Hello, love bugs and welcome back to my YouTube channel if you're new here I'm Sarah and I help teach people how to find inner happiness through fitness and spirituality and today We're gonna talk about how to gain more confidence be more in your power Super super easily by just doing these few things. So if you're ready, let's get into it So really what we're gonna be talking about today is words that you're most likely using in your vocabulary That are disempowering you making you feel less confident and more Not in your power And it's really simple Although you'll have to kind of be weary about when you use them and just have that awareness and you kind of have to like Realize it stop yourself in the moment and like switch the wording So the first word I want to talk about is the word sorry so most of us really overused this word at a very high magnitude and a lot of times you can replace that word with a more positive direction that helps You keep your confidence and also doesn't make you seem weak to whoever you're apologizing to now Disclaimer if you're actually sorry about something and you want that to be known. Yes, please use that word an example I could think of would be You know, oh, you're running a little late to something and you show up and you're like, oh my gosh I'm so sorry. I'm late and it kind of sets the tone on a more negative note So instead of saying hey, sorry. I'm late. You want to say something more like hey Thank you so much for your waiting for me or thank you so much for your time And that more so levels the playing field and doesn't make you feel like you're Lesser than the other person another word that you want to remove is just like I Just wanted to do this or I just wanted to say this It's such a minimalizing word where if you just remove that word instead of saying I just think that blah blah blah blah blah I Think that Like it's it's just totally an unnecessary word I do it myself and what it does is just minimalize what you're trying to say And it's something that especially women, although I think everyone does it Really, we're trained to do that to almost like make yourself smaller and belittle yourself and belittle whatever it is That you're trying to say and you really just don't need to do that another example would be I was wondering if Again, that's such a minimalizing word like oh, I was just wondering if blah blah blah blah blah like for example If you wanted to see someone you could say, you know, I was just wondering if maybe you wanted to you know hang out No, no, no, no, no, I Wanted to know if you'd like to hang out blah blah blah blah Do you see the difference of that and the thing is is when you say words like this you do take a different tone in your voice I was wondering if oh, I was kind of wondering if I would like to take you for coffee How does blah blah blah sound either way if you use those words or if you don't the other person's answer is most likely Going to be the same, but people are attracted to confidence. They're attracted to not Minimalizing yourself. They're attracted to people that walk into the room and say what they really mean and mean what they say So don't belittle yourself. Don't say things like oh, I was wondering if or oh, I'm so sorry that No Step into your power you are a powerful human being you do not need to be little and you do not need to Minimize yourself for others to feel better around you if anything you're actually doing the opposite This next one is probably the one I'm most passionate about and that's saying I can't and Switching it with I won't so an example. I could tell you is back when I used to sell cars We had a vending machine in the dealership and of course we all know vending machines in the USA They're not healthy So someone would say hey Sarah. Do you want you know this and I would find myself saying oh You know if I was dieting like no, I can't and then I would immediately like I won't and it's so much more empowering Oh, I can't have that piece of chocolate. I won't have that piece of chocolate I'm choosing not to have that piece of chocolate. Do you see the difference there? Like it is just so these words like words make up our lives words make up who we are and how others perceive us and how We perceive ourselves so so if you make these little tweaks in your vocabulary It is literally going to change your entire life I promise another kind of slew of words that I'd like to mention here are I'll try to do something or I wish or I hope all of those things are essentially putting out into the universe and reprogramming your mind that You want to do something But you're essentially making yourself more comfortable by using those words like try or wish or hope and remove them I'm you're not going to try to lose weight. You're going to lose weight Yeah, you're not going to wish for more money.  I'm so passionate about this kind of stuff, especially because I Do have a degree in broadcast journalism. So I have literally Studied words and the differences they can make in the order you put them in in the tone that you say them in and You just I Did it you see you kind of have to catch yourself in the moment And I want you guys to understand how potent and how important words are because you are reprogramming your mind If you're saying things like I am Something negative. I am fat. I am lazy. I am too. I am too blah blah blah blah to accomplish x y and z You were putting that into your brain You are putting that into your subconscious and as we've talked about in law of attraction videos before if you're putting that out Into the universe, that's what you're getting back.    It will change. It will change everything. You believe it will change your life Like think about this What if I was sitting here filming this video and I'm saying well You should try to change this and you should try to do this And I think that maybe you could do it or I hope that you know You can do whatever your mind is instead of saying bitch you got this you can do this I know you can and you will do it. Do you see the way that I come off differently? I mean, I know I can be a little aggressive Please like and subscribe to this video or what if I said I really hope you guys would choose to subscribe or I Really wish that you would like this video like no Have confidence you've got this you have it and the only one that has control over what you believe is you if you Someone else saying things shut them out because if you start to reprogram your mind and you start to truly believe that you can And you will do things it won't matter what other people say It won't matter what other people think about you because you will be reprogramming your mind to believe in yourself and believe That you can do it and believe that you have the confidence and that you can and it's not something that's going to change overnight It's not like today.  You're still gonna slip up I mean you guys saw earlier in the video. I slipped I said just and then I caught myself and the more you catch yourself the more you have that awareness the more often You'll catch yourself and soon you'll train your mind to not even have these words come through or to not believe Them once they come through when I was at the dealership and I would I would say these things Oh, I can't have that immediately. I'd say I won't have that I'm choosing not to have that and I believe that and so it's a lot easier to achieve what you're looking for or what you want When you're removing these words from your vocabulary, so I hope you guys learned a lot in this video It's a very simple thing that you can do to really change The dynamic of your life to really change your confidence and to step into your power because you my friend are a powerful human being We all are I love you guys so much. Don't forget to like and subscribe this video and don't forget be limitlessly yourself


Hey, Virgo. Welcome back. Welcome back to the channel. This is Kelly from House of Virgo. Welcome back. If you're new, please do hit that like, share, and subscribe button. And hi, everybody in the chat. Go Eagles! So if you're new, welcome. You can join my channel if you want to get, well, I offer early access, but lately I haven't been very early with publishing these videos. So my apologies to those of you who are channel members. Been getting the videos out kind of late. But with that being said, you can still join and also you can join for 99 cents as well. So just click the join button. So just be mindful. These readings are general love readings. So some of the messages may or may not resonate. Take a fit. Leave the rest. This is for Virgos only. So if you're Virgo's son when rising your Venus, this will be for you. And so we are now at the end of October. It is the 17th and we're almost out of Libra season going into Scorpio season. So yeah, let's see what the remaining messages are from October 17th going into November 17th. We're going to take a look at like from today and a month going forward. All right, Virgo, let's get into this reading. And everybody, welcome the new mods. We've got some new mods here. Okay, engagement ring, engagement, partnership, commitment, eternity, completion, union. You have mask. Oh, okay, stabbed in the back and girl talk. Okay. Well, overall the message here, it feels like these are two messages. So I'm going to start with girl talk and stab in the back. I feel like some of you have some time that you spend with friends. Yeah, the first thing that's coming out is you've got some people, some friends around you who are either gossiping or talking some, you know, just not being very nice. I feel like that's a message. Some of you might have a hunch about what that's about. There's some people saying some stuff. Maybe it's work colleagues. There's a little bit of like, just talking behind your back. People you might think are your friends or one particular person. I don't know. I feel like just be careful. Maybe there's a friend that you had in the past or that you have now that you guys aren't talking right now because that person stabbed you in the back or you feel like, you know, it doesn't have to be a friend. It could be anybody external to you. But it feels like a friend. So in other words, it doesn't feel like it's a romantic partner, but it is someone, and it feels like it could be a sibling or work colleague or a friend or friends.  And I was trying not to say the S word, but it's me. You also have engagement ring and a mask. So I feel like there's someone on the love front who has deep, true feelings for you, but they are hiding it like this person wants commitment. They want partnership with you. You might just be like, I see question marks above your head. I don't know who this could be. I feel like there is somebody here who's hiding their true feelings. They wear a mask. Okay. They wear masks. And for some of you, this could have something to do with Halloween too. Someone hiding behind a mask. But I do feel like whoever this person is, and we'll go more into the reading, try to figure that out. They want union with you.  Like you, so I feel like someone could actually pop the question or make a statement or somehow you get like a either an intuitive knowing or you find out and you're like surprised by this. For some, this is like, I've always wanted to be with you. I'm hearing I've always wanted to like I wanted you to be my life partner.  Okay, let's take a look and see who this is. Let's try and find out who this person is. Okay. All right. These two cards. Oh, okay. Page of Swords and the Nine of Wands. So this person is watching you. They're stalking you, but they're kind of doing it in the background. With that Nine of Wands feels like they have boundaries up. They're not showing anything. Sometimes this could be the wounded warrior. This is someone maybe you were connected with them before. And they're like battle torn, battle worn, battle weary. Okay. This person has learned from their past failures, gathering their strengths right now, watching you, planning. They don't want to fight that this person doesn't want to argue. I'm also hearing they're being patient. But I do feel like but I do feel like they're watching. They're very curious about, you know, what you're doing or if you are, you know, moved on with somebody else. If you are, I'm just seeing something to do with an engagement ring and hiding that. Okay. Now, maybe some of you are engaged to somebody else and you've got a past person here who is curious. Maybe you might not be showing it or you're hiding something about that for some of you. Okay. So this person comes across as very single, single as Pringle, very independent. They don't have anybody else around them. This person also, so if it's a male who is interested in females, they have the opposite sex, who has stabbed them in the back, something along those lines as well. They might have just wanted friendship with them. But that other person did something shocking to them. Okay. That's just the energy I'm picking up.  On their own financially stable, secure, not with anybody else. No one else is connecting to them. They're not really connected. No one's significant is what I hear. I feel like this person has their eye on you. They're watching you. They're curious about you, but they're kind of like, I don't know, hiding behind the bushes watching you. They could be maybe watching you on social media. And I know some of you are like, Oh, I have people blocked, but either they're making fake accounts or they're somehow watching through mutual others, or they make, you know, somehow they see, they're just, if they don't see anything they're looking, they're looking to try to find something seeking answers. Okay. So what's going on here? So I'm going to tell you so far we have Gemini, Sagittarius, Virgo, Aquarius. Yeah, this person is sneaking. They're sneaking behind the scenes. They're hiding in the bushes. Hiding in the bushes Virgo. They're going to make a break for it though. I feel like this person is going to show themselves sometime between now and the 17th of November. Let me just take a look here and see. They're hiding behind work too as well. But I'm just picking up this energy of patience. Okay. They know, I feel like this person knows or will come to terms in this month period, this 30 day period that whoever they were connecting with before is or was not right for them. I feel like this person, their focus is solely on you, but they're hiding. They're not out right now saying or doing anything. They're just kind of spying and sneaking. Okay, let me see. They're also lying about work or working. I don't know how that might resonate. There's an energy of like this person is supposed to be working, but even when they're working, they're sneaking peaks at you. Interesting. So the ace of cups here. So there's somebody here, like a potential new start, new beginning with someone here. Definitely. This person, I feel like as soon as the time is right, they want to make a beeline towards you. Okay. Have a new romance, a new love start here. Now they have foresight. I feel like hindsight has caused them to have foresight. If that makes any sense to you, I feel like this person is making plans definitely to come your way. They want to give you all their heart, all their love, everything that they have. Okay. All right. So first court card we have showing up here is the king of cups. So this person comes through as a water element, although they might not be of that sign, it could be. There might be any other sign, but the energy, because we have all the elements within us, but at different times, we come out with different elements, maybe with different people, like when we're on the job, maybe we come out more with earth element in romantic relationships, maybe feelings more of the water elements. When we're hiking, we got more of that fire element. When we're studying and doing our taxes, we have that sword element. So because we engage everything at different times. So this person as far as a romantic relationship is coming through with the water element, very deep, deep feelings for you. This person shows up very mature, compassionate, calm, caring, friendly. This is how they're going to show up. But understand very deep feelings, but it's not the night of cups. It's more along the lines of like the king of cups energy, just you'd never know how they feel about you, because they just don't wear their heart on the sleeve. But when they speak, they do speak in watery, fluid, emotional waves at times, but even if it's peppered in there in some way, this person though, they show up very romantic and charming. So and for some, it is a water sign, Cancer Scorpio Pisces, but this is an energy of like this person is ready for the long term. Okay. And when it comes to engagement, if you're already involved with this person, they might be waiting for you to ask if you're if you want to like, you know, get engaged or get married or turn this into more. Well, I don't feel like they might be. I feel like they are, if you're already involved with the water sign. Okay, now our female energy. Okay, this person. So interesting, three of cups, and the eight of sorts. I feel like this person is very isolated from people right now, friends, three of cups, his friendship, friends, others, the opposite sex, dating, socializing, this person's all up in their head, feeling trapped, they feel restricted, backed into some kind of corner, could have something to do with the girl talk and stabbed in the back. This person finding out that perhaps if you were involved with them before that, and that ended and they went to others, it's not working out, and they know it, and they realize that they're kind of like paralyzed or hands are tied behind their back, they can't make anything work outside or external. So for some, this could be a little bit of a like, oh, well, what's Virgo up to? Starting a little bit of a comeback around from this person, but not direct just yet. This is more along the lines of like just seeing, it feels like a circle back around kind of energy to see if you're available to see if you're ready to take it to the next step with them or if you've already taken it to the next step with somebody else, a lot of that energy playing around, yeah, circle back around. So reconciliation as well. Okay, I'm seeing Aries energy. Yeah, coming in very innocent, playful, the past. So if you if you had a connection with this person in the past, the good times, which would be a past influence, are having an effect on them right now. Okay, so I feel like if there was any kind of betrayal or anything that might have happened in the past, that something ended or what have you that has faded away, I feel like there's forgiveness. But I also feel like now, just remembering all the good times kind of being a bit nostalgic about the connection that you that you had with them. And if this is someone that you're currently connected with Virgo, it kind of feels to me like there's a lot of playful energy. I feel like if you're connected with this person right now, they're either waiting for you to make a move or have that conversation about moving things to the next level, whatever your next level will be or would be at this time. All right, so there's definitely a spying energy going on throughout this time period, this, you know, the end of October into the middle of November, maybe the third week of November. Oh, yeah, here comes a page of cups. Communication for sure. An apology for some of you trying to make that reconnection again with you. This person has a crush or admires you. And like I said, for some of you, you might not be this might not be a past person, it could also be might not be someone you're currently connected with this energy. I know a lot of you will listen to that when I start the reading say it's not my reading. Well, this is a bit predictive because we're going into November, October through November. So for some of you, this may not be somebody you know, this could be somebody that kind of like, maybe you don't know them, but they know you. And they're going, they want to ask you out, they want to connect with you. This person's been through the war zone with romantic relationships in the past and we either stab or betrayed and there's something a separation or heartbreak or something happened to them. And I just feel like they have their eye on you, or they will be having their eye on you if you connect with them on a friend base, friend level. And kind of like checking to see and getting to know you or to see if you're with anyone so they can make their move. So for some of you, this is like an invitation as well, you'll be receiving around this time to do something fun also to connect with you. Some of you may have known this person in your past when you were like children, but maybe you never dated as well. That energy could be for some of you. Okay, now we also have the King of Pentacles. So, oh, and the King of Wands. So, okay, you have a few suitors going on here, Virgo, male or female energy. You have a few suitors, definitely. You might be in the process of deciding between two people and you've got someone else coming in either trying to reconcile or someone coming in that is thinking of you or wants to see if you are available. There's two fellows here. So, there might also be competition. You might have some competition here for two other people competing for your attention. Let me see. There you go. That's it, right there. The conflict, competition. So, for some of you, that is going to ring out, ring true. Um, gosh, Virgo, I don't even know what to say. Territorial energy.  It's the most severe thunderstorms.  Okay, and we are definitely in forward motion from that Mercury retrograde now. It has the post phase, post shadow phase has passed and now we're moving forward here. Oh boy, whole bunch of cards flipped out. What do they want to say?  You've got, you've got a little juggling going on here, Virgo.  Like you are, I don't know what you're doing in your life at this time. Yeah, if you're doing that level up or you just, I don't know, for some it's just an energy that's like the light, the stars are shining on you and oh, I just, what's that song? Look at the stars. Look how they shine for you. Who was that group? Yeah, I can't remember because if I try to pull something up immediately, I can remember stuff when I was like three years old, but I got to pull something out of the vault like from just instantly forget it. I need pass codes. I got to go in and try and like pick the lock. It just, the stuff doesn't come to me right away, but I think if you look up that song, look up, look at this, look at the stars, look how they shine for you. Yeah, like every star in the sky and every star in space right now is shining on purpose just for you and I feel like you're being viewed that way, but not just by one person, but by others and if there's this competition or some person sees that there's competition for you, that is also causing this, you know, revisit kind of energy or causing someone to be incredibly interested in you. You had two cups. Wow. Love connection being made for sure during this time period. Let me see what your love messages are here. What are your love messages? So Virgo Taurus, Capricorn, Aries, Leo Sacheterious, Cancer Scorpio, Pisces. We do have Gemini. We have Aquarius and you know, did I see Libra? You guys, huh? I did not wait. Don't tell me. Is it possible that I would have called every sun and not Libra? Some of you might be like joyful to hear that. You guys, there is no Libra here on the table. Okay. You have every sign here except for Libra. So that Libra might be gone and you guys are like, nope, that's it. It's done. Don't want that person back. Okay. And for those of you hoping for a Libra, well, maybe it'll happen in the next reading, but this, there's no Libra showing up here for you. So, but you do have others competing for your attention and another person who's interested, oh wait, yep, and another person who's interested who's watching you to see what you're all about. The curiosity just feels like a singles. Okay. But all right, let me see. So I don't feel like you're going to get a proposal in this time period. Okay. From the 17th of October through November, 17th. I don't feel like there's going to be a proposal, but I do feel there is going to be some type of a reach out, a love reach out, possibly an apology or someone coming in here. They're totally hiding their deepest feelings. Let me see what the love message is here. Balance. One person giving too much in this relationship. So Virgo, some of you have just like taken your power back. You're not overgiving. You're not undergiving. You're just, you know, you're in balance right now, which is really good. A lot of you are just like, you know, what's meant for me will be for me and what's not won't be. And you're accepting that. And that's really just the best way to live your life. If it's meant for you to come to you, you know, don't try not to stress yourself over things, the things that you don't have, because it's just wasted energy.  So I like this. If you haven't gotten to that place yet, that's definitely a tool to work on forgiveness, forgiving yourself or another will help you move forward. So some of you are employing the forgiveness tactic. Some of you are like, you know what, I forgive this whole situation so it doesn't keep me stuck anymore. I haven't forgotten it. But I know forgiving myself for participating in things that you know, you wanted but probably weren't good for you. You're forgiving yourself and another person which will help you move forward and embrace the new. So that's a I'm, I'm, I'm for forgiveness. I think that you get there when you get there, you know, sometimes you got to like work on that every day. Sometimes you got to remember and put that into practice when you get triggered or things bother you, you've got to just get into, oh, I'm going to forgive this person for why, for because they don't know what they're doing, right? And then getting to a place of acceptance. Everything happens for a reason. Okay. So this feels more or so than anything like advice for you at this time. Get into balance. If you're over giving, pull your energy back and put that towards yourself. Okay. Overgiving is going to do anything except leave you drained. So that's not a good place to be over giving no one ever. I don't think anybody ever says, oh, hey, give more love and they'll love you back more. No, that's actually quite the opposite. Because then you become maybe too needy or too clingy, you know, I mean, I think that the only over giving of love that's ever necessary is for an infant or for a baby, you can't over give love to a baby. And you certainly don't want to be giving over giving your love to an infant adult, because then what the heck is going on? That's weird. Save your over giving your over giving love to the baby to the child. No, not to any adults, you know, because that that just doesn't work. If you've been doing that, forgive yourself for that. Move forward with, you know, change that redirect that energy into yourself and accept. Okay, sometimes Virgo, it's just a matter of saying to yourself, okay, things don't work out. It is what it is. It's fine. Everything happens for a reason. Let it go and keep moving forward. But I do see some drama happening here, sometimes letting go and getting into balance forgiveness and moving forward brings, you know, then you display a different kind of energy when you do stuff like that. And that tends to attract people more so than before. Let me see. Okay, free yourself. There's the message, take back control of your life. So it feels like the strongest message for you during this time is focus on self, forgive yourself, get back into balance, accept where you are at this time, accept everything as it is, as everything happens for a reason, free yourself from the bondage or any kind of restriction that anyone has put you in or that you've allowed someone to put you in and take back control of your life. And watch how things change, Virgo. When you start doing that, I promise you the minute you, I'm not even talking about taking physical acts of walking away. I mean, when your energy shifts and you're no longer giving energy to other people, places and things like it, energy is fluid. Well, it's not fluid. It's, it's transcendental. It's transitive. So people can feel when you're not giving your energy to something. Isn't it interesting how nothing can feel like everything?  And if you don't believe that, that's fine, but try it. Just try it. I'm sure there's people here in the chat that will tell you, no, that's absolutely true. I have experienced that in my own personal life many, many years ago.  Just take it. Then everything comes back to you. The minute you give up, the minute you surrender. Okay. Yep. Unrequited love. So some of you just need to get in this, this space right now to accept that maybe there's just not enough to keep a particular relationship going. Even if your heart wants it, you may have to, like, I do feel like in order to get yours, to free yourself and get yourself in a position to let go, you kind of have to give yourself the facts about situations and people and certain relationships. Like you have to look at the facts. You can't look at what your heart wants because your heart is always going to fool you and is always going to try to find a way because love does that, but it doesn't work if the other person isn't doing it. So getting into that position of saying, you know, it wasn't meant to be, everything happens for a reason, move on. Then all this energy comes flooding back your way. That it's just the way it works. What you choose to do about that is up to you. Okay. But you want to get yourself in a position where you can open your heart again to give and receive the highest energy of all. It doesn't say open your heart to give the highest energy at all. It says give and receive reciprocity. Very important in a relationship for it to work. Okay, let me see Chinese sign. Let's see what I'm going to look at you. What is your Chinese sign? Virgo, a little more specific as far as your reading goes. Okay, some of you might be a dragon, year of the dog, year of the goat, year of the ox. Okay, we have double dragon, a snake, rat, pig, rat again, goat again, and a rabbit. Okay. And if I didn't call your Chinese sign, don't worry about it. It doesn't mean it's not your reading. Let me see what other messages does Virgo need to have from the time period of October 17th through November 17th. So negative thinking and a lustful fiery spirit. Those are your Achilles heel, Virgo. Negative thinking and a lustful fiery spirit. Be careful that this energy doesn't trip you up. Okay. Be wary of this. That lustful fiery spirit is great, but that could get you into a lot of trouble if it's for anything other than, well, lust represents sex. I don't know if you can really lust over, I don't know, pizza. I know someone in here in particular and I say in any names could lust over pizza, but I feel like that's more along the lines of physical pleasure. Be very careful because that will trip you up if you indulge in that with people who could actually harm you and be careful of any negative thinking that you might have. Stop it in its tracks. You can't stop yourself from thinking negatively, but you can stop the continuation of it. That's the practice. So, you know, if the thought comes and you notice that you're having a negative thought, then you need to counteract that. The antidote, the antibiotic for that is a positive thought. Okay, that's how you change those brainwaves. Also, twin flame. Communicate your love to the divine. Be thankful for a twin soul love. You've been chosen for one another, even when times are tough and seen back and forth. This love was meant to be and for some it's time to reconcile. So, for some of you, this is a twin flame reconciliation coming into union again, but it's not going, I really don't feel, the only way you can accept that is if you both have healed and gotten into a better place and you both let go of the past. I know some of you, that's a difficult thing and some of you are like, no, no, no, just bring me a soulmate. Just bring me the pizza delivery guy. I'll take that person or just bring the pizza. That'll be my soulmate. I get it. I get it. But for some of you, this is a twin flame connection here that is trying to work. Universe is trying to is putting you guys through stuff and it's awful. It feels horrible for some of you. Okay, some of you are going to be learning a new skill during this time period. Could be a work situation. Some of you might be going back to school or collaborating or improving your craft, focusing on quality over quantity. So a very good distraction for you and okay, there's a popular social female in your life or will be coming into your life. This person very self-confident, very self-assured, a bit feisty, bold, charming and courageous. It's going to help you get through some kind of struggle that you might be dealing with at this time. And I feel like this might be more along the lines of a friend or a non-romantic partner is what I should say. Okay, let me see what your charms are here. I'm going to flip these over so you can see them. If you guys want to get this deck, there's a link in the description box below to purchase my Moon Patero deck. Okay, so you've got lipstick and oh, a dove, crazy. I was just talking about a dove today in one of my classes that I teach. And we were talking all about the dove as how the dove is the messenger was used in a biblical form to go and find dry land. Okay, connected to like, you know, Noah's Ark, that whole story. And the dove was sent out to go find solid ground. I feel like this is a message for some of you who are seeking solid ground at this time.  Or some of you are, there's a message, either you're receiving a message or you're sending one about someone, I feel like someone's offering an olive branch, definitely, or an apology of some sort. Okay, now the lipstick, some of you might be maybe you're putting on lipstick right now or you're changing your lipstick shade with the seasonal change. Some of you might just be looking or shopping for better lipstick or just looking for your lipstick. And others might be designing or creating some cosmetics or working in a cosmetic field as well. Some of you might be looking for some makeup for Halloween. Okay, now the first thing that fell out here was the dolphin. So I don't know if you're dolphins fans. Maybe some of you might be dolphins fans or you see something to do with that. The dolphin is kind of like an angel of the sea. And I feel like at least that's how I see them. It's kind of like their rescue. They save, they protect. So I feel like that's very symbolic that you are safe. You have been saved, or you have guidance, or you have others or angels looking over you, watching out for you. And you also have a key with a blue heart. So I feel like there is an energy of someone being very sad in their heart. They got the blues. And the only way that they can unlock their hurt and pain is by giving you the key. They want to give you a key to come into their house. And, you know, it's very symbolic come into their house and heal their blues. Okay, you know, it's like a love key. And for others, there is, okay, someone just said someone is receiving a key on a street. It's called Cobalt Street, C-O-B-A-L-T, Cobalt Street. They just said Cobalt. Okay, Cobalt Street. I think, you guys, I think that's going to be it. That was not too long. So I'm going to leave that reading there for you. I hope that that I hope that brought you some guidance to some degree. I think I might go live one of these days during the week to do a reading rather than relate at night. I might do it instead of or I might just add it as a bonus. Tomorrow I'm going to do a reading that will have an extended. Most likely, if it does, I'll leave the link for you to go over to the extended reading. But basically, yeah, this is going to be it for you. And I will leave this here. I hope you guys have a fantastic evening and an awesome day. And I will see you all next time. All right, you guys, go Eagles. Bye.


Thank you very much, so good afternoon everyone, and yet my name is Al Carquhey, I'm a solutions engineer at Cado Security with about 20 years of cybersecurity experience from a time in the Royal Air Force and leading incident response engagements at PWC UK. Hello everyone, I'm Matt Muir and I'm a threat intelligence researcher at Cado Security. Prior to working at Cado, I was a macOS malware researcher and I've got a background in DevOps, digital forensics and operational cybersecurity. Great, thank you very much Matt. So to kick things off, I just walked through the agenda. So during this webinar Matt and myself will talk about the challenges we've heard from cloud users about performing investigations of compromised cloud assets. Matt will provide a briefing on a threat act group that has been targeting cloud assets for financial gain using crypto coin miners. I'll be walking through a Kubernetes compromise case study, and then we'll wrap up with the key takeaways and some of the question and answers. So, I always think it's important to start off to talk about the challenge itself. So let's face it, performing an in-depth investigation in the cloud is extremely complex and time consuming process. And according to recent research by the ESG, organisations are four times likely to say investigations and incident response is more difficult in cloud environments versus traditional on-premise environments. When asked about the leading challenges security teams faced when it came to performing cloud investigation, lack of visibility and context was the number one response. This has got a lot to do with the ephemeral dynamic nature of cloud resources, such as containers. Since we'll be talking about Kubernetes today, I thought it'd be quite an interesting stat to touch on, where 50% of the survey respondents actually reported that it'd be simply impossible for them to investigate an incident in which it impacted their container environment. So now I'd like to hand it over to Matt for his briefing on the threat act group that's been targeting cloud assets. Thanks Al. So as part of Cado Labs, Cado's threat research team, I'm regularly involved in conducting research into new software threats affecting cloud infrastructure. In this section I'm going to discuss an emerging malware family we've been tracking since the end of 2021 named ABC Bot. As we'll see, ABC Bot is a botnet that targets insecure cloud compute instances. Currently, it targets cloud service providers such as Alibaba and Huawei Cloud, but the techniques it uses for initial infection and propagation mean it could realistically target instances from any cloud service provider. So to give a quick overview of ABC Bot, the malware includes payloads consisting of shell scripts and elf executables with the shell scripts in particular displaying some notable capabilities. These capabilities include self propagation in a worm-like fashion, using information about cloud security services and competing malware campaigns to disabled competitors, and registration of persistence via common Linux persistence techniques. So to provide some context around ABC Bot, the campaign was originally reported on November 2021 by 360NetLab. 360NetLab focused their analysis on the elf payloads used to connect the infected machine to the botnet. For this reason, we won't cover this today and will instead cover one of the installation shell scripts used to propagate the malware and download additional payloads. We believe this script reveals more about the attacker's capabilities and objectives, which we'll discuss further in the coming slides. Let's begin by taking a look at an interesting capability displayed by this malware family, the killing of competitors. One thing that is immediately clear from analysing this initialisation script is that the developers behind ABC Bot are really invested in killing off competing miners. The function that you can see on screen here is dedicated to removing artifacts of the competing malware campaigns and mining software such as XenRig. The malware also searches for malicious Docker images and removes or kills them as appropriate. This suggests targeting of misconfigured Docker API endpoints, which is a common infection vector in cloud environments. Clearly, the ABC Bot developers had invested significant time into researching cloud security threats, given the previous slide. However, the developers also demonstrated a knowledge of cloud security mechanisms as the disabling of security services native to the CSPs targeted was also performed. This allows their malware to execute unimpeded and also allows us as analysts to determine the targets of the campaign. For example, several lines were dedicated to killing processes associated with the Alibaba and Tencent cloud security agents, as we can see on screen here. The knowledge of malware research will know that persistence is a key objective for most malware samples. ABC Bot is no different. Persistence for the ABC Bot initialisation scripts was established via an RC script in Cron. This is common on Linux and Unix systems. Once registered, the persistent scripts periodically try to retrieve a copy of the current script and execute it on the fly by piping it through SH. Persistence ensures that the script is always running and is kept alive in the event that a user or another process in the system attempts to hold execution. Another key objective of most malware campaigns is to establish network connectivity to allow bidirectional communication with the attacker. This is known as command and control or C2. In a function named IP tables checker, the developer behind ABC Bot configures the Linux IP tables firewall to drop or accept traffic based on port numbers and source IP addresses. This particular function gave us some insights into the state of the campaign at the time of analysis. For example, it is clear from this function that the malware is under active development as the author has left commented code. In one of the commented rules, it appears as if the developer configured IP tables to accept all ingress traffic from our mobile IP. This was likely a command and control server under the attacker's control. Another commented rule drops ingress traffic from ports 2375 and 2376. These ports are typically associated with the Docker engine API. We suspect this was added at one point to prevent attempts to halt execution of any malicious Docker containers the malware creates. A check is also done to see whether these rules are already in place, but if they aren't, they are no longer added. Instead, a more generic rule is added to allow all ingress traffic to a non standard port number of 26800. Interestingly, URLs embedded in the malware also made use of this port. Another notable technique of ABC but was the ability to infect related hosts with a copy of itself. As we can see on the slide, the malware checks for the existence of roots SSH known hosts file and corresponding public key. If these files are found in roots SSH directory, known hosts are enumerated and a copy of the installation script is run on the remote host. This ensures propagation of the malware in a worm-like fashion and could result in an organization's entire cloud estate being rapidly compromised. So now that we've covered some of the notable capabilities of ABC but let's discuss an unexpected finding that emerged during analysis of this campaign. When analyzing ABC but we were initially under the impression that we were analyzing a relatively new malware family. Continued analysis revealed that this malware had a longer history than we initially thought. Back in late 2020, Cisco's Talos security research team reported on an emerging cloud cryptojacking malware campaign that they named Zante. We discovered a link between ABC bot and Zante when conducting analysis on the infrastructure behind the ABC bot campaign. Additional comparison of the code used in samples in both campaigns confirmed our suspicions. Before discussing the similarities between these malware families, let's have a brief overview of Zante itself. So Zante is a family of cryptojacking malware with the primary objective of hijacking system resources to mine the Monero cryptocurrency. In order to mine Monero on target systems, the common open source miner X and rig is deployed. Zante also spreads via exposed Docker API endpoints with an initialization script responsible for propagation, network scanning and downloading of additional payloads. Zante's additional payloads includes an open source library for hiding processes, a script to disable security services and kill completing miners and the X and rig binary itself. This will probably sound familiar if you're paying attention to the previous section of this talk. Let's take a closer look at some of the signs that demonstrate these campaigns are linked. So in the report published in late 2020, researchers from Talos commented on the coding style present in the Zante scripts they analyzed. They highlighted that in the samples analyzed, function declarations were located at the top of the script and function invocation was conducted at the bottom. Talos suggested this likely aids testing new iterations with function calls commented or uncommented as necessary. Although this is a fairly tenuous link, it's interesting to note that samples from both the ABC bot and Zante campaigns follow this convention. So diving deeper into the samples themselves, we see several of the functions in Zante have identical names to those in ABC bot. Some of the functions also have the string go appended to the end of their names. This is another convention observed in both campaigns. We identified five functions with identical naming that you can see on the slide here. Subsequent analysis of each of the above functions was performed to determine whether they were semantically equivalent. The first function we encountered that appeared in both campaigns was called name server check. This function is responsible for configuring the target system to allow DNS requests to be made to the internet. It achieves this by checking whether the IP for Google or Cloudflare's public DNS server is present in the xaresolved.con file. If it isn't, the script then adds it. The ABC bot version of this function is much larger than the Zante equivalent and has additional functionality. This suggests that ABC bot is an iteration of Zante, which also makes sense given it was discovered a year later. More importantly, the lines dedicated to configuring DNS are identical between both campaigns, as can be seen in the screenshot on this slide. As I mentioned before, resistance is a key goal of most malware campaigns. Given this, it's unsurprising that the function on screen was present in both ABC bot and Zante. As the name suggests, this function is responsible for achieving persistence via cron, the task scheduler which is present in virtually all Linux distributions. Since cron is pretty much ubiquitous, this is a common method of persistence on Linux systems, so isn't necessarily notable in itself. However, analysis of this function revealed further links between the ABC bot and Zante campaigns. One example of this was the presence of a comment from the developer regarding additional logic to determine whether cron was running. This line appeared in samples analyzed from both campaigns and the wording was identical. The lines of the cron entry itself are also of interest. Part of the cron entry consists of a curl command with a defined user agent string. The string used in both Zante and ABC bot samples can be seen highlighted in the screenshot. Interestingly, one of the payloads downloaded by the malware also used this string as it's name. Existence of a unique string such as this between the two campaigns seems more than coincidental and suggests that server-side code from both campaigns expects us to be present in the user agent. Similar to the previous slide, this was another function responsible for registration of persistence, except this time via RC scripts. RC scripts allow code to be run at boot or login and similar to cron are particularly useful for malware persistence. This is another common technique, although perhaps less so than cron. Looking at the code within this function again, we noticed identical commenting between both samples. The functionality of check RC is similar to cron check go. Persistence is achieved by writing shell commands to RC dot local, which is one of the RC script files. The shell commands are used to invoke the curled data transfer utility with a unique user agent string. This downloads a copy of the current script and pipes it through SH to ensure it's kept running. Version numbers are also appended to the user agent string suggesting iteration of the sample. Similarly, the lines responsible for creating the RC script are virtually identical across both campaigns. At this point in the analysis, we noted that the structure of the code, wording of two-to-comments, wording of log statements and several lines of code were identical in samples of both ABC bot and Zanzi. I mentioned previously that ABC bot downloads additional payloads to connect it to a botnet. The one-go function is responsible for downloading these payloads and performing additional configuration of the target system. There were more differences observed in the ABC bot versus Zanzi versions of this function than any of the others. Some lines are identical, however. In Zanzi, the developer configures the huge pages feature via modification of the appropriate kernel parameter. This likely facilitates cryptocurrency mining by configuring the system to support memory pages greater than default. In ABC bot, we see these lines commented out. This, combined with prior analysis of payloads downloaded by this function, suggests that the objective has changed from cryptojacking in Zanzi to more traditional botnet activity in ABC bot. Despite this, it's worth noting that the semantics of the two versions of this function are similar. Processes are enumerated to check whether this machine is already being compromised by ABC bot or Zanzi. If malicious processes are found, this is logged. If not, the process is launched as necessary. So hopefully we've illustrated the similarities between certain functions found in both of these malware campaigns. At this point in our analysis, we were fairly convinced that these samples were linked. However, there are some additional findings to note. We mentioned that propagation via enumeration of known hosts was a notable capability of ABC bot. This exact same technique was used in the samples of Zanzi we analysed. Examples of the code responsible for this can be seen on the slide. In ABC bot, a number of malicious users were added to the system to facilitate a backdoor. The usernames added to the system were identical in samples from both campaigns. While this could be an attempt by one threat actor to copy another, we believe that our prior findings indicate that this is more than coincidental. Moving on now to our final and most important finding. Although each of the similarities we've discussed were enough to give us reasonable suspicion that these campaigns were linked, we needed one final piece of evidence to conclusively link the campaigns. We already discussed the function from ABC bot named IP Tables Checker, which was responsible for configuring IP tables to allow ingress traffic from a non-standard port. An incredibly similar version of this function was also found in this anti-sample we analysed. Not only that, but rules used within this function to allow traffic from a C2 server included the same IP address in both Zanzi and ABC bot. This constitutes an overlap of infrastructure. The server at that IP address would have to be under the control of the developer behind both ABC bot and Zanzi for it to be usefully included in this script. Of course, they're unlikely to include this if it wasn't a part of their own infrastructure. We believe that this is the strongest indicator yet that these campaigns are linked and the same threat actor is responsible. So to summarise, the ABC bot and Zanzi campaigns show the sophistication of malware developers in the cloud security space. Although code reuse is common in malware, we've highlighted an overlapping infrastructure and identified reuse of unique strings, which would be difficult or pointless for someone to copy. If the same threat actor is behind these campaigns, we believe this indicates a shift away from cryptocurrency mining, a common objective of cloud malware, on to potentially more destructive bot net activities. So I'll hand you back to Al now for a case study on another attack with similar TTPs, except this time targeting Kubernetes clusters. Thanks Matt. So yes, in this case study, I'll be walking through an investigation of a comprised Kubernetes node, which was ultimately resulted in attacker gain access to the AWS console. The case study used the tactics techniques and procedures from threat actor group that is focused on comprising containers or the systems that we run on. So here we have an overview of the setup that was deployed and compromised. In the centre of it all is an EKS cluster with three nodes running a simple application. The nodes were configured with the Kubernetes controller API exposed to the internet. And in addition to the cluster, AWS GuardDuty and CloudWatch were enabled to provide external logging and monitoring capabilities, along with the deployment of our creative response platform, which we use for data capture and processing. With organisations moving services to container-based cloud systems, and as you've heard from Matt's coverage of ABC buttons and things, threat actors are actively looking for exposed and poorly configured Docker or Kubernetes APIs to exploit. Once the exploitation is achieved, threat actors will look to complete their immediate objectives of deploying column miner and then look for further systems to compromise whether those are local or delivered via C2 command control from internet-based systems. So what's the worst that could happen? Well, if I say that typically, and as Matt's mentioned already, most of the time is for boring coin mining. But I think you could go further than deploying applications like XMRAG. So, for example, threat actor could exploit their access to perform data exfiltration, which could be part of a ransomware attack. Utilising user accounts on systems that have been compromised for lateral movement. If they were able to break out of the container environment, this could lead to an attacker being able to spin up or destroy other containers, or worse, expand their access to the cloud infrastructure level itself. And then from there, they could modify and create cloud user accounts and use these access to gain access or observe other resources or areas of the cloud environment, where maybe key or sensitive data may be stored. So now that we've covered the setup and environment and what threat actors can do, let's move on to how we perform the investigation. A critical component to any investigation is data. If you don't have access to all the necessary data sources and the data that I've been able to process and analyse, then you're not likely to be able to confirm threat actor actions, or you are likely to miss their activity altogether. Here we show the data sources that we use during the investigation, and we'll have some examples of them as we go through our presentation. So I'm looking at the value of what cloud provider logs can replace. So cloud trail can provide you with an audit of what's happening within your account. So, for example, new user account has been created, or the IP address is associated with a console logon. CloudWatch can provide you with system usage telemetry, which can be used to identify abnormal system activity such as high CPU or memory usage, both of which are good indicators of heavy workloads can associate with crypto manual. From a network telemetry perspective, VPC flow logs can show abnormal network connections, which have been made from systems themselves. This can be tied into the GuardDuty system, or GuardDuty logs, which is AWS's providing threat detection to show connections that may be associated with tort exit nodes. So here we have an example of the VPC flow logs, which have been processed using the CatoResponse platform. This top section shows a network connection to an IP address, which, when you look it up, resolves back to PaySpin. We've seen PaySpin being used to host malicious scripts, and seen as a common mechanism to distribute that code to compromise systems. This bottom section shows SSH network traffic from attacker systems to the Kubernetes node itself. One thing to note here, the VPC flow logs don't necessarily appear in order of the network connection establishment. So, for example, the first event shows the network connection flow from PaySpin to the node, and the second event shows the flow from the node to the PaySpin. And it would be expected to be the other way around, as it was the node itself that initiated the connection to PaySpin. The benefits you can get from doing a disk-based analysis. So having access to the full disk allows analysts to run additional detection or investigation tools, which can then help identify malicious files or for actual activity. One of the main benefits of that is that you have access to file contents themselves, and then as you're going through your investigation, you can look into the contents of those files. Whereas if you don't do that collection in the first place, you'll end up having to do repeated multiple collections from that target system. Having access to that data can also allow analysts to identify potentially staged data for exaltration and also historical data such as user command line activity. In this example, where we process the disk image of the Kubernetes node, we can see that we've got a log entry event for a successful SSH connection, where the attacker was able to access the nodes using the root user account. From this point, as part of the investigation expanded, we reviewed the contents of the authorised key file in the rootusers.ssh folder, and then from there we find an unknown SSH key had been added to that file. Looking now at memory analysis, so memory analysis can provide visibility of the runtime information and can show details of what processes were running, including some of the command line arguments. An analyst can use this information to establish what libraries and drivers were loaded for each of the processes, and also can aid with the identification of road processes or code injection. Long with process details, memory analysis can provide network connection information associated with those processes and command line history that has been effectively written to disk or files that a particular process has been accessing. Memory analysis can also provide the analyst's ability to extract those files and process executables from the capture, and those can then be further analysed using additional tools, and in which they may can lead to additional indicators and use for identification of other affected assets. Additional context around processes such as the timestamps, and especially around the network can help with understanding the order activity that's taking place. Some things to note from doing memory capture and analysis. The memory capture itself, it's from a moment in time, so you may not find that as much historical through activity as you think. Looking for false, look out for false positives from things like activity signatures, if that system is running software such as AB. It can be tricky to perform the capture and analysis of memory from cloud-based systems, so be careful that you don't take the environment too much. Analyzing network connections highlighted suspicious network traffic when we looked at this. Here we have an aptly named process called NCAT, and it has a connection to an unknown remote IP address. Looking for additional processes with connections to that same IP address, we identified that a bash process also showed the same network connection information. When we look at the process listing, we can see that the NCAT and bash processes have the same start time. On systems that are running containers, each of those container processes will have its own container-chim component part. Expanding these, we find that our suspicious process bash is also a child process of the aptly named NCAT, which is running on a container that's also running an NGNX process. So when we pull all this information together, we can see a lot more of the picture. So using each of the data sources, we've mapped out where we identify through activity. No one single source of information showed the full picture. Having to look at this in totality, we'll enable analysts to confidently answer the questions such as what happened, when did it happen, and how did it happen. When we pull this information together in a combined timeline, you can see network connections by attacker onto the node itself. These were followed by attempted connections to a URL associated with crypto mining, followed by Kubernetes API audit log showing the launch of an XMRA container. And finally, the creation of an AWS account itself, and then that account being assigned with the IAM full access policy. In this example, we've assessed that the attacker's intent is more financially motivated with the distribution and execution of XMRA point minor. However, their ultimate access could potentially lead to greater problems with that additional account being created with the full access for the IAM policy. And that could then allow them access to additional areas of the platform and cloud area and have unauthorised access to data. So, some key takeaways. Organisations are moving their opportunities, their operations and capabilities to the cloud. The threat actors have already been operating in cloud based systems, and they are affixed while exploiting their knowledge and experience of it to achieve their objectives. As mentioned in match review of ABC Botans and Thing, threat actor groups, and demonstrated in this case study, API endpoints are actively being sought and if poorly configured could lead to the exploitation and compromise the node and potentially further systems and resources. Setting up automation is a key function of being able to do Kubernetes investigations. It must be quick to capture all the data that's necessary to fulfil a full investigation. If not, then you're going to lose some of that and then you'll not be able to do that complete and effective function. Utilising the full potential of monitoring and not only from your systems themselves but also from client providers. So, we can have traditional triage disk memory data that will provide security teams with the means to answer those key questions of what happened, when did it happen and how did it happen. So, thank you for your time this afternoon, and I'll pause here now for a minute to let anyone post any questions that they have into the Q&A box. Question, there have been many recent malware botnets that have specifically targeted Chinese cloud providers. Why do you think this happens? Matt, I think this is a good one for you. So yeah, we're not entirely sure why this is the case, but for the guess I'd say that many of these CSPs are newer than for example AWS or some of the other bigger cloud providers. So, this is security controls are not as mature as some of the larger CSPs, which makes compute instances running under them and easier target for attackers. I've also got another question. How is access gained to install the RC scripts? Yeah, I could probably take that as well. So, this is something that's a really good question because it's not completely clear. And I think because a lot of these campaigns we're looking at were historical, so identifying the initial infection vector is pretty difficult. But we believe that malware spread via exposed Docker engine API endpoints, so it seems likely the remote commands are sent to the server with Docker potentially running under root post compromise. So these commands can be used to download the initialization cell scripts or attempt to escape the container and run those commands on the box itself. Right. Investigating a potentially compromised container is a huge blind spot for us. So when you say automation, what does that actually mean? Automating your investigation should look at all your data sources. So, if you have that ability to utilize capable things like source or sole platforms, you can create playbooks, which will could be triggered from a high fidelity trigger. And then use that to automatically go and capture or initiate the capture of your data. Bring that into a central place. Get it processed and then have it accessible to the entire security team to allow the analysts to then concentrate on working on the investigation itself and not necessarily worrying about what data needs to be captured and where is that going to be stored. So what Kubernetes info or forensics opportunity might be lost if not actively managed and collected. So one thing that we've seen is with regards to kind of containers, those systems themselves when they're in their due to their nature, they can be easily spun up and easily destroyed and torn down. And unfortunately, is that aspect of being torn down, being able to collect information from there becomes then a problem. Okay. Thank you everyone for your time this afternoon. And we'll follow up with any of the questions that were not answered by email, but now I'll hand back to Marissa from the Linux Foundation. Wonderful. Thank you so much Alan Matt for your time today and thank you everyone for joining us. Excuse me. Just a quick reminder that this recording will be up on the Linux Foundation's YouTube page later today. So we hope you will join us for future webinars and have a wonderful day. Thank you.


If he were like me, raising his hands up high would mean surrender, but he is not like me. With his hands up he looks even bigger, more threatening, more likely to destroy me.  What if we had met on the street without the uniforms, the holsters and hoods that mark our bodies as different? What if we had fed our bodies together around a table? Then would I have found him to be like me? Thanks for watching!


Welcome to the AI For Good Global Summit 2018. I am delighted to be joined by Kevin Kajitani and Mr Akira Fukaburi. They are both ANA Avatar co-directors at ANA Holdings. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having us. So Kevin, we'll start with you. You both actually have a background in aeronautical engineering. So what's that to do with avatars? That's a question that we often get. If I may, I'd like to kind of talk about what an avatar is, first of all. We define an avatar as being a physical system that allows you to essentially teleport your consciousness, presence, and skills to anywhere in the world. So it's kind of a new form of transportation. It's not an avatar in a virtual space, but an avatar in a physical dimension. So the question we often get is, you know, why would an airline like ANA and an aerospace engineer like us pioneer a technology that allows people to travel without getting on an airplane? But we don't see avatars as being a competing technology. We see this as essentially an extension of the service that we've been providing all along, which is really connecting people and bridging the gaps of distance, time, and culture in the world. And when we kind of do the math, we realize that only about 6% of the world is traveling via airplanes. And as the only efficient providers of long distance connectivity, we believe that that's a huge market failure. And so we believe avatars will allow us to kind of break through that barrier and provide physical access to the remaining 94% of the world. And you are both founding partners of the X-Prize, and this very interesting project. What can you tell us, Akira, about the X-Prize for avatars? What's the project all about? Yeah, so X-Prize is a nonprofit organization based in the US, and they created global competition to drive innovation. So as an airline, it's really hard to create a really big disruption, like big innovation, because yeah, like many, like including us, all the airlines are struggling. So we knew that X-Prize is really professional for creating innovation using technology. So we kind of approached them, and we started really foundation partnership to work together to really create innovation. And then in 2016, X-Prize, they used to create their global competition, the X-Prize in house. They used to design in house, but in 2016, they opened up the design process to outside organization to design the next X-Prize. And Kevin and I, we competed in the very first X-Prize, prize design competition called Visioneers, and we competed against eight other global teams. So at that time, our theme was transportation, the big theme to create the prize. And at that time, our vision and vision is to really connect 7.5 billion people. But as Kevin mentioned, currently we only have 6% of the whole population actually traveling. So you need really a jump here. So our solution first was we came up with the idea of teleportation. Really. So we tried to create a teleportation prize, but we found out it will take for 100 years. It wasn't impossible, but still it will take a long period of time. So we kind of first back cast and come up with a telepresence, which we call avatar. So we teleport into a robot. Then we do communications or like we do tasks. And you can actually see and hear and touch. This is really important. So you have like 5G networks and you'll be able to log into the robot. And you can actually feel the heat and the softness and the harness as well. And by using this technology, you need a X-Prize. Because we do have the VR or AR technology, but those technologies are really developing independently. So there you need an X-Prize. So with X-Prize, we can converge these technologies into an avatar. So that's where we started. So now we launched the avatar X-Prize to create general purpose avatar, which anyone can log into that avatar and you can do multiple tasks. If you're a medical doctor, you can log in and you can do the surgery. If you're a teacher, you can teach children in different countries. And you can do that. You can travel to like 10 places in one hour. So Kevin, in order to deliver this vision, was AI the missing ingredient? It's one of the key ingredients. As Akira is mentioning, in order to create a general purpose avatar platform, it requires integrating multiple exponential technologies, one of which is artificial intelligence. And the ways in which we see AI playing a really important role in creating a general purpose avatar on multiple fold. For example, we see it as being a major ingredient in reducing the amount of data transfer that needs to happen because that's going to be a major bottleneck for latency issues, for example. Also, there are security and safety issues. And we believe that AI will help with kind of taking over in case of, you know, unexpected situations, if there's a loss of network connectivity, for example. And one other important relationship between avatars and AI that isn't often discussed is that essentially as people begin using these avatars to explore the world, to transfer their skills and experience the world, we begin to build this very rich, data rich database of human actions, communications, skills. And we'll be able to use that and feed those into the next generation of AI systems, which I believe will really accelerate our path to solving many of the, achieve many of the SDGs that we're trying to achieve through AI. So, Kera, to conclude with, why is it important for you and your organization to be here at the AI for Google Summit? Yes. So our really aim is to connect 7.5 billion people in new ways using avatars. So really the main goal is to tackle global agenda. Please imagine if you place one avatar in a remote village, that village will have access to every doctors or teachers or engineers. So we can use like 7.5 billion skills and resources to tackle global agenda. That's probably the first ever thing that we have, humanity have never experienced before. And to do that, we have to really work together with the UN and many organizations and many companies and many startups. That's the reason we came to attend this summit. And we really are looking forward to work together with a different kind of really organizations who have strong passion to make the world better place. Well, thank you very much to both of you. Thank you very much.


Do you have a car? Yes, I do. What kind of car do you have? I have a Honda. Is it new? It was new in 2003. So it's pretty old now. Yes, it is, but it still looks good. It is, but it still looks good.


So, without further ado, let me welcome, already on stage, OFIS CEO, Sachiko Motto, to welcome you all. Thank you, Astor. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the EU OpenStores Policy Summit. Really excited to get started, and my excitement grew while waiting for the event to start. It was great to see, you know, to read the chat in the chat. Just, it adds a little bit of the pre-FOSTA feeling. It's the eighth year that we are hosting a policy-focused event on the day right before FOSTA. And to us, it's always one of the highlights of the year. And it has been an important opportunity for us to bring together leaders of open source that are usually in town for FOSTA, the policymakers that are based in Brussels. Over the years, the event has grown from a fairly intimate gathering, I would say, to what is perhaps the main forum focused on open source and public policy, not just in Europe, but possibly anywhere. So, it's a good moment to be here this year, meeting virtually for the first time, which has allowed us to have many more participants than ever before. I looked this morning and we had over a thousand people registered to attend today. And we'll see, it might fluctuate a little bit depending on what time zone people are in. We have people from all over the world registered today. And so here I want to extend a big thank you to the Linux Foundation and their events team for supporting us in organizing the event and enabling us to scale up to the level of online attendance. And also thank you to our longstanding supporter Red Hat for sponsoring this event. Now, we have a truly amazing lineup of speakers today. I always say that, but today we are really overwhelmed and eager to get started. And so just before we kick off, I wanted to give a few words of reflection in order to put today's event and the scale of the event into context. One year ago, at last year's event in Brussels, Piers O'Donohue of the European Commission, whom we are also fortunate to have joined us again this year, he gave a speech that we at OFE really took to heart. I don't know if it was intended that way, but for us it was a moment of ask not what Europe can do for open source, but what open source can do for Europe. Piers really challenged the open source community to engage more with the most pressing and complex policy challenges facing society. And it's not an exaggeration to say that that speech was one of the main inspirations for us to take this event to the next level. And so we are taking the conversation beyond digital policy to innovation, to the competitiveness of European industry and to job creation. And since that speech, OFE, I think, as you know, has worked with Fraunhofer, ISI, to deliver a study for DD Connect on the impact of open source software and hardware on the European economy. The final results of this study are presented here today for the first time. And it's the first major study of this kind since 2006. So it's a really big moment. It sets out to quantify the value of open source for Europe. And it's exciting for us to see and to be able to present some of those results today. Other important milestones during last year have been the creation here in Brussels of Appel, the new European Open Source Business Association. And we have also seen and supported open source foundations establishing a stronger presence in Europe, which is an important indicator of Europe's importance in the open source ecosystem. Now, in 2021, we aim to increase our ambition level further to meet the Commission's challenge. At OFE, we are launching a new research program aimed at really defining the role that open source technologies or open technologies, I should say, can play in responding to societal challenges. We believe that open source can and will play an important role in delivering the twin digital and green transformations in a post-COVID world. And we hope to support the development of policies that can maximize the value for citizens in Europe's digital decade. If you are interested in collaborating with us on this project, please reach out to me. So we have tried to do our part in ensuring that we can participate in those bigger conversations. And therefore, it gives me great pleasure to introduce the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, who, while not here live, will give us a welcome address and set the stage for today's summit. His participation is a strong acknowledgement of our efforts and gives us encouragement to continue. Thank you all for being here, and I hope you will enjoy the conference.