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Nation State Hacking: US Gov Secrets Revealed! #shorts

BSides Frankfurt1:32508 viewsPublished 2026-03Watch on YouTube ↗
About this talk
Hacking for US government agencies, the prime directive was clear: avoid detection. Getting caught costs valuable resources and time, often leading to mission abort. #NationStateHacking #CyberSecurity #DOD #Intelligence #SpecialForces
Show transcript [en]

I have done nation state level hacking for the United States government. I have done it for DoD. I have done it for the intelligence community. And I have done it for special forces. The main rule that we had every single time I did an OP was don't get caught. That is the rule. Don't get caught. And there's a number of reasons why we don't want to get caught. Number one, getting caught sucks. Number two, if you're a nation state and you're using techniques or you're using tools that are really expensive, brand new malware that bypasses endpoint, brand new communication techniques that bypass firewalls, that costs money in very real terms. It also costs time. So when I'm

doing an operation for the United States government or when I did it in the past, if we had even a slight chance of being detected, nine times out of 10, the commander in charge of that operation would pull the plug because it wasn't worth getting caught. So we want to do is change that calculation to where getting caught is a high probability. [snorts] And as I mentioned, the stuff that I'm going through today is part of anti-ciphon security training, but have an entire class dedicated to this that's two full days that is free or pay what you