How little data reveals a lot.
[ Music ]
Dave Bittner: Hello everyone and welcome to N2K's CyberWire's Hacking Humans podcast where each week we look behind this social engineering scams, phishing schemes, and criminal exploits that are making headlines and taking a heavy toll on organizations around the world. I'm Dave Bittner, and joining me is Joe Carrigan. Hi, Joe.
Joe Carrigan: Hi Dave.
Dave Bittner: And our N2K colleague and host of the T-Minus Space Daily Podcast, Maria Varmazis. Maria.
Maria Varmazis: Hi, Dave, and hi, Joe.
Dave Bittner: We've got some good stories to share this week. We'll be right back after this message from our show sponsor. [ Music ] And we are back. No follow up this week. So, we're going to go right into our stories here.
Joe Carrigan: Oh, I was going to talk about my chickens.
Dave Bittner: What?
Joe Carrigan: I don't get to talk about my chickens [laughs].
Dave Bittner: Oh. Well, you're always welcome to talk about your chickens [laughs].
Maria Varmazis: Oh, I mean [laughs] --
Dave Bittner: I'm sorry, I -- I --
Maria Varmazis: Do you need prompting, Joe?
Dave Bittner: -- I spoke too soon.
Joe Carrigan: No. The Coopers arrived.
Dave Bittner: Oh.
Joe Carrigan: -- and I just need to spend a -- like a week putting it together.
Dave Bittner: Okay. That sounds like code for something you know just [laughs] --
Joe Carrigan: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: The coop has arrived.
Joe Carrigan: The coop has arrived. Right [laughs]?
Dave Bittner: The coop has arrived. How long do you -- how -- how big a lift is assembling a chicken coop?
Joe Carrigan: I imagine it's about as big of a lift as assembling a very complex IKEA desk.
Dave Bittner: Okay.
Joe Carrigan: I -- I'd probably -- that -- that's my initial thing. So, whatever the time they say it will take just double it.
Dave Bittner: Okay. Okay. So, medium --
Joe Carrigan: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: -- medium level of difficulty.
Joe Carrigan: Right. But I mean I can handle it.
Dave Bittner: Now when you take on something like this --
Joe Carrigan: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: Is this a solo project, or do you have helpers?
Joe Carrigan: I will probably do this by myself because I'm the kind of guy that when somebody says, do you need help? I'm like, "No, I got it[laughs]."
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: You know? Mom sent me out here to help you. "Well, tell her I said go back inside [laughs]."
Dave Bittner: [Laughs]Okay. That was what I was getting at. It's like, are -- are you good at accepting help? It doesn't sound like it.
Joe Carrigan: No. No. I'm not.
Maria Varmazis: And an hour later, I'm in too deep. I need help.
Joe Carrigan: Right [laughs]?
Dave Bittner: Right [laughs].
Joe Carrigan: Nobody's supporting me. Why?
Dave Bittner: Right. Right [background laughter].
Joe Carrigan: Out here all by myself.
Dave Bittner: Right?
Joe Carrigan: After I sent everybody away. Wasn't that great? [ Interposing and laughter ]
Dave Bitner: Yeah. Alright, well best of luck with it, Joe --
Joe Carrigan: Thank you.
Dave Bittner: -- and we -- we'll -- we expect updates. I -- I shall no longer say we have no follow up, because [background laughter] -- there's always follow -- as long as Joe has chickens, there's follow up.
Joe Carrigan: Yep.
Dave Bittner: All right. Maria, why don't you start things off for us?
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. So, instead of doing a news story, I thought I would talk about, anecdotally, something that happened to me yesterday regarding a Facebook scam --
Joe Carrigan: Hmm.
Dave Bittner: Hmm.
Maria Varmazis: -- possibly one of the -- Yes. So, this is a very American lead-in to a story, but it's just -- stay with me for this one. Dave Bittner: Okay. As -- as of the day of this recording, yesterday, in my neck of the woods, there was a -- a shooter. It was really dark.
Dave Bittner: Wow.
Maria Varmazis: But yeah. There was a shelter in place order at the -- a university very close to me, the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. And there was video circulating of a person, not just brandishing a rifle, but literally holding it and looking to aim it at people wandering around the campus. It was terrifying.
Dave Bittner: Hmm.
Maria Varmazis: And a shelter in place order was put in at the university, and as somebody who lives pretty close to the university, that -- this all was going down at the same time that my daughter's elementary school was being dismissed for the day, and lots of little kids would be --
Dave Bittner: Ugg.
Maria Varmazis: -- just sort of shepherded around from activity-to-activity, or in large groups at playgrounds and the like. So, it was horrific for, I think, everybody involved. It was also the first day of school for the university students. So, just a really terrible way to start their university year. So, I did what I think a lot of people would do in my situation and go -- and went on Reddit and Facebook, trying to find any local chatter about what the heck was going on? Was anyone injured? Like, has anyone seen this person? What's -- what's happening? I didn't want to contribute to the panic, but I was also trying to figure out, like, what do I need to know, as somebody who's not on the campus but lives close by. You know, well how -- how much is there a handle on what's happening here?
Dave Bittner: Hmm.
Maria Varmazis: So, as I think I mentioned some episodes ago, I had reactivated my Facebook account, so I was like, Okay. Let me try and figure out what's happening in the local news communities, which pretty much only exists for me on Facebook. There's really nowhere else for me to go. And I did find some posts that some students at UMass, Lowell had posted about the shelter in place order that they were under, and a lot of them had made their posts public. A lot of them were communicating with family members who were posting things like this is scary. Please stay safe. And you know, I didn't comment on any of this. But these are public posts. And I noticed at the bottom of all of these posts that were happening within minutes of, you know, me looking for this information, were some comments that were saying things like, shot by someone present at the scene. Peep it on something that sounded very obviously fake, like, you know, Big Crime investigation page. Or another comment with a shocked face emoji. This angle was never shown on the news. Here's what I caught, with a link to another Facebook page. And of course I'm going, All right. This has clearly got to be scammy.
Dave Bittner: Mm-hm.
Maria Varmazis: But I mean, this is the worst type of ambulance-chasing I can possibly imagine when there is an active situation. where people are trying to figure out what the heck is going on. And it -- within minutes the scammers are showing up on the public comments and trying to divert people to very obviously scammy pages. So, I -- this was very personal for me because I literally was trying to figure what the heck is going on. You know, especially with all the kids being dismissed at that time.
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: And I noticed that a lot of these pages were, if you clicked on them, and I know -- I was like, I'm, I'm now in for this for for clicking on -- on links that I shouldn't [background laughter]. But I knew they were going to other Facebook pages. So, to be fair, as they were going to other Facebook pages. So, I just wanted to see what the profiles looked like. And they all had newsy-sounding names, these Facebook pages that made it, you know, Live News, or News Live, that kind of thing. And they would embed what was, I'm sure, going to be the next step, the phishing link, they would embed a link that put an image that looked like a video preview in their Facebook post. So, it had like, the little "Play" button overlay --
Dave Bittner: Mm-hm. Mm-hm.
Maria Varmazis: -- but if you click it, it will take you to the Facebook page. I -- I didn't go that far [laughs], so I -- I didn't go that far, but I -- I'm -- this might be familiar for people, I'm sure, who are on Facebook a lot and are keeping track of breaking news stories, but -- and I know these are not new. I'm not saying that this is new. But for me this is, again, very personal, and I had never encountered one, in the wild so to speak, because I've never needed to find information this quickly through Facebook. So, I just -- I don't know. I'm just -- I'm just out here saying, what the heck? Thankfully --
Dave Bittner: Yeah [laughs].
Maria Varmazis: -- all is -- all is well. The person was apprehended, there were no shots fired, no one was injured. Ends up it was a -- a kid with an airsoft gun having too much fun.
Dave Bittner: Oh. You know --
Maria Varmazis: So is it -- gladly -- gladly, all is well, but it --
Dave Bittner: My dad used to tell me, "You're going to get killed with that." Because I had a water gun that looked like an Uzi.
Joe Carrigan: Oh. Yeah.
Dave Bittner: And this is the kind of thing that gets people killed. I mean, this guy walking around the college campus, he's lucky he's alive.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. He is.
Dave Bittner: And the campus police didn't respond and just shoot him.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. Because I -- I will tell you, it was campus police, local police, state police, and the FBI with at least five helicopters we're all looking for this person.
Joe Carrigan: [Laughs].
Maria Varmazis: It was -- I can't even begin to imagine this. Yeah --
Joe Carrigan: You done messed up [laughs]!
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. And -- and there's a picture.
Dave Bittner: Just imagining him walking around, looking at -- looking at all the stuff and going, gosh, I wonder what's going on?
Joe Carrigan: [Laughs] Right.
Maria Varmazis: Well, again, he wasn't just like carrying this around. He was holding it up, like to look through the site and looking very much like he was looking to shoot it at somebody.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: I've seen the video of it. It was kind of like, wow. So, I just -- this was a what the heck moment for me, of like I -- I can't believe [laughs] within minutes of these things being posted, the scammers are already all over it --
Dave Bittner: Right.
Maria Varmazis: -- trying to direct people to get phished. I just --
Dave Bittner: That is amazing. I mean it's -- it's, it's not like they're following a news cycle by watching the news. They're following a news cycle by being on Facebook, seeing what's going on, and responding to it. Because there's like --
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, I think -- Yeah, go ahead.
Dave Bittner: Here's my question about this, because we've talked about something similar that happened. I had a situation a couple years ago where I was looking for tickets for a local event.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: Like a local community theater event.
Maria Varmazis: Right [laughs].
Dave Bittner: And I just posted, "Hey, looking for tickets to this event." And somebody replied and said, oh, I've got 2 tickets. They're $150 each. And I was like; this is a $10 event.
Joe Carrigan: Huh? [Laughs] right.
Maria Varmazis: [Laughs] yeah. Yeah.
Dave Bittner: So, what? you know, what?
Maria Varmazis: Yeah [laughs].
Dave Bittner: What's going on? But my question is, how are they getting access to the feed? In other words? In other words, my -- I think this must be something in Facebook's API where people in some kind of automated way are just sucking in keywords, or have automated searches or --
Maria Varmazis: They must.
Dave Bittner: -- something.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: And I would love if any of our listeners know -- have any familiarity with either the Facebook API or some -- because Facebook has a lot of different tools for automating things and all that sort of stuff. If anybody out there can point us to how this works, or how they're able to key into an event like this so quickly and with such precision.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: -- in clearly what's at least a semi-automated way, right? I would love to know the mechanism by which they're doing this. And of course, the B side of that is the mechanism by which Facebook ignores it.
Maria Varmazis: Why can't we stop it?
Joe Carrigan: Right. Yeah. Exactly.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. Yeah. Because what was interesting to me is there weren't, at least in the posts, they were not obvious keywords. Like, if it said, this is my video from shelter in place or something --
Dave Bittner: Mm-hm.
Joe Carrigan: Mm-hm.
Maria Varmazis: -- but I could imagine they're looking for terms like that. But a lot of them were saying, this is the video I took. Or, you know, I'm -- you know, nothing that really stood out as this this is a newsy thing that's happening.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: Maybe the comments of, you know, people saying, stay safe, and there's a lot of volume of comments happening very quickly. I don't know, but it just -- it seemed more sophisticated than I would have expected, and there were also a lot of these spammy comments very quickly. It wasn't just one or two profiles, it was like, 5 to 10, all very different.
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: So yeah, they're just gross kind of ambulance chasing and unnecessary noise during a crisis situation, which is just horrific. Dave Bittner: Right. I wonder if it could be as simple as a post garnering a lot of attention, so it gets labeled as being a hot post.
Joe Carrigan: Or a trending post.
Dave Bittner: Trending post. Right.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Dave Bittner: Precisely. And so, if all you're out to do is get people to go somewhere and you post something that just says, here's my video of this, it doesn't apply to anything really, you know? Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah. I'd love to hear people's thoughts too. That's a great point.
Joe Carrigan: Wow.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: Yeah. Please. If there's anybody out there who has the details, if you have any experience or can shine some light on what's going on behind the scenes here, or if you're Mark Zuckerberg [background laughter].
Maria Varmazis: We want answers [laughs]!
Dave Bittner: Just ring us up. We'll have you on the show.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah!
Dave Bittner: We'll give you proper talking to.
Joe Carrigan: Why would you have a seat, Mark? [Background laughter] You should be ashamed of yourself.
Maria Varmazis: We'll throw some of those Hacking Humans brains at him [laughs].
Joe Carrigan: We'll pelt him with the --
Dave Bittner: There you go.
Maria Varmazis: We'll pelt him with the brain?
Dave Bittner: Yeah. You know, that'd be a great dunk -- or a great fundraiser. Rather than a dunking booth, have a brain hurler booth.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah. Some kind [background laughter] -- somewhere you just throw foam balls at Mark Zuckerberg?
Dave Bittner: Yeah. Exactly [background laughter].
Maria Varmazis: Use your brain. No, these ones. Yes.
Dave Bittner: Yeah. Call me. Call me, Mark. We'll make a lot of money together. Oh. Sorry, you got a head start [laughs].
Joe Carrigan: There's one thing he doesn't care about; it's a lot of money.
Dave Bittner: No. It's been there; done that. All right. Well, that's interesting. And then I guess the lesson here for our listeners is just to be mindful of this sort of thing, particularly when you see a nondescript link posted [laughs] right? It's so easy to fill in the gap.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: Right?
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. When you're looking for information, when it's something that's literally happening right now, and you know, minutes count.
Dave Bittner: Right.
Maria Varmazis: Because you don't know, is any- -- is everybody Okay? Is anyone hurt? And there are other people commenting, you know, this is what I found, and those are legitimate comments too. That makes it even more confusing, where it's other people --
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: -- also at the situation going, oh. I captured this. So, the spammy comments, if you're panicking, especially -- as I kind of was to be honest with you -- they can look pretty much in line with some of the legitimate stuff.
Dave Bittner: Right.
Maria Varmazis: And I had of force myself to slow down [laughs]. >>
Dave Bittner: Right. Right. Well, and when you're in that state of mind, you're not thinking straight, certainly not at 100 percent.
Maria Varmazis: No.
Dave Bittner: So yeah, that's a good cautionary tale, Maria. All right. Well, no link to that, but we look forward to getting some, perhaps some answers, from our listeners there. My story this week comes from the folks at Wired, and in a roundabout comes from a friend of the show and my co-host over on Only Malware in the Building, Salena Larson. Salena is a researcher at Proofpoint, and they've come up with some interesting information here. Let me start off sort of -- lead us into this. You know, we've -- we talked about sextortion here many times.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. Yep.
Dave Bittner: I'd say -- correct me if I'm wrong, I'd say the stereotypical sextortion scheme I think of is a phishing e-mail where somebody says, hey, I hacked your machine. I saw what you were up to on your computer. You should be ashamed of yourself. I secretly took some pictures and unless you send me some money, I'm going to send these pictures I secretly took to all your friends and family. Is it -- do you think -- am I--? Does that align with what you guys think of when it comes to sextortion?
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah. That's one of them.
Maria Varmazis: Email or text. Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah. E-mail. I think that's one of them. I think of the Meta platforms, sextortion gangs that target teenage boys.
Dave Bittner: Okay.
Joe Carrigan: That's who I think about a lot, because I have -- I can't remember his first name; last name is Raf- -- R-A-F-I-L-E. He's in my LinkedIn feed, and he comes up Paul, I think Paul Rafile. He comes up all the time talking about it. So, it's always front of me.
Dave Bittner: And what does that involve?
Joe Carrigan: It involves them being on Instagram and -- or Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, and somebody messages them posing as a young girl, and they exchange nudes, and then the guy turns around and says, "I'm going to extort you for money if you don't pay up." But he's already actually entrenched in his social network.
Dave Bittner: I see.
Joe Carrigan: Actually.
Dave Bittner: Yeah. So, the thing about, for example, the one that I'm -- was describing here is that it's a bluff. You know --
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Dave Bittner: -- they don't actually have pictures of you. They -- you -- but they're just counting on the fact that there are enough people out there. I don't know if it's fair to say, the majority of people out there [laughs], who occasionally look at things on their computers that they wouldn't want everyone to know about, right?
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Dave Bittner: We've all been there.
Joe Carrigan: Yep.
Dave Bittner: So that's why it works. Well, the researchers at Proofpoint published a report about a tool called Stealerium. Which looks like a pretty normal info stealer. And info stealers, once they're on your machine, they just gather up information like passwords or banking information, or crypto wallet keys, and send it off to the attacker. But this particular one, Stealerium, comes with what Proofpoint calls a "sextortion feature." It watches for certain keywords in your browser history, words like sex, or porn, and when it sees them, it takes a screenshot of what you're looking at. It snaps a picture of you through your webcam at the same time --
Joe Carrigan: Hmm.
Maria Varmazis: Oh gross.
Dave Bittner: -- and sends the paired pictures straight to the hacker. And from there you can imagine where that goes. They send you an e-mail that says, pay up or we leak these, and they send you the paired pictures of what you were looking at, and you there, you know, through the webcam. They -- Proofpoint has spotted this campaign. It's spreading pretty broadly.
Joe Carrigan: Right. I'll bet it is. Because this is actually like, somebody said, wouldn't it be great if we could make those scam e-mails real?
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: That's --
Dave Bittner: Exactly.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah, the kind of ingenuity you're dealing with here.
Dave Bittner: Right. Right. What if it was real?
Joe Carrigan: Right?
Maria Varmazis: Ugg. Gross. Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: It is gross. It's so gross.
Maria Varmazis: It's so gross.
Dave Bittner: Think of the money we could make?
Joe Carrigan: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: So, the sort of weird twist to all this is that Stealerium is an open-source project.
Joe Carrigan: Hey. I like open-source projects [laughs].
Maria Varmazis: Wait. Wait. Wait. What [laughs]? What?
Dave Bittner: It's Just opinions. Does a 360 [laughs].
Joe Carrigan: I'm all right. This is all okay with me.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah [laughs].
Dave Bittner: It's an open-source project.
Maria Varmazis: I mean, yes. Open source is great, but this is weird. Okay [laughs].
Dave Bittner: Yeah. And the person who distributes it on GitHub says that they -- said it's for educational purposes only.
Joe Carrigan: Of course it is.
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: Okay. Well, a contributor has a chance to do the funniest thing ever to this [laughs]. Maybe nuke it from the inside, I don't know [laughs].
Dave Bittner: Yeah. So, so far we don't have any stories of people being affected by it, like no victims have come forward and said, this is what happened to me. But Proofpoint has seen this malware package being distributed. So, it's out there in the wild. It's happening. But it's just so despicable.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: Just the lowest of the low when it comes to taking advantage of people. I was trying to think of lessons learned from this. I mean, I guess, you know, put a put a sticker over your webcam. Right [laughs]? Or --
Dave Bittner: Right.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: Or kind of face the wall [laughs].
Dave Bittner: Yeah. If -- you know, whatever. Whatever you're up to.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, a post it note over your th- -- yeah.
Dave Bittner: Yeah. A post it note. Yeah. Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: Mm-hm.
Dave Bittner: Just as a matter of habit, I guess. I remember, I mean Joe, this goes way back. Wasn't one of your colleagues at Hopkins figured out a way to activate a webcam without the light going on?
Joe Carrigan: Yeah. That was --
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: -- his first name was Matt, and I can't remember what his last name was --
Dave Bittner: Okay.
Joe Carrigan: -- but he --. Yeah. He -- it was -- it had to do with the -- he was on an Apple laptop with a particular model of camera, but I think it was universal. The issue was that the camera loaded firmware, it didn't validate signatures for the firmware. So, he could rewrite the firmware, and he reverse engineered the camera to find out how to keep the diode -- the LED --
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: -- off, even though the camera was on.
Dave Bittner: Right.
Joe Carrigan: And you could just turn the camera on.
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: The other thing I can imagine, if they're just looking to grab a still shot, you know, even the -- I could imagine the little light just flickering for, you know, a fraction of a second and you --
Dave Bittner: Right.
Joe Carrigan: -- you wouldn't even notice it or say wait --
Maria Varmazis: Yes. Yes.
Joe Carrigan: -- what was that? Is my camera on? Oh no. It's not. The lights not on. I'm good.
Dave Bittner: But you're not. So --
Joe Carrigan: Yeah [laughs].
Dave Bittner: You know, I think it's
Maria Varmazis: I mean, if you can.
Dave Bittner: -- easy to ki- to sort of tut-tut and shame the victim here, but I don't think this is a case, you know, where that's appropriate.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Dave Bittner: Uh --
Joe Carrigan: I don't think that's the case either.
Maria Varmazis: No. No.
Joe Carrigan: I don't think that regardless of how you feel about it, you don't compound whatever wrong you perceive by piling another wrong on top of it.
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: No. NO.
Joe Carrigan: Especially a criminal wrong.
Dave Bittner: Right. Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: Which is what this is.
Maria Varmazis: People deserve privacy. It's just -- that's all it is.
Joe Carrigan: Right. Agreed. People also deserve privacy.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. Yeah.
Dave Bittner: So, keep an eye out for this. You know, be careful. Obviously when you're clicking links and downloading things from places you don't know where they might come from, keep that antivirus running. But then also I'd say, just to be mindful of keeping your webcam covered when it's appropriate to do so.
Joe Carrigan: Or you can do what I do and just not have a webcam on your desktop computer at home [laughs].
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. If you're on a laptop, though, that's a lot harder because they are often built in.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah. It's almost impossible.
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: [inaudible 00:20:35].
Maria Varmazis: A mean, a post it note will do.
Joe Carrigan: For my story, when I get to it, I'll explain that I have to -- I have to put a camera on my computer when I fire it up.
Dave Bittner: Is that right?
Joe Carrigan: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: Yeah. Okay.
Maria Varmazis: Interesting.
Dave Bittner: All right. Well, we will have a link to that story in the show's notes. Again, that comes from the folks over at Wired. We're going to take a quick break here. We will be right back. [ Music ] And we are back. Joe, you're up. What do you got for us?
Joe Carrigan: So, since we're talking a lot of privacy stuff today. and also, we're talking about not having news stories but personal, anecdotal things -- there, see? I wove both what you guys --
Maria Varmazis: Nice! I love that.
Joe Carrigan: Yes. Thank you.
Dave Bittner: A masterful job well done, well done.
Joe Carrigan: But, you know, of course by pointing it out that makes it worthless [background laughter]. Like, a segue is not a segue if you say the word, segue. My story is more about privacy, which we talk about from time to time in the news about social engineering, and today I wanted to talk about metadata. Now, I don't know if our listeners are aware of this, but I am currently enrolled in a master Master of Science program at -- or master's program in data Science. There. I'll say that.
Dave Bittner: Okay.
Joe Carrigan: I'm taking one class this semester, and its Introduction to Machine Learning.
Dave Bittner: Now, you already have a masters, right?
Joe Carrigan: I do. I have a master's in computer science.
Dave Bittner: Okay. Well, La di da [laughs].
Joe Carrigan: Yes. I'm getting -- getting another one.
Maria Varmazis: Dual master, ooh, ooh, ooh.
Joe Carrigan: Maria, do you have a masters?
Maria Varmazis: I do not. I only have a bachelor's.
Dave Bittner: Yeah. Me too. Hmm.
Joe Carrigan: Well --
Dave Bittner: How many bachelors degrees you got there, college boy [background laughter]?
Joe Carrigan: I have two of those as well.
Dave Bittner: Well, I just got my lowly arts degree, so I'll just stay down here in the cheap seats [laughs].
Joe Carrigan: I have two of those as well.
Dave Bitner: I have one of those as well [sigh].
Joe Carrigan: So, the name of the class that I'm taking this semester is Introduction to Machine Learning. And before you can do any machine learning on any any data set, you have to do something called EDA, which is in initialism for Exploratory Data Analysis.
Dave Bittner: Hm.
Joe Carrigan: Right? That is where you start looking at the data. And we were talking about this in class last night, as -- which I'm I'm really actually enjoying this class. But -- and to go back to the camera thing, it is an online class, and the instructor has asked that people turn their cameras on so we can see them and -- and get -- make sure number one, everybody sitting at their computer paying attention to him, and number two, is see if anybody has any confused looks on their faces [background laughter]. Right? Which is a great thing to do.
Maria Varmazis: I think that's only fair. Yeah.
Dave Bittner: But that's my default face, so [laughs] --
Joe Carrigan: Well. Right. So, I -- first day of class he's -- he says, "Can you get your -- turn your cameras on," and I'm like, "I have to go get my camera; hold on." He goes, "What?" I said, "Yeah. I work on a desktop." He says, "They still make those?" I'm like, "Yes. They still make these things."
Maria Varmazis: [Laughs] They still make those.
Joe Carrigan: I love my desktop. You cannot have a GTX1080TI in a laptop. Sorry [background laughter]. That's -- and I'm boasting about like a --
Maria Varmazis: How much Factorio are you playing Joe? Anyway, I'll just -- I'll hold it right there [laughs].
Joe Carrigan: I'm boasting about having like, a seven-year-old graphics card now, [background laughter] but it still works very well. So, exploratory data analysis is what you have to do before you can do any machine learning. This is where you look at the data and you see what needs to be cleaned up. You begin looking at different parts of the data, those are called dimensions or features, right? You might think of them as columns if you're familiar with databases and things like that.
Dave Bittner: Hm. Mm-hmm.
Maria Varmazis: Mm-hmm.
Joe Carrigan: Some of these pieces of the data might be more significant than others. You can visualize them in a limited way. You're not going to, you know, if you've got a big data set, you're not going to visualize a lot of it, but you can start visualizing little pieces of it, and it's really fun. And like, last night we looked at the at a small data set for classifying species of irises, the flowers?
Dave Bittner: Oh. Okay.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Joe Carrigan: And I know this sounds like it would be boring, but it was remarkably interesting to see the data.
Dave Bittner: I'll take your word for it. And just [background laughter] --
Joe Carrigan: I should hear crickets on this, right? Nobody else says anything. It's just me. Anyway, I -- we've talked about how much I love data on this show before, so, you know, looking even at the data analysis of flower petal length and stuff like that is fascinating to me. Anyway, the instructor took one year of his own browsing data and stripped out all the information except for two pieces of information: The domain he was visiting and the timestamp. And this is a very limited form of metadata, and we he had -- we had a discussion last night, and we all well, I don't know. I'll tell you what metadata is. Metadata is data about the data.
Maria Varmazis: Right. Yep.
Joe Carrigan: So, There was a -- somewhere, I can't remember. It was during the Obama Administration, there was a disclosure that came out, it came out that the Government was keeping data about phone calls.
Dave Bittner: Right.
Joe Carrigan: And it was, like the two numbers that it called, the time of day that it happened, and the length of the call.
Dave Bittner: Right. And --
Joe Carrigan: Which can reveal a lot. Yeah. Dave Bittner: Yes. Right. And I remember President Obama was talking about, saying, "Everybody should just relax; this is just metadata." But this was everybody's metadata.
Dave Bittner: [Laughs] right.
Joe Carrigan: Right?
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: Right.
Joe Carrigan: Ig -- this was indiscriminately being pulled up, is how -- if I'm remembering this incorrectly, I'm sure our listeners will remind me, but it was a lot of information. And there was somebody on, was it Facebook or LinkedIn? One of the social media sites. Maybe they have an article about it, where he requested essentially the metadata that the government was getting from the cell phone companies, and he was able to entirely map out his day just from that metadata.
Maria Varmazis: Right.
Joe Carrigan: Right? So, it was -- I mean, it's -- when you hear somebody say, we're just talking about metadata, don't let that fool you [background laughter].
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. Now I am --
Joe Carrigan: That's a trick.
Maria Varmazis: Yep. Yep.
Joe Carrigan: The metadata of your data is so important. And the example that instructor gave in class last night was that Facebook, or Meta, was going to start learn- -- learning -- using your metadata from WhatsApp about to build machine learning and training of of these models. And they said, don't worry, we can't see your messages. That's actually end-to-end encrypted. But he did this demonstration with his browsing data, and I want to remind everybody, two pieces of data: Timestamp domain. That's it. Like, if you went to Google and did a search, all that showed up was Google. If you went too --
Maria Varmazis: Okay. Yep.
Joe Carrigan: If you went to the Wall Street Journal and looked at an article, all that showed up was Wall Street Journal. And by looking at this, I was able to -- we -- he grafted out as number of -- average number of visits per day during the 24 hours of the day.
Maria Varmazis: Okay.
Joe Carrigan: And he said, "Look at this graph." And he didn't sing it, but he said, "Look at this graph." And he said, "Can anybody tell me anything about me from this graph?" And I look at it, and I'm like, yeah. You get up in the morning around 6 o'clock, you check your e-mail, you check your phone, you do something, then you -- it looks like you will commute in to work, somewhere between around 7 o'clock, because you're you're very inactive at that point in time. On average, you don't do anything until like noon. That's probably indicative of you being at work and there are studies that show that you're the most productive at work during the morning. That as the day goes on and you become more tired of doing the work; you start doing more stuff like browsing. And sure enough, right after noon, it starts picking up. And then there's a steep drop off around 4:00 p.m. I'm going to guess that's where you commute home. And then it doesn't pick back up again till like 7 o'clock. That's probably after dinner, and then you're on the internet intermittently from 7 o'clock. And then, it looks to me that like, from 11:00 to 1:00 p.m., that's when you do the -- or 11:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m., that's when you do the most -- your -- most of your browsing. And he was like, "Everything you just said is 100 percent correct."
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Joe Carrigan: And he I got that information from two pieces of data extracted over a year.
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: And it wasn't -- and actually, it wasn't even the domain piece, it was just timestamps.
Dave Bittner: Mm-hmm.
Joe Carrigan: From just the timestamp data --
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: -- I -- the -- I wro- -- I told that whole story of his daily life and --
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: -- from that I'm able to tell he had a -- he has -- probably has a full-time job. He probably commutes to and from work. All these kind of things you can learn just from this one piece of metadata. He also listed out the top 50 sites he visited during this year, and this information we were able to say -- to guess correctly, hey, you're looking to buy a house, aren't you?
Maria Varmazis: Hm. Mm-hmm.
Joe Carrigan: Because he was going to realtor.com and Zillow and another place.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joe Carrigan: And we could identify two of his financial institutions.
Dave Bittner: Mm-hmm.
Maria Varmazis: Yep.
Joe Carrigan: Right? And then I said, "Hey. What's your e-mail address and your first pet's name [background laughter]? And that seemed to confuse him; listeners to this show will know. I said, "Don't answer it. Don't answer that. I was joking about that. Please don't answer [background laughter]."
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: You know, we talked about this over on the Caveat podcast, Ben Yellen and I, pretty regularly.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Dave Bittner: And the example we use is just location data.
Joe Carrigan: Mm-hmm.
Dave Bittner: That's it, just location data.
Joe Carrigan: Yep.
Dave Bittner: If I have a log -- so here's the thing, organizations, the data brokers, will often say all this data is anonymized.
Joe Carrigan: Sure, it is.
Dave Bittner: So, we don't know whose data it is.
Joe Carrigan: Mm-hmm.
Dave Bittner: Okay? But I'll just use you, Joe, as my example. I know where you work, and I know where you live.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Dave Bittner: So, all I have to do is look for a device that spends at night -- spends its night where you live, while you're asleep, and spends its day where you work -- while you're at work.
Joe Carrigan: Yep.
Dave Bittner: And I have a device ID.
Joe Carrigan: Yep.
Dave Bittner: And then I tell them, give me every location that this device ID has been.
Joe Carrigan: That's correct.
Dave Bittner: And now I know where you go to church.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: I know where you go to the doctor.
Joe Carrigan: Yep.
Dave Bittner: I know what bars you visit.
Joe Carrigan: Yep. >> I know -- just, you know, all just -- as you say, it's all just metadata. Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: It's just metadata. It's --
Maria Varmazis: Yep.
Dave Bittner: You know, it's not we're not watching your conversations. We're not reading your messages.
Maria Varmazis: Nope. But another great example that our instructor gave last night is, what if I see that you make a phone call to a doctor, or you -- what was it, he said? He said, you make a -- you visit a doctor's website and then a cancer institute's website.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Dave Bittner: Right?
Maria Varmazis: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dave Bittner: What can I guess about that?
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: And I remember, I actually looked this up. I -- in 2015, I got an ad on Amazon that said, cancer in you. And I'm like, uh-oh.
Maria Varmazis: Jesus [background laughter]. Or they know something you don't. Dave Bittner: Right. They they figure it out before you know. Also, whether or not you're pregnant? Yeah -- - >>
Dave Bittner: Right.
Maria Varmazis: I've wondered that famously.
Dave Bittner: And it was a couple years later, I think, I have to ask my mom and about this, but within -- after that happened, both my parents were diagnosed with cancer.
Joe Carrigan: Hm.
Maria Varmazis: Oh, my God!
Dave Bittner: Bit it wasn't within -- it wasn't within like, a year I don't think. I think it was a little longer than that. Hm.
Joe Carrigan: But I have to -- I have to go back and find that out, but it -- I always think about that, you know? It was like, I got that ad and I posted it on Twitter. On -- and I actually went back to the Twitter account to look this up to see when did that happen?
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: And then I got a Facebook ad that was like something about massive heart attacks and had a guy that looks a lot like me sitting there reading a book, and I'm like, uh oh [laughs].
Maria Varmazis: Gee, they got it out for you.
Joe Carrigan: I better go to the cardiologist.
Dave Bittner: [Laughs] It's like --
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. Seriously.
Joe Carrigan: [Laughs] yeah.
Maria Varmazis: Well, it's like that -- there was that story a few years ago about a woman who got an ad for diapers or something in the mail, and then a few weeks later found out she was actually pregnant. But I guess it was Target?
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: They knew that she was pregnant before she was, or something? I don't know if that was true, or if that was a --
Dave Bittner: Well -- the -- well, the version of the of that, that I've heard is that Target figured out that she was pregnant and started sending her coupons and things.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: But she lived at home with her parents, and her parents did not know she was expecting.
Maria Varmazis: Oh.
Dave Bittner: But her parents found out she was expecting because of all the stuff she was getting from Target.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: Oh. Okay. All right.
Dave Bittner: Like envelopes that said, you know, come -- bles- -- here comes the blessed day!
Maria Varmazis: [Laughs] right?
Dave Bittner: You know, and things like that, right?
Maria Varmazis: What blessed day?
Joe Carrigan: [Laughs] Right?
Dave Bittner: What? Yeah. [Laughs] what blessed day?
Maria Varmazis: The day you move out? Oh no, it's [laughs] --
Joe Carrigan: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: All right, I miss -- I totally misunderstood that story then, yeah [laughs].
Joe Carrigan: It's what every dad says to their -- says to their teenage kids.
Dave Bittner: That's the version I've heard of it. But you know --
Joe Carrigan: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: -- I don't know -- you know, the stories sort of [laughs] --
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: -- or take on the life of their own.
Maria Varmazis: A bit of a meme.
Dave Bittner: Over time.
Maria Varmazis: Well, Joe, isn't -- don't these data sets also generate -- not -- I'm trying to think of this in terms of AI kind of bringing it back to that, but don't they also generate their own metadata? Especially if there's requests flying back and forth? Or am I thinking more in the space world [laughs]?
Joe Carrigan: No. Absolutely not. You're not.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: You know, our example here is actually just data pulled out of the browser.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: That is one small piece of the data that's available about you and your browsing history.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: There is all kinds of other data that's out there. And yes, you're right, that even the network traffic can provide metadata like your location, your approximate location, or maybe even your exact location if they have access to the lease information --
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: -- the DHCP lease information.
Dave Bittner: And this is why --
Maria Varmazis: I -- I'll give it --
Dave Bittner: And this is why we have those stories about that Facebook is listening to you.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Dave Bittner: Facebook doesn't have to listen to you.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Dave Bittner: Because Facebook has all the metadata and it can figure out pretty much --
Joe Carrigan: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: -- everything it needs to know about you by stitching together the metadata from your use of their apps, but also they have their little probes on just about every other place you go.
Joe Carrigan: You know, it's -- you know what's really weird is, I reinstalled Facebook on my phone --
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: -- and I might take it off again, because I noticed that when I start -- when I go to a place and I meet people?
Dave Bittner: Mm-hmm.
Joe Carrigan: Like there's a person -- a woman I used to work with, who were not friends on Facebook, but we -- we'd go out -- there's a brewery over in Rockville that we'd -- we'd meet at every now and then, and I would show up there, and -- with one of my friends who is a Facebook friend, and one of my -- and this woman who is not. Shortly after that meeting, I started getting her as a recommended friend on Facebook.
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: Because we were in the same location --
Dave Bittner: Yeah. Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: -- long enough.
Dave Bittner: Yeah [laughs].
Joe Carrigan: They're like, hey, do you know this woman? I'm like -- >>
Dave Bittner: There's a famous story about that, where there was like a Domino's Pizza delivery person who got held up.
Joe Carrigan: [Laughs] Really?
Dave Bittner: Yeah. Got held up delivering pizzas and a couple hours later the person who held them up got recommended as a friend on Facebook.
Joe Carrigan: [Laughs] Took too long to rob the guy [laughs].
Dave Bittner: Well, I mean, because they were in proximity, they were in close proximity --
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: Well, now you're friends [laughs].
Dave Bittner: -- and it figured these two folks must know each [background laughter]. Let me make a connection.
Maria Varmazis: Under what circumstances? Yeah, that's the question.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah. That's awesome.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: So, the thing is, here in the good old US of A, we have no data privacy legislation [laughs] at the federal level. So, there's not a whole lot that we can do about our metadata being vacuumed up. But if this sort of thing gives you pause and upsets you, then this is very much the sort of thing that, if you want to pen a letter to your representatives in Congress.
Joe Carrigan: Yep.
Dave Bittner: It's a good kind of thing to do because that's the only way we're going to get there.
Joe Carrigan: I'm sure that I'm going to be very upset next week because our homework assignment is to do this with our own browsing data.
Maria Varmazis: Hmm.
Dave Bittner: Oh. That's -- Oh. See, that's interesting.
Maria Varmazis: That's an interesting exercise.
Joe Carrigan: It is.
Dave Bittner: And then do you do you share it with someone? And then they try to figure out --?
Joe Carrigan: No, you do -- and that is one of the things they made abundantly clear. Do not share the metadata. Only share [background laughter] the graphs and the output of the program --
Dave Bittner: Okay [laughs].
Joe Carrigan: -- and the soft- -- and the code. That's it; don't share the metadata.
Dave Bittner: See, I would -- what I -- you know me, I would try to find a way to subvert this --
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Dave Bittner: -- to make it seem as though my browsing was the most unhealthy, weird --
Joe Carrigan: [Laughs] right!
Dave Bittner: Just, you know, bonkers, psychopathic things you know? Like -- it's like, why do you keep look -- searching for how to bury a body? You know?
Joe Carrigan: Right [laughs].
Dave Bittner: Oh no reason. Aren't you?
Joe Carrigan: Yeah [laughs].
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, no reverse card.
Dave Bittner: All right. Well, in terms of advice for our listeners, there's not a whole lot you can do really. I mean well, so, be mindful of cheap, janky apps on your mobile devices.
Joe Carrigan: Absolutely.
Dave Bittner: Because they are the ones that are quite often tracking your location data, and all your other data, and sending it off to the data brokers.
Joe Carrigan: But if you have -- if your phone has privacy features, like, for example, iPhones have switches you can throw that help hide where you are, and who you are, and that sort of thing. And I -- and Android has similar things, so activate those.
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: -- because why not.
Dave Bittner: Absolutely.
Joe Carrigan: Why not?
Dave Bittner: But you're kind of pushing a rock uphill when it comes to metadata --
Joe Carrigan: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: -- because there's just so much of it.
Joe Carrigan: And that rock --
Maria Varmazis: Yes.
Joe Carrigan: -- just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Dave Bittner: It's a reverse snowball.
Maria Varmazis: Yes.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Dave Bittner: Yeah. All right. Well, no link to that story as well. But again, we would love to hear from you if there's something you'd like us to consider for the show, you can e-mail us. It's hackinghumans@n2k.com. Joe, Maria [music], it is time for our Catch of the Day. [SOUNDBITE OF REELING IN FISHING LINE]
Joe Carrigan: Dave, our Catch of the Day comes from the scam subreddit.
Dave Bittner: Mm-hmm.
Joe Carrigan: And I haven't looked through this one yet --
Dave Bittner: Okay.
Joe Carrigan: -- so I'm just going to send it over to you and see. What it says it.
Dave Bittner: All right. It goes like this. "Dear candidate, you have been specially selected to receive this exclusive invitation to join the Illuminati Brotherhood. Our international network continually monitors individuals who demonstrate ambition, leadership and potential for influence. After carefully reviewing your background and online presence, you have been identified as a candidate worthy of induction. No payment or upfront fees are required."
Joe Carrigan: Oh, that's relief [background laughter].
Dave Bittner: You have the opportunity to rise above the ordinary and achieve true power, wealth, and recognition. Initiated members enjoy the benefits and protection of this prestigious global organization. If you are ready to begin your induction process today, contact the Supreme Superior via e-mail.
Joe Carrigan: Wow. Don't delay.
Maria Varmazis: Is that a LinkedIn?
Dave Bittner: Don't delay. Opportunities like these come along once in a lifetime and your future awaits. Required information? first and last name, country, address, phone number, occupation. Please send the above information directly to the High Superior --
Joe Carrigan: Oh. Wait!
Dave Bittner: -- so I can post.
Joe Carrigan: -- not the Supreme Superior?
Dave Bittner: That's well, I guess --
Joe Carrigan: It says to contact the Supreme Superior.
Dave Bittner: Maybe the high superior is the supreme superiors lackey?
Joe Carrigan: Okay [laughs].
Maria Varmazis: Yes.
Dave Bittner: Maybe scheduler?
Maria Varmazis: Yes. The hierarchy's weird. Yeah.
Dave Bittner: Sincerely, the Illuminati Brotherhood.
Maria Varmazis: What [laughs]?
Joe Carrigan: So, I have --
Maria Varmazis: Why would they be sincere about anything?
Joe Carrigan: -- I have gotten emails like this in the past actually.
Dave Bittner: Yeah?
Joe Carrigan: And I will tell you one point in time I was like, really? [Background laughter] But no. But no.
Maria Varmazis: Tempting. Tempting.
Joe Carrigan: I --. Yeah. So very tempting But here's my number one question. You're the illuminati.
Dave Bittner: Right.
Joe Carrigan: Why do I need to tell you my first name, last name, country, address, and phone number?
Dave Bittner: Right!
Joe Carrigan: You should know that!
Dave Bittner: Exactly!
Joe Carrigan: That would be my reply. I'd reply to Supreme Superior going, Supreme Superior, t is you know who, you've asked this information, why don't you provide it to me?
Dave Bittner: Yeah. That's right.
Joe Carrigan: Of course. My luck. They'd be like you're Joe Carigan. Here's your address. Here's your phone number.
Dave Bittner: Right. [Laughs] Yeah. It's everywhere you've been browsing.
Joe Carrigan: [Laughs] You weirdo.
Maria Varmazis: Listen, the illuminati's falling on some hard times. They're not -- they have to up their game a little bit, they're just getting rusty.
Dave Bittner: Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's harder to be an Illuminati when the data brokers are out there sucking up your metadata.
Joe Carrigan: Have you ever played Steve Jackson's Illuminati game?
Dave Bittner: I do not believe I have.
Joe Carrigan: [Sighs] It is a great game. The rules are, of course, convoluted, but you get -- it's a card game.
Dave Bittner: Okay.
Joe Carrigan: So, you're in control of an Illuminati, which is one of like eight organizations, because you can have up to eight players. And then the -- you get money and you're illuminat- -- your organizations produce money, and then you can -- you know, the idea is you can use that money to influence and destroy other illuminati's. Anyway, it it is a great game because you wind up saying things like MTV is controlled by the CIA. Right [background laughter]?
Dave Bittner: Okay.
Joe Carrigan: You know, as you're building your Illuminati out, you start to sound like a tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist.
Dave Bittner: Right.
Joe Carrigan: And and it's brilliantly funny.
Dave Bittner: Okay.
Joe Carrigan: Like a lot of Steve Jackson games, it's brilliantly funny and awesome to play.
Dave Bittner: Well, I want to add, Maria, evidently you're not eligible [background laughter].
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. I would --
Dave Bittner: Sorry, Maria.
Joe Carrigan: I don't think I can be part of a brotherhood. Yeah.
Dave Bittner: Just a brotherhood, so you're going to have to sit this one out. I know --
Maria Varmazis: Oh shucks.
Dave Bittner: -- that's a huge disappointment for you.
Maria Varmazis: I know. Well --
Dave Bittner: But maybe next round.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Dave Bittner: [Background laughter] Maybe there's an Illuminati sisterhood.
Joe Carrigan: Or maybe there's an Illuminati support organization like there is for a lot of the men's fraternities like the Masons?
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: They have organizations for the wives.
Dave Bittner: Yeah. Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: But that that implies that my husband's in the Illuminati.
Dave Bittner: Well --
Maria Varmazis: So there -- - well --
Joe Carrigan: So, here's how we can get in [background laughter].
Maria Varmazis: How would I know?
Joe Carrigan: Would you know? Right? Where is he going? Does he -- maybe you're already a member of that organization?
Maria Varmazis: He says he's at the office today; I don't know [laughs].
Dave Bittner: Right. It seems like every time you guys go out, you pull up to the building, there's always an available parking space right out front [background laughter].
Joe Carrigan: right [laughs].
Maria Varmazis: It's amazing. I've got to pull some strings, but it's pretty nice.
Joe Carrigan: So, [laughs] --. Yeah. I get the rollerblades from the far --
Dave Bittner: Right.
Joe Carrigan: -- from the far parking space.
Dave Bittner: All right. We [laughs] --
Maria Varmazis: What [laughs]?
Joe Carrigan: I'm just going. I'm just keeping going. It's a Simpsons reference.
Dave Bittner: Again. There's a stone cutters reference?
Joe Carrigan: Yeah. Stone cutters [laughs].
Dave Bittner: Okay.
Maria Varmazis: Oh my God. Geeze. Stone Cutter's Guild. It's been a while. Okay.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: Right. Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: Lenny and Carl, get up to front parking, but Homer doesn't get it, he still has to -- but they said no, but they gave me these cool rollerblades, right?
Maria Varmazis: What's the song? What's the Stone Cutter Guild song?
Dave Bittner: [singing] We do. Who keeping meets the trains are on time? We do. He keeps --
Maria Varmazis: We do. That's right.
Dave Bittner: Yeah. Some -- yeah, some so-and-so down --
Joe Carrigan: The metric system [laughs] --
Dave Bittner: The metric system down. Who keeps the metric system down? We do.
Maria Varmazis: That's what it was. That's what it was [background laughter].
Dave Bittner: Yeah. Right [laughs].
Joe Carrigan: Who makes Steve Gutenberg a star?
Dave Bittner: We do. Yeah [laughs]. All right [music]. Well, again, we would love to hear from you [background laughter]. Please e-mail us [laughs]. It's Hackinghumans@n2k.com. We are going to mercifully take one more break before we wrap things up [background laughter]. We'll be right back. [ Music ] [Music] And we are back and that is Hacking Humans brought to you by N2K CyberWire. We would love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing world of cyber security. If you like our show, please share a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes, or send an e-mail to hackinghumans@n2k.com. This episode is produced by Liz Stokes. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester. Peter Kilpe is our publisher. I'm Dave Bittner.
Joe Carrigan: I'm Joe Carrigan.
Maria Varmazis: And I'm Maria Varmazis.
Dave Bittner: Thanks for listening. [ Music ]
