#328 Kevin Mandia - The Man Who Exposed China's Military Hackers

**Shawn Ryan** (0:05)
Kevin Mandia, welcome to the show.

**Kevin Mandia** (0:08)
Thank you.
Man. Cyber.

**Shawn Ryan** (0:11)
Cyber security. Got proud to say it, cyber, cyber.

**Kevin Mandia** (0:14)
We got this.
You ready? I'm ready.

**Shawn Ryan** (0:16)
All right.

**Kevin Mandia** (0:17)
We're gonna make it cool.

**Shawn Ryan** (0:18)
Man, I have been, yeah, I always thought cyber security was boring until I started researching you for this interview. Holy shit, man.

**Kevin Mandia** (0:29)
Yeah, it's a...

**Shawn Ryan** (0:30)
What a fucking badass.

**Kevin Mandia** (0:32)
It's a weird world. You know, I've walked the halls of a lot of the headlines people read in cyber security, and the press never really gets it. You know, nobody really understands what it's like to be a victim of a cyber crime. You know, whether it be someone hacking you to steal all your corporate secrets or extorting you. You know, and yeah, hey, you got to serve a higher purpose. Mine's always been, you know, the phone rings, I answer it, and it's a CEO, and the other side's saying, hey, you know, we're getting ransomed and damn it, we're not paying it. And my response is always like, hey man, we're not paying it, you know, let's show up.
But it's a, Shawn, let's see if we make this interesting for everybody. You know, because I remember a judge, I testified once in a case and the judge is like, this stuff's so cool. I can't wait till there's like a NCIS show on it or something like that. I'm like, man, if you could see the war room in a cyber case, it's just really quiet. It looks like your back room right there with those guys in it. You know what I mean? And everybody's clicking on a computer going clickety-clack. There's nothing to see, but you can see the emotional changes in the victims. You know what I mean? You can see it on their faces. So we'll make it real.

**Shawn Ryan** (1:37)
What is, let's talk about what does a victim go through?

**Kevin Mandia** (1:40)
Yeah.

**Shawn Ryan** (1:41)
Like a worst case scenario for everybody here.

**Kevin Mandia** (1:43)
You know, there's nothing, here's bad. You're an executive at a company and somebody breaks in and your email gets released. It's now Google searchable. Every, you know, let's say you're at a Fortune 100, Fortune 500 company, or your photos get released, you know, things like that. Your private thoughts get released. I've seen, I've been in the room with executives when their email got posted. Nobody ever should have to go through that. I just, it's just a terrible thing to see. Even I get physiologically like I can't eat and I'm like, man, this is bad. So I think that's the worst thing. It personally impacts people, it gets exaggerated. The press does search your emails. They do write articles about people.
And it's happened to actors, their photos get stolen. It happens to kids, like during our interview today, it's gonna happen to some 20 year old college kid, where their photos get stolen. Nobody should ever go through that stuff. So to me, those are the ones that hurt the most.
Companies survive them. You get back up and running, you get your operations running. You get over the reputational hits that happen sometimes. I just feel for the people that go through losing their email.
And by the way, it goes in stage, they lose their email and a month later, they lose their family. Some of these things are pretty bad.

**Shawn Ryan** (3:02)
Is that how they always start? They always start in your email?

**Kevin Mandia** (3:05)
No, the intrusions are all different. It depends on who's doing it. You have the modern nations, China and Russia, Iran, North Korea.
North Korea hacks for money, take them off. But China hacks for espionage. So if they break into your company, they'll break into Defense Industrial Base. They'll break into any company doing business in China and they steal emails. They steal things, communications. But they don't post it online, Shawn. They don't extort you. They follow rules of engagement that whatever their doctrine is, they follow it, but it's not destructive. They don't change your data. They're like the polite hackers. But criminals, it's gotten hard. Because they want to monetize any breach they've got. So they pull on every thread to monetize it.
If The Shawn Ryan Show got compromised, what they would try to do to you is steal your e-mails, steal things that matter to you and say, we're going to share it with the world unless you pass $5 million, $10 million. Those are the ones that are, you're always making the least bad of 10 decisions.