The Imposter Syndrome Network Podcast

Jayson E. Street

August 23, 2022 Chris & Zoë Season 1 Episode 4
The Imposter Syndrome Network Podcast
Jayson E. Street
Show Notes Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Imposter Syndrome Network Podcast, where everyone belongs, especially if you think you don't.

Today's guest is Jason E. Street, VP of InfoSec at SphereNY.

In this episode, we discuss why everyone is a Hacker and why you don’t need to be a programmer to be one. He walks us through how he went from being homeless and the best Janitor at Mcdonald's, to becoming a professional bank robber. 

Jason explain to us that the reason he got into security is that he wanted to stop bad people to do bad things like what was done to him.

We talk about why the label “Ethical Hacker” makes no sense, the necessity of stopping gatekeeping in the industry, and how looking adorable and cute may help you rob a bank.

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Fear is telling you to be alert, to be aware that you're in unknown territory. Fear is not supposed to stop you. It's just to help you understand your situation so you can get through and get to that unknown area that's usually ten times better than where you are.
~Jason E. Street

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If you want to keep the talk going, join our LinkedIn Group.

Send us a message, we would love to hear from you.

 Chris Grundemann

 Zoe Rose

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Links:

●     https://jaysonestreet.com/

●     https://twitter.com/jaysonstreet

●     https://www.linkedin.com/in/jstreet/

●     https://twitter.com/HackNotCrime

●    https://hackeradventures.world/

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Thanks for being an imposter - a part of the Imposter Syndrome Network (ISN)!

We'd love it if you connected with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-imposter-syndrome-network-podcast

Make it a great day.

Transcript is automatically generated and may contain errors.

[00:00:00] Chris: Hello and welcome to the imposter syndrome network podcast, where everyone belongs. Yes. Even you. My name is Chris Grundman and I'm here with my co-host Zoe rose.

[00:00:19] Zoe: Hey! 

[00:00:19] Chris: This is the Jason E Street episode. And, uh, wow. You're in for a treat. Jason is a hacker, an author, and the VP of InfoSec at SphereNY to name a few.

[00:00:33] Chris: Jason, we're stoked to have you here. Do you want to, uh, introduce yourself to the network? 

[00:00:37] Jayson: Yeah, I just, uh, I think I, I hate talking about myself, so it's like, usually it's like the bio includes just like three words. I'm a hacker, I'm a helper and I'm human, that's it? Those are my designations. It's like, that is how I identify as 

[00:00:51] Chris: awesome.

[00:00:51] Chris: I love. To go a little bit deeper than that, just to kind of help people understand, you know, what does a VP of InfoSec do? Maybe, you know, what's that job mean? What do you do in, in 60 seconds or less? 

[00:01:04] Jayson: Oh, that's the worst thing. This job is not the title. I don't do anything that remotely looks like a VP of information security for this job.

[00:01:14] Jayson: It is. And it's way more than 60 seconds to fully explain how craptastic that. I just give talks and I do training and I occasionally rob banks or other enterprises for people to help them better understand and prepared for when someone actually tries to rob them for reals. But I rob them in a very educational manner.

[00:01:34] Chris: Educational robberies. I, I dig it.

[00:01:36] Jayson: Yes. It's like I've, uh, if national geographic did an episode, uh, on their series breakthrough season two, episode two on cyber terror, and it was literally me robbing banks in Beirut Lebanon, and it showed how I actually do those things and then educate the people afterwards.

[00:01:53] Jayson: It didn't focus that much on too much on that, but it did show a little bit of it, which was.

[00:01:58] Chris: Wow. That's cool. So that's really curious, right? I mean, I think that folks would love to know what's the path that leads you to a place where you are a professional bank robber, but it's educational and not criminal.

[00:02:11] Jayson: I think that my path I'm a high school dropout. Who used to live behind a dumpster. So I used to be homeless and I, and I've come from very like, you know, my childhood was against the Geneva conventions, but. One of the things I learned. It's like I was a janitor for two years at McDonald's. That was like my first career move was where I actually like, you know, a longrun job that was like legit with current paychecks.

[00:02:36] Jayson: And I was one of the best effing janitors at McDonald's so much that we won the cleanest restaurant in the Southeast Texas region for two years in a row. I never wanted to always stay a janitor, but mother, if I'm gonna do a job, you do it right. You do it the best way you can. And you do it to your best of your ability.

[00:02:56] Jayson: And I think that's one of things I learned from it was that I just, even though I didn't like all the stuff that I was doing, it didn't give me the excuse not to do it well, because that reflects on me. Not them. And then I got into security because somehow I was broken in just the right way where I wanted to make sure bad things didn't happen to bad people.

[00:03:21] Jayson: I didn't wanna be the bad person and do bad things like was done to me. I wanted to do the opposite and stop bad people from doing things. So I got into security and I did that for quite a bit, and I was really good at it because I actually took it seriously. I didn't sleep on the job. I didn't do. I mean, I was like one of their troubleshooter agents by the end of it, because I would go to contracts where they were having problems and work there for a month or two to get people like really good service.

[00:03:48] Jayson: So they could like, you know, feel better and unruffle feathers. Then I worked for three years on a gang task force as a supplemental officer, got tired of getting shot at literally and, uh, gave my two weeks notice when, uh, slug went two inches from my right ear, basically, uh, left me a little dazed and, uh, unhappy, and my partner with six stitches, which was like my fault, but still, and then I would say I got into computers when I heard a commercial saying, Hey, it's like, do you work on your people's computers?

[00:04:18] Jayson: Do you like doing this? I'm like, yeah, I do all. I did a lot of GUI hacking. My hacking was just changing the way things looked on the OS. It's like, it's supposed to look like this. This is the way I want it to look. And I was like working with three 11 at the time. I mean, my three 11, uh, work group manager looked like a magical battlefield where all the different icons were like fantasy characters or castles.

[00:04:41] Jayson: And it's like, and they were like, the, the armies were fighting each other. So, you know, you clicked on the unicorn for a calculator. It's like, you clicked on the, on the castle for it's like the, my documents thing. So something like that. So, yeah, so I went and worked at a IT support company. And then in 2000 I was I'm old.

[00:04:59] Jayson: So in 2000, I was told by Tim Smith at a wonderful man who changed my life at that point. And he said, Hey, do you wanna do information security, network security? And I was like, huh? I can do security and stop bad guys and keep working on computers and no one shoots at me. Yeah, please. It's like, I'll take that.

[00:05:20] Jayson: And it's a vicious circle because, you know, I started there thinking, yay, I don't have to get shot at anymore. And now I'm doing red teaming kind of things where it's like, I'm robbing places where I might get shot. It's just one of those things, but, you know, I take the good with the bad. 

[00:05:36] Chris: That's awesome.

[00:05:37] Chris: Uh, and, and along the way you talk about being a hacker pretty openly, and I know you're also involved at least in some way with a group or a Twitter account, that's hacking is not a crime. Right? I think that word hacker has definitely had its ups and downs, you know, since the eighties and. Often carries a stigma with it.

[00:05:54] Chris: You know, maybe you can tell us a little bit about what a hacker is, why you're proud to be a hacker and just a little bit more about that and maybe, you know, demystify it for some folks who might still be scared of, uh, the dudes and hoodies. 

[00:06:05] Jayson: To break it down plainly as possible. Is, everyone listening to this, and y'all self are included. We were all born hackers. This is one of the biggest stupidest misconceptions in our industry is that first of all, that hacking has to have computers involved in it. It's like hacking has nothing to do with computers. Hacking is basically what we were born with. And if you're wondering what that was, remember the last interaction you've had with a three year old, because that was you too. 

[00:06:39] Jayson: That stage where you're going. Why, why is the sky blue? Why is that there? Why do we have to do it this way? Why do I have to have a bedtime at this point? But I don't feel like this. Why do they look like that? Why does that person look like that? Why can't we do it this way and just make it this way? Why can't we go visit that castle up in the sky, in the clouds and stuff it's like that active imagination and that curiosity and that willingness to say.

[00:07:07] Jayson: This is the way everything is told to me that it's supposed to be, but I wanna make it different. And I would like to do something different. That is in essence, what a hacker is. Now, our family and our educational structures are very good at grinding that out of us. But if you can manage to keep up and keep a spark of that through your educational period, until you get into your twenties, well, then you can probably have a really good career in doing something that has that kind of creativity.

[00:07:41] Jayson: And that's asked for that kind of creativity. Being an artist, being a different kind of chef creating aerodynamics and doing science. It's like that's all hacking. Leonardo DaVinci was one of the greatest hackers in the world. It's like, because he was able to envision and use art into his way of thinking and his designs and also in his invention.

[00:08:05] Jayson: It's like the Mona Lisa is one of the crappies examples of his work, but it was still around the last supper of Christ doesn't exist anymore because it was a very great masterpiece, but it was not left and not tended carefully. It's like, so we don't understand that sometimes it's not the work that you see is the whole essence of the person that counts.

[00:08:28] Jayson: And that's hacking the person who created the 3d printed arms. To give out to people. So instead of thousands of dollars, it's now this, uh, the young man in Africa who was able to figure out by bicycling to another village so he could get internet to go on and research how to create windmills. So he could take that back to his village and created a very self sustaining, windmill infrastructure and company building these things.

[00:08:59] Jayson: It's like for people that, how can that not be hacking? Heady Lamar, one of the biggest insults. And I just recently said this too. Heady Lamar, one of the biggest insults ever given to this lady is the fact that we call her an actress first like that her beauty or something somehow defines who she is, which is a travesty based on the fact that it's because of her research and her innovations is the reason why we have WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS.

[00:09:28] Jayson: She helped the Navy with submarines. And you wanna call that hacker an actress first it's like she could quote lines and she looked in a characteristic way that people with society was supposed to say was pleasing to the eye. Like that means something, no, Grace Hopper Ada Lovelace, uh, all these other hackers and the lady who worked in a basement in the university because the school didn't want to give her funding.

[00:09:59] Jayson: Who created the MRNA breakthrough for the vaccines that we have now for COVID an immigrant lady. It's like, who was given no status, no credit until it worked. How is that not hacking? And this whole thing about having to call myself an ethical hacker is BS. I don't go to an ethical restaurant. I don't go to an ethical banker.

[00:10:22] Jayson: I don't go to an ethical dentist. It's like ridiculous. That saying that you have to say you're an ethical hacker is a smear and a discriminatory thing. Just like you're calling someone an African American. It's like, they're an effing American. It's like stop trying to classify them as something different or making like there's a designation of a difference.

[00:10:45] Jayson: Because that's don't even get me started on the whole nonsensical concept of race, which was, you know, founded in the 17 hundreds to help white people feel better about owning people. But the other thing we go into is black hats or white hats or all these other, my head's too fat to wear a hat that begins.

[00:11:04] Jayson: it's like, I'm a hacker. I don't commit crimes. I'm not a criminal. If I have a banker that I go to every week that cash my check and handles my money and he works on my accounts. And then I find out later that she was arrested for embezzlement. And then I'd go to a new banker. And I asked him was like, well, you know, the last guy I had was arrested for embezzlement.

[00:11:30] Jayson: So are you a black hat banker or a white hat banker? Because I don't want any dealing with the black hat banker cuz I had dealing with them before and I didn't even realize they were black hats because who knew they looked so normal. It's like, no, it's stupid. 

[00:11:45] Zoe: So I think communications is a really, really interesting career.

[00:11:48] Zoe: And through my security career, I've worked a lot with communications cuz you know, doing incident response, you've gotta communicate effectively doing ethical hacking. Or as you said, just hacking, you have to, you know, make sure that everything's worded properly and you're, you know, you're selling the right thing and you're kind of explaining it better.

[00:12:07] Zoe: And properly. And one thing that I found really interesting is that a man that I worked with years ago, he said, actually, let's rephrase it. Let's not define the career by the people doing things maliciously. Let's define it by the people doing it properly. You know, you're a hacker. The other people are not hackers.

[00:12:24] Zoe: They're cyber criminals. 

[00:12:25] Jayson: Right? If I get mugged with a guy with a gun, I don't automatically assume that they're a gun rights activist or an NRA member, or a gunsmith who loaded the bullets themselves. No, they're using a tool to commit a crime. Computers, make crime very easy to commit mm-hmm and you can be lazier, which what criminals are.

[00:12:46] Jayson: So they used the tools that they can get online to commit crimes with that's an insult to hackers to call them hackers. 

[00:12:54] Zoe: What you just said is really interesting is you can be lazy and do pre-create stuff. You can be lazy and do things the easy way. 

[00:13:01] Jayson: Oh my gosh. 

[00:13:02] Zoe: But here's the thing though, being in your career, I know you don't like speaking about how awesome you are.

[00:13:09] Zoe: But you are pretty brilliant. And has there ever been a time where, and I imagine there has been, and I'm pretty sure you're gonna say yes, because I think I've seen you talk on this very subject, but has there has been a time that you're like, you know, I'm not smart enough this, or I'm just not good enough for this.

[00:13:24] Zoe: And how do you get through that emotion? 

[00:13:26] Jayson: I honestly, I tell people. That it's, this stuff is so easy, even I can do it. and I try to do the very basic stuff. You know, you've heard of APT uh, we like to call it advanced persistent threats. What it really stands for is adequate phishing technique. But what I like to do is bad.

[00:13:46] Jayson: Just B A D basic adorable destruction, meaning I will literally walk in site unseen to a place. And see what kind of damage I can do that doesn't take skill it's like, that just takes, you know, really a lot of just disconnect from reality, thinking that you can get away with something like that. And people go like, well, yeah, you know, you're not gonna have to go to jail other way.

[00:14:09] Jayson: Do you think criminals are committing crimes because they think they're going to jail? No. Yeah. They've got plenty of self confidence. These idiots think that they're gonna get away with these master hiests and that's why it turns into the Benny Hill show because it's like they don't have a clue.

[00:14:24] Jayson: Criminals are stupid or they wouldn't be criminals or they'd be in white collar crime where the real money's at period. If they're not doing stocks or working in crypto, they're pretty low rent criminals. So yeah, I'm not really worried about them. People are worried about these nation states and these like very advanced tax and these zero days.

[00:14:44] Jayson: And I'm like, but did you patch MSO 867 yet? Okay, then don't worry about the newest Fontella attack coming out of the word docs. Okay. Cause that's not your problem. You don't need to worry about low hanging fruit. Pick up the effing fruit on the ground. Okay. That's rotting. Get that first. 

[00:15:02] Zoe: Yeah. It's not zero days.

[00:15:03] Zoe: It's the 200 days that you have to worry about. 

[00:15:06] Jayson: Exactly. 

[00:15:07] Jayson: Yeah. I call it the 1,337 day one that is out there. 

[00:15:12] Zoe: fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah, no, I like that. Your career has been very interesting. Obviously you started from very scary place. You started from having nothing and then building your way up to having a really brilliant career.

[00:15:25] Zoe: I mean, I've followed you on Twitter for, I don't even know how long and whilst we've planned to meet up many times and I keep moving. Um, but you know, it's, it's always interesting to seeing it from that external view. But from the internal view, what what's that like? Like how do you, do you plan for going where you are?

[00:15:44] Jayson: No, I'm nobody. And this is one of the biggest things is that I'm always gonna feel inadequate. Cause I'm a high school dropout. It's like I don't have formal education. And now I've gotten, somehow I've gotten through to a certain level. It's like, all my friends are like super successful and super smart and doing all these really cool things.

[00:16:04] Jayson: And I'm like, what do you do? It's like, yeah. I try to look adorable and break into places and rob them. Yeah. That's real technical. I always make sure that I pre insult myself. So it takes all the fun out of it for other people to do it. When I know they're going to. People think I'm like self deprecating or I got false humility.

[00:16:27] Jayson: Like, no, I just understand. I'm not that great. And when you get, and you figure that out, you can't come back at me going like, oh, look, as you perpetrating a fraud, Jason, you're just, this nobody. And it's like, you acting like you're somebody like, no, I never acting like I was somebody that's on you. I told you straight up.

[00:16:44] Jayson: I just recently did a job interview. And I told the CEO the very first thing I told him, I said, well, first of all, you need to. I'm a lousy employee. Okay. I suck at any kind of reporting. I suck at doing any kind of expense reports. I don't like to do the reports. I don't like to write things down. And I promise you, if you give me stuff that I don't like, you we'll see how bad I am very quickly.

[00:17:05] Jayson: give me the stuff that I'm passionate about. And I'm amazing because I'm, I like it. But if I don't like it, that's on you. So don't hire me and then go. And I literally, my whole process of trying to get another job is basically telling them all the problems that I have and the reasons why it's going to be difficult dealing with me.

[00:17:27] Jayson: And I do also put in the caveat. It is very difficult to deal with me, but I go the extra mile to make sure that it's worth putting up with my crap. And at then that way, if they still hire me, they can't come back three minutes later, Jason, like, well, yeah, Jason you're really like, you were really serious about this.

[00:17:46] Jayson: I said, yeah, I was. 

[00:17:47] Jayson: So don't get mad at me now. It's like I told you front, this was not a surprise to you. 

[00:17:52] Zoe: Well, I will say you're very good at making a very entertaining . 

[00:17:56] Jayson: Yeah. I, I mean, I try that. I could learn so much more and do so much more. I just, the way that my brain works and being on the spectrum and being with ADHD, uh, just gets.

[00:18:07] Jayson: So bad dealing with trying to deal with things that I don't find interesting. And I don't find programming interesting. I'm never going to be a programmer, all this stupid false gate keeping in this industry that you have to learn programming, screw that I couldn't do pythons for Minecraft book. Okay. My youngest child was better at it than I was.

[00:18:28] Jayson: That's not something that I'm ever going to be good at, but that doesn't make me less of a hacker. That doesn't make me less belonging here. I tell people it's like with gate keeping it's like motherfucker we're hackers, jump the fence. It's like go under the fence, go around, knock the effing fence down.

[00:18:44] Jayson: Why does the fence matter? And why does a gate have some kind of authority over us, especially the gatekeeper billing about it? No, that is nothing to us. Realistically, I should not be where I'm at. Realistically. I shouldn't be here. If I let reality get in the way of me trying to accomplish something, I would never have been here.

[00:19:05] Jayson: People need to start understanding that they have to have the audacity to go and understand that even though they don't think that they're worth it. They need to understand it doesn't matter if I don't think I'm worth it. No other mother better think I'm not worth it. I can do this because just cuz I wanna prove it wrong and I don't mind proving myself wrong, but no one else is gonna get that luxury.

[00:19:30] Jayson: That's just a me feature. Okay. It's like only I'm the ones that's allowed to beat up myself. It's like, I'm not letting anybody else take a punch. Yeah. And if they do, they only get one. They don't want to go up for round two. So I was raised a little bit different on the streets. It's like, I've tried very hard now to be very adorable and very soft spoken because back in the day it was not like that.

[00:19:53] Jayson: I like the luxury of being just, you know, sweet and like, Hey, yeah, everything's cool. Everything's happy. Cuz it's like a much better place to be. And also one of the things I wanted to address too, especially with people looking for careers and trying to find a career is this thing that I still deal with, which I was dealing with just recently: Fear people have this horrible misconception about fear.

[00:20:18] Jayson: Fear is supposed to tell us not to do something. And I'm like, what the are you talking about? No fear is telling you to be alert, to be aware that you're an unknown territory. Fear is not supposed to stop you. It's just to help you understand your situation. So you can get through that situation and get to that unknown area.

[00:20:41] Jayson: That's usually 10 times better than where you are. Mostly everything positive that's happened in my life has happened through me, pushing through fear. Me going through the fear, accepting the fear and still doing the thing, jumping out of a plane. I literally, for two seconds, I was like, when I had to scoot to the edge of the, the plane, this open door and then jump out, it was like, it was, it was like what?

[00:21:09] Jayson: They would push me. It would've been like fine, but no, no. I have to actually make that willful move to like actually get to the gate. And so for two seconds, like, what am I doing? And then I was like, yes, I'm doing this. And then I jumped out of a plane, fully functioning plane, like a rational person does. When I got my first job.

[00:21:26] Jayson: It was through fear. It's like when I started looking for one, now it was through fear. What do people realize? I'm not as good as I say, I am. What if they're gonna realize that I'm not as good at writing stuff down or processing stuff or getting things the way that they want done, what's going to happen.

[00:21:44] Jayson: Then, then I'm gonna be just proving the failure that I think I am, that fear is there to warn us. It's not there to stop us. We need to understand. And have a better relationship with that fear because it can't be done as even if you're afraid of the dark, even if you're afraid of these things, that's just a warning system for you to be cautious with not to be paralyzed by because fear shouldn't paralyze you because then it's working against you.

[00:22:15] Jayson: Fear is there to help you and let you assess the situation properly. 

[00:22:19] Zoe: No, that's a really good point. And I think for me in my career, that was. Thing. I was raised to believe that mistakes were the end of the world. You can't make a mistake. It's a bad thing. And it took me a very long time and it held me back a lot of the time to realize actually mistakes are good, cuz they help you learn.

[00:22:36] Zoe: You know, when you're scared to do something that's because maybe it's something you really want to do. And you're scared of making that mistake, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. And I found that now that I'm a bit further in my career. I feel a little bit more confident to allow myself to make those mistakes, allow myself to admit, I don't know something which is hard in a tech position.

[00:22:58] Zoe: It's hard to say. I don't know that technology, you know?

[00:23:01] Jayson: Oh, yes. And to be honest as a feminine presenting person, it's like any human that's feminine presenting in this industry. Mm-hmm has it 10 times harder? It's like, uh, just like any person of color, has it 10 times harder in this industry? Because it's like, we have our preconceived ideas of who's supposed to be here or what a hacker supposed to look like.

[00:23:23] Jayson: And one of the biggest problems that I see is the self gate keeping. Yeah. Especially from. Women presenting people and people of color, because I have the same advice every single time. You need to learn to channel your inner mediocre white dude. okay. Because as a mediocre white dude, when I go through a job interview and someone ask me, he's like, can you do something like, well, yeah.

[00:23:46] Jayson: Do you know how this technology works? Uh, not really, but gimme five minutes on Google, I'll tell you how it starts working and the best part about it. I will let you teach me how y'all do it here. And so I'll understand your processes. And I don't come with all this other way that I thought was, should be done.

[00:24:02] Jayson: So I'm gonna do it your way. Mm-hmm so I'm an asset because I don't know that mm-hmm , but I see it time and time. Again, people of color women, they will go in and they will go, oh, you have to know this. I don't know this. This one thing on the list. Mm-hmm so therefore I shouldn't apply for that job. 

[00:24:18] Zoe: Oh, it's a hundred percent.

[00:24:19] Zoe: There's been positions that I've turned down. Cause I'm like, I'm not qualified for this. And they reached out to me, you know, and I'll say, actually, I'm not qualified for you that position. And I regret it only because I didn't try. Not necessarily was the right position for me. I don't know. I never tried it, but I do.

[00:24:34] Zoe: I do recognize that a hundred percent. Um, I am trying to change that. But it is difficult. It is difficult, cuz you're essentially rewiring the way you're thinking, you know? 

[00:24:43] Jayson: Oh yeah. I would like to take a positive out of everything. And I think one of the positives out of this pandemic. Has been the wonderful realization that, oh, these people are governing us.

[00:24:55] Jayson: Obviously aren't qualified for the job that they got , but that didn't stop them. You know, it's like all these politicians and I'm not just talking about one country, it's like a lot of different countries. It has been blatantly obvious that, oh yeah, maybe that person shouldn't be in power. Maybe this is not what I signed up to, to pay taxes for.

[00:25:18] Jayson: I thought the government was there to actually, you know, help, not just say things or sling mud or, you know, cause insurrection it's like I thought they were here to like actually, you know, govern and monitor and lead and, and, and help and assist. In times of need. So yeah, it is a wake up call. So look at some of the people that we've had in power, and if they can go to the highest office in the land, you can land that job that you may have to learn a little bit more.

[00:25:50] Jayson: It's like about one of the technologies. Okay. Cause you are emphatically more qualified for that position than they were for that, but that didn't stop them for that position. 

[00:26:02] Zoe: Yeah. No, that's a great point. I really like. 

[00:26:04] Chris: Yeah. I often tell people that, uh, I've never taken a job. I was qualified for. 

[00:26:08] Jayson: Oh, exactly.

[00:26:09] Jayson: Same here. It is amazing that people still think that I, I have things to offer and contribute. I'm saying basically the same stuff over and over, but my gift is to be able to keep saying it in different and entertaining ways. So people still listen sort of to it. If they would actually start doing the stuff, instead of listening to the stuff, then I wouldn't have to talk about the stuff so much because we would actually be doing the stuff that we should have been doing over 10 years ago when I first started talking about this stuff.

[00:26:38] Zoe: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Cause some of the things are like foundations, you know, look at the foundations, you know, I, I couldn't put a number to the number of places I handed. Pen test report or a vulnerability report or whatever. And the next one I hand in exact same reports, just different text sizes or different, you know, funds to make it look pretty.

[00:26:58] Jayson: I gave my talk in 2019 and I ended it. One of the last slides was ending it by showing people by saying it's like, guys, I've been saying the same thing for 10 years. Why are we still not paying attention? I think I was using the more cowbell theme GIF too. I think I, I mean, I keep giving the cowbell and no one's like really paying attention to it.

[00:27:20] Zoe: No, that's really interesting. I mean, you've talked to your career and it's not the typical career, you know, it's not, oh, I did this and I, 

[00:27:27] Jayson: oh yeah. My, I don't have a, I have a very weird life. Yeah, 

[00:27:30] Zoe: no, but all of these things ring true with me as well. I mean, I'm not to compare our childhoods, but we both didn't have the easiest childhood.

[00:27:39] Zoe: And, you know, you picked yourself up from literally the bottom. I had probably not as difficult, so I, I will say that, but there were times that I felt like it was the end and, you know, I recently found a letter that was a letter I wrote to be the end. And so it's looking back, it's like, how did we get to where we are?

[00:28:01] Jayson: Oh yeah. 

[00:28:01] Zoe: You know, and I absolutely adore what you say about, you know, use that fear to empower. If it's not the position that you want. That's okay. Because it's the position you're at right now. Doesn't mean you're gonna stay there. And so keep working and you'll get there and that's really, really encouraging.

[00:28:18] Zoe: I absolutely adore everything you said, especially your acronyms, APT and BAD. Love those. I'm going to use those all the time now, 

[00:28:25] Jayson: please do. So I still, the adequate phishing technique from some FBI agents who I didn't really. Respect that much anyway, so I've never given credit , but I'm always honest. So I will let you know, I selfishly stole it.

[00:28:37] Jayson: It's like, I legit stole that without credit or remorse. It's like, and I stole them from FBI guys. So it made it just even better. . 

[00:28:48] Chris: All right. Well, we are coming up on the end of time here. So I wanna just take a quick pause to one. Thank you, Jason, for joining us and telling your story. This has been amazing.

[00:28:58] Chris: I think there's probably many layers still to get to, and we might have to have you back on again in the future. I also want to make sure I thank everyone from the imposter syndrome network. That's listening in. If you want to, you can join us on LinkedIn. We've got a LinkedIn group, the imposter syndrome network, where you can get and give career advice, find mentors, be a mentee, be a mentor.

[00:29:18] Chris: Uh, anything you need to kind of move along and, and get past that sense of dread, uh, moving into your next job or even getting through the current one. But before we totally close out, Jason, uh, you know, I'd love to know. Again, through this really wild and varied career where you've, you know, been shot at driven tanks, you brought banks out of all that up till now.

[00:29:36] Chris: What's the most valuable lesson you've learned in your career so far? 

[00:29:40] Jayson: It's not good enough to be honest with just others. If you're not being honest to yourself, if you're not literally honestly listening to the facts, am I happy? Am I doing good? Find what you're passionate about. You will find someone to pay you for it.

[00:30:00] Jayson: So stop trying to say, this is the career path I have to be because it's the most profitable. And then I get to be miserable. I'm old. And so it's like when you get to the point, when you realize on your deathbed, you're not gonna look back at your life and see, oh, I made this much money or I was very successful in this career or my peers really admire.

[00:30:23] Jayson: No, you're gonna say, did I enjoy my life. Did I make other people's lives enjoyable? Did I help others? And did I spread nice in the world? Did I leave good impressions? And did I leave positive impact on other people's lives that will live past me? And if you can't answer that, but you can answer the former, you screwed up horribly along the way, because you're never really going to be looking back about how much money you made.

[00:30:53] Jayson: It's always gonna be what you did with the time that you had, because that's what happens. If you become a billionaire, you're gonna learn one important lesson that the money means nothing because you can't buy time. You only have a finite amount of time. Do you wanna spend it being miserable at any point in a job?

[00:31:18] Jayson: In a relationship in a community that you feel bad about? The answer should be no, you only have so much time and you don't know how much that is. So why are you giving it to those places? Why are you giving it to those areas? It's like, why you're allowing yourself to take that away from you. The times where you're just dwelling and the times that you're just in a panic, because you're upset and you don't know what's going on, don't waste that time to yourself.

[00:31:48] Jayson: Either use it to be making yourself happy, even if you can't fully be happy in that moment, at least dedicate that time to not be, you know, moping about it, but trying to do something actively to change that situation. And that's scary. That is a lot of fear, but I guarantee from someone who has fought that fear is worth getting past because usually on the other side of that curtain of fear is some really nice places 

[00:32:18] Chris: Hear, here.

[00:32:18] Chris: Well, well said, Jason, do you have anything? I know you're an author. You're a speaker. Is there anything coming up soon or that just came out that, uh, you know, folks in the network should good go check out or, or can they connect with you to, to chat? 

[00:32:30] Jayson: Well, I'm all over the place. Uh, jasonestreet.com is my main website.

[00:32:36] Jayson: It's got some links for it. Uh, hackeradventures.world is a website that shows you where I've been. It's like kind of place. Where's just some cool pictures and things that I do. But like in August, there'll be a lot more announcements, uh, to be made and a lot more projects I'll be working on and I'll be at DEFCON, uh, for sure.

[00:32:55] Jayson: Fully masked up. It's like, um, I still make sure that, uh, I wear, uh, two N95 masks usually, but I'll think I'll have like a, one of those P 100 respirators for DEFCON. I'll I'll try to hack her up and make look all cyber. 

[00:33:08] Chris: Nice. Nice. You need L E D display on it and yeah, 

[00:33:11] Jayson: that's what I'm trying. That's what I'm shooting for.

[00:33:12] Jayson: We'll see. I'm not that crafty, but I'm gonna do my best. Awesome. 

[00:33:16] Chris: You just need a hot glue gun and some, some solder it'll be fine. 

[00:33:18] Jayson: Yes, we'll see. So nice. 

[00:33:21] Chris: Awesome. Well, that's it let's all say goodbye to the listeners. 

[00:33:25] Jayson: See you guys 

[00:33:26] Zoe: Cheers! 

[00:33:27] Chris: See you next week.