guarded by one guy bob who’s a bit of a drunk so
[00:34:48] Chris Roberts: Mhm. I mean because I mean let’s arguably let’s be honest if we do, if we go back to intelligence gathering, if we we did this a couple of years ago uh there’s a dot com talk that jesse and I did and this was back in like a condom but naturally should hang on because I got the boat. Mhm. God that’s what holy shit 10 years ago 2011. Why? So we did this stock contact in 2011 and we went after we went out in the food supply. Well like okay think of the hierarchical needs that humans need each Delta want food and a few other things. Uh huh. Um We’re like, let’s let’s because we know heaters, the fuel lines and power lines just like all right, we know we can take those down. Um water light, same kind of things. Water plants, we know a complete shit. So we’ve had so many of them now over the last few years. Well let’s go after food. So we did and we took two different attack vectors. We went after one very, very famous tractor manufacturer and food supply manufacturer who I won’t name, but you know, they’re very green gold in their colors like green bay packers um which is rather useful. And then the other one we went after was the actual food supply chain itself. So in other words, if anything actually made it through, what could we go on that in? Um and we gave the talk of Falconer, this is what, 10 years ago now and we figured out that we could influence 60 to 75% of the crops just through to at the time they were FTP service through to FTP service. Uh that’s the cross Yeah,
[00:36:37] Brad Nigh: the scary part is with, you know, food or agriculture, it’s not a quick fix, you can’t just grow tower, you have to
[00:36:46] Chris Roberts: wait. Yeah, this was and we figured out we’ll end up doing because mrs smart, let’s be brutally honest. and we ended up putting two sets of programs in one program planted the seeds short, so it went through the algorithm and said if it’s barley or corn or a couple of us, because the farmer has to type in what they’re planting into the planting system and we built a math algorithm loop into the assembler code that said if it’s if it’s one of these ones, instead of planting at X step, doing X to the negative, so instead of planting like an inch and a half debate only plants it like a third of an inch or half an inch, which comes up too early, which means it gets affected by weather and wind. And their farmers are smart, they’ll replant the field, We put a secondary loop in that then set on deep, so said we’re planting into planted 200 ft, which means just doesn’t come up and we ran that scenario of barley corn weakness, few others, and at the time they were to ftp servers now there to SftP services, they’re way more secure and it was they were responsible basically for pretty much of the global um every single one of these tractors and combines, everything else went to these two service to get all the updates and yeah, we left a smiley face in there, which as far as I’m aware, still through the state is still there, it’s crazy, man. And so, you know, I mean that’s I would argue, but if we wanted to do stuff, the data points around there, this isn’t the hard stuff to find. I mean you know in this case, all we did was basically get one of their programs off of Ebay um and look through it and see where it was talking, what I was talking then went out and did the record on their I. P. Space and everything else and figured all then we went up to one of the tractor supply places up here and basically talk to the folks and social engineer and got in and did if you end up in there and you know sort of couple of farmers and all of a sudden we correlate this note from the pipelines. I mean shit that’s just public knowledge. Do you want to know where how a digital pipelines come into this country? I mean there’s a flag planted on the damn buildings for crying out loud. That shit ain’t hard to find. Right.
[00:39:02] Evan Francen: Yeah we’re what did I say man 580. Seriously?
[00:39:06] Chris Roberts: Just I thought you had 800 and something that
[00:39:09] Evan Francen: I do. 857, I got my dyslexia
[00:39:12] Chris Roberts: something. 5 80 is good. I mean five eighties nicer. 8 27 yeah there we go. Yeah. No it’s um you know it’s always an interesting conversation. You know we all know what we should all know if we’ve got any sense about us that we are all in each other’s systems from a nation standpoint. And so I think there’s the same thing we had in the Cold War. You know, we all we there were a number of us hovering over that trigger button, but nobody thankfully was was at the point where they were going to be the one responsible for the end of the world, basically, I’ve already hovered over and he was a really good drinks and brinksmanship, but nobody actually pulled the trigger and I’d argue we’re in a similar kind of, but you know, we know China’s infrastructure is absolutely amazing and massive and has been built out in a crazy way over the last, you know, 10, 20 years and you know, the architecture and systems they have and you know, damn well we’re kicking around their systems the same thing with our friends over in Russia and the same thing with our friends over in other countries and you know, well they’re all kicking around in our systems and and the irony of it is in a number of cases, you know, I always use my grandmother’s computer and North Korea, you know, we’re all traversing through some very similar pipelines and it’s like the old days in Berlin, I mean, I remember being deployed in a few places where, I mean, you literally would, you know, it was it was the spy versus spy. So I thought, no, I don’t see you today, I’m just going to keep walking by in this direction. I mean that was we’re doing the same thing in the digital world, you know, we’re heading systems were like, hang on, right, we’re not the only ones here, a tiptoe across everybody else’s bloody system. Now, back in those days, the only people that had that button, we’re the big boys, shall we say. Unfortunately, any hooray Henry with a freaking decent laptop and a good enough cause can unfortunately, you know, can call some level of damage. No, two ways about it.
[00:41:29] Evan Francen: Well, and the problem is only getting worse, you know, I mean, because we still haven’t fixed those fundamental things, those fundamental holes right there, still there and we were just adding, we we just keep adding more and more to it
[00:41:45] Chris Roberts: when we keep abstracting it. You think about it? I mean, We we keep abstracting it, we’ve got three layers to what? 37 layers now, I wonder if we just abstract it so far. I wonder if that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to like, almost outmaneuver ourselves, you know, if I turn off the computer doesn’t matter because there’s six other copies of it in the cloud or there’s other bits of it or I’ve got six other pathways or You know, remember the early days of F5, it didn’t matter if you turned on this turned off this computer because the way it worked, it would just go to the next morning the next month or the next one, You know? And so I wonder if we’re just trying to abstract our way out of the problem rather than solving the basics, we literally put so many layers between us. Mhm. I wonder if that’s what we’re trying to do. Adding complexity. Sure, adding complexity to solve the basics. Oh my God, we need to do a talk on this. How to add complexity to your environment to solve all six. Hey,
[00:42:47] Brad Nigh: I’m machine morning,
[00:42:48] Evan Francen: I’m stopping. I’m stopping at micro center and best buy on the way home.
[00:42:54] Chris Roberts: I’m not
[00:42:54] Brad Nigh: allowed to go to Microsoft or by myself
[00:42:56] Chris Roberts: anymore. I’m not, I’m not either
[00:42:59] Evan Francen: with my card. I’ll go at the corporate card. So you may not, may not get a paycheck. Sorry, but we’re gonna have complex as hell. Shit. So cool.
[00:43:12] Chris Roberts: I wonder if that’s what we’re doing. Seriously. That is like, I wonder if that’s rather because I mean think about this humans, I mean as human nature, we, we don’t always like doing basic simple stuff. We’ve always tried to out engineer our way through a problem. If we didn’t, we’d still be clamming fields by hand or we’d still be using horses. We’d still be living in houses with holes in the roof because we had fire. You know, we would, we would not have advanced ourselves far enough the literally out engineer our way through some of these situations.
[00:43:50] Brad Nigh: But one of my my saying is it’s not necessity is not the mother of all invention? Laziness is the mother of all invention.
[00:43:58] Chris Roberts: I there might be something that
[00:44:01] Brad Nigh: I mean think about how many times. Well that’s hard work. I’m just going to find a workaround so I don’t have to do
[00:44:06] Chris Roberts: that. Oh yeah. And that’s freaking work around. You can take God knows how long to design and develop and unfortunately yeah, picking up a piece of paper. All right, bend down and pick the stupid thing up. Oh no time do that. I’m going to invent a vacuum so you need to do it for me. And then I’m going to event not only a negative inventors acting vacuum cleaner actually takes time and effort. So now I’m going to invent a room but to do it for me remember takes code programming the it takes all these bloody things to do And takes God knows how many apps encoding counselor. I mean it’s $1,000 in vacuum cleaner and the hell down and pick up the piece of paper. Right, right. I’m going to spend $1,000 in the back, you know? Right.
[00:44:49] Evan Francen: That’s an intriguing thought man. I this will be one of those things are all as I’m going to bed tonight. It’ll pop in my head and I’ll be like son of a bitch. I’m not going to bed again
[00:44:58] Chris Roberts: tonight. No, it’s it is one of those interesting things. I wonder if that’s you know, think about it. How long have we been talking about basis. Right. I mean why two K. Let’s be perfectly honest. Was almost that reset button. So since that reset button, we’ve been talking about the basics, we got through Y two K. And they’re like, okay great. We still have some stuff to sort out. We start of architecture as we slide inventory. We have to maintain this. You know, we have to keep doing this stuff and it dropped off in pursuit of all sorts of new shiny stuff. So 20, 21, years. Um, we don’t even talk about passwords. Let’s not even go down that. Right? Yes. Um, it’s a good point. Yeah.
[00:45:44] Brad Nigh: You know, like you said the basic start, it’s hard work and it’s not sexy. Uh
[00:45:49] Evan Francen: you know, kind of like me, you, it’s
[00:45:55] Chris Roberts: video
[00:45:55] Evan Francen: now. It’s me that’s making sense to son of a gun. What is basically
[00:46:01] Chris Roberts: what you can relate to it.
[00:46:03] Evan Francen: Yeah. Right.
[00:46:05] Chris Roberts: So this is going to have to be a post or at home. We got, we need to do this. Need to be like an R. S. A. Talk how to out engineer your, how to engineer or we need to come up with a couple of titles. We’ve got to put a talkin for this one for shits and giggles seriously.
[00:46:22] Evan Francen: And then do some, some examples. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:46:27] Brad Nigh: All right. There’s tons. I mean take your pick.
[00:46:33] Evan Francen: No, I mean like like purposely like, like
[00:46:37] Brad Nigh: you could you could probably call some companies
[00:46:40] Chris Roberts: out. Do
[00:46:41] Brad Nigh: you want to do that? Right?
[00:46:44] Evan Francen: I’m talking like, you know, Yeah, interesting. I have to give that. Yeah, you can go pretty deep. I like it. I like I think it’s a great idea in the uh, so the pipeline today, it’s not operational
[00:47:02] Chris Roberts: fully operated is no, actually I got a where I can’t say where I got it from, but I got a report. We’ll just leave it at that. A
[00:47:10] Brad Nigh: partially.
[00:47:12] Chris Roberts: Yeah. Say that again. They’ve got certain functionalities on on some of them. It um, where the hell is it? I have it.
[00:47:24] Evan Francen: What’s your prediction? Uh, and when the next one,
[00:47:30] Chris Roberts: you know, it will be interesting on that particular topic will be to see if the individuals that did it and they’re getting caught in getting help. And I think that will actually, that will provide some interesting guidance. You know, the same Republic became fall and went worse. Um, means that they’ve realized a what they’ve done and you, let’s face it, I mean, you kind of probably already knew something, but they probably also realized that every single fricking agency not just in the U. S. Is breathing down their their digital next looking for somebody’s balls to hang out to dry on the washing line. Yeah, probably
[00:48:17] Brad Nigh: one of the one of you that you’re going to get attribution relatively quickly.
[00:48:22] Chris Roberts: Well,
[00:48:22] Evan Francen: and even even the Russians I think will turn against them.
[00:48:26] Chris Roberts: Well, that’s, I think that’s what it’s going to be. If
[00:48:28] Evan Francen: I give you these criminals, you know, maybe I can trade this for something
[00:48:32] Brad Nigh: well, and they just escalated with the solar winds with that whole debacle. So my little bit of uh
[00:48:41] Chris Roberts: goodwill back. Yeah. Yeah. So line four is operating on the manual control while the inventory is available. Main lines off lines, lateral lines between tell miles an hour, operational product inventory, storage tanks and everything else is in place. Um They uh incremental faced in a written approach basically. I was uh looking in terms of normal operations by friday. What’s so that’s about all I can say. Yeah. So the
[00:49:16] Brad Nigh: supply is good until monday. Maybe Tuesday is when you’re going to really start seeing stations running out of gas and the chaos really beginning.
[00:49:26] Chris Roberts: Well, okay, you say that, But I mean, there’s already places like, oh, you know where we’re running because again, people, it’s this is toilet paper all over again. I mean, this year I didn’t run
[00:49:40] Brad Nigh: to fill up my car. I don’t drive, Don’t go anywhere right? Like 3500 miles on my car in the last 15 months. Oh, no
[00:49:49] Evan Francen: way. If push comes, push comes to shove out to steal my neighbors. Guess.
[00:49:53] Chris Roberts: Yeah. I mean, I
[00:49:57] Brad Nigh: Drive to go to the store and that’s about it and it’s 10 miles I go once a week. Otherwise I’m out and about.
[00:50:04] Chris Roberts: I got my body caulking, I go after dr I to me that’s like my Mhm My peace and quiet time. I saw Jenna if it grabs sometimes, I think you know, one of the civilised cars and just go for a cruise around just to get out of here or I’ll take one of the cars of the sales or something.
[00:50:23] Brad Nigh: Mhm I do a high price
[00:50:27] Chris Roberts: motor or paddle pedal. Got it. Yeah, I got to lose a little bit more way before I before I enjoy doing that again or at least get pleasure out of it. As opposed to wondering what the hell are you trying to kill myself,
[00:50:38] Evan Francen: you know? But
[00:50:40] Brad Nigh: well, so I used your name the M. S. Tours, multiple sclerosis,
[00:50:48] Chris Roberts: Dhs Oh yeah, those are, those are roughly the buggers, those ones did
[00:50:53] Brad Nigh: A bunch of those younger, I was like, I’ll be great. I used to do this and realize that I’m old and average shape. I didn’t do anything like that, but I was like, you know, 10 miles in and I was like, I should tell you right
[00:51:06] Chris Roberts: now. I, I’ve dropped a bunch, I’ve still got a bunch to go and I’m asking climbing at the moment. I started back about two weeks ago, bathrooms of the climbing, I like climbing and so I’ve gone back and honestly all under at the moment is just a little bit of bouldering back and forth. Just trying to remember how the body works on a wall. Trying remember forefront points and points and balance points and and just trying to build up like the strength here, here, here, here and here, you know, so you get that done, drop a bit more weight and then maybe I’ll get back on that. But I used to enjoy riding. Um but that was, you know, he was saying, you know, 15 years ago and Shared another one of my name too. So yeah, £45 lighter.
[00:52:02] Evan Francen: I told my wife when, when I, when we move, oh, because I’m a chapter guy. So like, you know, look at my life, there’s like compartments, No, there’s adolescence. I closed that chapter. They moved on to like high school, I don’t have any high school friends, right? I closed that chapter. I don’t want any of my high school friends and then I, you know, and you go from that to the drinking phase, right? I don’t have any of those friends anymore. So now you’re in this like working insert probably the most unhealthy part of my life because I don’t sleep enough. I don’t, you know, whatever. But the next chapter is going to be, I think that chapter just healthy, uh, you know, exercising, being disconnected, stress free. That’s the hope, you know,
[00:52:50] Chris Roberts: I hate to say you’re not gonna want to hear this, but you need to do before you get your 800 and something one day. So otherwise, and I mean this is nice as I can be a very good friend of mine just around me a while ago he said, you don’t see many old, you don’t see many old large people. And I’m like, you’re right. It is the truth. It was a little blunter than that, but that was the truth. You know, between him saying that and my daughter was like, hey, I want you around for a bit longer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’ll do it when the rugrats and and says, hey, I want you around for a bit and like you have time to listen. All
[00:53:27] Evan Francen: right. So one last thing before we wrap up, I want to hear about how are things going to sign it. So sign it is kind of your latest kind of full time gig. Right? How, how are things going there?
[00:53:39] Chris Roberts: Okay. You know, it’s um, it’s interesting. It’s interesting there. I like the philosophy of what they’re trying to do. Let’s put it that way. They’re not chasing trophy companies, they’re not going for the bigger big big companies. They actually care about wanting to help the smaller organizations, you know, companies that are maybe only got a couple of its staff insects staff that’s they call target. I I appreciate that because and that fits in really, really nicely because let’s, I mean one of my talks is, you know, the forgotten, the forgotten, you know, it’s the poem is basically the poem off of the statue of Liberty Bring the you know, and it goes on like that. So I like that philosophy. Um Mhm. Fine. We have some work to do when it comes to how how marketing and how cells are working. No, two ways about I think like any company that’s it’s growing like any company that’s trying to figure it out how to message, you know, the big harry thing comes on board who starts calling bs on a couple of things and we’ve got to figure it out. It’s you know, there’s some tough things going on. No, two ways about it. There’s there’s some good stuff. I mean we’ve got the community stuff started, which is actually makes me really, really happy. Um Although, you know, I’ve been down for four or five days and now we need somebody else to help in that. I got to get some help in on the community. So we need that. I think there’s some jane in the office with sneezing Evans says bless you and says hi. Mhm. Um you. So I think there’s definitely some of this stuff um I think the challenge for the company as well as it’s not well known in the U. S. Right. So it’s it’s also you know when you go in it’s having those conversations with people and trying to help them understand why there may be is difference why the focus is different and in doing that. You’ve also got to make sure that the cells is different. That the marketing is different. It’s not the same shit basically given in different ways. So there’s definitely some walking in love that needs to be done there. So we’ll see what the other guys.
[00:55:52] Evan Francen: Yeah, I like it. I mean it’s the technology looks, you know,
[00:55:56] Chris Roberts: I mean it’s like what they’ve done. They basically, you know, the stuff that we talked about, it’s for me, it’s that like, you know, the latest calling champion stuff which is simplify then add lightness. It’s like, how do we take this entire rocket ship that even the big companies have a problem dealing with. But let’s face, it doesn’t prevent a damn thing. And the very best it gives you kind of an early warning. If you’re paying attention, how do we take that? How do we make it simpler? How do we make it easier? How do we make it more effective? How do we take the best bits of it? We don’t need everything. Perfect example, I traded one of my cars out and I traded from a new Mercedes to a slightly older one. When I went from having, you know, when I get into the car, you can choose to interior light color and you know, I went from being able to choose more 15,000 different like coast choose six or eight. I’m like, oh no, what a hardship. A terrible,
[00:56:51] Brad Nigh: I like that approach. So,
[00:56:52] Chris Roberts: But that’s the thing. It’s like, you know, it’s, I took a step back and into some degree, they’ve done the same thing. They’ve gone, you don’t use 15,000 installations, people six or eight. Let’s give you some of the best things that the user behavior, stuff of deception, stuff of the firewall stuff and it’s the other phase, let’s bundle it into something you’ll actually use. You know,
[00:57:15] Brad Nigh: the big thing we’ve seen is those big, you know, complicated solutions are rarely configured properly. You don’t have all the things pointing to it because it’s so complex. So the simpler it is to use, the more likely it is it’s going to be correct.
[00:57:33] Chris Roberts: Yeah. I mean no two ways about it. And I think that’s, that to me is where the messaging, we’re trying to ship the messaging to be less of uh, I hate hundreds. I mean they drive me nuts. I’m like talk, talk proper civilized english language for me. So for me it’s like, I’m not gonna, it’s not X P A U B. And all the other shit. It’s like, hey, I’ll give you a better serve ice. Let me help you with a better set of ice. And then we actually have some pretty cool stuff that does a lot of the like incident response over words. So if it sees something I got you covered, let me, let me do a little bit of analytics. Let me ask you take from point A to POINT B and point seeds. If I can do some correlate ori stuff and let me just give you a better sarah hands so I can actually do some of this pay books basically. Let me see if I can do some of the simple stuff for you and say, hey look, I saw a problem over here. I saw it on these for the machines. This is what I’ve done. I need you to make a decision as to whether you want to do more of this. And then we’re in good shape.
[00:58:29] Brad Nigh: It goes to the communication issue we have in the industry and you know, it sounds like you’re messaging is aimed at the quote unquote normal people versus all these acronyms trying to impress people and they’re like, I don’t understand that.
[00:58:45] Chris Roberts: I know I had one of my inbox today. I mean I had one of my, I want to clean up. I had, I had a competitor’s email in my sign it inbox today. There was going to sell me and I’m like, guys, I just need to send you a message and tell you I hate you and it’s not going to hate you. It’s just I hate how you’re trying to, how you’re trying to sell things to me because it’s just like it just isn’t going to work. You know, it’s another one of these
[00:59:14] Evan Francen: processes.
[00:59:15] Chris Roberts: Yeah. Yeah. There we go. I mean it literally was one of those And it was all acronyms, like all actions and I’m like, I I had to google a few of them. I’m like, I don’t know what the hell are you talking about? And I don’t know it. And this bug has got great hair has been dicking around this industry more years. Right?
[00:59:34] Evan Francen: How is it? I was just talking to ask you yesterday about the zero. Oh yeah. Invisible process. They’re still bugging us. Are you serious? Well, it comes down to uh, you know, one more product diagnostic, right? Uh If we tell your firewall sucks, it sucks, you know? And so on the uh but you know, we we will not talk crap about your product, I think, you know, so it’s more like kind of that thing. And uh and so we said from the beginning, let us get our hands on it, send us send us one. Um you know, and then we can tell you what we think and I don’t know how many times has Oscar asked about that like six times.
[01:00:23] Brad Nigh: Yeah. Yeah. He was complaining to me the other day about it
[01:00:26] Chris Roberts: too. Yeah.
[01:00:28] Evan Francen: Yeah. So the last, the last time he was like, you know, whatever. And so that guy called another guy here and if our secure to complain about Oscar was being a jerk and it’s like, come on, we don’t play those games here. We’re just
[01:00:46] Chris Roberts: well that’s the problem. Other companies do play those games? I mean that’s I mean how many times have you seen, how many times have you seen that end are undone. And that’s what pisses me off about golfing. And that kind of stuff is like will be the gatekeepers that say your tax starts, you don’t want anyone error. All of a sudden you suddenly find the C. X. Or somebody’s being taken out for a gulf dinner or being taken out for a steak house or something. And now you’re being asked to even a second look unlike you our souls,
[01:01:16] Evan Francen: right? Yeah. And for me it’s like in fact instant fire. Oh yeah. You know what I mean? But and I actually know a place where it’s happening right now but I’m letting it happen because I want to see I want the person who’s managing that person to handle themselves then then you know, eventually you have to do it
[01:01:43] Chris Roberts: yourself. But yeah, it’s again, you know, it’s the way I look at it is you know the sign that stuff. I mean the same with you guys. I mean What is it this? 30, 30, 31 million smaller organizations just in the us some we’re gonna say, no Get over it. Focus on another 29999999 except no, sometimes no,
[01:02:14] Evan Francen: absolutely. Why don’t you pick an actual problem and actually solve
[01:02:19] Chris Roberts: it? What there we go. I mean that’s the that’s the other big one for me. You know that’s where I kind of like what we’re doing. I like I like the science I’d like to focus. I like the simplify side of it. Like a few other things. I think the other stuff is I’m hoping touch wood, the other stuff is just heating problems but it’s growing planes start steering problems. We need. What I really want is more is more collaboration between the south and marketing folks and then to focus on the U. S. Stuff and understand the U. S. Market. That’s part of the reason I think I got dragged into the company. Um but in my family getting dragged in and then you know when you’re paying me a lot of fucking money certainly start listening to me. So let’s just hope that that balances out. We’ll see. I mean either work well or or one. It is what it is these days.
[01:03:10] Evan Francen: Yeah. Yeah. I liked it from the get go man. I mean the first time you and I were talking about it was like I mean it looks good. It looks I mean I don’t know that I don’t know the technical details. I’ve never had my hands
[01:03:21] Chris Roberts: on one or it should be. I’ll give you access to your so called flying I’ll get you in. I will actually love your faults on it because when you think about I mean that’s honestly with the help of the hit squad and stuff we’re doing with Dave with everything, a lot of Dave actually a lot of this direct deliberately because I think what we’ll end up doing with Dave is we will end up consuming like a larger license and then we’ll just basically stuff that license down to all our clients. There’s a lot of our clients are just smaller, smaller sign. It doesn’t directly deal with small, small, small companies, but they’re doing a lot of work to enable IBMS PS and SS piece to deal with the smaller, you know, 125 10% companies. So at least they’re carrying on that side, which is not Yeah, for sure what school. All right. Although that quarter, I just got a message from Lana who’s our HR leader over there and they were over in Israel. So I just got a message from her, You know, she was like, hey, I hope you’re starting to feel better. She’s like take care were being bombed and I’m like, shit all the mess that’s going on over in Israel at the moment. That’s another neck of the woods. Seriously. Somebody just needs to put three or four of those countries in the room and start bashing has seven reckon in the way. Yeah, it’s crazy.
[01:04:38] Evan Francen: It’s always been that way, right? Always been the most hotly contested piece of real estate like ever.
[01:04:46] Chris Roberts: It’s those so frustrating because I mean having having been to almost all of those different countries. I mean there are some amazing, amazing people in each one of those countries. I mean I was talking to a friend over in Iran the other evening. I mean you know it’s I hate the fact that we paint people with that same brush and it drives me nuts because I love having conversations with all the different people in different countries and not just quickly wish, I wish that
[01:05:17] Evan Francen: we do that to each other.
[01:05:19] Brad Nigh: Just think about how much we fight and have these words for like 3-5% different, like 95% of the time we agree this 5%
[01:05:30] Chris Roberts: don’t just you know,
[01:05:33] Evan Francen: You actually if you actually have an open dialogue a lot of times you’ll find that you actually agree about 3-5% to a I have a buddy of mine used to be my boss way back when like that rock and we’re both kind of intellectual right? And we like to you know, I’m not going to do something if I don’t feel like it’s right. You know, so we would get in these kind of like heated arguments in the server room like ours and then we like what you are doing the same damn thing I am. You know, we just came out of totally different angles and it was like some of a bitch, we did that so many times.
[01:06:13] Chris Roberts: It’s um I just you know this is this is the interesting one. I mean, we have this song shoots out of the other evening when I was talking about some of the research I’m doing, um the digital side of the world. So taking what we consider a human in a digital essence and moving them into a digital morale. I have. Mm hmm. Probably a naive hope. We’ll just leave it at that. I have a naive hope that if we could go from a physical run into a digital run that we wouldn’t have the same, we’re not gonna have borders. I mean, let’s be perfectly honest, they just don’t exist now. Can we put borders in place? Absolutely. Could we do it a little, definitely. Bloody Lord. So maybe we could actually learn something for a change. But, you know, you would hope that we would we would get rid of so many of these basically territorial disputes. One, by the way of putting it. You know, I mean, that is the one that I see in the digital realm. So go, I’m sorry, I’m on this s But well, that’s my great, you’re not. I’ll spin up another one just over here right now. I’m on this one. You cannot done no issues. No problems there at all. Have a nice day. You know, unfortunately, can’t quite do that with visible and when the digital realm, there should be no disputes. I mean, that was from that standpoint, a little naive. But man, I
[01:07:32] Evan Francen: it’s like two guys walking by each other at a biker bar. Neither one of them are going to step aside, actually bump into each other. It’s like really,
[01:07:41] Chris Roberts: come on donna, I just, you just, I mean, you know, I just wish there’s, there’s a lot of stuff too much, yeah, to seem too many stupid things over the years. Unfortunately when I was a military, one of the places I end up being dragged into Bosnia was, oh well that was, that was not fun. That was when basically like, pretty much of my faith in humanity just basically have to, I’m not, I’m done. When, when I, when I see what one human can do to another human that used to be their neighbor. I’m done.
[01:08:15] Evan Francen: Well that’s, I’m excited from Mexico because I think the mexican, the mexican culture is unbelievable. Like I’m so in love with the mexican culture, I’m gonna become a mexican citizen.
[01:08:28] Chris Roberts: Yeah, leave outside of
[01:08:29] Brad Nigh: the cartels.
[01:08:31] Chris Roberts: That’s the yeah, that’s the one I use the cartels the right way. Okay, they’re humans, you
[01:08:40] Evan Francen: know, they’re susceptible to, you know, social engineering, just like the rest of us.
[01:08:44] Chris Roberts: Yeah, no, I get it, I told you I’m with you on the culture down there, it’s just absolutely amazing. The people, that’s what many people just like amazing things I don’t understand in Bolivia, There’s a bunch of calm down in Bolivia many, many years ago and that was another one of those places that was living in chile just amazing, amazing next to the word. Just one of those just beautiful, beautiful next to the world. But I would happily go back to in a heartbeat.
[01:09:11] Evan Francen: My buddy just came back from
[01:09:13] Chris Roberts: Colombia because they’re having like major
[01:09:17] Evan Francen: there so he like kind of an emergency and he’s probably never going back again. He
[01:09:22] Chris Roberts: was there all the time.
[01:09:24] Brad Nigh: One of the customers I’m working with is from Colombia has family and said his parents left the city and are staying in a vacation house because it’s so dangerous. You just never know when there will be a gunshot or bombs or anything.
[01:09:38] Evan Francen: It’s completely gone to
[01:09:39] Chris Roberts: crap again. Another one of those amazing places that Yeah, just so much to tell you New Zealand I’m going to retire to my S 400 near a wind farm close to whatever I will be sitting in my digital self in my as 400. Quite happily
[01:09:57] Brad Nigh: I’m gonna say yeah new Zealand would be my
[01:10:01] Chris Roberts: I mean you know everything, I see everything, I read everything and I was actually meant to be going there before I ended up in the U. S. They were gonna send me, I was meant to be heading to that nick is there going to be sending in the other there and because of a slight misunderstanding, I ended up being over here and So that was what, 2022, 23 years ago now. Well yeah it’s kind of crazy. I’ve lived all over the US as well which is even last year. I mean I was actually gonna sit down and work it out. I remember now I remember that we’re talking about it. I’ve been in this house now for I 4 4.5 years and I think that I should have to do what I can do. I think this is the longest time in my life that I’ve ever been under one roof wow. Yeah I was I was actually gonna go back and work it out but I’m about 195%. So this is the longest time in my life over the number one.
[01:11:00] Evan Francen: Yeah I was in the house for a long time kind of the middle part of my life but otherwise you know in the military you’re all over the damn place.
[01:11:07] Chris Roberts: Yes europe. But you’re T. 1949. That edited it and on the side of the box and it appears on the other end of the other end. Yeah. And then when I came out I moved a bunch of his stuff I was doing yeah and I came over here and you know it was basically virginian after the words be seen after the words then lamp work in Georgia. Ohio Chicago. Ohio Atlanta Wisconsin back to Ohio and then out here and even out here it’s been what one to bring or 567 houses out here in 13.12. 12 years of my that mm. Yeah you make
[01:11:59] Evan Francen: my A. D. D. Look like it’s nothing
[01:12:01] Chris Roberts: man. This is awesome.
[01:12:03] Evan Francen: I feel so much better by myself. Yeah I was like oh man. And then you’re like oh wait there’s somebody else like me.
[01:12:12] Chris Roberts: Okay cool. Oh yeah yeah no I’ve done. Yeah you were yeah love it. No problems.
[01:12:20] Evan Francen: All right. Uh That’s it. Still wrap thank you our listeners huge thank you to chris
[01:12:29] Chris Roberts: this is good. Thanks guys. And and brad much much. Pretty nice just to hang out and talk to us. Yes.
[01:12:37] Evan Francen: Uh If you have something like to tell us feel free to email the show at unsecurity@protonmail.com. Actually check the email this week. We had a really nice message that help to send it to you. Yeah. Yeah you look somebody does that.
[01:12:50] Chris Roberts: That’s cool.
[01:12:51] Evan Francen: If you’re the social type you can socialize with us on twitter except for with brad because brad doesn’t do social very well at all. Uh I mean
[01:13:00] Brad Nigh: I’m on it. If somebody brings me directly I’ll reply
[01:13:03] Evan Francen: you don’t have to defend yourself. Bad.
[01:13:04] Chris Roberts: I mean the fact is the fact you’re not good at it.
[01:13:06] Brad Nigh: It’s intentional.
[01:13:08] Evan Francen: Yeah exactly. So I’m @EvanFrancen brad’s @BradNigh and chris you want to give him yours.
[01:13:15] Chris Roberts: Uh yeah I’m pretty easy to find side Dragon one. I mean I’m all over the place. It’s yeah just look for a large share. Everything longer than that. All
[01:13:25] Evan Francen: right. Yeah, that’s it. We’re gonna wrap it up. Good, good talk. I got to figure out.
