Former FBI Agent, Eric O’Neill on Spies, Lies, and the Cyber Wars We’re Already Losing

24:29You can hire an attacker during COVID. There were all these stories of enterprising students, for example, during the pandemic when we were all working from home, right? Who would find their way down to dark web marketplaces where they would hire a cyber attacker, you know, sometimes called a hacker, to shut their school down with what's called a DDoS attack. They flood the network and the servers with so much information, it all crashes. And then they get out of school for the day, right? You know, kind of the modern equivalent of pulling the fire alarm to get out of a test. Well, you know, kids were doing this.

25:01So there's so much you can buy in cyber crime on the dark web. All of our identities are for sale. All our username and passwords are for sale. There's something like six billion of them. When you say all our usernames and passwords, like your Google email password, is that somewhere on the dark web right now? That's certainly on the dark web. Yes, actually, Google has many times noted that your password's been lost. And you should turn on two-factor authentication to protect yourself from the fact that it's the only thing that's going to keep a dark web cyber criminal from buying your username and password for pennies off the dark web been trying it.

25:37Now, that doesn't mean that you personally or any of your listeners would be targeted unless, you know, you work for the federal government or a high-profile company, which is probably true for some of your listeners. There is that micro-targeting, but there are also broad-scale targeting using AI to just try usernames and passwords until they get into accounts. And then you can be a victim of identity theft, fraud. They can use your accounts to launch attacks against all your friends and neighbors and contacts, it can scale to be more damaging from there. So you never want to just rely on your password.

26:11It's always password plus something else. Yeah, I'm going to, I've never used two-factor authentication just because I'm lazy, but I think maybe I should start using it. But if I was like, let's say one of these students who is going onto the dark web to find a hacker who can attack their school, I would be worried about two things. One is I don't even know how to find something on the dark web. Like how does someone go to the dark web. There's no website. Welcome to the dark web. There isn't. And the other thing is I would be worried if I think I'm actually talking to someone on the dark web, it seems like a good chance I'd be talking to a police officer because you're right.

26:48And you're right. So yes, it's difficult to get into the dark web marketplaces. And that's by design. The criminals don't want tourists and they don't want law enforcement, right? So the way that you learn about dark web marketplaces, I don't want people to go do this because, and I'll outline the dangers in a moment, it is usually through these underground message boards where people trade the onion sites. That's what it's called. It's called onion routing. So it's dot onion are the websites. And they're just this very long string of letters and numbers. They make no rhyme or reason. There's not like our normal web pages where you can actually define it.

27:28There's not like google.onion. No, it's not. You have that. There is no. Well, I'll get into that in a minute. But you have to know the site. And then you use a special browser called a Tor browser, which literally stands for the Onion Network, the Onion Router, right? Browser. And anyone can download that and use it. And that will get you onto the dark web. Why you don't want to do it is most of the sites that you're going to find as a tourist are going to just hit your devices with this gnarly malware. And your computer's going to crash. It's going to hate you. It's going to spit fire. It's some of the worst malware because they want to infect you.

28:09And they'll steal your identity and all your data. So you want to be very careful. Also, you can hire an assassin on the dark web. And if you're going too deep and they think that you're somebody that shouldn't be there, a person might show up. So you really don't want to play around with the dark web. I do spend an entire chapter in the book, you might remember, I go down deep into the dark web with a friend to go chase down pictures for a client that were stolen from her phone. She had taken naked pictures of herself for her fiance or boyfriend at the time. And she was underage and really didn't want them on the internet.

28:45We were going to try to find the marketplaces they were on, but it was also a great instructive opportunity to record it and turn it into a chapter for my readers to see how difficult it is to get down there, even for a seasoned veteran who was paid by the DOD to become a bad guy and sell drugs so he could catch a big dark web drug trafficker. So tell that story. So this is Halima in the book, right? Yes. How did she know naked pictures were on the internet? What did you do? what happened. Take a quick break. If you like this episode, I'd really, really appreciate it. It means so much to me. Please share it with your friends and subscribe to the podcast.

29:26Email me at alcatra at gmail.com and tell me why you subscribed. Thanks.

29:38in today's world you have to be super careful with your data whether it's your passwords your bank info your private emails or messages there is non-stop attempts to get your data and some of it's like legit corporations stealing your data and some of it's from hacking and some of it's from viruses you have on your computer. By the way, everybody probably has some sort of virus on their computer. But here's the thing. You wouldn't take out your wallet in a shady part of town and start flashing your money around, right? Because you're worried that it would get stolen. Well, that's what you do every time you use public Wi-Fi.

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32:16And with LinkedIn, of course, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of small and medium businesses say using LinkedIn helps them find high-quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature. That's linkedin.com slash altature to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. So she was contacted by a criminal, a cyber criminal, through a DM on her Instagram account, or Instagram account, yes, telling her that he had her pictures and he was going to sell them unless she paid him a lot of money.

33:03and her father, she finally told her father, they came to us and we told her, look, you know, this gang is in Belarus. We believe in Belarus. You know, there's no law enforcement that we can use to take them down, but we will go find them and find the pictures and see how real this is. The pictures were showing up like sexy teen photos with her name on Google, on the primary search engines. And she was afraid her friends would see this. And she had just taken pictures and used Snapchat to send them to her boyfriend. And a lot of kids do this, and it's a terrible idea. And they do it because they believe that Snapchat, you take the picture and it disappears, right?

33:44That's not true. Unless you turn off a setting, it saves everything to your camera roll as you take the picture. In fact, law enforcement can get all those pictures from Snapchat anyway, so nothing actually disappears off the internet. So kids, don't snap anything you wouldn't want your grandma to see on Snapchat. Anyway, the attacker was able to use Instagram to get into her iCloud account, which is where her camera roll was saved to the cloud, download all her pictures, found the really racy ones, and then was selling them on an underage dark web marketplace for teens. and we actually took a snapshot of the website, you know, where she was on there, blacked out all the names.

34:29You just pick your teen and where they're from and you can go in and look through their photos and then download whatever you want to pay. But what we were able to show her is that we went all the way down in the dark. We found the marketplace. We investigated and realized that what the criminal was doing was creating this marketplace, not to sell the pictures, but to steal identities and data from people who would go on and buy it, right? With their pure interest who wanted to go buy pictures of young teens. And the second you clicked on any of the links, your computer just was hit by this malware that stole all your information.

35:06Anybody who goes to try to buy these or even look at them is going to be hit by a major cyber attack. And we reached out to all of the major search engines and identified all the links and said, this is an underage person, and they all removed them. So we were able to give her the peace of mind, even though in that case, you know, Belarus doesn't care. Russia doesn't care. China doesn't care. If the criminals are there, they just look the other way, unless it's a huge national event and a lot of pressure from administrations. And so that's interesting. So a couple of things there. One is you're saying the site was set up, not the crime.

35:46Okay, they were committing a crime by selling these underage pics, but what they were really trying to do is they knew enough sickos would be buying these pics that they're the perfect ones to steal all their information because they're not going to complain. Exactly. So is it the case that I could just click on a random link and that could take over my computer? Certainly. If you're in places where you, you know, you can think of the places. The internet is filled with pornography. And a lot of it's free. And the reason that it is is because, you know, they're posting it there because they want you to click through.

36:26And many of these sites will start trying to data mine you for information or look for weaknesses that can be exploited through a web browser exploit. Like what's a weakness that can be exploited? Well, we have all sorts of vulnerabilities. So one thing I talk about in the book is the need to patch our systems, right? And for an individual, for example, when you get that alert from your phone, saying from either Google, Android, or your iPhone, or whatever company you use for your phone, that says, hey, there is a critical update. That usually means that the brilliant engineers have found a flaw that a cyber criminal or a spy can exploit, and they want you to update quickly before, you know, the bad guy finds a way into your phone.

37:08It's the same with any web browser or computer or operating system. And they can use different sniffers or scanners in order to look at your, when you log onto their website, now they have a connection to you. They can start scanning you to find a flaw that they can exploit. And then what they do is they just grab the toolkit that they can use because you didn't patch something and now they're in. That's why websites can be so dangerous. And one of the biggest tips for anyone is be careful where you go. The internet's not a safe place. Go to legitimate websites. Don't play around with your data by going to things that are too good to be true or things that you believe aren't going to be dangerous because you want a great deal or you want to go look at a picture of a teen girl.

37:57Now, the Body Parts website, this is a website. Ah, the Body Parts Bazaar. Yeah, this is a website that now they sell body parts, I guess, like if you need a liver, they'll sell you a liver and they took the liver from someone they killed or whatever. Yeah, they can get parts from all over. They get them from cadavers. Obviously, if it's transplanted, it sort of has to come from someone who either has just died moments ago or might still be alive. You do hear stories of people waking up in bathtubs because they decided to go join the wrong people for a party. that actually happens, those body parts can find their way to the dark web and then can be sold on these marketplaces.

38:38And they'll even charge you for shady doctors who will transplant it for you. For example, a heart went for something like$150 ,000 with the doctor to transplant it, eyes for$2 ,000. And as I was looking, some of the weirdest things were like hands and feet. Does that work? 500 bucks. No, you can't transplant it. There are weirdos who just want to buy a human hand. Oh my God. And they're cheap. You know, so in the, you know, they, I guess they, I've never obviously tried this. FedEx it to you in dry ice. I mean, how else are you going to get a hand? Now, why did you come across this? Were you investigating something relating to this?

39:15This is, yeah. I wasn't investigating something related to this. I was diving into the dark web just to find some of the most bizarre sites to be instructive for my book, just to really show what this place is and how crazy it is for what you can buy. What's weird is in your book, you describe these companies like Lockbit, which is, it's almost like a real company. They identify themselves. You know where they are. It seems like it's like a formal institution like Google is or McDonald's is. And you mentioned this one NGO where their information was hacked. The Lockbit was going to release the information unless the NGO gave them$5 million.

39:58What kind of information could be, A, so important? And B, if everybody knows, oh, it's Lockbit, why can't you just go find Lockbit and do something to them? I don't know. Well, let's unpack all that. So first of all, the NGO story is my through story for the book. I wanted the stories to read like true crime, thrilling thrillers, right? Each story. But I also wanted, I didn't want it to just be like a collection of short stories that teaches something. I wanted to have that one core story that carries you through the book. And just as I was writing the book, you know, a client had this horrible cyber attack and I was right in the middle of it.

40:37And I was recording and remembering everything. And that became my through story that carries you from the beginning all the way to the end. And this was an NGO, a non-governmental organization that did government contracting, primarily with USAID and humanitarian work all over the world. including in Ukraine, and was attacked by a Lockbit, which is actually Lockbit 2.0, right? The upgraded version of the cybercrime syndicate, which is a Russian cybercrime syndicate who attacked the NGO because they were doing humanitarian work in Ukraine. You know, Lockbit believed it was their patriotic duty to harm anyone helping the Ukrainians.

41:16And I know this because the bad guy called me on my personal cell, and he had my personal cell because he was so deep into their data that he was able to just look at lists and found like Eric O 'Neill and everybody, all the bad guys know my name. And he called me directly and said, what are you, why are you playing around? You know, just get them to pay. You know, they have insurance and I don't want to give away the story, but we were able to save that company. And it was just, it was really clever how we figured it out. And what kind of information did they want to sell? Like, why was it worth that much money?

41:46Right. Yes. Your original question. The, these cybercrime syndicates know how to exert pressure. Pressure is the golden rule for cyber criminals. Pressure means that you don't think. Pressure means that you pay. And what they were claiming is that they had a wealth of customer data, but also the data of people that the company was helping. And that could destroy the reputation of the company if they found out that they're helping all these people that were essentially resettling refugees in Ukraine, and suddenly all their data was released. Could you imagine? And now the Russians know the identity of these people and they could cause physical harm in the middle of a war.

42:27So the company was terrified. And the number one goal for the investigation was to determine what the attackers had stolen, because they said they had everything. So we had to prove that they didn't have anything. And at the same time, keep them on the line and keep them negotiating before they released whatever they had. Another situation that you write about is, and I remember this from a few years ago, several casinos in Las Vegas were just like shut down because they were a subject of ransomware. Like some organization stole all their data or, or, or no, actually just seized control of their computer systems, like shutting down the elevators.

43:04And they were just going to keep things shut down unless they paid. And I believe they paid, right? So, so what was that all about? So this was MGM, the MGM. So I didn't realize this and I go to Vegas a lot, not really because I like to gamble, but because I speak and they've got these immense conference centers and I've spoken at the MGM Grand many times. I didn't realize MGM owns like half the hotels in Vegas. And with a 10-minute phone call, a cyber attack group called Al5 and their buddies in this affiliate group called Scattered Spider, which are really good at what we call social engineering, were able to call the IT help desk for the MGM grant and get the username, password, and two-factor authentication reset for a systems engineer.

43:52The IT people that are able to create passwords, create whole accounts, like do all the mayhem within a network, within a computer system if the bad guys get a hold of their account. And then become that person and then spread throughout not just the MGM Grand, but all these other hotels and bring it all down with a ransomware attack. And what makes it a cool story for an author isn't just that they were brought down by a ransomware attack. It's the unfortunate chaos that happened. I mean, to the point where people couldn't check into the hotels. People who were checked into the hotels, their room key wouldn't work.

44:28And then randomly, some people's room key opened every room in the hotel. I mean, this is Vegas. Imagine the chaos for that. You couldn't make a reservation to eat or for a show. The gambling tables were down. None of the slot machines worked. So now you're in Vegas, and I don't know what else other people do in Vegas, but those are like the top three things to do. Eat, gamble, and go see a show, right? You couldn't do any of that. They're sending people out of their hotels. And here's the kicker, because you always look for one little hook, right? They were putting cases of bottled water in the elevators because sometimes the elevators would work and sometimes they wouldn't.

45:02And they didn't want people getting stuck between two floors and they couldn't get them out without water. So it was bananas. And I don't believe they paid, but they had to do the immense amount of work to get out from under it and remediate the attack, which took them weeks. And I mean, they lost more than$100 million just in downtime and a magnitude worse in reputation and sending people to other hotels. So it was a disaster for them. And that same cyber attack group was then pummeled by the FBI, Al-5. The FBI went into the dark web, found all their servers, found all of their websites, took it all down, stole cryptocurrency, stole decryption keys from them.

45:46like really went in and punished them because you know, the FBI loves Vegas too. And the leader of AL5, this dude like AL5.sup or whatever his name was, he swore he would be back because these guys are all hysterical and back with a vengeance. And they did, they came back, they rebranded, they came back and they launched this attack, which was our biggest critical infrastructure attack here in the US against change healthcare, which you might remember, it was November, 2023 when MGM was attacked. and then by December, the FBI attacked ALF-5 and then by February of 2024, Change Health was attacked and nobody could go to a pharmacy and fill a prescription.

46:27And that was ALF-5 because bad guys have backups too and they just restored all their service from backup and were right back in business. And that's why you can't shut down the dark web. Law enforcement can't do it. They can just do little things here and there We need to protect ourselves. Why isn't every company every day just down because of all of this? Like, it seems like there's so much better at it. And just in general, offense is easier to do than defense because defense, you don't know what you're defending against. So why isn't just every company down all the time? Companies are constantly down.

47:07They don't always tell you when they're down. You might have just noticed that we never know whether it's a cyber attack or a glitch. CrowdStrike was a big cybersecurity company that went down, and then you couldn't fly on planes. And there was chaos everywhere, but that was a glitch. Amazon Web Services just went down, and that was also a glitch, not a cyber attack. Just as many companies go down through a cyber attack, they don't always say it unless they have to. Media doesn't report on it as much as they should. And I think some of that is that the media doesn't understand this, so they should all read my book.

47:41And there are so many cyber criminals, and there are a lot of them, but there are a lot more companies. So it's a little bit of a roulette whether that ball lands on you or not. Also, cybersecurity is getting good. I mean, if a company invests in robust cybersecurity that's offensive, that hunts threats, doesn't just play defense, they have a good chance of catching the breach before it does a huge amount of damage and limiting that exposure and saving themselves. You know, with my company, that's what we do with a lot of cybersecurity advising is helping companies get to that point. And the more companies that do that, the more we dry up the dark web.

48:16It's sort of like putting a sign on your lawn that say, we have dogs. Whether or not you have dogs or not doesn't even matter. Like, oh, they have dogs. I'm going to focus on the houses that don't have the signs. We have dogs. So once a company does a little bit, probably the cyber attackers say, okay, it's not worth it. There's 6 ,000 other companies we can look at. Yeah, that's a good place. In security, we call that displacement. I like to give Connecticut examples for cyber, right? Because we understand physical. I did this case for a client. It was a housing community in Washington, D.C., in a bad part of Washington, D.C., and they were just tired of crime.

48:52I mean, to the point where some of the crime was actually in the community. People were selling drugs from their first-story windows, people who would come in off the street, and they would have to figure that out. So we went in and we looked, the first thing we did was looked at all the other communities like this, housing communities surrounding them. And then we went to our client and said, I know you don't have any money, so we're going to make you a little bit better than your neighbors. And we did. Built a wall, put some cameras up, good lighting, made it really hard for criminals to go and do anything.

49:24And you know what they did? They were displaced. They just went to the neighbors. Now, does that solve the crime problem? Well, no, but for your client or for that company, you can translate that to cybercrime. It does save you. So yeah, it's the companies that don't do a little bit of work. And it can be painful and it can be expensive, but it is far less expensive than getting hit by a cyber attack and losing everything. Now, somebody was once telling me that probably every company in the Fortune 500 has already been attacked. And there are like sleeper cells, these bots, these bot armies that are probably sitting on every desk and just waiting to be activated to do some harm somewhere.

50:03Do you think that's true? I don't think that in particular is true. Now, them all being attacked, certainly. Companies get attacked thousands of times a day. If you were to look at the investigative chain and say an attack is an attempt, right? That could be an attack. Then they're constantly bombarded from attacks, especially in the Fortune 500. That's big game hunters are going after them. They can be very clever and really understand the company and launch a much more successful attack. But these constant bombardment attacks happen all the time. It's kind of like having an umbrella against the rain.

50:39Now, whether they've been successfully attacked and the criminals have left something behind is a little less likely. It does happen. But when a company is attacked successfully, they go through an immense amount of pain to clean everything up. and usually you're going back to a backup that is before the attack. You're bringing in people like me to find every place the bad guy went and completely scrub them out of it. And then you're bleaching everything to make sure the bad guy's not there and that they can't get right back in, at least using the same attack vector. Companies that get attacked end up being stronger than they were before if they survive.

51:16Now, you know, speaking of getting bombarded thousands of times a day, like I get emails, I'm sure everyone gets emails, all day long, things like, oh, someone's trying to use your Google account. Click here if that's not you. Obviously, that's a phishing attack. And I always kind of look at the real data being sent you. You can kind of, what is it called? You can look at the actual HTML of the email. Yes, right. You can look at the web address of the attack or who is sending you the email address of the person sending it to you. And if you just click on it, you can usually tell. Now, sometimes they get really clever, but the real trick here is don't click through the link.

52:00If you get an email from Gmail that says there's an attempt to compromise, right? And we've blocked it, but you should change your password. That's the most tricky one. And if you see that, then don't click. Go to www.google.com and then log into your Gmail account and see if there's an alert there. That's where they'll put the actual alert. And if there's an alert there, change it. Or if you don't feel good, go directly to gmail.com, change your password there, but don't change it through a link. When you get the email, especially as we move into the holidays, right, that says, we tried to deliver your package, but it was held up.

52:40It's sitting at the warehouse. We need more information to deliver it for you. Click here and fill out our form, right? Don't do that. call ups go to ups.com go to fedex.com and look directly for that alert don't trust that email so so so i know that and again i get at least dozens of these a day like between my spam and my regular inbox a lot of them pass through to the regular inbox but right how many people have already clicked on that and they've already been compromised maybe their information hasn't been used yet maybe whatever's on their computer hasn't activated yet but how many people in general in the United States do you think are already compromised?

53:20In just our conversation here, millions. In just the 50 minutes we've been talking, James. Wow. It is pervasive and it is broad spectrum. And the only way to stop it is knowledge. The only way to stop it is knowledge. The reason I wrote this book, so people read it, you're never going to get caught by, it's going to be really hard to catch you from one of these now because you've read the book. You know that the punch is coming. You can see it coming. Well, not only was it such an informative book, but it really read like a spy thriller. I really congratulate you on how you wrote it. You should write a crime thriller next, a crime novel.

54:00I'm serious. You must have considered it. I've got a plan. All right. I have a plan. I think my next book will be fiction, spy fiction. But one of the reasons I wanted people to read it, read it. But two, there are so many cybersecurity books out there that in a chapter will put you right to sleep. And I wanted something that people would pick up and read because they love the book. They like reading it. Not only you get to read a good story, but it's like when you read a great story or you go see a great movie and you come out of it thinking you're super powered because you also learned something.

54:31I think those are the best authors. And if you don't tell a good story, then people, one, won't finish the book and two, won't remember it. And I just used the practice that I learned as a keynote speaker, which I've been doing for more than two decades, very successfully, storytelling. Even though I talk about cybersecurity, people always rate me as the best keynote of the day. And it's because I tell really cool stories and people feel cooler after hearing me. And that's what I want people to feel after they read. But also, learn everything they need to know to protect themselves from the scourge.

55:02And it's going to get worse. AI has made it all worse. AI hijinks now are making the cyber criminals job so easy. Oh yeah. The whole deep fake thing where someone's daughter calls, it's like, oh, I'm captured by bad men. And the mother's freaking out. This is in your book. And it was just a deep fake of the daughter's voice. It's crazy how that happens. It is. And you know, there's a new one. There's a scourge across the West now of this deep cake where here's how it goes. it's your, let's just use your daughter, right? Your daughter calls and says, dad, I'm in trouble. I screwed up. She's crying.

55:39I hit somebody with my car. It's a whole mess. I think the woman's pregnant. I just need some help. I'm in jail. And then the phone gets handed over and you hear this other voice and it's the public defender. Yes, your daughter's in jail and in this county and this place, I'm her court appointed attorney. She's going to be stuck here for weeks, I don't know, maybe a month while we set up trial and she gives a rain and da-da-da. I need you to pay bail so I can get her out today. And oh, by the way, this is the only call she gets. After this, I can't talk to you illegally, right? That's not true, but they know that you're scared and they're putting urgency and pressure on you.

56:18Urgency and pressure. That's what the cybercriminal has to do. That's your trick. If you feel that urgency and pressure, that horrible terror, you have to take a step back and think. And it's costing people thousands of dollars every minute for these scams. They are using AI of somebody that you know to clone their voice. They're getting it right from our social media. And normally they try to do it when that loved one is on vacation or away, right? So they're not going to be easy to contact and say, is this really you? Oh my God. So the solution I give in the book is have a code word with your family and your friends, right?

56:52That's a great idea. I'm going to do that with my daughters. Yeah. If you don't hear the code word, then you know, it's probably not true. Or, you know, on the call, I know it sounds crazy, but you get that terrified call from your daughter, a terrifying call, and you say, oh, honey, okay, I'm going to help you, but what's the code word? And if you don't say the code word, then, you know, it's probably a scam. Eric O 'Neill, you've done so much, you know, both for your country through the FBI. I mean, Robert Hansen's the highest profile double agent in history. And also just all the work you've done, not only in stopping these or helping in these cybercrime situations, but then writing this book and explaining it in such an easy to understand way through these stories, really riveting stories.

57:38It's a scary world out there. They should make a movie out of this book, Spies, Lies, and Cybercrime, Cybersecurity Tactics to Outsmart Hackers and Disarm Scammers by Eric O 'Neill. former FBI spy hunter. Eric, thank you so much. This is just such a fascinating topic and there's no end to it. So I hope your work gets better and better. Yeah, James, thank you. This has been a great podcast. I mean, this is definitely a keeper. You asked great questions. We got down into deep into some of the stories. And I guess for your listeners, I might offer read the book or if you really like my voice, listen to the audible version, which I recorded, which was a lot of fun.

58:18It was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun. And I also have a companion newsletter to the book where every week I go through a new cyber attack so the book can continue to live and breathe in your hands and you can learn from it. Thanks again, Eric. Thank you. Thank you, James.

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