Interview with Jake Moore, Cyber Security Specialist, ESET

Interview with Jake Moore, Cyber Security Specialist, ESET

Biography

Born – Dorset born and bred by the sea. Do you want my first car and childhood nickname while we’re at it?

Studied / Education background – I graduated from Kingston University in 2004 with a Mathematics and Statistics degree.

Current role / bio – I am a Cyber Security Specialist for ESET. After starting my career out as a statistician for Dorset Police, I spent the majority of my 14 years for the force investigating computer crime in the Digital Forensics Unit and Cyber Crime Team on a range of offences from fraud to murder. Within law enforcement powers, I learnt how to retrieve digital evidence from all devices whilst engaging in a variety of ways to ethically break security in order to help protect innocent victims of cybercrime.

Q&A

Who do you work for and what does your role entail?

I work for ESET Internet Security and I have the role of raising people’s awareness about the latest cyber threats. I do this in a range of ways from commenting on hacking stories in the press to delivering talks to businesses of all sizes which usually highlight the ease at which companies are at risk to being compromised.

What’s been your biggest work achievement of the last 12 months?

I was given permission to break into a police station and compromise an account with a real life “Get Out of Jail Free” card. After getting through the encryption on a laptop, I succeeded by socially engineered the IT Helpdesk into convincing them I was the head of professional standards and was given access to his account. I then had full access to every crime, suspect, victim and police officer’s personal data.

What is the biggest challenge facing the industry?

I think we are now at a stage where the bosses of most organisations are well aware of the risks to their businesses, but the problem isn’t so much at the top, it’s at the other end. Employees don’t care and enter organisations with minimal consideration for the business or it’s reputation.

What’s the best piece of advice you have ever been given?

Never trust anything, anyone or any email unless completely verified. Even then, carry out with caution.

What are your predictions for the IT industry for 2019/20 or beyond?

I keep waiting for the morning that I wake up to a Wannacry 2.0 or similar, but it seems to be taking longer than I initially thought. The thing is, large scale cyber threat predictions, in their own nature, are difficult to predict because when they are correctly predicted, they are patched which mitigates that particular risk.

How do you perceive the hype around AI, a big concern ethically or a huge opportunity?

The fact that it’s not true Artificial Intelligence yet, just very good computing / machine learning / deep learning, I don’t think we have anything to worry about just yet. I think there are bigger problems before true AI takes shape. It is however, an epic opening to the future of technology and creates endless opportunities as far as the imagination will take us – it’s just we may have to wait a few more generations yet before Terminator exists.

What do you think is going to be the next big technology development?

DeepFakes. They are taking over! Just think of how easy everyone made themselves look 75 with FaceApp this year – now imagine the consequences if deepfaked videos could be made of someone after a couple of Instagram stories or similar. The social impact could be catastrophic and we may never know the difference between truths and lies if we stop being able to believe what we see and hear.

I predict deepfakes will be used in high level phishing attacks and other cybercrimes which will be near impossible to combat. Although on the flipside, I would love to see what would happen if someone deepfaked their boss and sent out a video telling everyone to have the afternoon off.

Watch Jake unfold a targeted phishing attack on the CEO of a company and see how easy it is to manipulate anyone into handing over the credentials of their accounts and precious data. Jake uses hacking tools which are widely available on the internet (if you know where to look) so come along and see if he could hack into your account!

Join Jake's session 'HackedIn' which is taking place on Thursday 10 October at 1:00-1:45pm in the Cyber Hack. 



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