HG - Hacking Remote Interviewing: Lessons Learned

hello everybody welcome back to our afternoon session of higher ground so we will if you want to continue your conversations for career coaching and resume review please continue them maybe a little bit lower down on the volume thank you so much uh you know kovid pandemic zoom interviews all of a sudden they're now a thing and not only are they a thing they're a thing for the future so i'm really excited to have will baggett present a little bit more about hacking remote interviews because will has been a big fan of higher ground for a long time so well take it away wow thank you for coming the last time i spoke in a b-sides was in

february 2020 then stuff happened and it's 2022. thank you for coming i appreciate it so you're competing with the fans so you need to really talk about it all right can y'all hear me better now raw all right so man the hardest part of this is just getting started uh hacking remote interviews and we're not talking about load renaming your profile to zoom.exe to see if you can connect to the interviewer's machine funny but probably not going to get you the job i was working longest time in the federal government doing stuff and things and things and stuff lots of travel is a great job opm data breach happened i had to go to the

civilian sector and realize i hadn't can't hear me how about now right logistics this is good this will go to the point later so i've been in the government for a long time and opm data breach happened i had to go look from the outside for work in the civilian sector one of my friends told me back in 2017 you haven't interviewed for a job since bill clinton was in office things have changed covet hit things changed even further right so i was up in canada working with nato doing training with canadian special forces cyber stuff for them and started looking on the outside for work it was a good job but it could be

better right that's why y'all are here looking for better work and some of the lessons that came up i came and went had interviews had jobs with um paraphrasing uh got acquired by a big fortune 4 company but you know the axiom last hired first fired during covet i got laid off right before the colonial pipeline breach so it's coveted everything's shut down and i've got to look for work being now a former intelligence officer i started discerning what's working what's not working why are these interviews going well what's not and looking and distilling what's really happening so i'm will baggett former cia officer nato special forces trainer schuman collection a lot of cyber collection director of digital fringes

for operation safe escape fantastic group chris is in the audience we do fantastic work changing lives i don't want to sound presidential it's a great group it's fantastic but it is amazing what we accomplish to help people's lives i'm a cyber threat intelligence manager at a place if i mention the name it has to go through legal so we won't name them hardest thing to remember someone told me this once i hated it and he was right every job is temporary you're going to exit the airplane on your own time frame or when someone else wants you off the plane and that's a hard thing to acknowledge either you want a better job the situation's gone south it's toxic

there's a merger acquisition management changes from a leadership to a management role things happen but the time to prepare to get off the plane isn't in the air it's well no it's not when it crashes never mind sorry too much red bull that'll go to another point you need to prepare yourself now the example of you know i hate remote interviews i detest them but they're better than going in person a brief example from the book of zen and the martial arts someone said you know this tennis player is so much better than me what can i do to get better can i try this tactic or that tactic and i realize that is a wall of text

but the best way to defeat someone or improve the process is to make yourself better make your line longer what can i do to make the interview process better for me so i stand out from the crowd you know always going back to the three infosec principles of data confidentiality data security data availability integrity sorry and paraphrasing that to the remote interview principles you have to control your environment you have to minimize your interruptions and maximize your advantages there are a lot of things you have control of that you can do that you can change first big step is to control your environment when we talk about helping digital or domestic abuse victims that's also the

first thing is what can i immediately control in my area for the remote interviews i realize there's a lot of different situations a lot of living situations this is a generic overview it's not a one size fits all i thoroughly acknowledge that if you can at all look at your router your other devices connected and pt puff anybody know what pt puff is before we even go down the road no okay you want to maximize your bandwidth this is right up front bluff bottom line up front you want to disconnect every single device in your house except for your router your smartphone and your laptop that comes from hard experience and even on those you want to disable

all but the necessary apps on your phone wicker is a fantastic secure chat application it's a battery hog anyone out there using wicker no signal i know some people are on signal it's pretty rough whatsapp is not so good either but when you have that phone interview do you really need to have these other apps on the phone that are going to drain your battery yes we're getting very basic stuff because when the plane's crashing you've received notice you've been laid off there's going to be a laid off you've been put on a pit whatever things life happens you're not thinking about these by new details that's why it's on a checklist if that phone dies in the middle of the

interview is that going to build rapport with the interviewer or is it going to kill rapport you want to do everything to keep it positive case in point i was interviewing for a director at a remote security company things were going good we have playstation 4 in the house my son loves call of duty's black ops he loves a zombie thing whatever right during the interview when they're getting into hiring roles whatever it pulls one of the massive playstation 4 downloads kills my bandwidth and i go from clear and smooth to looking like max edward they ghosted me that's okay salary's low but i needed a job so yes these are all hard-fought lessons learned the hard way you want to test

your bandwidth speed or is the router performing as advertised you may need to call your i your internet service company you might be getting at paying for a gig and you might be getting 100 meg check that first before you start the interview process again going back to osc we've had a lot of we had a lot of victims clients at osc say i think my ex is keeping my signal and my voip app from working because when i leave where he lived the app works again and over time we discerned that it's not they've not been hacked it's the default security setting on the xfinity router that's blocking these packets and once we learned that the client learns that

they lower their security they can make the call they're good to go but you want to test that before the interview we'll go to your router we'll check your bandwidth we'll see what's truly connected here it's an android phone it's a laptop and an iphone that's good what other edge devices are you if you have kids you know the plethora of devices they're going to have connected you want to have those off again the standard disclaimer we can't talk about every router every configuration but this is the core we start from ground zero to make sure you have a good connection it doesn't matter how polished you are how presented you are how many sans search you have

if you don't have a good connection to make a good impression the rest of it's lost again this is granular but these are again hard-fought lessons charge your phone before the interview connect your laptop to ac power even here practicing what i preach i have my laptop connected for the presentation or being streamed wouldn't look very good to talk about how well to do a remote interview in my laptop dies you never want to assume it should be fine no should be and will be fine are two different things again this is in the weeds for before you even the little light comes on you want to have these things done here's a tech interviewer who

recruiter who placed me at my current company we're talking after the placement and he said when you interview for a remote job you are demonstrating your ability to remote to work remotely if you show up late if you're distracted if you're playing with your phone these are the negative things like granular things it doesn't matter how great the new c2 tool cover to excel data is if you're sitting there playing angry birds or plants versus zombies during your interview basic stuff but i've seen it as i'm interviewing people for roles in my company pt puff put the props up front this is where a little bit of the subtle manipulation comes in if the corporation uses

whatever software platform for the slides it's generic but for the presentation prior to the acquisition by celebrite i have quite a bit of blacklight digital forensic company merchandise that the mugs from training coffee cups the shirts so when i'm interviewing for a forensic roll i have that on it's starting to date me a little bit after the acquisition but oh yeah i got this shirt when i visited apple in cupertino if they ask about it you don't mention it let them mention it but yes i've got my waffle house mug full of water but why not have a sand smug why not have your defcon mug oh yeah i was on a panel at defcon and

they gave me this as a speaker let them ask about it and you get to advertise yourself just a little bit more it is subtle manipulation and they did kind of train this and edit cia manipulation so you want to manipulate as best as you can anything in your background anything around you to help you not to hurt you another key point the only acceptable use of your phone during the video interview is as a clock mine's in my laptop put up in a way trying to be a good role model so if it's over here is a clock so you can see a timer great out of reach phone is off it's on silent you don't

want to have any notifications if they think you're distracted and looking at something else perception is reality you may think i'm just checking this they say you're not paying attention the first time i spoke training over at nato over in belgium i had all my notes on my phone i pull it out the instructor mentor he was a 20-year trainer from the army military police school he flipped out in the back used some choice words about my phone away i saw it as i'm reading my notes he saw it as you're screwing around on your phone the troops saw it screwing around on your phone again i made a mistake lesson learned passing that on the

community you don't want to do that same thing works for your corporate presentations internal meetings you want to have those other notifications off just because you've got your job congratulations but if whatever unique dating app has that unique dating sound and you hear that going on during a meeting that's not cool another one patching your device of course you know working in i've done nerf sip audits we manage vulnerability patching the i'm expecting to get pushback here yes pegasus ngo zero click malware is a threat the probability of someone attacking me in the hour during that interview in the hour before that interview that probability versus having my phone brick and die before this major key hiring

role i'm willing to take the risk of i can wait an hour to patch my phone to make this interview rather than oh crap my phone's dead i can't contact the interviewer everything's on my phone they think i've ghosted them when you've had tech issues you don't want to have automatic updates i hate windows took mcsc off my resume on purpose if you have that automatic windows update and your laptop switches over to update mode during the interview guess who's not getting hired that's you you don't want to do that you don't want to risk no good functionality for an upgrade we had us we had a instructor flying to belgium from australia he had an automatic update on his

machine after he landed it's a long flight he was tired automatic update machine was bricked my twitter handles ios forensic i've done mac forensics for years so now i've gone from instructor mode to digital data recovery because he accepted the update he was offline for the rest of the week if he had waited he would have been back in rotation he could have taught the troops your background i've had interviews where i'm in suit and tie early on would never do that again if i don't have to the interviewer is in his bed has his cat on his chest wearing his v-neck t-shirt with a concert and you know mr bigelsworth is having a good

time but it's 100 not professional you don't want to be that you either want to have something professional in your background unless you're interviewing with universal you probably don't want the spongebob template you want to present what is this saying about me because one if you have just your bookshelf they're not looking at you they're show a hands who's actually when you see someone's background are you looking at their books what's on the shelves are you you're looking at the house aren't you yeah they're doing that to you as well we had one person at former company he had a 1990 georgia tech national title bottle that's great he had baby grogu on his desktop that

was cool and all sorts of books what'd he talk about but i remember the props he had behind him so maybe he should have gone with this with his nice big fat executive salary but it was still something i remember three years later this didn't fit this wasn't right you want to choose wisely because if you're the selection hiring manager just something simple is that if you have two equal qualities you two equal candidates you want the professional for the salaries we get paid in cyber you need to present yourself the best possible picture at every given opportunity preparing your laptop you want to have an account only on that laptop just for interviewing pop unders

pop overs all the pop-up ads whatever else all the debris that's on your desktop so that when they interview if you they do see your desktop for whatever reason it's clean the only accounts on there or just for interviewing you've got all the other minutiae loaded teams zoom webex blue jeans signal slack whatever but you have all the accounts that way they say we need to meet you at this account you're ready to meet them there in a moment's notice even microsoft edge i hate it but internally that's what one of the meetings one of our partners uses for meetings so we have edge i hate it but we use it because that's what it takes

uh one of my partner yeah nerd stuff i've got a twitter account i talk about football we used to have a better football team at georgia tech i talk about that a lot you get to know the audio video producers they read the commentary about the games it's entertainment for them miller pope he's a audio producer for the falcons for georgia tech for other sports i asked him he said in written down i hate the wall of text i acknowledge that the microphone on your device the microphone on your laptop on your phone are the lowest quality devices the marketing people could tolerate the consumer focus group said this is good enough they would go lower quality if they

could but their customers wouldn't let them with your years of experience do you want to rely on that 15 cent microphone or do you want to get something just a little bit better if your budget permits because even though yes my friend who's a hiring amazon manager said but will it doesn't matter what they have if the hiring manager has a crappy microphone well yeah that's true but they just showed thor ragnarok for number four in charlotte the imax dome they recorded that even though it might be shown on your iphone or the little bitty screen on the tv they recorded they gave it the best possible presentation think of yourself the same way this is a studio production

you want the best possible outcome so if you go through something like that remember or you have a good microphone which one's going to get hired right again this is all about perception and presentation if they have trouble understanding you now when you're talking to the internal stakeholders they'll have trouble you may not get the job you want to again all the little things matter your lighting quality what time of day is your interview if it's early in the morning and the sun's coming in and you're squinting to look at the screen because you didn't think about the curtains in front of you all these little things do matter to help you get that job

this is one of the better cheats a little awkward here so this is your house this is your residence you control the environment if you have your sticky notes with your examples back here along this area on the other side of the wall from your camera they're not going to see that you have cue cards why not cheat why not hack it hack the planet hack the interview have your common interview questions there if they ask registry questions well maybe we should all go to hacker trivia later on tonight practice that instead of tech skills and you again we want to emphasize this a couple of times we've seen the meme on 9gag probably the guy in the tux in the

front and he's got lingerie in the back you want to consider if your mirror behind you shows your notes behind you they're going to see that they can see your screen or you make sure i've got the video presentation behind me but just what can they see from my environment that's going to distract them the red slides are you know the military you would kick the podium for the main point i'm not really going to do that here nervous people speak at a fast pace that loses translation you want to speak slowly you don't want to do like mark levin where it's repeat the last sentence said repeat the last and said because that's a verbal thing once

people realize that they don't notice what you're saying they notice you're repeating that so slow and deliberate not incredibly southern slow that drives everyone nuts but a slower where if english is second or third language they will understand you the toddler model again telling you how to suck eggs brush and flush before your interview the time to need to go isn't when you're sitting there trying to make a good interview we have people laughing you're like yeah i've been there

thank you turkish coffee can wait you don't want to be overly caffeinated and excitable during the interview you want to have some coffee but you don't want to be met foley i've been downstairs in the basement drinking coffee for three hours before you go live with a hiring manager this as a we have done this you want an account just for interviews email account phone number line two is fantastic google voice works having your phone number your true phone number your cell phone is your dna you can go on different sites and see where that cell phone number's associated mail.com has i feel like a salesman here i'm not they have around 200 different domains that's why i have an

engineer.com account instead of at gmail just a little bit more professional there's at consultant there's architect different ones but that'll help you stand out just a little bit more than the next candidate you're competing against next one is a kind of mistake you don't want to use your sock account for your google chat we'll just leave it at that but uh the hiring panel laughed they all went on mute they were laughing i got almost immediate rejection because turns out becky with her picture that i use for my ocean research wasn't exactly me and yeah so we don't want to do that another thing from one of our friends said look at the corporation's standard

interview questions at georgia tech we call that word if you if this professor teaches the same class quarter after quarter and they use the same test you get a copy of the test yeah they didn't change it no harm no foul c for complete d for done if large corporation keeps using the same hiring questions why don't we go see what they are get this review know what these are have your answers beforehand post it around your screen so you know how to answer this best one of our people she's found around 50 for one job she's now a senior associate senior consultant for the company relocation package paying for all sorts of training she's done very well because

she went to glassdoor and got the interview question there's no heart oh yeah there's a camera yeah when in doubt look about it's better to cheat than to repeat that's what a college football coach said so no harm looking at these questions now ocent is your friend of me it's fantastic for these but you can expect the interviewer to turn around and do the same for you if they see that your party lifestyle here's me in vegas at defcon i'm supposed to be working i'm out partying i'm at frankie's tiki bar versus someone who's got a little bit more of a stable lifestyle which one are they going to go for so a little bit of osimp of course

they're going to look at your linkedin profile you want to have that complete one tool x1 discovery you wanna heard of this no it you put in the target subject whatever you don't call it you put in their name and it harvests their whole social media profile so you can do deep dive analysis of their lifestyle so be cognizant of what you're presenting in all fronts the one that i like because it's free uh ocean framework i know chris knows this anyone else very simply go to osyntframework.com take their short name from their twitter drop it in here get a full pattern of life all the other accounts where they're going so if you're on was

it cash app or venmo and it's paid for weed paid for weed paid for weed paid for bail versus nothing because you lock down your profile guess who's getting hired for the privacy role at big corporation again it's all sorts of little things that will disqualify you they're looking for a reason to say no and coming from government it's hard to find someone that can say yes but you find a mermaid i find an army of people that are happy to say no from that i pivot over to uh have i been phoned drop in the email account to see what groups is this person in are they using the same email account and they

show up at ashleymadison.com they may have been added there by mistake there's a barack.obam at whitehouse.gov in the have i been phone list for ashley madison obviously maybe not real i don't know if his bill clinton whitehouse.gov definitely would be real but you want to make sure everything you present this is my email it hasn't been leaked because it's not used anywhere but for the hiring process all these little things do matter before you even get that interview don't laugh water one everyone's sitting high-rated here drinking enough putting on dad mode but think of royal think of you know the british queen presidents generally uh most leadership they have glasses of water they don't have the walmart bottle

of water that's which one's going to give the better impression again pt prep had the problem you're going to talk more in that interview than you might talk all day working from home looking for work remotely your mouth will get dry that's why i got the big glass of water because i know from the experience my mouth is going to get dry talking same thing for the interview unlike dating where the more they talk about themselves the more they like you because you talk about yourself they're actually looking to hear you talk about yourself a friend said this in jest plastic water bottles are noisy and unstable just like the people that drink from them during interviews

again getting very granular very tactical to be blunt you're out of the job you have a laptop maybe two maybe three or four depth maybe four but get a laptop so you've got this two cent bottle of cop water from costco you put it down here you're hoping that it's not going to spill during your interview you're hoping the structural integrity of that is not going to knock over and wipe out your laptop because there's a feature built in if you spill water on your laptop it'll automatically turn off i think you don't want again little things but you don't want to have this happen yeah being apolitical

you want to be that guy he might want to watch that again or is that cringy enough point made when you're setting up your meeting you want to confirm why you're meeting with a recruiter you don't want to assume oh meet at nine nine when nine pm bangkok time nine am uh ugo wagodugu time or we mean at nine p nine am eastern confirm it get the details right show you're a professional you don't want to assume also okay we're meeting at nine am on zoom and we're going to assess the senior cyber security manager role for this company it also doesn't corporations do another hiring managers in the back corporations are often known to bait and switch

we will advertise for this role but we actually want you for this you want to confirm what you're interviewing for to see if it's actually a good fit it saves your times it saves their time it doesn't put you in awkward position down the road have a reconnection plan at the beginning hey if we get disconnected for any reason i'll hop back on zoom if that's not working i'll call you i'll text you but at least be professional and have a reconnection plan up front another big one joe hudson brought up was language profanity is a deal breaker for most hiring managers yes you may have been in the marines you may have been in the

navy and you can take the paint off a wall but that's not appropriate for the interview maybe afterwards when y'all are out the bar with a hiring manager celebrating getting hired sure but not during the interview you want to avoid colloquialisms regional phrases and obscure references example you don't want to be dennis miller and you don't want to be dennis leary you want to just be normal just as if you're speaking with a foreign national you want to have things people understand next two slides will show the difference or do you want to focus during your interview okay follow me you've human evolution when we talk and thank you for making a little bit of awkwardness but

here you go you maintain eye contact this is how we evolve we make right but when you're looking at the interviewer you're doing like my old branch chief pete he would just sit there and talk like this they're seeing your forehead because you're looking at their eyes on the screen not at the dot make sure you look at the camera because again i'm not pulling my phone out you've seen the dating profiles or the selfies on instagram and they're looking at their phone and congratulations you've told me what model phone you have on what your face looks like but you're gonna picture your phone good job be aware of that that's unnatural to look at the camera dot

all right that was the plain straight model no weird references as opposed to the warner brothers models if you're not looking at dot when you yakko you're wacko so right there anybody watch warner brothers dated reference obscure a little bit funny but straight down until chris is taking pictures nice so if they have this on the wall building report it's likability you want them to like you you have interest in them you you you is boring them them them is interesting hiring manager had this and again for a osc challenge point what can you tell me about this movie other than it's a movie the poster that doesn't count speak up okay okay well oh

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so things you can do with this how did that oh how does that compare to the new movie do you like the newer movies compared to the ones did you see the one the 80s in the theater maybe a little bit age but the other thing oh that was a horrific movie that i saw in the theater they killed all the main characters in the first 10 minutes to introduce the new toys but this is something just find a way oh did you like that movie do you have a copy of the vhs or dvd something anything show interest in their background because that shows likability now the hard questions this is more for traditional hiring ground

learn to negotiate salary if you say between x and y they're going for the lowest possible cost check in at the front desk and you say he's nodding again you check check in at the front desk oh sir your room's between 25 and 500. how much you want to pay well what salary are you looking for anywhere between 150 to 250. guess who's getting offer 150 you are oh yeah i'm looking in the 250 neighborhood even if they come back at 200 you're still up higher than your bottom line because you didn't give them your true bottom but that's something you have to learn how to negotiate ask for permission on this one awkward questions and silences are where the

money is found i was interviewing with a former dream company and it was okay here's our salary it's a hundred percent remote cool will it always be a hundred percent hard question because i don't want the answer no we want you to move to cupertino okay

will you adjust the salary from tk south carolina to the bay area no it won't change okay will you pay for relocation no this will be out of pocket after the year okay that's two strikes will i get time off for the move no you'll have to do this on your own time three strikes right there and they said but you get 117 days off per year sounds good right because you get saturday off sunday off in the federal holidays anybody here want to jump on that offer no not a single person hard questions i really wanted to work for this company was insider threat digital forensics big name company but the salary and actually the benefits

were so bad i'd have been better off just working at walmart rather than trying to do this out west for that salary but if you don't ask you won't know and you won't have an obstacle later to deal with some of the other common questions again my friend amazon hiring manager used to work with him at the other company up north tell me about a time you disagreed with your management team what are your strengths what are your weaknesses really common stuff what didn't you like about your last job give me an example of the time you made a mistake at work everyone's made a mistake at work everyone has it's whether or not you're going to own it

coming back from the cia charm school it was elicitation i like these uh if you were in charge of building your own digital forensic lab what would you do if you were in charge of your program what would you change it's not the answer the looking for the thought process in the mindset of oh i would get a copy of celebrity i would take all the advanced sans training i would get some high speed processors i would change this process i would bring in oversight for this and get a second tool those are good answers maybe not dude i want to get like a bow sound system so i can listen to skinner when i'm imaging

drives he didn't get an offer like cool answer but no that's not what we're looking for here another good one and i can't believe how well this works was well tell me about the tell me about the areas of your job you can't discuss the things you do that you can't bring up and that way i'll know not to ask them again in the interview one you're probably dealing with a foreign intelligence service not an actual interview that's a problem according to the fbi but be cognizant of what they're asking don't be so anxious to answer with the truth sometimes if you really can't because if you do have a clearance you have to be aware of this may not be

someone that is truly an interviewer there are people you can pretend to be anyone on linkedin go to this person doesn't exist say you work for caught myself because we're being recorded you work for company all of a sudden you have the authoritative inherent trust that you really work there you want to please them get the job so you're offering up stuff that you wouldn't otherwise that is a very common tactic of foreign adversaries to get people who work in sensitive jobs to give up data so going back to that question tell me about a time you disagreed with your management or had to say no the star framework situation task action result the example i give and probably going to

burn it after this having a recorded talk is we got a cable in country in africa said we need your team to do this thing in our country in three days we split the task half the team looked is it technically feasible to make it there the other half is it humanly possible to produce this result we found that regardless of who you are regardless of your color your passport they have a 30-day process to get the visa 30 business days not calendar days you have to go in person the embassy in dc sit in line get the visa and then wait to get over there we found that data found we could technically do the job

but we can't get there so situation task the action was we had the data compiled the result i went back to leadership and said we can't do this by law we cannot get into their country fast enough here's how we will solve the problem if you're amenable to offering the solution solutions offered it's legal we're not breaking any international law to get there because we really don't want to get people killed for doing your job you have to abide by their rules it's a good example shows research accountability in the way you mitigate no one to a yes anyone familiar with a field found model no right out of college i was working in banking for a suntrust bank

now truest whatever the heck that is and it was the to overcome objections yeah i wouldn't do it now but i'm out of college i need a job selling loan insurance complete profit for the bank so that you're paying money so that if anything happens to you the bank's insurance covers the bank so loan to you but we get a nice commission was like 30 alone so yeah mr smith i understand how you feel about buying loan insurance i used to feel the same way but then i found working with so many clients like yourself and after hearing accidents happen and the insurance covered that bill so that their new whatever the loan was covered they didn't have to

worry not while they're in the hospital we found that was the best solution for peace of mind and that's how you manipulate the no into a yes you know i used to feel that way about this technology that i found after some training that i like the other product better take it for what you will use it as you need but it's a good pivot to get off a sticky situation your questions are a reflection of you of your mindset so again doing digital forensic behavior analysis it's the good questions are here what can i do on the first day what are the skills of a good teammate what software suite do you use for this

task who would i engage with daily is it internal stakeholders external clients what are the biggest hurdles and challenges blockers for this role why are you hiring for this role and again nate from amazon gave me this he said the big red flags are oh we're expanding into this market green flag that's good we've had a large number of resignations in this department red flag bag maybe you want to bail on that interview but that's a fair question to ask why are you hiring

when i got cleared to get the job at ciao i was talking to a person who was a former army crypto custodian the quotes up there you apologize for the wall of text if you know how to do our sensitive processes where everything is stored know our procedures know where our safe is no before all this before you start you're not a unicorn of a hire you're a security concern and we don't want you on the job you're not getting handling classified materials for dummies at target you have to have an onboarding process and it's fair to ask how can i get up to speed the companies that say we're looking for a self-starter i don't know where all the tools are i

don't know the drives the directory the process doing digital forensics it does get into the legal process i want to do it right for this company going back to the question of what tools you use for digital forensics oh we only use one tool kit anybody no problem with that two is one one is none trust but verify so if you're only using in case and not verifying the output with black light or axiom you may have found this is a false positive and the true negative is over here that would exonerate the case of the client and this is just an apparition so as a digital forensic practitioner i wouldn't want that job but if i don't

ask upfront about that for the onboarding process i'm not going to know this is a major problem right up front there was somebody we worked with who saw that with a major company she cut off a process right there for personal liability because at the end of the day the individual examiner who signed that affidavit was responsible that this wasn't accurate but through limitations you're on the hook for it the axiom if you failed to plan you plan to fail and one of our volunteers at osce el martinez she has a presentation it's okay to be new you are new to the company it's okay to ask questions and on board you're not going to drop in and know where

everything is again from nate the bad questions he said will please tell them this if you don't know what role you're interviewing for you're not getting the job uh what am i here he said i couldn't stop the call fast enough they don't know why i'm talking to them i don't want them on my team the other ah when can i take my first day off again you're looking at you not what can i bring to the team you can think that really really hard and find out later but first get the job get in the door the skills assessment anyone been asked to do free work before getting the job i have anyone else

you know do some coding force it's not a program process improvement depends on i'm torn i don't want to do the work for free but i want to validate my skills so i don't feel good saying yes reddit anti-work reddit recruiting hell says don't do it send them an invoice if you don't get the job if you all were asked southern if you're asked to do this for free for this project would you do it show hands to validate maybe one maybe everyone else is a no yes you would do it let's see if i can not poke your eye out yeah i didn't practice that but that's something you're going to have to consider am i going to think 16 20 hours

of coding into a project for a job i may not get that they're going to incorporate production my value as a outside consultant is x per hour and i'm giving this many thousands of dollars of labor for free just to a lot of unethical corporations will use that free labor to solve problems without hiring outside consultants interviews over if it went well and you feel good comfortable everything went like that cannot talk everything went well send the email thank you ask about next steps if there's anything you need to clarify hey i misspoke ft fpp port number is this sftp is that i confused it to you during the process i realized that after we hung up

acknowledge your mistake and mitigate the damage if it's not a good fit like the example from the insider risk company backing cupertino hey i appreciate your time that i'm withdrawing myself in the process good luck with your search and future endeavors or whatever acronym they like to use firm final and fair your name's off the list they don't get to ghost you because you don't want to work there it's okay to say no and from the domestic abuse briefing we give you don't need permission to avoid a bad situation no bad situation ever got better by sticking around if it didn't go well don't get on reddit and post all the gory details yet you want to secure that

job example being this is a small community because we're probably only two or three degrees from each of us knowing each other and your heads are nodding human resources and hiring managers are probably pretty much the same like attracts like soldiers kill soldiers tanks kill tanks sub skill subs airplane skill airplanes infosec meets with infosec hr deals with hr so if they have a horrific candidate they're going to say dude there's this one guy and it's going to be out there you don't want to do that again the red letters after the interview remember to take your phone off of airplane mode remember to re-enable your notifications because again this is to take home if you want

to remind you oh yeah because you're stressed you're looking for work you're a bad situation at work very excited about that but things happen you forget the little details we're all human except jeff suffer mark zuckerberg i wonder about him but i acknowledge this is basic and common sense i thorough it not but if it's common sense and you forget it was it really common sense if you ask others to look at your resume to help you coach with the interview process are you asking for help are you asking for people to pre-validate your or validate your preconceived notions one person asked for help several of us gave it yeah but someone else told me no well why did you ask me

because we're telling you this isn't going to work your mcsc from 1999 is really cool congratulations that's not relevant in 2022 i would take it off your resume yes i know you worked hard for it no one's using iis and proxy server i take that back because i am talking the voting machine village and the machine i analyzed was office 97 database so never mind all that said there are advantages because you don't have to get up make an excuse to go to to take a day off of work you don't have to go out you don't have to iron your suit look for parking there are a lot of advantages for remote interviews like seriously when's the last time

y'all wore a suit been a while the tldr remove your unnecessary devices from the network for the interview you want to silence your alerts you want to make eye contact with the interviewer at the little dot look at dot when you yakko remember the star model my twitter account is generally clean it's not political it's right down the middle here's pictures of deer here's some antiques i found here's some rare stuff every so often there's infosec but it if it was put before court of law and read to my parents i wouldn't be embarrassed by what's on there so like a good marvel fan there's an after if as a insider risk threat analyst working for a company during the

pandemic unnamed never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever search for new jobs from your corporate devices no will's not joking i it if a packet went from linkedin to your device then on the splunk dashboard that improv that increase your risk if you have emails with acceptance job offer resignation now you're on a list of an insider threat i investigated this that's why i'm doing cti now and not forensics you need a break from forensics they are going to put you under the eye of sauron if they start thinking you're going to leave because you're working with proprietary classified sensitive and they know you're leaving they're watching to see what you take out the

door snowden um the vault 7 it it's people are now looking at this the consent to monitoring is real has anybody worked inside a threat right because these four tools with splunk network traffic in a heavy regulated industry log on dates times badge access i can see when you say brb going for coffee and then you badge out of the building and go to your car for an hour and then come back in if i'm not because i'm not petty but a manager could say that's time card fraud because you had an hour for lunch you took your hour for lunch and then you went to a car knowing that you're leaving the eye of

swords upon you just from your splunk badge access that we're looking at your email productivity i can go harvest all emails between you and linkedin or you an external recruiter get that list of everything you're doing and discussing druva would give me a remote file access or where i could pull down oh he's staging an x field for after he leaves i've got all these documentation not only is will looking to leave he's going to take this data with him it's now moved from termination to termination and legal proceedings in mcafee if you're going to try to be slick and change proprietary words from widget to mandalorian to try to get past the dlp filter i can go back in that cave and

see can when you control c control v that's still visible and retained in the corporate environment so i can't tell you enough you do not want to do this from your corporate device

we're all excited to hear them but what the hell are next steps if you said that in a normal conversation people look at you funny but hey let's move forward with next you're all excited to get it it's weird to show you i had to record my talk for uh defcon alerts are silenced have my glass of water i'm plugged in because i hate hearing myself talk i don't want to report it again it's fire and forget it's recorded forever i'm never going to hear myself talk thank you for sitting through me here talking very last thing when you're engaging a red team for pin test they meet you on teams guess what they now know you use teams for your

corporate communication guess what they're going to target first teams so when you're hiring an outside pin test firm use a different program just for a little bit of tradecraft to hide the internal stuff the external you talk with them on slack back here are internal exists you don't give them the end to already load their malware super bonus tip and yes it's real don't live stream your pin test while you're performing the engagement on site no i'm serious because the blue team is going to find your streaming to twitch we're going to record it and we will mock you and bring it up the last side of the presentation super duper duper bonus tip if you live stream your confidential pin

test on twitch first tip money while getting paid from your employer and you talk poorly about your client you won't have to worry about looking for a job on your corporate device we will take care of that for you don't be that guy so we got one minute two minutes uh one quick very quick story thank you for sitting through the whole thing i have it's the rush not the rush of i want to talk oh crap i got accepted then crap i have to speak tomorrow then it flies by this has been the fastest 50 minutes the example they gave one of us i don't remember but at ci was they gave the example of an elephant and what's he

talking about in thailand you'll see an elephant tied with just a little garden hose to a steak and they would say i've been there i love the country they would say why does the elephant not move well as a baby elephant they secure it with heavy leg irons heavy chain to a stake embedded in the ground so over time the elephant grows and is acclimated to think i can't do anything more than this the elephant grows and he's far stronger than anything he knows but his mind thinks i can only i can't move that's not even going to try if you're in a toxic environment they constantly brow beat you run you down all of your work isn't good enough

you've now got two three four years experience on this topic you're far better than when you first started you naturally got more experience you're far stronger than you realize and it's okay to leave that bad job for something else for something better don't let the toxic environment in former treatment hold you down and hold you back i wasn't going to have an elephant picture but ran out of time so anyway the talk is over it was a higher ground have a minute thank you yes [Applause] [Music] interviewer he asked if there are any tips for the interviewer

it depends on the role you want to do see if they're a good fit see if they want to work a remote see if they want to work on site interest hobbies get to know him as a person i mean regardless of all the tech skills you're going to work with him daily you know you don't want to hire somebody that rocks the boat to cause drama no one really wants that you want to see if just basic personality the tech skills can be learned but the personality that's if they think they're the rockstar they're the solution we had a guy walk into a new platform and said yeah i'm here to solve everything for

you they had a wheels up party when he left they were so happy he was gone to another division because he was so arrogant so it's all about the people tech skills can be they're fungible i mean you've specialized in dial up modems 25 years ago and now look we got this

you're welcome so this is going to be really hard for me to say but if you go on youtube on the b-sides lv channel and you look at previous years presentations there's a gentleman named mike murray and he always did the first talk on the second day and his talk was always about managing people managing superstars how do you interview how do you cultivate them i apologize but mike is no longer with us so it's very hard for me to talk about him but he had some really really great presentations so they're all on the besides lv channel

how does the remote process change so all of his same tips really be need to be done by the hiring manager as well so um one thing that i talk about with my customers a lot is the recruiters need to train their hiring managers on how to do remote interviews you know giving them the background on the candidate giving them the background on the team making sure that the hiring manager doing the remote interview knows all the tech knows the background knows how to have personality on the the um interview because you're you're establishing a rapport you're established you're cultivating this candidate and that's really hard to do in a remote environment when you don't

have body language so basically everything that will said you need to do as well as a hiring manager having your notifications off and you know really checking to make sure that you have a backup plan if you get disconnected and checking with your recruiter i know we've got three great recruiters over here and several other recruiters there who have more than 20 years experience well maybe not jamal but they all have really these are all recruiters that i have cultivated over 20 years of my experience and they have all prepped their hiring managers so i'm sure any one of them are more than happy to sit with you and sort of go through how to prepare for a remote interview if

you'd like so let's give will a round of applause it's always hard to be it's always hard to be the middle of the afternoon caffeine dip presentation but i really appreciate will being here you're welcome um now we do have in the back uh tables uh if you can you raise your hand if you're a recruiter or a career coach so we have several people here who are ready to meet with you talk about your career talk about your resume my friend jen haverman over here in the corner will help you get signed up to or not signed up match you up with the right person thank you so much we'll kick off with presentations tomorrow thank you we have

osc stickers if anybody wants some we'll leave them up here on the table free stickers