In Cyberspace, No One Can Hear You Scream - Jennifer Holland

ification that's just H youi so I'm afraid you just going to to loud that from the diaphragm yes am I am I starting uh yeah to go time to go okay hi everyone thank you very much for coming we're going to spend the next half an hour talking about horror movies and cyber security but it's kind of mainly just horror movies really um so my name is Jennifer very just briefly a little bit about me um I just graduated um I'm from up near Glasgow um I graduated with my undergrad digital security and forensics um I'm currently studying a masters of Advanced Computer Science with AI and I really like horror movies which is why I'm doing this talk

um I don't know every horror movie that's ever come out I haven't seen them all so if you're already preparing some kind of question about have you seen this obscure black and white movie from the 1950s no I haven't don't ask um I also really like horror movie behind the scenes photos so throughout my talk I have scattered through some of my favorites just for if I had a slide that I thought was a bit lacking in excitement so I've got some fun horror movie Behind the Scenes as well so uh just a disclaimer before we get started this talk will not have screamers jump scars Rick rolls Etc I too was traumatized by the Scary Maze

Game as a child so we'll be having none of that here today however this talk will contain spoilers for The Following movies black Christmas the thing Hellraiser Child's Play the blur Witch Project and the ring I'll also mention Annabelle as well now if you want to leave because you don't want spoilers for these movies I will understand however I might judge you because all these movies came out before I was born so you've had some time so we're going to start off talking a little bit about cyber incident response not too much I promise very quickly um I think this is the nest cyber incident response cycle there are four different sections to it preparation and you move on to detection

analysis how do you know that there is a threat and then what kind of threat is it um after that how do you contain the threat how do you eradicate it um how do you recover from that and then some post incident activity so to talk about cyber incident response I'm going to talk about the thing which is a fantastic sci-fi horror movie um John Carpenter in 1982 it's based on a I actually had notes but I can't see them on here so it's a a novel a novela that came out in like the 1930s and then there was a movie made on it called the thing from another world that came out in 1950s maybe and then this one was kind

of kind of based on both of those things so our movie starts off um we our main characters are a crew of um American researchers and Anar Artica the movie begins with them having a nice afternoon and suddenly there's some Norwegian researchers outside their base in a helicopter trying to kill a dog I mean why would you look at it isn't it just adorable I'm sure nothing bad will happen um um so the uh the helicopter comes down the Norwegian researchers die the American researchers take in their new good boy sled dog so they go and investigate um they Norwegian base so step one preparation what does our crew have they have guns they have

helicopters they have a snow cat which it's like a big truck with wheels for going through the snow um they have their sled dogs and they have their radios uh even though they can't get through to anyone on the radios the whole time um what does the crew know what are their skills so uh we have a big crew they all have different jobs we have Pilots we have mechanics we have biologists they all have different things to do it's wide range of skills they all have something to bring to the team step two detection and Analysis so how do we know we've got a threat what do you mind what kind of uh indicators

of compromise might we have and then once we know we have a threat what kind of threat is it so they arrive at the base and it's not looking too good there were buildings exploded everywhere uh there were dead bodies there are axes shoved in doors um doesn't look too great they find this Cor in the snow which looks a we bit kind of suspicious and we don't really get to see it at first but then they're like hey let's take it home with us as you would if you found the corpse in the snow um I don't know how good with Gore everyone in this room is but I'm going to put a screenshot up from the movie It's 80s

practical effect so I personally don't think it's too bad but this is what the corpse looks like you can't even really see it on this screen you can see a little behind the scenes photo of them like painting it up there you really can barely see that um so the at this point yeah there's an issue there's a threat we've got a weird corpse with two faces we can move into analysis at this point they do an autopsy and they decide that they um they find that this um weird looking corpse has got come in um this weird looking corpse has got normal human organs which I really don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing that

it's got normal human organs but we'll you know we'll see um um meanwhile our good boy has been wandering around the base making friends isn't that nice night time comes our good boy goes to go and sleep with all the other sled dogs um wow you really can't see that at all uh the sled dog is going into a cage with lots of other dogs and uh nobody is happy about this least of all the other dogs um when our good boy reveals itself to not actually be a dog it's actually a horrifying beast and its face rips open and it murders the other dogs and then at this point we go yep that's a problem

we've got an issue um so they they torch it with a flamethrower and at this point they're pretty much decided right yeah we have a threat um they do some signy analysis stuff and they work out this creature this thing if you will can not only um mimic perfectly human other like organisms but there is also a 75% chance that one member of the crew at least is currently infected so basically it's now in the words of John Kramer we're going to play a game um B basically time to play Among Us Who and the crew has been assimilated so at this point we move on to containment eradication and recovery so our first member of the crew

to be discovered to have been assimilated by the thing is this guy Bannings um he gets left alone with what they think is a corpse they think it's dead it's not really it kind of drips blood everywhere and then the next time we see him he's in the corner very much kind of being taken over um and then he runs outside and they discover you can you even see it yeah he has a really funky looking hand so he's not quite fully assimilated yet so they torch him they take everything else to do with it outside and dump it and torch all of that at this point you might be thinking fantastic eradication done we nailed it

the crew is now safe however you'll remember I showed you this earlier on of our good boy dog going to make friends around the crew and this actually um the shadow that you see actually wasn't a member of the cast it was a film crew member because they didn't the um they didn't want it to be obvious who this if this was like a member of like the the cast like who it was going to be so they basically just got a random film crew member and went sit there and film them with the shadow so that's a random crew member but we do know that there is some else on the crew currently infected lots of things happen to get to

this point um lots of things um there's like everyone starts pulling guns on each other tensions are rising and um yeah this guy has a heart attack and then gets put up on the medical bench and they're like oh no CPR oh it's not working get the defibrillator and then his stomach opens and grows teeth and it's not fantastic and then they try to defibrillate that guy's hands get uh chopped off so he's dead that guy in the table is also dead if you couldn't tell um his head detaches also and grows legs and antenna and scuttles around the place um that also gets torched very quickly they're really really good with their flamethrowers in this movie it's

the one thing I can say about their their incident response is that they really got they really nailed the flamethrowers um we move on to possibly the most famous scene from the movie the blood test scene basically um they decide okay well if we test everyone's blood and we stuck a hot copper wire in it then we'll discover if anyone has like infected blood or is infected at all so you they draw blood from everyone and they go down the line and some people are fine and then we get to one of this guy you can't really see right at the end and they test the blood and it like explodes out of the pet dish

and the thing that always cracks me up about this is that they've had the sense to tie them all together like tie them like down to a couch but then they've tied them together so when the guy at the end can't see it when so the guy at the end is freaking out and turning into a horrible thing and the other two guys on the couch are just tied to him so you know it's not not very good on like the isolation tactics and all that kind of thing so at this point the remaining crew members who are alive basically just there only like four of them are Left Alive at this point they basically

decide okay we're just going to blow up the whole base because nothing says around rication like flattening all your resources so they blow everything up um they go down into the basement to try and um destroy the generator this guy you can't even see it um there are two characters in this image um one of them is this guy here who basically we have know we kind of guess from the start right from the start that he was a thing um he murders half of them only like two of them left alive at this point everything goes up in flames and the movie ends um you can you can theorize as to how this movie ends either you can

say oh well the two remaining people there just froze to death because they blew up their whole base and they're in Antarctica in the middle of nowhere or there are hints that maybe one of them maybe was infected maybe wasn't we don't really know so it's it's fun to theorize about fun to think about and a movie with fantastic practical effects I refused to watch the 2011 remake cuz I know that they replaced the practical effects with CGI and from what I've seen it looks horrendous so I refuse to watch it maybe one willbe one point I will but yeah so that was the thing some cyber incident response how well did they do you can decide for yourself if you think

they did a good job personally I think you know you're not exactly expecting um Alien Invasion originally I had another big section after this war on the movie Alien and I compared the two like oh how well did they do in that movie in space having an alien is a very reasonable concept I think so the some of the things they do are a bit you know like you do not have planned for that but in this case I think they did a pretty good job with what they had oh yeah Donan asked me to put this image in he was like please put it in your talk it's going to be really funny he's not even here because he's in track

one doing his own talk which I'm sure is probably better than this but yeah there we go you can all go and tell Donan that Jennifer put in his funny Instagram meme okay moving very quickly on I'm talk about the blur Witch Project and we're going to talk about social engineering because I've Got a Theory I don't think that the Blair Witch is actually a witch no no I don't think that at all I think that the Blair Witch is actually just a master of social engineering so we're going to look at three kind of main tactics of a social engineer posing as a trusted figure inducing fear or panic and a sense of urgency and we're going to see

how the Blair wi wit uses these to um do some murder basically um so the main plot of the BL Wich project these are our three characters Heather Mike and Josh and they go off into the woods to try and make a documentary on the Blair Witch and very quickly um they get targeted basically um lots of spooky things happen throughout the movie there were like noises outside the tent um there were very spooky piles of rocks there are some very spooky arts and crafts projects hung up in the trees um and as the movie goes on all these things start happening you know they find these lovely bits of Art in the trees they get rocks piled around their

campsite um eventually one of the cast goes one of the members goes missing so the two that are left are trying to find him um they hear him one night out in the middle nowhere screaming screaming for help so they go out they find that's an abandoned house I promise um an empty abandoned house basically and um they go inside they're following these screams they run all around the house and then they go down into the basement um well basically the this movie is a found footage so it's all from like first person perspective in cameras so we have like one both of the cameras of the characters who are left so the guy runs down into the basement

drops the camera and we don't know what happens and then Heather runs down the girl runs down after him and then this is probably the most famous bit from this movie that you can't even see that is what I have there is the ending where it's him standing in the corner like this that's what I have here if you I hope most people have seen this movie um if you haven't the ending basically the guy that went down first he's standing in the corner facing away and then um when Heather goes down she's like and then passes out and the camera drops and that's the end of the movie so basically what the movie is

trying to tell you is this is a witch this is Supernatural um you know she dragged them down there it was all Supernatural she tricked them I think she did trick them but I don't think it was witchcraft I think it was simply social engineering so we'll start with impersonation of a trusted figure I think that she pretends to be Josh Josh is the character who gets taken away and then they hear him they hear him like screaming and stuff like that I don't think that's actually Josh I think Ste is dead um and then the wit is impersonating him impersonation is a very popular tactic in Social Engineering so I think that's exactly what's going on here and just in fearo

panic we have the aforementioned strange noises the very threatening piles of rocks the stck art arts and crafts projects and something I didn't mention before is the bundle of blood and body parts it wouldn't be a horror movie without them Heather wanders off at one point and finds some of like the guy that been missing his FL flannel shirt and it's like wrapped up like a little gift and then she opens it and inside there's like teeth and his tongue and a finger and blood and it's like oh and she doesn't tell the other guy she just wraps it back up and hides it and goes back and then she's putting her backpack on and he's like hey are you okay and

she's like I'm fine thanks and then it never gets brought up again um but that would make me panic if I found what I thought was you know my friend's tongue and fingers lying but hopefully in your cyber security Journey you won't ever have to deal with that in the workplace if you do maybe a call to each um the last Point sense of urgency again they hear him screaming um quite a lot there's like lots of weird noises a bundle of blood and body parts that might make you want to hurry a little bit faster if you think your friend is being like slowly dismembered it's maybe like oh we should maybe find him um they

are also running out of food and clean water which is a kind of a basic necessity they were only meant to be in there for a couple of days and then I think by the end of the movie they've been in there for like a week it's kind of hard to tell with the way the movie is done but yeah so they're running out food they're eating leaves at one point it's kind of gross um but yeah um the I don't think that it's a witch I think it was merely just some really good social engineering and yeah you can decide for yourself going to move on now and talk about Black Christmas and uh Insider threat so um if

you haven't seen this movie please watch it it's really good even though I'm going to spoil it for you please watch it I promise it's great um what is an Insider threat Insider threat is you know someone within your company or business or whatever who is causing a cyber risk whether that's you know maliciously that they're doing it on purpose or it can also be unintentional but in this case it's very much intentional um there were so many movies I could have talked about for Insider threat so many one of them was The Shining with Jack Torrence um the other one was saw too I could do a whole track about the Saw movies and I could have a

talk for each movie and I'd still be talking at the Afterparty however I don't think anyone else cares so I thought I'll park thank you so I'll park the saw too and I'll maybe talk about another time so crowd strike gave me these fantastically vague um def definitions of what an Insider threat is which let me talk about Black Christmas a lot of them are like oh it's someone who's meant to be there like an employee and they have authorization and that didn't fit for black Christmas but these are really vague so it fits uh an in a cyber security risk that comes from within the organization perfect what more do you need this is our cast for

black Christmas um there're a group of sorority girls and they basically they are getting a plot of the movie is they are getting obscene phone calls and then throughout the movie these obscene phone calls continue and they all start getting murdered fantastic so this movie is famous for a lot of things and I could really ramble on but I wanted to make a kind of brief point about one of the things it's kind of famous for so this movie is 50 years old it came out in 1974 the same year as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and this movie May it's kind of I don't want to say it's controversial but for the time it came out um abortion

was quite a a touchy subject um roie Wades in America um was passed in 1973 this came in 1974 this is a Canadian movie but um 1969 I think was when abortion was legalized in Canada so in this movie our main character Jess um this is her and her boyfriend she goes to her boyfriend and she's like okay I'm I'm pregnant but I'm going to get an abortion and he is so violent towards her that for the rest of the movie he is the main suspect he's not the murderer but he threatens her physically and verbally he U smashes up the piano you can see in the background he sneaks into the house and waits for her and

threatens her um he tries to convince her to give up her degree he's like yes give up your degree and I'll give up M and we'll run away and get married and have children and she's like no thank you I want my degree um I just bring up I there's a lot of things in these movies that I could have rambled on about I really love horror movies and there's so much so many facts but this is just something that I think is very interesting for the time it came out and I just wanted to mention it briefly but yeah he is the main suspect throughout the movie he is who because of how violent he is towards her to do with

this he is the main suspect he's not the murderer um though because we see through first person POV shots this is another thing that the movie is kind of well known for is having like a lot of firsters shots of the killer we see him climbing into their house um start of the movie and then he just kind of lingers and he like walks around the house and it's really creepy cuz he's like you see the characters will like walk downstairs and then he like leaves the room and it's like H go away get away um so we see him wandering around and in the end the reason I'm talking about Insider threat to do with this is

there's a very famous phrase that's like the call is coming from inside the house in this case it's very literal a lot of people think in horror movies that this kind of obviously the Trope is oh it's like an urban legend in movies a lot of people think that this Trope came from When a Stranger Calls which came out in 1979 this came out before and this is where they it kind of came from in movies as far as I know um basically the climax of the movie is they've been trying to trace these phone calls and they can't do it because the guy keeps hanging up and then eventually they finally managed to trace it and police

call Jess who's sitting downstairs and she like they're like okay you need to just put the phone down and walk out of the house and she's like oh but my friends are asleep upstairs they're not asleep they're already dead but she doesn't know that like oh but they're asleep and he's like no that's fine but just leave the house and she is like no I'm going to go and get my friends and then he loses his patience and he goes the calls are coming from inside the house you need to leave the house so the whole time that all these have seen phone calls have been coming through the that's been from the guy he's in their

Loft he in the walls he has been inside the house the whole time um the end of the movie is another one where it's kind of open for interpretation um they leave her so she's just been through hell she kills her boyfriend by the way because again he's been so threatening that she thinks that he he's going to kill her so he's dead they think it was him the cops all think it was him they sedate her after her trauma and leave her in bed um and all leave the house just leave her sedated in the house by herself um then reesi from first person perspective from the killer he's not dead he's still skullking around in their attic um and

the movie ends with a slow pull away from the house and the phone runs so you can make your decision based on whether or not you think she survives personally I think she's dead but you know what we can hope um so what can we learn from Black Christmas first of all lock your metaphorical doors and windows this guy literally climbed in through an open window and there are several lines throughout the movie like who keeps leaving the front door open and like oh are all the windows locked and they never are so lock your ports close up close up your open ports um patch vulnerabilities you know don't leave those things lying open for intruders to

sneak in and also don't assume that just because you caught one threat that the danger is over she does kill her boyfriend who is being very threatening towards her but the actual murderer um is still skulking around the house so he's still hanging about quick fire around because I am maybe meant to be out time very quickly um the ring if you don't know this movie again watch it all the movies here I recommend all the ones I'm talking about um so in this movie very very basically there is a tape if you watch the tape you will die in seven days unless you pick a coffee um with ransomware very often you will get a

countdown timer you have S days to pay us or you will you know you'll lose all your encrypted files um I don't think that's ever happens to anyone who didn't pay the ransom but you never know you never know so basically um the ring tape is around somewhere is what I'm saying here Hellraiser um so with Hellraiser um there's a box uh when you get a fishing file or a fishing email or whatever there be um you know like a document or a link that if you open the link or you open the document bad things might happen similar to perhaps how if you open a box bad things might happen um my point with this is basically um the Hillway or

S bites are running a fishing ring Child's Play this is pretty simple Chucky is a trojan horse you think you're getting a best friend for life and instead you get people flung out of your apartment windows from the top story and you get framed for murder my very last point in this talk um I'm not going to spoil this movie you'll be glad to hear spoiled everything else um if you're a person of culture you might be looking at this and thinking oh she's going to talk about that Annabelle ransomware that all the news sites were talking about cuz ooh spooky and look she's got blood coming out of her eyes isn't it scary but I'm not it's a good

point but it's not what I'm going to talk about um my very last point for for this talk what do we see here we see a bad [ __ ] locked in a glass case for the safety of the world you want to know what else is a bad [ __ ] locked in a glass case for the safety of the world the Morris worm codes that's all thank you

I thank you I don't know if I have time for questions I might be over do I okay I have time for a couple of questions then if anyone has them after that there anything anyone wants to ask me yes what's your faite oh can I can I give a top five okay um and no particular order saw couldn't tell uh Hellraiser Candyman The Shining and Pome has anyone in here seen posum okay your homework have you seen posum by yes okay your homework everyone go home watch posum it's a fantastic movie um if you look up the poster you might see it and think oh it's a spider movie all I'll say is it's not a spider

it's worse any other questions yes fine um Brute Force attack very like yeah sure Brit Force why not um anything else no fantastic thank you very much and if anyone if anyone would like to talk horror movies with me come and find me at lunchtime I'd be more than happy thank you try leave on a second I'm just going to try there doesn't seem to be a talk now scheduled until after the break so the next talk Focus