YouSaid · the spoken record

Nicole Perlroth

lines on the record: 109
first: 2022-02-20
most recent: 2022-02-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“How are those kids going to ever be present? There's going to be some photo of them at some point making some mistake. And that's going to be all over for them. And now I take that back. Now it's like, no, everyone's going to make mistakes. There's going to be a picture for everyone. And we're all going to have to come and grow up to the view that as humans, we're going to make huge mistakes. And hopefully they're not so big that they're going to ruin the rest of your life. But we're going to have to come around to this view that we're all human and we're going to have to be a little bit more forgiving and a little bit more tolerant when people mess up. And we're going to have to be a little bit more humble when we do and like keep moving forward. Otherwise, you can't like cancel everyone.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think you hit something hit on something earlier, which is authenticity. Like no one is going to rise above that is plastic anymore. You know, people are craving authenticity. You know, the benefit of the internet is it's really hard to hide who you are on every single platform. You know, on some level, it's going to come out who you really are. And so you hope that, you know, by the time my kids are grown, like no one's going to care if they made one mistake online so long as they're authentic. You know, and I used to worry about this. My nephew was born the day I graduated from college and I just always, you know, he's like born into Facebook. And just think like, how is a kid like that ever going to be president of the United States of America? Because if Facebook had been around when I was in college, you know, like Jesus.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exposed the sort of inertia that there has been on so many of these issues. And I really think it's a generational shift that has to happen. And I think this next generation is going to come in and say, like, we're not doing business like you guys did it anymore. You know, we're not just going to like rape and pillage the earth and try and turn everyone against each other and play dirty tricks and let lobbyists dictate what we do or don't do as a country anymore. And that's really where I see the hope.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think it's a generational thing. You know, I think baby boomers, like it's time to move along. I think it's time for a new generation to come in. And I actually have a lot of hope when I look at, you know, I'm sort of like this, I guess they call me a geriatric millennial or a young Gen X. But like we have this unique responsibility because I grew up without the internet and without social media, but I'm native to it. So I know the good and I know the bad. And that's true on so many different things. You know, I grew up without climate change, anxiety, and now I'm feeling it. And I know it's not a given. We don't have to just resign ourselves to climate change. Same with disinformation. And I think a lot of the problems we face today just”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And sometimes, and this is why the metaverse scares me to death, but when I'm reminded of that is not online, like online, I get the opposite. You know, you start to lose hope and humanity when you're on Twitter half your day. It's like when I go to the grocery store or I go on a hike or like someone smiles at me or, you know, or someone just says something nice. People are fundamentally good. We just don't hear from those people enough. And my hope is, you know, I just think our current political climate, like we've hit rock bottom. This is as bad as it gets. We can't do anything.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a good question. I mean, I have to have hope, right? Because I have a kid and I have another on the way. And if I didn't have hope, I wouldn't be having kids. But it's a scary time to be having kids. And, you know, it's like pandemic, climate change, disinformation increasingly advanced, perhaps deadly cyber attacks. What gives me hope is that I share your worldview that I think people are fundamentally good”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And you know what's interesting? I mean, in cybersecurity, the difference is oftentimes you see the more interesting threats in the private sector because that's where the attacks come, you know, when cyber criminals and nation-state adversaries come for the United States. They don't go directly for cyber command or the NSA. No, they go for banks. They go for Google. They go for Microsoft. They go for critical infrastructure. And so those companies, those private sector companies get to see some of the most advanced sophisticated attacks out there. And, you know, if you're working at FireEye and you're calling out the solar winds attack, for instance, I mean, you just saved God knows how many systems from, you know, that compromise turning into something that more closely resembles sabotage.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know a living prison. You know, plug those holes, defend industrial systems, defend our water treatment facilities from hacks where people are trying to come in and poison the water. You know, that, I think, is just an amazing job on so many levels. It's intellectually stimulating. You can tell yourself you're serving your country. You can tell yourself you're saving lives and keeping people safe. And you'll always have amazing job security. And if you need to go get that job that pays you 2 million bucks a year, you can do that too.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they laid it all out in an indictment, it came down to two cyber criminals and two guys from the FSB. Cyber criminals were allowed to have their fun, but the minute they came across the username and password for someone's personal Yahoo account that worked at the White House or the State Department or military, they were expected to pass that over to the FSB. So we don't do that here. And it's even worse on defense. We really can't fill these positions. So, you know, if you are a hacker or if you're interested in code, if you're a tinker, you know, learn how to hack. There are all sorts of amazing hacking competitions you can do through the SANS org, for example. S-A-N-S, and then use those skills for good. You know, neuter the bugs in that code that get used by autocratic regimes to make people's life.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And talk about job security. Like, be a hacker and work on cybersecurity. You will always have a job. And we're actually at a huge deficit and disadvantage as a free market economy because we can't match cybersecurity salaries at Palantir or Facebook or Google or Microsoft. And so it's really hard for the United States to fill those roles. Other countries have had this workaround where they basically have forced conscription on some level. You know, China tells people like you do whatever you're going to do during the day, work at Alibaba. You know, if you need to do some ransomware, okay. But the minute we tap you on the shoulder and ask you to come do this sensitive operation for us, the answer is yes. Same with Russia. You know, a couple years ago when Yahoo was hacked.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A hacker You know, if you have any interest, become a hacker and apply yourself to defense. Every time, like, we do have these amazing scholarship programs, for instance, where they find you early, they'll pay your college as long as you commit to some kind of federal commitment to sort of help federal agencies with cybersecurity. And where does everyone want to go every year from the scholarship program? They want to go work at the NSA or Cyber Command. You know, they want to go work on offense. They want to go do the sexy stuff. It's really hard to get people to work on defense. It's just, it's always been more fun to be a pirate than be in the Coast Guard. You know, and so. We have a huge deficit when it comes to filling those roles. There's 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity positions around the world.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is a danger to that little whispered voice that's like, well, how would people read that? You know, how could that be manipulated? How could that be used against you? And that stifles creativity and innovation and free thought. And that is on a very micro level. And that's something I think about a lot. And that's actually something that Tim Cook has talked about a lot and why he has said he goes full force on privacy is it's just that little voice that is at some level censoring you and what what is sort of the long-term impact of that little voice over time”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. I mean, just the cortisol response on Twitter. You know, Twitter is basically like designed to elicit those responses. I mean, Every day I turn on my computer, I look at my phone, I look at what's trending on Twitter, and it's like, what are the topics that are going to make people the most angry today? And, you know, it's easy to get carried away, but it's also just that sucks too, that you have to be constantly censoring yourself. And maybe it's for the better. Maybe you can't be a secret asshole. We can put that in the good bucket. But at the same time, you know, there is a danger to that other voice, to creativity, you know, to being weird.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, they call it the New York Times front page phenomenon. Don't put anything in email or I guess social media these days that you wouldn't want to read on the front page of the New York Times. And that works, but sometimes I even get carried. I mean, I have not as many followers as you, but a lot of followers and sometimes even I get carried away.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that destroyed my vision of my invisible shield, you know, sure, you know, he was a Saudi, but he was a Washington Post columnist, you know, for the most part, he was living in the United States. He was a journalist. And for them to do what they did to him pretty much in the open and get away with it. And for the United States to let them get away with it because we wanted to preserve diplomatic relations with the Saudis, that really threw my worldview upside down. And, you know, I think that sent a message to a lot of countries that it was sort of open season on journalists. And to me, that was one of the most destructive things that happened under the previous administration. And, you know, I don't really know. To think of my invisible shield anymore.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They wanted me to know that they were following me, and I operated accordingly. And he says, that's how you should operate in the digital world. Know that there are probably people following you. Sometimes they'll make a little bit of noise. But one thing you need to know is that while you're at the New York Times, you have a little bit of an invisible shield on you. You know, if something were to happen to you, that would be a really big deal. That would be an international incident. So I kind of carried that invisible shield with me for years. And then Jamal Khashoggi happened.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it changes you. And unfortunately, there are some things like I was really scared to go deep on, like Russian cybercrime, you know, like Putin himself, you know, and it's interesting, like I have a mentor who's an incredible person who was the Times Moscow bureau chief during the Cold War. And after I wrote a series of stories about Chinese cyber espionage, he took me out to lunch and he told me that when he was living in Moscow, he would drop his kids off at preschool when they were my son's age now, and the KGB would follow him. And they would make a really loud show of it. They'd tail him, they'd, you know, honk, they'd just be a ruckus. And he said, you know what? They never actually did anything.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We know we're supposed to do. And that's what I tell everyone don't go crazy because then that's like the ultimate hack. Then they've hacked your mind, whoever they is for you. But just do the best you can. Now, my whole risk model changed when I had a kid. You know, now it's, oh God. You know, if anyone threatened my family, God help them.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, for the longest time, my crown jewels were my sources. I was nothing without my sources. So I had some sources I would meet the same dim sum place, or maybe it was a different restaurant on the same date every quarter. And we would never drive there. We would never Uber there. We wouldn't bring any devices. I could bring a pencil and a notepad. And if someone wasn't in town, like there were a couple times where I'd show up and the source never came. But we never communicated digitally. And those were the links I was willing to go to protect that source, but you can't do it for everyone. So for everyone else, you know, it was Signal using two-factor authentication, you know, keeping my devices up to date, not clicking on phishing emails, using a password manager, all the things that, you know, were”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then I went back to bed and I woke up, and this beautiful morning light. I mean, I'll never forget it. Like this is like glimmering morning light is shining on my cable box, which has now been ripped out and is sitting on my floor in like the morning light. And I was just like, no, no, no. Like I'm not going down that road. Like you basically, I came to a fork in the road where I could either go full tinfoil hat, go live off the grid, never have a car with navigation, never use Google Maps, never own an iPhone, never order diapers off Amazon, you know, create an alias. Or I could just do the best I can and live in this new digital world we're living in. And what does that look like for me? I mean, what are my crown jewels?”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know they've got it into all sorts of stuff, and I was living by myself, I was single in San Francisco, and my cable box on my television started making some weird noises in the middle of the night. And I got up and I ripped it out of the wall. And I think I said something like embarrassing, like, fuck you China, you know.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I've had my moments. You know, I've had our security team at the times called me at one point and said someone's on the dark web offering good money to anyone who can hack your phone or your laptop. I describe in my book how when I was at that hacking conference in Argentina, I came back and I brought a burner laptop with me, but I'd kept it in the safe anyway and it didn't have anything on it, but someone had broken in and it was moved. You know, I've had all sorts of sort of scary moments. And then I've had moments where I think I went just way too far into the paranoid side. I mean, I remember writing about the Times hack by China and I just covered a number of Chinese cyber attacks where they'd gotten into. The thermostat at someone's corporate apartment.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they created a new law that you couldn't criticize the ruling family or the ruling party on Twitter. And he's been in solitary confinement every day since on Hunger Strike. So that's evil. You know, that's evil. And we still, we don't do that here. You know, we have rules here. We don't cross that line. So yeah, in some cases, like I won't go to Dubai. I won't go to Abu Dhabi. If I ever want to go to the Maldives, like too bad, like most of the flights go through Dubai.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it gets evil is when you use it for censorship, you know, to suppress any dissent, to do what I've seen the UAE do to its citizens where people who've gone on Twitter just to advocate for better voting rights, more enfranchisement, suddenly find their passports confiscated. I talk to one critic Ahmed Mansour, and he told me, you know, you might find yourself a terrorist labeled a terrorist one day and you don't even know how to operate a gun. I mean, he had been beaten up every time he tried to go somewhere. His passport had been confiscated by that point it turned out they'd already hacked into his phone, so they were listening to us talking. They'd hacked into his baby monitor. So they're spying on his child. And they stole his car.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Basically, the White House said, You better cut it out on intellectual property theft. And so they made this agreement that they would not hack each other for commercial benefit. And for a period of about 18 months, we saw this huge drop-off in Chinese cyber attacks on American companies. But some of them continued. Where do they continue? They continued on aviation companies, on hospitality companies like Marriott. Why? Because that was still considered fair game to China. It wasn't IP theft they were after. They wanted to know who was staying in this city at this time when Chinese citizens were staying there so they could cross match for counterintelligence who might be a likely Chinese spy. I'm sure we're doing some of that too. Counterintelligence is counterintelligence. It's considered fair game.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Uyghurs are China's test kitchen for surveillance. And there's no doubt in my mind that they're testing them on the Uyghurs. Uyghurs are their petri dish, and eventually they will export that level of surveillance overseas. I mean, in 2015, Obama and she, Jinping, reached a deal where”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of these Western intelligence agencies to China, for instance, and the surveillance that they're deploying on the Uyghurs to the level they're deploying it. And the surveillance they're starting to export abroad with some of the programs like the watering hole attack I mentioned earlier where it's not just hitting the Uyghurs inside China, it's hitting anyone interested in the Uyghur plight outside China. It could be an American high school student writing a paper on the Uyghurs. They want to spy on that person too. You know, there's no rules in China really limiting the extent of that surveillance. And we all better pay attention to what's happening with the Uyghurs because just as Ukraine has been to Russia in terms of a test kitchen for its cyber attacks,”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is not like the pound your chest patriot that you see on the beach on the 4th of July. A lot of them have complicated feelings about their former employers. Well, at least at the NSA reminded me to do what we were accused of doing after Snowden, to spy on Americans. You have no idea the amount of red tape and paperwork and bureaucracy it would have taken to do what everyone thinks that we were supposedly doing. But then, you know, we find out in the course of the Snowden reporting about a program called Loveint, where a couple of the NSA analysts were using their access to spy on their ex-girlfriends. So, you know, there's an exception to every case. Generally I will probably get accused of my Western bias here again, but. I think you can almost barely compare.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, well, that's an easy one. No, I think it depends which intelligence agency think about the Massad, you know, they're killing every Iranian nuclear scientist they can over the years, but have they delayed the time horizon before Iran gets the bomb? Yeah. Have they probably staved off terror attacks on their own citizens? Yeah, you know, none of these intelligence is intelligence. You know, you can't just say like they're malevolent or they're heroes. Everyone I have met in this space”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, the whistleblower who blew the whistle on the Trump call with Zelensky. I mean, people needed to know about that, that we were basically in some ways blackmailing an ally to try to influence an election. I mean, they went through the proper channels. They weren't trying to profit off of it, right? There was no book that came out afterwards from that whistleblower, that whistleblower is not like. They went through the channels. They're not living in Moscow. You know, let's put it that way.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. I mean, these are hard questions. And, you know, even for myself, in some ways, I think of my book as sort of blowing the whistle on the underground zero day market. But it's not like I was in the market myself. It's not like I had access to classified data when I was reporting out that book. You know, as I say in the book, listen, I'm just trying to scrape the surface here so we can have these conversations before it's too late. And, you know, I'm sure there's plenty in there that someone who's, you know, US intelligence agencies preeminent zero day broker probably has some voodoo doll of me out there. And you're never going to get it 100%. But I really applaud whistleblowers like”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People's names on them. You know, part of me wishes that those documents had been released in a much more targeted way. It's just a lot of it just felt like a PowerPoint that was taken out of context. And you just sort of wish that there had been a little bit more thought into what was released because I think a lot of the impact from Son was just the volume of the reporting. But I think based on what I saw personally, there was a lot of stuff that I just, I don't know why got released.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“China has been hacking into our pipelines and they've been making off with all of our intellectual property and Russia's been hacking into our energy infrastructure and they've been using the same methods to spy on track and in many cases kill their own journalists and the Saudis have been doing this to their own critics and dissidents and so you can't talk about any of these countries in isolation. It is really like spite spy out there. So I just have complicated feelings. And the other thing is, and I'm sorry, this is a little bit of a tangent, but The amount of documents that we had, like thousands of documents, most of which were just crap, but had”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That I saw in those documents that was beyond what I thought a spy agency does. And I think if there was another 9-11 tomorrow, God forbid, we would all say, how did the NSA miss this? Why weren't they spying on those terrorists? Why weren't they spying on those world leaders? You know, there's some of that too. But I think that there was great damage done to the US's reputation. I think we really lost our halo in terms of a protector of civil liberties. And I think a lot of what was reported was unfortunately reported in a vacuum. That was my biggest gripe, that we were always reporting. The NSA has this program. And here's what it does. And the NSA is in Angela Merkel's cell phone, and the NSA can do this. And no one was saying, and by the way.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we weren't using that knowledge to, as far as I know, assassinate journalists. We weren't using our access to, you know, take out pharmaceutical companies. For the most part, we were using it for traditional espionage. Now, that set of documents also set me on the journey of my book because to me the American people's reaction to the Snowden documents was a little bit misplaced. You know, they were upset about the phone call metadata collection program. Angela Merkel, I think, rightfully was upset that we were hacking her cell phone. But in sort of the spy eat spy world, hacking world leader cell phones is pretty much what most spy agencies do. And there wasn't a lot.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I walked into the storage closet of classified NSA secrets, I had just spent two years covering Chinese cyber espionage almost every day and this sort of advancement of Russian attacks that were just getting worse and worse and more destructive. And there were no limits to Chinese cyber espionage and Chinese surveillance of its own citizens. And there seemed to be no limit to what Russia was willing to do in terms of cyber attacks and also in some cases assassinating journalists. So when I walked into that room, there was a part of me quite honestly that was relieved to know that the NSA was as good as I hoped they were.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think he's neither. I have really complicated feelings about Edward Snowden. On the one hand, I'm a journalist at heart and more transparency is good. And I'm grateful for the conversations that we had in the post-Snowden era about the limits to surveillance and how critical privacy is. And when you have no transparency and you don't really know, in that case, what our secret courts were doing, how can you truly believe that our country is taking our civil liberties seriously? So on the one hand, I'm grateful that he cracked open these debates. On the other hand,”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Asked to hand over our social security number and our home address and our passport, you know, all of that information to every retailer who asks. I mean, that's insanity. And there's no question they're not protecting it because it keeps showing up in spam or identity theft or credit card theft or worse.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And, you know, there's low hanging fruit. And I hope Congress does something. And frankly, I think it's negligent they haven't on the fact that elderly people are getting spammed to death on their phones these days with fake car warranty scams. And I mean, my dad was in the hospital last year, and I was in the hospital room and his phone kept buzzing. And I look at it and it's just spam attack after spam attack, people non-stop calling about his freaking car warranty, why they're trying to get his social security number. They're trying to get his PII. They're trying to get this information. We need to figure out how to put those people in jail for life. And we need to figure out why in the hell we are being required.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is going to go. Enough is enough on sort of losing our personal information everywhere, letting data marketing companies track our every move. You know, they don't need to know who I am. You know, okay, I get it. You know, we're stuck in this world where the internet runs on ads. So ads are not going to go away. But they don't need to know I'm Nicole Perlera. They can know that I'm token number, you know, X567.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, there is this company, and I hope they succeed. Their name's PII Ano, Piano. And they want to create a vault for your personal information inside every organization. And ultimately, if I'm going to call Delta Airlines to book a flight, they don't need to know my Social Security number. They don't need to know my birth date. They're just going to send me a one-time token to my phone. My phone's going to say, or my Fido key is going to say, yep, it's her. And then we're going to talk about my identity like a token, you know, some random token. They don't need to know exactly who I am. They just need to know I system trust that I am who I say I am, but they don't get access to my PII data. They don't get access to my social security number, my location, or the fact I'm a Times journalist. I think that's the way the world.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that it's an enabler, but it's also a blessing. And they said that same thing to. Shut down a promising new technology because it introduced risk. We just figured out how to manage that risk.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I spoke to these guys at TRM labs. So they're one of these blockchain intelligence companies. And a lot of people that work there used to work at the Treasury. And what they said to me was, yeah, cryptocurrency has enabled ransomware. But to track down that ransom payment would have taken, you know, if we were dealing with fiat currency, would have taken us years to get to that one bank account or belonging to that one front company in the Seychelles. And now, thanks to the blockchain, we can track the movement of those funds in real time. And you know what? You know, these payments are not as anonymous as people think. Like we still can use our old hacking ways and zero days and, you know, old school intelligence methods to find out who owns that private wallet and how to get to it. So it's a curse in some way.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will get your $200. Now it's pay us, you know, five Bitcoin. And so there's no doubt cryptocurrencies enabled ransomware attacks. But after the colonial pipeline ransom was seized, because if you remember, the FBI was actually able to go in and clos some of it back from Darkside, which was the ransomware group that hit it.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's so terrifying for me. But we've never stopped any new technology just because it introduces risks. We've always said, okay, the promise of this technology means we should keep going, keep pressing ahead. We just need to figure out new ways to manage that risk. And that's the blockchain right now. Like when I was covering all of these ransomware attacks, I thought, okay, this is going to be it for cryptocurrency. You know, governments are going to put the kibosh down. They're going to put the hammer down and say enough is enough. Like we have to put this genie back in the bottle because it's enabled ransomware. I mean, five years ago, they would hijack your PC and they'd say go to the local pharmacy, get an e-gift card and tell us what the pin is.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Adversaries and their long term thinking. It really scares me. And here's where I just come back to just because we can create the metaverse, you know, just because it sounds like the next logical step in our digital revolution. Do I really want my child's most significant moments to be online? They weren't for me You know, so maybe I'm just stuck in that old school thinking or maybe I've seen too much. And I'm really sick of being the guinea pig parent generation for these things. I mean, it's hard enough with screen time. Like thinking about how to manage the metaverse as a parent to a young boy, like I can't even let my head go there.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, all I thought about when you were talking just now is my three-year-old son. You know, he asked me the other day, what's the internet, mom? And I just almost wanted to cry. You know, I don't want that for him. I don't want all of his most meaningful experiences to be online. You know, by the time that happens, how do you know that person's human? That avatar is human. I believe in free speech. I don't believe in free speech for robots and bots. And like, look what just happened over the last six years. We had bots pretending to be Black Lives Matter activists just to sow some division or, you know, Texas secessionists organizing anti-Hillary protests or just to sow more division, tie us up in our own politics so that we're so paralyzed. We can't get anything done. We can't make any progress and we definitely can't handle our.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a friend who worked inside NSA and was one of their top hackers. He's like, every time I go to Russia, I get hit on by these tensions. I come home, my friends are like, I'm sorry you're not a 10. Common story”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's like the worst nightmare. And it also, unfortunately, creates all kinds of xenophobia at a lot of these organizations. I mean, if you're going to have to take that into consideration, then organizations are going to start looking really skeptically and suspiciously at someone who applies for that job from China. And we've seen that go really badly at places like the Department of Commerce where they basically accuse people of being spies that aren't spies. So it is the hardest problem to solve. And it's never been harder to solve than right at this very moment when there's so much pressure for companies to let people work remotely.”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you put on a pretty face, you hire an actor or something, and then you just get inside the organization and get access to all that organization's data. A couple years ago, Saudi Arabia planted spies inside Twitter. Why? Probably because they were trying to figure out who these people were who were criticizing the regime on Twitter. You know, they couldn't do it with a hack from the outside. So why not plant plant?”
2022-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #266 – Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source