From Hacking to Cyber Warfare: Inside the World of an Intelligence Expert with Mike Jones

How's it going, mike? It's really good to finally have you on the podcast. I feel like we scheduled this thing so long ago, but luckily I had the foresight of understanding that my kid was probably going to come in March, and so I booked off all of March. So, but I'm glad to finally have you.

Well, it's a pleasure being here, man, it's a, it's an honor, and congratulations on the uh the newborn. That's pretty awesome. Um Yeah, so just, it's great to be here and it's great to be back, back from where I was, uh, back in december november.

Yeah, definitely. Well, you know, mike, i um, i start everyone off with their background, and the reason why I do that is because, uh, you know one, my audience may not be familiar with who you are, somehow, if they're living under a rock, right, um, and it also helps the people that are trying to do that career change into security so that they can hear the background. You know there's a variety of backgrounds. I've never heard the same uh Backstory you know of anyone, and so I feel like hearing that variety really helps my audience know that they can do it.

Oh, for sure, for sure. So a little bit about me. Um, i got my start many, many, many moons ago with Gateway computers. Um, actually, me and Jason street worked in the same office in houston for gateway computer support. That didn't last very long for me. I wasn't very good with technical support for people that that didn't have somewhat of a computer literacy or some sort of knowledge. Um, so I moved to sega soft gaming And debated testing for stuff like rocket jockey, which was really cool, so I was looking for glitches in software early on. Um, i had messed with computers from an early age. My dad worked at nsa when I was a kid, was always into electronics some sort of electronics And uh, so fast forward and went to the military, became a signal signal intelligence analyst. Later on became a cyber warfare uh Warrior for the navy one of the first, uh, one of the first in that rate. Um, and in between, so got into a little bit of trouble with the fbi. Uh, opened up a couple can of worms here and there and uh, in 2016, had to come to jesus meeting and work for the fbi for a year as an informant And then went to europe thinking everything was good after that and got stuck Because the state department decided it would be a beneficial thing for the country to revoke my passport. So I was Basically exiled, for lack of better terms. I'm here in today.

That is a That's a wild, wild journey. Um, i, i mean, you know, let's start. Let's start from the beginning, if we can, right like I. Obviously I don't want you to Tell me anything that you shouldn't. I would prefer that the us Government doesn't come knocking on my door. That would not be fun. Um, you know, how did you get into, how did you get into being a signals intelligence officer, analyst, whatever Whatever the title might have been? um, because I, i imagine that that's It's a pretty interesting field, and especially with the chinese Balloon that, just you know, went over the country. Um, there's a lot of mixed, i guess, feedback on it. Right, a lot of people are saying, oh, it's a weather balloon, or oh, it's not going to get anything different than what a satellite would, which you know me being a security person, i mean, that's complete bullshit, right, like complete bullshit, especially over the sites that it was flying over. Um, there's no telling what it could have gathered. You know, so, like, how did you get started in that field?

So the funny thing is, um, my dad was also a ham radio operator, an amateur radio operator, and so he had a lot of that equipment around. I was really interested in electronics, like I said, from a super early age, like 8 years old. I really wanted to have things that beeped and had lights, um, so I got into radio and I got into, um, ham radio, and so I figured that would be a good transition. I I already had, you know, some decent math skills and I figured that I would go into the field. You know some decent math skills and I figured that I would go into something that had an intelligence rate. So 9 11 hit, and one of the things that I really pushed for was I wanted to go back in, i wanted to help the country, but with one caveat I wanted to go into intelligence because I knew at at that point in time, when the last plane hit the tower, i knew at that point that intelligence and cyber security was going to be huge. Because that's, that's what caused that whole, that whole domino effect of events, was lack of intelligence, and where intelligence is going today is the internet. Um, so it pushed really hard for that. I scored really high on asab and went through the school And uh ended up getting stationed at the joint force intelligence command in virginia.

Hmm, can you tell me anything about the school? because, like You know, i I always wondered if, like that edward snowden movie was accurate, right, where they sit them all down and they're like, oh, create a I don't know, create a encrypted form of communication that cannot be broken, you know, and you have like two hours to do it, or something like that. Like, is that the kind of tasks that they would give you, or was it something that's worse, different, it's a war.

It's way worse, man, um. So one of the exercises that they do, um, is they actually sit us behind these simulators, right, And they launch these simulated missiles towards where we're at and we have to pick them up on the radar, bust them down by pri and prf telemetry, um, look at velocity, trajection and be able to tell when that Missile after we identify what missile it is is going to hit the ship that we're on And you have it's timed and you have guys behind you yelling at you. You know, look at this, look at that, and it's just, it's constant flow. And so the the big joke. I never got stationed on a ship, but the big joke on the ship is when, the when you see the CT swim team running for the deck, you should probably follow them over the side of ship, because those guys see the stuff first.

Wow, that is, that's really interesting. You know, like how they train their people. You know, did you get the sense that I mean the training was, you know, top notch, top tier training? I, you know, i would think that performing under that kind of you know stress, it really Really ingrains those skills into you if you pass it. You know, did you feel the same?

I Did. I felt like the equipment that we had Might have been a little outdated, but some insulators that we have were pretty high-tech and Really, when you look at telemetry and we look at RF and stuff like that, that doesn't change. So literally some of the radios that they use back during you know, world War two will still work today. Oh, wow, may not, may not be a secure, but you know that that type of technology still works and that the, the theory, the antenna theory and its one tree and all That's still remains.

So you know, to talk about a little bit more about signals, intelligence, you know, specifically with the Chinese spy balloon, right, you know? I Obviously know, yeah, like they can, they can gather things from where they were doing it and all that sort of stuff, right? I don't know what things they could actually intercept and whatnot. You know, the first objection that I would think of in my head is Well, aren't we using like technology from like the 60s in those missile bunkers? You know, that isn't even connected to anything, it still runs off of a floppy, like, how is it, you know, how is that actually going to pick up anything that they don't already know? Well, can you talk about what it could potentially be picking up?

Absolutely, absolutely. So. The reason why it's going over the installation is it was going over I'm sure the payload included some sort of either video surveillance or some sort of imagery, you know, analysis capability. Right On top of that they probably had some sort of HF or UHF antennas, some sort of to pick up RF, right. So they go over these bases, and a lot of these bases were locations close to ICBMs, and so what they're doing is they're gathering all the telemetry they can within that area, not only to identify the ICBMs and the capabilities of those which I'm sure they already know, but also to confirm other things, other you know, points of interest. You know you may have a comms, a comms shack over here on part of the base and they're going to pick up that telemetry and map that out, sort of like we saw with Russia when they bombed the, the base that was close to the Polish border. The reason why they did that was because we're picking up telemetry and and data emsy data from phones From that base that were UK based emsys. So they knew that UK soldiers at some point were either at that base or at that base currently, and so that's why they launched the attack on that base. Hmm, Interesting.

You know, do you kind of see it as like a precursor for, you know, potentially like a prolonged engagement even, and I think that you might be more More qualified to actually talk about it, you know, than anyone else I've ever had on Because of the time frame that you were serving? you know, like I Didn't realize, obviously, like back then until fairly recently, that you know, the first thing that we did when we went into Iraq, before we even Put boots on the ground, was intercept all all communications shut down, you know power, water, sewage, all of that right, and we were intercepting everything. So, like there there wasn't anything that we didn't know that was going on in the country Deed. So do you take that experience and kind of map it to maybe what's going on right now in the world?

100%. I mean I'd have to be like completely naive to think that it doesn't play a big part in what's going on. I mean, when you look at the ongoing engagement, let's roll back to when I was contractor at USGF comm and I was doing computer network defense in the cell there, and The one of the nights I was working was a very first attack that I saw from Titan rain, operation tight rain, which was Chinese actors that were attacking US military sites, and so that was my first interaction with the Chinese back, and that was back in 2003 or four. That's all been declassified Now you can look at Pediate. But starting from there and moving onward right, so you saw all the Insider threat espionage from China on the West Coast and all the tech firms you know many years ago and It's just a gradual effect. Then they switched over to healthcare and you saw, you know, during the pandemic, the Chinese and Houston at the medical center dumping and burning documents in their little embassy Because they've been found out. So it's an ongoing cat and mouse game, but but let's not forget that the US is engaged in that as well. We do the same things. We have a very robust espionage and clandestine intelligence agencies that really do top-notch and very technical type espionage and surveillance and collection, so we're very capable of doing the same thing.

Yeah, 100%. You know, and I think I heard a quote right from It was. It was in a book, I think, by Andy Greenberg, where you know he was talking to one of these like black market, you know, hackers, slash dealer type of people and You know he asked him like, would you ever sell a weapon that you would knowingly Have intelligence that it's going to be used against America? and the guy's response was actually You know kind of kind of opening I. I opening to me right is because he said, well, it depends on you know What, where you're looking at it from, because to Iran, america is a bad, bad guy. Well, maybe I'm a little bit more on That side of the spectrum and so I agree with them. I can see how America would be bad, or Russia, or China, and it's it's always interesting to me, you know, just hearing about what we're, what we're actually doing, you know what we're actually capable of doing. I have a friend in the in the Navy and He he does, he does some stuff with the cyber department in the Navy and I was talking to him about, you know, going down this career path right, this is years ago, like when I was in college and whatnot. And He said you know, the first couple weeks are gonna be like a culture shock, because you're the things that you think are impossible Right now, that can't possibly exist, can't, you know, possibly be Penetrated, like they're going to tell you like, hey, we're breaking this via this tool and it's gonna blow your mind and then, after that, you're gonna have to adjust Everything that's going on around you. Did that kind of happen to you as well, when you, when you got in and you started to learn about the capabilities and whatnot?

Well, so when I first got in, it was it was kind of weird because I Kind of knew the capabilities already because I was so close. I was literally born at Walter Reed, right there next to an essay like that. That was my birth hospital, so it's kind of like attached to that whole type of I guess industry or that whole culture from an early age. My godfather was a linguist, a Russian linguist on a sub during the Cold War, so it Wasn't weird for me. It wasn't. It wasn't a shock Going into it. What was really a shock was when I went into the military and I got the access, i got the clearance and then started seeing the things that that access pertain to and Seeing the differences between what the media portrays and what's actually being conducted and for what reasons. That's what was shocking. The rest of it was just kind of a transition. Same thing with going into cyber. You know, i left the military and went directly into, you know, defense in cyber And walked right into a fire pit because I walked right into Titan rain like that same year. So you know, i didn't really have a chance to sit down and go. Wow, that was kind of a weird transition To me. It was fast-paced and just from one thing to the next.

Yeah, it's interesting how, i Guess it's interesting how the varying Speeds can exist within the government, right, just overall. Right, because I did a little bit of work with some agencies in the beginning of my career and I mean it would take them so long Just to approve me to come on site and I mean it would be like a whole month or deal, you know, just for me to come on site and then they were never ready and it was a mess, right. And so when I hear from people like you that are saying like oh, this is a fast-paced environment And you're learning different things all the time, you know, it's like I have to like reshift My thinking, almost, you know, because you you're in a very different department and team. Then what I was experienced with, right, like I was working with a very slow pace, slow environment, not much is going to change. With telecom, you know, at an agency, when you deploy in a via system or a Cisco system, you know it's not much is changing. But in your world it would be rapid change Would there be? Would there be like knowledge dumps, almost, or intelligence briefs that Get you up to speed on a regular basis? or how did you manage it?

Oh, every day, every day there was, there was a brief with the J6 That was the head of that directorate. Then we had the morning calls with the NSA Going over. You know the different operations that were underway and what IOC's look for As far as managing it. Like again, like it, even as a contractor I still felt like I was in the military and it was still that expectation that fast-paced It's funny, bringing up Telecom, because that was one of my first red teaming experiences was breaking into voice, because that breaking voice and intercepting voices is my specialty. And so I worked for a superior micro labs and I helped create the distro. Why she wrote the distro vast, which is all about voice interception.

Oh Yeah, it's um. You know, from my perspective, right like I, i I managed or I handled at least a emergency. You know a E-901 system, right, that Would give enhanced information when someone would call 911 and Me, being the security mind that I am, i'm looking at the security of this system And I'm being told by my developers, by the engineers, like, oh, this past, you know this military certification or whatever You know, so it has to be secure. I, and you know, come to find out, after you run the security Stig, that it that everyone wanted you to run the whole app didn't even work. I mean, it was like it was insane, like, guys, did you ever run this? Like, how did we pass this certification? And you claim it's still operable? because, like, i have to make 50 more changes after I run this thing just to get it halfway functioning. And it was a, it was an interesting time, because I feel like, maybe even now, right, telecom is kind of overlooked in terms of security. You know, like, i know a CEO of a telecom company and security is like really on the back burner almost, but that's a really sensitive place. You know that attackers can obviously get a foothold in and they would never know right That that happened, and it's an easy way to gleam intelligence, is that? do you think that that's true back then and today, or has it changed at all?

Oh, 100% The attacks that we came up with at Superior Viper Labs. The Secret Service actually would come and watch our demos of our new attack tools. Well, because back then our focus was Cisco. Cisco was the most widely deployed voice technology on the planet. So we focus strictly on Cisco. And if people really knew the vulnerabilities that that were contained within the call manager and within the protocols and the ways deployed, it would blow their mind. And not only that, but a void packet. Let's take a void packet, for instance. Right, a regular packet versus a void packet, a data packet, right. So the void packet besides the header, besides the you know the very first section. There's a lot of open space and a void packet. And what can you do with that? You can take whole databases, chunk databases, put in void packets, shuffle it out the door through port 5060 or whatever high port you want to use, and the person on the other end recompiles all database. And who here, or listening to the podcast, actually has IDS sensors or AI sensors on voice networks?

Yeah, it's not something, not something I even think about. You know, like that's wow, i never thought about it being exploited that way. Which is interesting because I look at, you know, i would look at the packets, i would look at the different traffic and I just wasn't looking for that. You know, it's a very, it's an interesting mindset, you know, do you think that you found that mindset in the service, where you're not looking at something for its utility necessarily, you're looking for the gaps, you're testing different things? You know, do you think that that training kind of ingrains that into you? Because I mean, it's a whole, it's a whole different mentality, right, it's a whole different mindset. What you just, what you just mentioned right there, it's something completely different. Like I didn't even think of it, you know Well. So, like my mindset and I talk about this a lot my first speaking tour is called Inside the Mind of a Hacker And in that I talk about.

You know we're all born into this world as infants, as hackers. We're all hackers. We have to learn how to talk, walk, eat all that stuff right. So we're basically hacking our own environment. Some people lose that mindset as they get older. You know that child, you know imagination, you know they're just like you know they're just like you know imagination and challenge and you know that thinking that out of the box thinking Some people as a mature, some people lose that I never, i've never seen to have lost that. I still have it. I still want to take things apart. I still want to see how things work. I still want to see what I can create And I think it's that mindset that really fosters you know what I do. Now The military really actually almost put a damper on that because it's very regimented and it doesn't allow that outside the box thinking. This is how you're going to think, this is how you're going to react within these parameters, with these variables, and you know, with that equation, this is what the operation is going to look like. It's very black and white, which fed the other part of me because I'm neurodiverse, and so the black and white I get and I thrived well in that environment because of the fact that it was black and white and you went to expect.

Hmm, that's interesting. You know I always wondered about that, right, because cyber is such a it's an evolving area. You know, everything can change in the blink of an eye. And you know, I would assume missions, whole missions, can be kind of thwarted just based on a reaction from an adversary, that that you didn't expect, that you didn't account for, that you didn't know, maybe this kind of attack existed, right, and now you have to change everything. You know just someone on the outside that's never been in, to me it's like, okay, it just makes sense that this would be more, more fluid, right, but that also breaks like military culture, right. And so that would be very difficult for them to kind of rationalize. That I could see.

It's each person. Each person has their own job and each person has been over that mission and been over their responsibility so many times in their head before that that mission gets deployed. And so when, when you're in that scenario, it almost becomes like muscle memory, if that makes sense, hmm, yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense And that's that's what I've heard too from other people that were in. You know similar similar positions. So, after the military, after intelligence work, right, where did you go from there? What did you start diving into? Because someone with that skill set, i mean you could do great good, you could do great harm. You know, like you have, you know the toolkit of both sides, right, like what? what did you start engaging down? Because I would imagine it'd be pretty difficult, honestly, because you know what's out there, you know the capabilities that are out there. You may not even have access to those capabilities anymore, but you have that knowledge, you have that skill set, and so using that skill set and kind of, you know, fanning the flame of curiosity would become extremely important, i would imagine.

Absolutely So. When I left the military, like I said, when I was in, there were some things that I didn't quite agree with. After I got out, there were things still continuing that I didn't agree with, and so I tend to find people with like minds, and I found those people, and those people ended up becoming a hacktivist group And a lot of, like you said, good things and bad things came out of it, right, so I was maintaining a full time job Like let's take, for instance, occupy Wall Street. I was actually working in Bank of America while working within a hacktivist group that was attacking Bank of America. Oh, wow. So I played both sides of the fence. It was like almost like a double agent, almost. So I did that for a long time When I was at Bank of America. That's when you that the FBI was not too far away, and so the investigation I found out went from somewhere between 2003 all the way to 2016. And that's when I had my meeting with the Department of Justice, us Attorney's Office, secret Service and some other sharp people in suits in Houston, and that's when I became an informant for the FBI, working in a Russian APT group during the 2016 election Wow.

That's. I mean, it's like every every five minutes you're saying something that like blows my mind And it's like, all right, let's, let's go down this rabbit hole, right? So you know when you're at Bank of America and you're working both sides of it, were you okay? so I guess this is a complicated question to ask, right? Were you giving the hack to this group, potentially like minor footholds, or informing them, right of minor footholds, like, oh, they don't have anything here, they don't have anything here. Not giving them the keys of the kingdom? of course, right, but were you threading that needle and how did you figure out how to do that?

So I was actually on the threat intelligence team, wow And I was in the bank, within the bank and on the corporate executive side, so I knew what they were looking for and what they were looking at. I don't know how much of what I did at Bank of America was actually in the stack of charges that the Department of Justice put in front of me, but I'm sure that some of that was in there And I was kind of relaying information. But still, you know, i had contacts you know active contacts and communicated back and forth on bank processes and stuff like that.

Oh, okay, okay, That makes sense. So then, okay, you know, in terms of the investigation timeline, right, 13 years is that basically like right when you got out of intelligence work in the military?

Yeah, and what's weird is when I left the military I immediately ended up on a no fly list for a short period of time, which was really shocking. I was like wait a minute, i just I just left the military right of clearance and then I get, i get one to the no fly list. But rewind back to when I was getting my clearance and I was at Corey station. I had some contacts in Russia that had sent me a letter. There were friends of mine and sent me a letter to the base, which was not very smart working back in retrospect, but I think that may have raised some red flags And I think since then they had kind of kept their eye on me pretty much.

Yeah, that would make sense because, like they don't do that at least my outside understanding right they don't do that for everyone. As soon as they leave, that sort of role, they're not actively investigating you. You know they're probably doing like some sort of psych vows and you know judgments of like, hey, what does he have access to? Do you think that he's potentially a flight risk, or something like that. You know, but I've never heard of that sort of that sort of reaction. I guess right, but even on the no fly list, i mean like even technically, you know why wouldn't you leave? you still have the clearance, it's just not active. You still have it for was it like five years or something like that?

Five years and you have after that you have to have like a corporate sponsor or somebody sponsored, right. Yeah, the weirdest thing was, like even after that, like even after I got off the no fly list, me and Chris Roberts actually used to compare boarding passes on Twitter the four S's, because it's supposed to be random, but for some reason it was not random for me. Every time I flew I got the four S's.

What's the four S's?

Selective security screening something. So it's a random. oh, we're going to pull you aside and don't pull your shit out and look through all your stuff and figure out and ask you a bunch of questions and make sure you're not one of the bad guys looking for.

Wow, i I didn't even realize that. I'm going to look next time when I fly, probably going to Def Con, so I'll check it out then. You know, do you ever? do you ever get nervous getting on a plane with a bunch of hackers going to Def Con? It's like, all right, no one, no one fuck around right now. All right, like I just want this thing to land safely. All right, you ever get nervous cause I do.

I don't get nervous in that aspect. Now, if Chris is on the plane, if Chris Roberts is on the plane, yeah, i may. I may try to catch a later flight, but other than that, no, not really. Last time I went to. Well, when I went to Europe one of the times I flew over on a British Airways and was looking at the entertainment system and was just kind of like messing around that network and watched all the TVs pixelate and freeze on the back of the headrest And I thought, oh, wow, this is really cool, it actually does work. But nothing to the extent of what Chris did. And yeah, chris was on a plane. I'd probably try to get into the flight.

Yeah, i mean I was surprised he could still fly. So you know I had him on maybe. You know I had him on maybe two years ago at this point And I tried to. I tried to bring it up because I like it's a you know there's a New York Times article on it Like he did an interview on CNN about it and everything And like he gave me like the silent, like shut the fuck up If you want a screenshot.

If you want a screenshot of the actual interview on CNN, let me know, because I have it on my phone.

Yeah, that's a I don't know man. That's just that I don't like flying, to begin with, you know. And so like, yes, like I can, i know how to scan things. I know how to do various things right. I'm nowhere near as skilled as a pen tester. I would literally not even call myself a script kitty. Whatever's below that. That's what I'm at right. I don't like flying by default, and so I really try my hardest to just focus on a movie when I'm flying, so I'm not freaking out. But Chris, over there, he's like seeing how far he could take this thing.

And that's that's, Chris, for you. When I was on the flight to Europe, I was going over for my speaking tour inside the mind of a hacker And I was doing my slides on the plane And that's when I realized that my content and my topics that I speak on I probably shouldn't do slides with other people around that can see it, Because the next thing I got was a tap on the shoulder and said are you still wanted by the FBI?

Yeah, yeah, i could see how that would like scare the shit out of people at 35,000 feet, you know doing that whole thing, man. so so after where were we? we were at Bank of America doing the talk to the, the agencies and whatnot, about their 13 year investigation. Right, that is one that's an insanely long time to be investigating anything. I feel, right. I feel like the majority of their investigations close within a couple of years, within two, three years, you know, that's at least what I would think. Again, someone on the outside, i don't know what the hell any of that world is like, or anything like that. I wanted to get into that world And now I'm going to split the space where it's like I don't know if that makes sense for me to go risk my life like that, you know. So, so you're, you're doing this work with the Russian APT group. Can we talk about that a little bit? because the reason why I want to talk about it, right, is because that election is extremely controversial, right, and even when Trump was being, you know, i guess, looked at, or whatever it might have been, right, it seemed like one side was saying, oh no, that's completely incorrect, completely false. Russia wouldn't do that. They don't have the capabilities. The system isn't set up in that way for it to be vulnerable to that. And then we have, you know, people that are coming out that like completely manipulated social media. I can't think of a company name right now, but I think it's still on Netflix. It's like the greatest hack or something like that right, where they hacked elections and literally manipulated social media around. You know false statements and just made things up to get people to win. What was that like? You know? what were you specifically working on? If you could tell?

me? Sure, absolutely. You're speaking of. You're speaking about Cambridge Analytica and their work around the elections. So APT 28 was the group I was in before I was even informed. The reason why probably the only reason why I didn't go to jail is because I had that connection and I had a really good lawyer, my lawyer, david Adler. He's former CIA. You can look him up. He's a Houston lawyer and he still does a lot of work for the US Attorney's Office And I think that had a lot to do with the way I was treated as well. Yeah, working in the as an informant, it was really interesting. To begin with, i had to sign what's called an OIA, which is an otherwise illegal activity form. So it's basically saying the FBI was saying okay, we're going to have you do some illegal shit, but if you go outside these parameters, not only are we going to charge you for what we told you to do, but everything else that you did along the way. And I had to sign those. Like once a month They would take me out to lunch and I would give them what I collected from the group And then they would. You know, sometimes they would give me money, sometimes they wouldn't. It just it was really weird situation. At one point, at the very beginning, they want to give me a laptop because I told them I wasn't going to do this on my home computer. And they wanted to give me a laptop of theirs and said no, no, no, just give me some money and I'll go buy my own. So from the very beginning I was really careful with how I dealt with them, and with good reason, because after I was done with my years in the form, i contacted him and it was about the election. Some of the questions I had, some of the sources I was looking at wasn't really matching up with what I was hearing, what I was seeing. And after I'd contacted about that, then they kind of ghosted me. And that's when I reached out to one of the lawyers and I said you know, i've heard from them. Am I good to go? And apparently, you know, everybody thought was good to go. Well, i did, on a plane and next to him. No, i'm stuck in Europe. So that's?

I mean, that's, that's pretty wild, But it's not. You know, it's not out of the realm of possibility, right? I mean, I guess, i guess, if they don't want me in the country, right, the next time I go to Germany. they just revoked my passport and guess what? I can't leave now you know.

Well, that's the method of operation for them. If you look at what they did with Snowden, same thing. He left to go to Singapore. As soon as he left, revoked passport. That's their method of operation. If they don't want somebody in the country, they feel like somebody could pose some sort of not necessarily a threat, but, you know, pose some sort of conflict, then that's the easiest way to get rid of them. As soon as they leave, just revoke their passport.

So you think, potentially you know you had, you had a different narrative than what was being told in the media And they want to potentially make sure that you couldn't deliver that message in a credible way, even though you know you were probably the one that had the most credible information. Do you think that that might have been what it was?

Well, i know for a fact that that played a part in it. How much of it, i don't know. I do know that when I spoke in Egypt so I was stranded in London and I had I was invited by the Ministry of Defense in Cairo, egypt, to actually speak at a conference center, their national cybersecurity conference in Cairo. And so I gave my talk and they brought a laptop out to the podium so that I could see the crowd And then my image was up on the big screen And so I'm giving this talk in Cairo and then immediately after the talk, you get a LinkedIn message from somebody from the State Department saying Hey, i just saw your talk, i'm here in Cairo, let's go grab a beer. And I said, ha, jokes on you, i'm not in Cairo. So I know that that carries over. I know that they, they, they still keep that, that information. I know they still want to kind of like keep an eye on things And of course I've had, like former FBI and CIA on my podcast. So you know it's not like I'm trying to shy away from it, you know.

Right, yeah, that makes sense. So, you know, if we could circle back to the election. um, you know, maybe the number one question that I get personally from people that are not in security is, like you know, how is that even possible? Right, because these election systems aren't connected In my mind. I don't know. I've never looked at it, i've never tried to look at election systems or anything but at DEF CON. right, they've got 10 year olds up on stage and they breach these election machines within 30 seconds or whatever. So if a 10 year old can do it, surely Russia could do it right, or they could do something more advanced and you know, potentially intercept the signals right around, how it's being transmitted or counted, or whatever it might be right? Can you talk about maybe some of those attacks that you saw or that you knew that were going on or trying to be planned, anything like that?

Sure. So I can tell you that the real concern that they had was not the actual voting architecture, like the voting machines actual voting process The Department of Justice was more concerned about I don't know if you remember that was the same timeframe as a DNC email leak. They were more concerned about that than they were voting machines. My focus was not even on voting machines. My focus was on the operation to steal the DNC email database And when it started pointing in a different direction as the source of the attack to be a domestic source, that's when things went cold.

Huh, Interesting. That is extremely interesting. Okay, so we're at 2016. Where do you go from there? I mean, how do you even scratch that itch anymore, right? Because I mean, at least in my mind, you're doing the coolest stuff out there. I couldn't even imagine trying to scratch that itch, right, Like what's your in that world? It's like impossible to do anything. That compares in my opinion.

Well, i went to work for an oil and gas company in Houston and was traveling the world. I was going to Mexico, singapore, scotland and luckily I was still working for that company when the State Department voted my passport. So I actually worked over there for an American company for a short period of time, but yeah, i still. You know, i worked a nine to five job. Same thing I did forever. I just tried to keep my background kind of quiet. I'm excited to know how people would take it Once I got over to Europe and I got revoked and I started doing the public speaking. Public speaking actually started at Robert Gordon University And a vendor for the company I was working for he was one of our vendors for a security project had heard my background and wanted to have me speak the next time I was going to be in Scotland. So I spoke in front of like 40 people at Robert Gordon University and from there it just took off. Next thing I was speaking at like the Manchester United soccer stadiums. So it really took off from there and I started helping with the London Met Police and started doing mentoring for the kids who are on probation for cyber crime and served time in prison, started doing their intervention workshop with them, became a board member of a couple of companies in the UK. Just things really took off once I got stranded over the UK. I can't explain what happened and why, and then, once I got back and started the podcast, it just continued to.

How long were you stranded in the UK, for You know it's hard to.

it's hard for me to put that in a timeline because it's all kind of a blur, but somewhere between almost between three and four years Wow.

Man, that's a really long time to not be able to come home. You know, especially when you intended to come home and you're probably thinking to yourself, okay, next month will be the month I get to go home. And you know like I mean, and even Even then, it's like the bills keep coming in. You know like you still got to pay the bills, maybe you had a mortgage or whatever. You know like still got to pay those things, so got to take care of your family and whatnot, like that's. That's an incredibly difficult situation.

It's one of the most inhumane things I've ever seen our government do to anybody is to basically remove them from their own country and freeze their bank accounts because basically you're trying to kill that person. You know they keep. You know they can't work in that country. How are they going to get the money for food? You've frozen their bank accounts. They have no money now. What are they going to do?

Yeah, that's.

But it's quiet.

Right, i mean, what did I? you know, i don't understand the end game there. Right, because if, what, let's assume, right, you knew something that they didn't want out in the media, that was being perpetrated, you know, by the right or the left, and they didn't want someone to validate it. Right? Don't you think they should just leave that person alone? I mean, why would you push them to that place? Right, Because it's only going to to me. Like if, if I was in that situation, that happens to me. I mean, it's like, okay, now it's fair game. Like because you've cut me off, you've basically metaphorically killed me, right, so now I'm just going to dump all that I know and you're, you're going to kill me and it will be good, you know? like, at least that's my self destructive side mentality of it. Right, like, i'm sure after I sleep on it I would rethink things, but So I'll give you something to think about.

So think about this for a second. If, if you weren't vocal about what happened to you, do you think it would be easier or harder to get rid of you? If you're vocal and you're constantly telling people about what happened, and this is what the government did to me And this is what they're doing to other people now and you know, constantly banging that drum, you become a voice. For that It's harder to take out that voice than it is someone who's super quiet, not know. It's a good point. One of the best pieces of advice I got was from a former former agent and he said just keep speaking the truth. Just keep speaking and they'll never mess with you again.

Hmm, so did you start your podcast when you were still over in the UK or when it when it? when you came back, you started it.

So I can't. When I came back, i was living with a good friend of mine from high school in Alabama and we lived on a mountain. We had no neighbors. It was like out of nowhere and and We were just sitting around the bar one night in the house and drinking a glass of bourbon and start talking about, you know, podcasts, because I'm a big fan of Joe Rogan. He likes Tom Segure and two bears, one cave or whatever. So we're talking about podcasts and he's like you know, you have an awesome story, but more people need to hear it. Like you're not getting it out there. Like people need to know what happened, not just because of the fact that you know what they did to you by leaving you Europe, but the fact that you're a veteran, a disabled man, yeah, um. So we did like a short podcast. The first was like me just talking right, and It went from that. We had a live podcasters probably like 50 people, i think the first podcast and it went from that to Bring in a couple guests at a time. And then my podcast went from four hour long podcast to now they're like an hour, but I was doing. I was doing four hour podcasts, doing questions and answers and I was just the machine when I first got back, um, but it was like it was therapy for me. It helped me, like, get acclimated back to the US post pandemic, because when I left The pandemic hadn't hit here yet, so it was a total culture shock. And then you know just the environmental shock going from London to on the top of mountain Alabama. So it just it took some time, but with that podcast it was really therapeutic for me.

Oh, Yeah, man, doing a four hour podcast. I mean, i couldn't, even, i couldn't even imagine. Now I'm contemplating, you know, doing like a two hour round table podcast, right, having a couple different people and just talking about different things.

Um, i 24 hour podcast. Lord, it's what my first in the haunted hacker podcast first anniversary show. I had Jack Scott on a bunch of other people I Murphy, mr Murphy, captain zap, we had him on, but it literally was all nearly 24 hours. I had people staying up all night and I kept the podcast going.

That is wild. That really is wild. So you actually started it pretty close to 2020, with with COVID and everything like that. I, i started this podcast in 2021. I wish I would have just done it in 2020. I would have gotten Probably a lot more traction. I wonder what that would have been like. Right, how, what are some of the challenges of podcasting that you have faced that you know other people Probably don't even think about it or know that they're challenges you know, like I, i can rattle them off right, but it's different when someone you know that has a even larger podcast in mind, someone as experienced as you, you know facing these different challenges.

Well, dude, i tell you what like to be honest. Like the only challenges I had from the beginning Was involving other people. I'll be, i'll be brutally honest and just really transparent here. Podcasting to me is super selfish, because I do it because I want to talk to interesting people. You know, i don't do it to to, you know, make somebody happy over here. I do it because I enjoy what I do and these people become friends of mine if I don't know them. But the only, the only hurdles I've ever had was involving other people and Just technology failures. Um, zoom is not been known to be the greatest platform for podcasting, but it's my, it's my go-to. But you know, i make it work. It's a really cheap podcast, is very like unprofessional, but I think that's why people like it is because it's just genuine. You know, i don't hold anything back. I don't sure you're coding thing, i don't worry about you know, censoring things that are said.

Yeah, i try to have that same mentality and I feel like that mentality is Kind of lacking in the industry. You know, like I Hear different podcasts and they're like heavily edited, you know they're they're Really scripted almost. You know, i have no, i've known notes right going into this thing, like I looked at your LinkedIn for five minutes. You know, and I'm more interested in having a good conversation with someone, i'm more interested in getting to know someone and Maybe somewhere down the line, you know, we're at Def kind. At the same time It's like hey, mike, you want to go have a drink? you know, like, let's hang out for a little bit. You know something like that.

Right, i'm more interested in the relationships, exactly, i think the most important to me, for me, you know, beneficial right, be able to hear those conversations and then go from there, you know, oh Yeah one of the most important parts for me about podcasting is just making that, that connection and creating that friendship, because you know, i've worked with Black girls hack. I've had them on my my podcast, several different groups. That's how I met Alyssa Knight I had her on my podcast. Just making that connection, it's, it's the human, it's a human element that really makes the podcast what it is. And if you take a look at the most successful podcast on the planet, joe Rogan is Jerry, his Joe Rogan experience. It is so genuine and so raw and They're themselves that there's no script, there's no hey, we're gonna talk about only this topic today. We're gonna see where the shit goes. That's and that's the same approach I take. You know, it's like having a glass of bourbon with somebody and just sitting there shooting shit.

Yeah, i think my my audience. I feel like they really appreciate, you know, that free flow form, right like I, i had no clue that you did signals intelligence. I had no clue that we were gonna talk about the Chinese spy balloon. I mean, i didn't even think about that thing in probably a week, right Like why did that come into my mind, i don't know, but it's probably perfect timing, right Like who better to talk to about it? you know, and now I get to tell my audience about it. You know like it's, it's, It's interesting, it's like almost a lost art that's coming back. You know, just having a conversation with someone Not having a script, i mean, like I'm terrible with scripts, you know I, i used to have a coast and he would like try to script out questions, and you know plot, where the episodes gonna go, and You know we'd have fantastic episodes But at the end of it he'd, he'd asked me hey, you know, did you look at any of the script or anything? I'm like dude, no, i didn't. Man, like I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to be anything other than Genuine. I don't know how to be anything other than who I am. you know. If I have a question that comes to mind, i'm probably gonna ask it, you know.

Exactly, and that's what that's where I expect people who are interviewing me to be. You know, it's all about getting to know that person. I can teach anybody. I could teach a monkey, the zoo, how to do cybersecurity, right? It's not? it's not rocket science, right It's? it's a matter of this plus this equals this. Everything's a variable into an equation. So I can teach that. But what I can't teach is interpersonal skills and be able to communicate with people, and it seems like some of the young analysts that I'm getting. So I run a MDR like Man, you know, mitigate, detect and respond like sock With some younger people that are fresh out of college and and you know it's. It's a different culture now, i think, and that communication is that communication is key, but Teaching that at that age is really hard. But I think the podcast really helps to give kind of an example of this is how you're supposed to communicate. You know this, this is the lost art. You know, i know you've been stuck at tiktok, you know, since you're a teenager and now that you're an adult, let's, let's communicate like humans.

Right. Well, mike, you know I really appreciate you coming on and I'm I'm very Strict with my time, you know, because when I say that my episodes an hour long, i don't want to hold my guests beyond that. I know that we all have busy schedules. So, before I let you go, how about you tell my audience you know where they could find you what your podcast is the haunted hacker and Anywhere else? you know that you may want to direct my audience.

Sure, you could find my podcast, the video version, on YouTube under hot hot hacker podcast. It's also on Spotify audible, itunes, etc. Pandora was audible streaming services also the haunted hacker calm the website And also out of the 501 PC hackers for bets. So if you want to help support bringing a person from active duty service into cybersecurity And help them make that costly transition, by all means contacting and let's get rolling on that.

Awesome, well, thanks, mike, i really appreciate you coming on. This is a fantastic conversation. I Definitely want to have you back on, absolutely, i'll be here.

Just let me know.

Awesome. Well, thanks everyone. I hope you enjoyed this episode.