Ruse - Lying the American Dream - Author Interview with Robert Kerbeck

Robert Kerbeck's book is a fantastic mix of serious social engineering and a parallel journey in the Movie business.   If you want to learn about how social engineering happens without falling asleep, then this is a great book as it truly is both educational and entertaining.

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Track 1 0:00

quite frankly, I don't need the key. You know why? Because you have the key. You have the key, and I'm gonna get you to turn the key for me

Malcom 0:07

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jon 0:17

Matt, briefly, you know, you are an American dude. On, on, on, on video. Hi. You know, good to meet you. I've now read your book, so I feel like starstruck and nervous

Track 1 0:30

Ah, well, I appreciate, I appreciate the support and I appreciate your thoroughness. I mean, you sent me a long list of questions and it was really, uh, it was, you know, well done, I guess as the, as you'd say there in England. Well done.

jon 0:43

I appreciate it. So, so it's happy Thanksgiving for you, for yesterday and uh, and I know we're gonna get this done cuz you've got family round and all the rest of it. So I really appreciate it. But also I've gotta say to you, good luck because we're playing you at soccer. I don't know how big soccer is where, where your neck of the woods, but it's seven o'clock, which is sort of pretty much when we're due to Finish England, play the usa. And

Track 1 1:05

uh, now, now I know what I'm gonna do when I finish here. I did know that was, that was going on. Um, but. so

jon 1:12

brother, my baby brother said to me, John, you can't lose cuz I was born in Texas so I've got your nationality. So I kind of, you know, and actually there's three players that played for the States who also played for my local team, lead United. So anyway, that's enough soccer. And for the, uh, English listeners there, obviously we're talking about football, but I've got to, uh, humor our American cousins and call it soccer. So, so Robert, do you mind if I read a little bit of the intro, um, that I did just because, we'll, you know, talked about, um, uh, I, well I'll just get started cause we wanna do a little intro for

Track 1 1:44

Sure, sure. Yeah.

jon 1:45

basically, you know, my impression Robert, is you are very difficult to define in a good way. and having just read your book, ruse Lying, the American Dream from Hollywood to Wall Street, honestly fascinating autobiography. Very cleverly written as well. I think that the mechanisms that you've used, I mean, I, found it quite difficult to put the book down at times. And, what, where I was drawn to was just your career decisions that you've make, have led you away from and towards very different outcomes. And I couldn't help. And I think a lot of people who read this, well think about their own career choices as well and kind of how that kind of leads you.

Track 1 2:19

Yeah.

jon 2:20

And then I said, you know, you worked in the, um, I called it the legally gray area of social engineering. I suppose we'll get into that a little bit, uh, in a moment. Um, but the ruse that you refer to, and, and I could see, you know, the, the, the techniques, um, that you've, you've deployed in the past and how obviously you spliced that into some really incredible stories about Hollywood. I mean, they might not be incredible to you, Robert, but as a someone reading in, there was a couple of moments where I just put the book down. I was like, no. you know, I'm not giving, giving away too much, but just meeting Paul Newman. I mean, I'm of an age where that is. That's probably one of the really. Big ones. And, um, yeah, so folks who are listening, you know, if you are, if you're, if you're into your movies and you're into your tech, uh, and you're also interested in sort of security and social engineerings. I know, I know Robert, I might be painting quite a small group, but actually that's, that's probably quite a few of my listeners. This is an incredible, uh, book to read to get into all of that. And so, I don't think you ever took part in any hacking your actual ransom attacks, but actually your social engineering skills. What I'm hoping to do, Robert, is learn a little bit about the tricks and why you think people fall for it. So our listeners can kind of, you know, uh, listen to that and hopefully maybe, uh, insulate themselves from that sort of, uh, event. Uh, should it, should it arise and sort of learn from you. what do they call it, the poacher turned gamekeeper.

Track 1 3:40

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I've, I've, I've switched from, um, um, offense to defense.

jon 3:46

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So first question was, um, from a social engineering point of view or reasoning point of view, do you think it's getting harder or easier, um, sort of today, you know, from when you first started out? Because obviously, and I'm not gonna give a lot away cuz there's just so much to get from the book, but clearly when you started it, Just purely telephone based, you know, and things have changed. You, you talk about the in internet and internets and all that sort of stuff, but I mean, what's your view in terms of, is it getting harder or easier? Are there new ways? What, what, what, what's your, what's your view?

Track 1 4:21

You know, when we, we started out spying, when I say we, cuz a, a buddy of mine got me this crazy job, um, cuz I was an actor and actors need survival jobs and who stumbles into a job as a corporate spy. But that's what I did because of my friend, he had the job and so he and I were kind of, you know, uh, for lack of a better word, we were kind of partners in the ruse and. You know, in the book we're kind of like brothers and we're very competitive and we're, you know, fighting against each other and you know, and he's learning, developing ploys. I'm developing ploys. We're fighting over these ploys and we were always afraid that with each development in technology, that the, that our career as a corporate spy was over. And what happened every single time is we found a way around that development. And I am sure that is the same today. um, when, uh, the word of the book, uh, you know, the book was being published, the book was about to come out. An old spy that I knew, um, reached out to me in a panic, in desperation, saying, oh my God. is your book going to end my career? Is your book going to mean? You know, corporate spying is, you know, dead and I just thought it was hysterical because, you know, corporate spying is alive and well. Corporations, uh, you know, we all know the Russians spy on the Chinese, the Chinese spy on us, but most people have no idea that major corporations all across the globe are hiring spies nearly every day.

jon 5:45

Yeah. And you know, big revelation as well because like you say, when you hear the word spy, you think at that level of nation states, et cetera. But actually it's something that's going on all around us, which actually, uh, you sort of answered or moved into the second question, which was in terms of rosing. I'm gonna call it Rosing. Yeah. I'm gonna use your term. now you know who's hiring what, what, where is it growing at the moment? Is it still predominantly, do you think, in the sort of executive headhunting recruitment space? Or is it, is it, is it sort of wider?

Track 1 6:13

I think it's wider. You know, you know what we found was, um, corporations, um, you. Corporations were hiring me, but they always wanted to do it through an intermediary for obvious reasons. They didn't want, uh, to hire me directly. Now, in some cases they did, um, um, but most times what they do is they hire me through an intermediary. So, for example, a consulting firm. Um, so consulting firms are big users of spies and executive recruiting firms are big users of spies. Cuz you think. Those, um, industries are based on knowledge, right? And knowledge is power. So if I'm an executive recruiting firm, if I'm a big consulting firm and I can know all of this stuff about your competitors, I can come in and pitch you as to why you should hire me. And indeed, many times we were hired to do the spying in advance of our client. In this case, an executive recruiting firm or a consulting. That they didn't have, um, maybe e they did not, certainly didn't have an engagement with the corporation and many times they knew nothing about the space that that client was in. They knew nothing. But after they got our intelligence, our spying, they knew everything. And so they could go into these pitch meetings and they would look like rock stars and they would win tens of millions of dollars, if not more. In terms of business.

jon 7:33

because they had all the context.

Track 1 7:35

They had all the context, right? You.

jon 7:37

you know, subtly were able to lift and emphasize and all the rest of it. And folks are just sort of, you know, going, yeah, this is exactly what we want, kind of thing.

Track 1 7:45

Yeah, exactly. You know?

jon 7:47

Okay.

Track 1 7:48

always started, you know, we always started in our spying with building the organizational chart. Now I know, um, we live now in an era of LinkedIn and, you know, uh, the New York Post very nicely and one of the reviews of the book said, I was LinkedIn before LinkedIn was invented. Um, and, and it was kind of true because back in the day back, Pre 2008 cuz it was really the crash of 2008 that really, uh, helped LinkedIn to explode because of course after the crash everybody was worried about having a job. And so everybody was like, what's this site? LinkedIn, I'm putting my stuff on there because, you know, my company may go wonder, I may get laid off. Right. So LinkedIn really exploded after the crash, but before the crash there was no place for people to learn really who worked at a firm. Who they reported to, what team they were on, what their team did, and most importantly, who the top performers were at a company, on a team in a division, you know, uh, you know, at a plant, you know, whatever. The, however the firm, you know, was broken down organizationally, we would find out not only all the people that were there, and you know, even today, LinkedIn has maybe. 60% of people in a company in a group, 70% of people in a comp. We got 99.999999% of the people in the group. And then we would learn the metrics as to how those people were ranked internally by the corporation, because every corporation has some way to rank their employees. So for example, if we were learning the people in a sales organization or a sales desk, we would get the revenue. we would know who the number one person was, who number two was, who number three was, who number 37 was, and you can imagine how valuable that is for your competitors.

jon 9:32

I can absolutely imagine it, but what it also makes me think as a CIO is that actually, um, and I know you didn't go in this space, but if you use this to get someone's password, that's actually relatively easy because the information you are getting is. Really sophisticated, you know, organizational, uh, so, so the, just to be able to simply trick someone into getting a password or something is actually sort of on the baby steps of what, uh, in terms of skill. It's so easy to engineer a password out of someone, would

Track 1 10:00

That's right. And, and by the way, we did that many times because what we learned is, you know, as corporations grew in size as they were based, you know, all of a sudden they had a Dublin office, they had a Frankfurt office, they had a Tokyo office, they had a Chicago office, they had a Charlotte office, they had offices all over the world, and those people had access to these systems, right? So we could talk to some junior analyst in Charlotte that had nothing to do with the London organization, but we could get. By putting in their password to find out anything we needed to know about London. And that's one of the things, you know, for your, your, uh, you know, CTO and, and, and CIO and cco, uh, you know, uh, clients or listeners, you know, it's, it that's the challenge for these corporations is there's so much money spent on cybersecurity for good reason, um, you know, uh, encryption firewall, protect the server, the network, et cetera, et. But only a tiny fraction of that is spent on training and educating employees with real testing, real time testing of saying, okay, Robert, what can you find out? You know, here's some things that we would like to see if you could find out about our company. And I'm here to tell you, 45 minutes, probably I could find out whatever I need to know.

jon 11:16

Yeah. So, um, you know, so there's a couple of things that remind me of that. So I'm not sure I'm a fan of the phase, but they talk about, um, silicon versus carbon. Yeah. And you put all your money in the silicon protection, but actually the big. Door that opens is carbon. It's the human that you speak to because everything's based on trusting that entry point. So that's fir first point. Um, and uh, and I think, you know, the, the skillset that you've got and, and actually offering as a service, they, sometimes they call it black hat, so you put the black hat on. We are gonna try and, you know, you know, so, so I think that's, um, that needs to be something that a lot of folks, uh, should focus on because, you know, why have the perfect set of locks only to just have a key that. Given to someone and enter so

Track 1 12:00

Right, right. Well, well, quite frankly, I don't need the key. You know why? Because you have the key. You have the key, and I'm gonna get you to turn the key for me.

jon 12:09

I think you said that when we first spoke, when I said to you, so what's your sort of technical background, Robert? And you went, I don't need one. You know, and I was like, sort of dumbfound, I thought, right. I'm reading this book. We're gonna, we're gonna do something. So just to get back into the jewel themes of the book as well. Um, I, one of the questions I had for you was whether you ever used. Your rosing skills in, you know, to get an acting job. Cuz there's obviously a link between your acting skills. You know, you talk about some people can't do this, it's, you know, and I'm just fascinated to, to understand that there's probably quite a few people watching who would love to have been actors. You know, there's a little bit of a rockstar in all of us.

Track 1 12:46

right? Yeah.

jon 12:47

you went way, way further than that, but what, was there an element of it where. where you use some of that skills in the acting sense? Or, or, or, or is acting a ruse by itself? Cuz you've gotta be very convincing for someone to watch you as an actor. You, you've gotta absolutely sell it, haven't you?

Track 1 13:03

Yeah, you know that, and it's funny, you know, when you sent over the list of questions and I saw that question, I said, boy, that, that's a great question. And I was really, you know, kind of racking my brain. Um, but I don't think I did. Um, and I think, you know, one of the things that I think. That I find interesting about the book is, you know, in one sense here I am doing all of this deceiving and manipulation, but then later in the book, when I actually go and work in corporate America for the first time, what was shocking to me is I, I, I was shocked that. All the people that I was working with were lying and deceiving to me, and everybody was stabbing everybody in their back with the office politics, which of course I had no idea about. And so I was quite naive. And so I think in terms of the acting, I always approached the acting from sort of a pure point of view. Like, you know, I'm gonna get this job and, and so I don't think I really ever did any bruising. You know, I know people have. Fictitious managers, acting managers. So they'll make up a name and then they'll, you know, basically call somebody and say, Hey, this is, you know, uh, Jackson Kincaid, I'm a manager here and uh, I've got a great client, Robert Kerbeck. I want you to see Robert. And maybe because I'm Jackson, you know, McCade or whatever, maybe they'll see me. Right. I never did that, but I do know people who did.

jon 14:20

But that's, that's, that's what I found really interesting about the book, Robert, because in one sense, you're very innocent because you have this view of the corporate world. Yeah. And you do a lot of justification for what you are doing, but you keep your acting very, you know, pure and principled. You know, you talk about where you started out in theater and all the rest of it. So there's this sort of innocence. And without giving too much away, but when you do make that, you know, you kind of get the offer you can't refuse, and you kind of move into that. You remember you're wind and dined, you know, all that sort of stuff. And then you meet the, I mean, I'm not gonna give too much away, but you meet those other characters and you have that first session. You've just got this massive moment of. Oh my goodness. You know, the corporate world is not, you know, it's pretty, it's pretty, pretty bad. You know what the behaviors and all the rest of it. When I read that, my heart sank a bit cuz it was a bit like, you know, that sort of moment. But, um, you know, let folks need to get to that bit in the book. It's a really cool, so, so, okay, so we've got this kind of natural ability to maybe trust. You've very convincing, you know, you talk about the, the, you know, your how, how you convey yourself on the phone. what can I do? What can we, you know, this training, you know, say we don't focus enough on training folks. And can you give us some tips about how you might prepare yourself better? Uh, because I always say that it's, it needs to be maybe something that's very recent repeated, because at the end of the day, it's, it's, it's using what is just in us naturally as humans. You know, that's what you're tapping into and you can't switch that off. And if you're tired and you pick up the phone, you are always gonna be susceptible as long as you're.

Track 1 15:51

That's right. Well, and especially, you know, I mean, you guys are in London, but you know, we, because we were actors, we used to always do, uh, different accents, right? And, and each SP had their kind of go-to accent. And so for me, you know, this is Geha called informs the office in Frankfurt. We have, so European Union regulates here. We need some information from the states, you know, and so people would hear this crazy Gerhard, or whatever name I was using, which by the way, would be based on a real person's name. You know, I would do research, I would find out the real name of someone in, regulatory compliance in, you know, uh, you know, somebody who was high enough up that people would be respectful, but maybe not too high up that they would not believe. Well, I'm here to tell you, do you know how many people, you know how many times people told Gerhard nine never? Because they went, oh, hey, hey, Gerhard. Well, you know, because you know, you're in the Dallas office, you're in the, you're like, what the heck? Why do I have this guy from Germany calling me? But it's cool, we're on the same team. We work for the same company, you know, so you become friends, you become telephone buddies, and you know, people would tell you anything. And even though things have changed, Much of the hacking, social engineering, rosing hacking is done now via phishing, via text, via email. there's still a ton of work that is done via social engineering and indeed many of the ransomware. Um, attacks are started via the good old fashioned analog phone call because if I can get you to tell me how your system is set up and explain to me this and explain to me that, and all of the technical stuff, now I can share that either, either I can do it on my own, but most of these, uh, ransom. Attacks. They're small teams of people, right? You know? You know, you think like mission impossible, right? They're three, four people and each person has a different skillset, and I'm here to tell you, guaranteed, one of them is a loser, is a social engineer that is getting all that information that then they give to the hacker. And the hacker's like, oh my God, boy, now that I know this, this is child's play. Right. Um, and so that's something for all of your listeners to realize that these ransomware teams, it's, it's a multi-pronged attack. And so if you, if you're only shutting the tech, the techno, you know the technical door, you're leaving, open the door for the cruising and the social engineering.

jon 18:15

Yeah. And it's fascinating you say that. So we've, we've got one episode on ransomware where basically, an expert talks me through kind of like the stages and I, I'm, I, I actually, I really get into it, get a bit like cold sweats because he's sort of saying that, you know, they're on the phone, John, but what I didn't realize is, is how early they get in and how organized it is. Like you say, it's planned, like you say, months in advance because there's things that they do technically to. Gradually cut off your recovery, um, because of the business model. But, uh, fascinate absolutely fascinating. So, um, so one of your, um, one of your rouses, without giving too much away, one of the, we were gonna just go through one was the compliance approach.

Malcom 18:51

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jon 18:57

I thought that was really, really clever because you are using, you know, you're talking about this relationship that you established. Obviously you're using compliance to have a bit of a, a power behind your. And also it's, it's not me, it's compliance. There's so many things going on psychologically in that phone call and how you do that. So what, um, just give us a little flavor on the compliance approach because obviously folks can get the book and, and, and have a look at that. And by the way, guys, I'm not on any affiliate link. This is a, it's a good book to read, in my opinion, hands down. But on the compliance press just a bit on.

Track 1 19:33

yeah. So, you know, I mean, obviously, you know to comply, right? You know, the, you know, compliance comes from the, the, the verb to comply, right? So we're, we're. by using this, we're almost forcing people to comply. Like in other words, just the word compliance. People would go, whoa. Right? And so we would again, do a tremendous amount of research before we made any rousing phone call. So I would know a lot about your firm. I would know. You know, stock price up, stock, price down, any scandals going on. Are you hiring? Are you firing? Are you expanding? Did you just sign a big deal with Microsoft? What, whatever was going on? We would be doing that research. I would be on the, uh, communication site, which most firms, you know, have a place on their website where they're publishing press releases and all kinds of, S e C requirements, you know, European Union, whatever the requirements are, most times they're required to be published. So I'm reading all of these reports, right? So I know so much about your company that I sound really knowledgeable. Now I'm gonna look at where someone is based. Deputy compliance officer, senior vice president of regulatory compliance, and I'm gonna go, oh, wow. You know? The corporation. Headquarters is London, but this one person is based over in Frankfurt or is based in, uh, New York or wherever they're based. Well, you know what? People aren't gonna know this individual that well because they're located in a different office. So I'm gonna call people as this person. I'm gonna, and by the way, we would also see if we could hear that person on the phone, right? So that we could learn their voice. Well, almost everybody you can call and get their voicemail and, and you, oh yes, this is Gail Hot. I, I, you know, please leave the message. You know? And so we would go, oh, okay. That's what he sounds like, right? So we are now imitating if they have a French accent, if they have an Irish accent, right? If they have a London, you know, British accent. We're gonna do our best to imitate their accent. And so now if I'm gonna call some junior person anywhere in the world and they're gonna hear this guy who sounds. In terms of the voice, in terms of the knowledge. What is this person not gonna tell me? Right? And in terms of your, your listeners, I think the key takeaway is all of the rosing that's done, whether it is for, you know, to get employment information, to get corporate secrets, to set up a firm for a ransomware attack. There's always the element of crisis and emergency, and that's what I tell people. The number one thing to look for is there's an emergency, there's a crisis, and you need to do X, Y, Z right now to help me. And that's when the employee has to go. I always say, you know, put the device down, walk away from the device, because anytime you do something quickly, that's when you get in.

jon 22:24

Yeah, Amazing. Amazing. Okay, so one of the questions I had for you was, uh, what's the fastest time, you know, what's your record? Where you've gone from a call? So I don't mean one of the folks you've called before, but like take like a completely new to getting. At the beginnings of information through, because when I was reading the book, I thought, God, you know, you're really perfecting the art. And I would imagine some folks who could be very resistant might take a bit of work, but others might just literally just cave in. And so just, is it minutes or seconds, or ha you know, what's the fastest.

Track 1 22:59

Yeah, sure. Well, you know, I think, the differentiator with us was the amount of research that we did because, you know, I didn't get my information. 90% of the time I didn't get it. 95% of the time I didn't get it. 98% of the time I got it. 99.999% of the time my clients called me. I got what they wanted to know. And the way we insured such a high level of success is we spent a lot of time on research. So I would almost never call a company without doing at least an hour of research. And then once I've done that hour of research, there are plenty of times I picked up the phone, and then in the very first call I got every single thing I wanted to know.

jon 23:34

So, so it is interesting and fascinating, Robert, because, um, I think you could have also, I'm not saying you would've wanted to, but, um, professional services, sales, you know, if you cold call someone, On professional services sales. And you go, John, tell me about the challenges you're facing in technology Artists, just like, you know, oh, this person's on a fishing trip. They've done, they're lazy. They haven't even, you know, if they rang me up and said, oh, I saw your episode on X, Y, Z, I see you're interested in such and such. I've had a look. I saw the, you know, done the research immediately. You're just drawn. and you're thinking, okay, well this person's different from the three other cold calls I had, and they've, it sounds like they've, and then you are, you know, you, you are drawing yourself, in, so I, I really understand the research element. Obviously you were doing it for a different purpose, but, um, you know, I, I, I, that really chimes with me. Um, so, so the book does. A few, uh, coincidences in it, and I'm not going to push you to see if any of it was done for artistic, uh, license. You know, you know, you're, you're obviously writing a book that wants to be, you know, someone wants to read, and you've, I think you've really nailed that. But I wanted to just talk about one. Sequence cuz it just sort of blew my mind a little bit because I'm of a, I'm of a, of a, a generation that, um, I didn't obviously, well I wasn't, not obviously, but I wasn't around when the Beatles, you know, were, were a thing. But I was definitely in the reflective glow and I love, uh, all of that. But you go to the John Lennon Museum and uh, are we okay to talk about that sequence?

Track 1 25:08

Yeah. Sure, sure. Yeah. What So it, it, it's the, it's the rock. It's the, the, the rock and roll hall. The, the rock and roll hall of.

jon 25:14

Hall of Fame,

Track 1 25:15

Yeah. In Cleveland? Yeah.

jon 25:16

And there's this white telephone, and you are, you are having a really tough time. It's a real key moment in your life with things going on. Um, and the phone rings this white phone, and there's a band dances, noise and all the rest of it. And you pick up the phone, hello. And it's, it's, it's Yoko Ono And, and you end up having a conversation with Yoko Ono where you are getting. Posthumous advice from John Lennon through Yoko? No. At that moment in your life? I mean, I was, honestly, I was, I did a little bit of a, as I was reading it, and then I thought, did that really happen? And then, you know, I won't say exactly what happened, but you know, the reaction of all the people and the fact they said, you know, that that phone hasn't rung very often, I'm not gonna give away. But I mean, that for me was just one of those just really.

Track 1 26:09

Yeah.

jon 26:10

Three or four pages I read. So did that really happen? Like

Track 1 26:14

Yeah, yeah, no, of course. I mean, I, I, I like to say that I've written a, an honest book about lying, um, you know, um, and, but everything in the book is true. Everything in the book happened. Um, and, and, and I love that you, you, you had that reaction to the Yoko Ono story because my publisher. Um, who wasn't my publisher but was, you know, reading the book. Reading the book. And when he got to that moment, apparently, I guess he's got a little basement office, he, he went, wow. And he said it so loudly that his wife upstairs heard him and she came down and he shared with her this. And he basically said that was when he decided he had to buy this book. When he got to that moment.

jon 26:51

you know, I mean, I just started laughing because I, I, when, when, when, when something like that links up, your brain makes connections. And for me, my reaction is I laugh and, uh, uh, my Elaine, my wife, she came over and said, what, you know, what is it? I said, you've just, this is just incredible. You know, this is, this is, and it's sort of a moment where you want to be, you, you want to be on that phone cuz you're kind of, you're making, it's a, it's a very. Uh, yeah. And, um, well, I think that's enough of a tease, isn't it, for folks to, to want to read that chapter.

Track 1 27:19

I hope so. Yeah. I.

jon 27:20

the book to, to look at that.

Track 1 27:22

well, you know, cuz I, I, I, you know, I say to people, because, you know, in a strange sort of way, it's almost two books, right? There's the whole corporate espionage part of the book, which reads like a spy novel. But then there's this whole behind the scenes of, with all of these interactions with huge celebrities, you know, we, you know, we're not even gonna get into OJ Simpson, but there's a whole chapter on OJ Simpson. Um, and, um, but yeah, they, all of these things,

jon 27:47

do you know what I even, I forgot to mention OJ Simpson. I mean, that's, and actually that, that bit hits you in the book quite soon after some other incredible stuff. So, uh, and the timing and everything. It is, it is, it is, it is amazing. Um, and actually, I think, um, so it's a bit of a cliche over here in the, in the, in the UK when we talk about entertaining and inform at the same time. but actually that's what your book does. Because if you think about, if you'd just done a book on social engineering, it'd be very dry. Uh, you know, people would still read it, but it'd be a little bit more kind of, um, non-fiction. Okay, I'm gonna read this stuff. But the fact that you land it with everything else just keeps you going. And I think that's where it sort of sinks in. And I think what you get is you get a real sense of speaking to you on the phone at that time. I think in a way, going through the process of reading the book helps you kind of prepare yourself for that kind of phone call. Maybe

Track 1 28:38

Mm-hmm.

jon 28:39

if that makes

Track 1 28:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, look, I was writing, uh, the book, uh, uh, during Covid, right? And if, and so one thing that was really important to me is I wanted to write a book that was fun, right? I wanted to write a book that was a page turner, because, you know, we all, you know, we all went through this terrible thing with Covid, and I'm like, we need to have a little bit of fun. So, um, so I really wanted the book to, to have that kind of spy novel, fun feel. Even though again, everything is true in.

jon 29:06

Yeah. No, it is, it's, it's really cool. So I've got two more questions. um, for you from, from, from what we looked through. So one was about morality, cuz it is, as a reader, you do, you, you kind of, you, you're thinking about it, uh, constantly. Because the thing is, as a character, you get very drawn in very quickly, to be on your side you know, that you can't, you can't help it, you know, as you're reading it, you, cuz obviously you're presenting it as an autobiography and, you know, uh, uh, and the way that you, you kind of really get, you're walking in your shoes if you like, as a reader. but I was wondering whether you got ever felt conflicted and also, you know, what stopped you from going further and into the, you know, the, the, the, the darker side of this with ransomware and those sorts of things, because you've, you, you've got, you, you have a moral compass because you, when you do the corporate thing, you have this sort of reaction about what, what those folks are doing. It's really interesting how you, how you walk that line. So I just wanted to fill whether you, whether you ever felt conflict.

Track 1 30:06

Yeah, definitely. You know, and, and, uh, you know, I like to think that I, I reckon with the, uh, moral issues in the book, um, and I think, you know, um, again, and this is just the rationalization. Um, I always was looking at it, at least in the early days, that much of the information we were getting was helping to get people better jobs. So in other words, if I learned who the top five traders were at this desk on Wall Street, or if I learned who the top five salespeople were at this pharmaceutical company, or if I learned who. You know, top five designers were at Google. Those people were getting calls from Apple or JP Morgan or, or you know, from big companies who were gonna offer them more money. And so in the beginning, that was kind of how I rationalized it. Now, of course, as time went on, the intelligence, we started obtaining. Started, you know, getting deeper and deeper. And, and there was definitely a moment there where I crossed over to the dark side and um, and, and, and I did struggle with it. And then there was a certain point where my child heard me on the phone and was like, you know what, what the heck are you doing? And, and I tried to rationalize it and my kid said, but it's dishonest. And, and I. Yeah, it is. And that was the moment with like the wake up call where I was like, I gotta get out of this. I can't do this anymore. And um, and then again, I don't wanna spoil too much for the reader, uh, for the, you know, for your listeners and, and hopefully readers. Um, but that was, you know, kind of when I, I, I started to go, okay, well how do I get out of this? And then, and then what else am I gonna do? Like, what am I gonna do with the rest of my life? And, you know, and that's when I kind of circled back to writing, which is where I started. Even before acting. I was an English major at.

jon 31:47

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, um, and, uh, you know, clearly we've got, you know, possess a great deal of, of IQ and intellect, uh, to, to get through all of this. You know, I think one of the things, Robert, is we will sort of learn these lessons through life, but you know, if there's anything you take from your book is that you as an individual can achieve anything you set your mind to. You know, that's what I see. I see this determin. Of someone who's trying to do something different with their life, not, not quite prepared to grow up in the mold of, from the family, business and all the rest of it. And you're gonna sort of plow your own furrow. And it's a, you've picked like the toughest thing to possibly do, make it in acting in the states. I mean, you know, so competitive. And so, you know, they talk about, um, luck is when preparation meets opportunity. You know, you were preparing yourself and you were, you had, you know, all the moments, all, all of that. But, um, the fact that, uh, you know, I think that's what comes through in the book is this someone who's very determined. Um, and, uh, I mean that's just a personal observation from, from what I read. So I I've only got one more question for you. Um, and because it's a technology, um, uh, podcast, which was like, what's, what technology does the ruler either hate or love? And it might be the same thing that can be used, but is there a bit of tech that you go, you know what, when, when, when this bit of tech became available, it really transformed what we did in the rosing side of things or. was there a piece of tech which you thought, actually, now it's just got a lot harder because of X, Y, Z, you know, so for example, you know, we use teams. Um, it's very easy to click on a link and find out who's calling you and Nate, you can check, you know, people have got like real-time information. I think you mentioned the intranet was the beginnings where people could access their own internal directories, and it started to become harder. But is there any, any, any technology that you'd call out that's either helped or.

Track 1 33:34

You know, what we found was whatever the technology that was developed, uh, in the beginning we were, we would be panicked about it and we would go, okay, well that's the end of us. You know, we're never gonna be able to do this. But spies, you know, are nothing if not resilient. And they find ways to not only work around the technology, but often to use the technology to their advantage. Right? So, for example, You know, when we, when they, and, and again, this is going back to the nineties, you know, when they invented, you know, caller id, well, they could see that you were calling from a phone number that you know wasn't who you were saying you are. Well, then they invented call spoofing, which by the way is. Quite an, an alive, uh, an active business today where I can make my phone number appear to be a different number. I can make my phone number appear to say, you know, I can have it say regulatory compliance, you know, and now you're like, whoa, what the heck? Regulatory of compliance is calling. You know, so they're all of these things. So, you know, I always found that, um, It just took a little bit of time as a spy to figure out how am I gonna make this technology work to my advantage? And that again, goes back to, for your listeners, is it's not about the technology. it's about the human being. The human being's always gonna be there. The tech's gonna come and go. There's gonna be new tech, better tech, improved tech, but the human being is still there operating it. Right. Uh, and, and the human being still has a cell phone. So if I'm able to reach people, um, I don't need to hack the systems. I hack the people, right. And then I, and then theoretically in the, in the current world order, now I'm giving that information to the hacker who now has basically the keys to the.

jon 35:12

And, and, and you just, the example you used, I love because caller id, when it first comes out, everyone's thinking that's great, you know, now I know who's calling me. Okay. But whereas before it was just a number. But of course then you can spoof that. So then what a bit of technology that was introduced to my, to give, to reinforce, I know who's calling me is now reinforc. Um, you know, it's given me the feeling. I know who's calling me when I don't, so it's actually worse. Uh, this is the old unintended, uh, consequences rule, isn't it? Uh, when, when, when tech gets introduced. Well, uh, Robert, I know, uh, you, we've got some, time constraints. Both of us. We've got the soccer and also you've got family over. It's Thanksgiving was yesterday, so I just want to say massive. Thank you for giving up, uh, your time to speak to us and,

Track 1 35:56

it was a real pleasure.

jon 35:57

And, and it's, uh, Rus lying, the American Dream from Hollywood to Wall Street and memoir Robert Kerbeck. Got, we've both got our copies. Mine's, mine's well thumbed and, uh, yeah, highly recommend it. I'll put a link in, obviously, Robert, in the, uh, in the session. Uh, so thank you very much for, for, for, for having, uh, uh, for joining us.

Track 1 36:16

well done. Thank you, John.

jon 36:19

Cool.

Malcom 36:20

My name is Malcom and nows the time ,to think. Have you ever been rused? Have you ever given away too much? Be on your guard and stay safe. CTIO 1 O 1 Business Technology Simplified and Shared. Subscribe now. Sponsored by Fairmont Recruitment, Hiring Technology Professionals Across the UK Europe