Digits

Hackers have accessed the traffic controls

of some European high speed railways.

They've controlled the steering and brakes

on a late model SUV.

With potentially scary results.

Along with the computerized controls

to a blast furnace at a German steel mill.

And this.

Hello Tommy.

Nice pajamas.

Are you having trouble sleeping?

Maybe I can help.

Can you imagine hearing a strangers voice

coming from the baby monitor in your nursery?

I mean how scary is that?

But something like this actually happened

to a couple in Washington state.

They had their top of the line baby monitor hacked.

But, we really shouldn't be surprised

since we know that the internet is just about everywhere

and can be connected to just about every device

that makes my life

and yours convenient.

From phones to Facebook, we've chosen

convenience over privacy.

But at a price.

Nice pajamas Tommy.

You know we as the consumer,

we as the citizen,

we as the technologists

didn't envision the dark side.

They try and infiltrate companies,

they try and steal your identity, to steal your funds,

to steal intellectual property from organizations,

to steal nation secrets.

It's different then physical demands of warfare.

What is a proportional response to a cyber attack?

There is no absolute sense of right and wrong.

Police, up against the wall,

up against the wall, up against the wall.

The tools come and go,

the capabilities come and go,

the threats come and go on a regular basis.

What it's really opened is a culture

of routine surveillance.

Clearly you're tracking us.

But how much data do you have on me?

And what are you gonna do with it?

One of the things we're struggling with

is deciding who does technology really work for?

Does it work for the individual?

Or does it work for the state?

Does it work for the company?

Does it work for the institution?

People want the device

that's going to make their life easier.

And security for the most part is,

is taken as a granted.

People just naturally assume that due diligence

has been paid where

rarely is that the case.

Trying to make the internet secure

to make it a safe place

has become a billion dollar industry.

It's industry really designed to do one thing.

Stay one step ahead of malicious hackers.

Now you'll notice I said malicious hackers

because as it turns out,

hackers come in different flavors.

White hats are the good guys, black hats are the bad guys

and grey hats falls somewhere in between.

My friend Sammy Camcar is one of the good guys.

I got into hacking and technology

when I was around 10 years old.

I got my first computer and

my mom spent everything she had to get me this computer

and the first day I got it I set up the internet.

And you know, one of the best days of my life,

I went and online and I started searching for the X-Files.

You know, one of the best shows.

And I found

a chat room where I could chat with people

about the X-Files.

I go into this chat room and immediately someone told me,

get out.

And I'm like what, why would I get out?

I said no.

He said, you have 10 seconds to get out.

I said, okay random person on the internet.

Stayed in the chat room and 10 seconds later

my computer crashed.

I got a blue screen, I had no idea what happened.

My mom spent all her money on this computer

and I just freaked out.

I was scared that the computer was destroyed

but simultaneously thought that was the coolest thing ever.

How do I do that?

Hacking in the mid 90's was

a lot different then the hacking that people

associate today.

There was no malicious intent.

There was no theft.

It was all very,

very much driven by intellectual curiosity.

Driven by the curiosity,

Sammy who at the time wasn't even old enough to drink,

figured out how to hack into Myspace.

A wildly popular early social media site.

When he was done, everyone who visited his Myspace page,

ended up with the phrase, Sammy is my hero,

on their Myspace page.

Essentially I'd created a worm or virus.

And there's no way to stop it.

Sammy's curiosity

infected more than a million Myspace users.

Forcing Myspace to take their entire site down

within 24 hours.

Myspace didn't come after me but it was

the government,

it was the LEDA that came after me

for writing the virus.

Ultimately I took a plea agreement where

I couldn't touch a computer for three years of my life.

Now Sammy makes a living looking for

vulnerabilities in online enabled products,

like refrigerators, cars

and baby monitors.

Everything we have has technology.

Whether it's your garage or car or doorlock even.

So I wanna see what's the way that this

system is suppose to work

and what's a way that you wouldn't necessarily

want it to work?

Sammy is a member of a new and

growing international workforce.

Young, white hat hackers,

hired to break into impenetrable systems

and close their loopholes for them.

Welcome to Hackerone.

Is that secure?

I hope so.

Companies looking to identify

hard to spot vulnerabilities or bugs,

frequently offer cash awards called bug bounties.

And like a high tech headhunter,

Hackerone connects the talent to the task.

We use the term hacking but we need to stop

thinking about it as something closer related to criminals.

It's a very very diverse community of software engineers,

tinkerers, hobbyists, academics, security researchers.

Microsoft has payday a bounty to a five year old hacker

who bypassed the parental controls on his Xbox.

Google has done the same to a seven year old hacker.

Technology bugs crop up all over the place.

Anyone who's capable of finding them.

This is actually Uber's Bug Bunny program.

You see here we're working with a hacker

called MDV and you see that he's now

actively engaging with a member of the Uber

security team to understand the potential issue he found.

What's most amazing to me looking at this chain

is just how friendly this conversation is.

Absolutely. It's a bit like,

hey, I found this bug and

they're like hey yeah you did, thanks for doing that,

here's some money.

It's so,

conversational.

This is absolutely ideal response that you

wanna see from a company.

This kind of cooperation is nice to see

but it wouldn't be necessary if

the vulnerabilities weren't potentially serious.

What stops a white hat hacker from

turning bad if they find a really good vulnerability?

Same thing that stops your local doctor

from taking out kidney and selling it on the black market.

We rely upon ethics and legal cos and

peoples own moral character.

The number of bad apples out there

who would choose to use that knowledge

for malicious or criminal intent is relatively small.

And that's okay.

As long as we're prepared for them

and have designed for that eventuality.

Crime has obviously been around with us

since the dawn of the civilization.

Technology just allows the criminals to really

automate their attacks, to scale them,

so now you can have a guy out in Eastern Europe

that is attacking someone here in the United States.

Without any repercussions, without a great deal of effort

and that's what makes it so different.

It had been a busy morning.

I was answering emails and watching TV

when my mom called.

She was going on and on about some problem

with her computer and she was using words like,

hijacked and

these crooks.