Thanks so much everyone. It's our pleasure to finally be here in Montreal with you at North Sec. I'm Asashin Ishihara This is my colleague John Scott Railton As Pierre David said we are from the Citizen Lab, which is an interdisciplinary research group at the Mung School of Global Affairs University of Toronto. We work on a variety of things But one of the main research interests we have is trying to track and understand malware-enabled espionage campaigns targeting civil society and I use that language espionage campaign on purpose because the purpose of these operations is not to extract intellectual property It's not financial gain. It is to collect sensitive information from groups doing political work That could threaten those in power and over the next hour We're gonna break that down for you with some examples around the world and we're gonna do that in four ways First we're gonna give you some provocative statements about the state of attacks against civil society We're gonna tell you a good story We're gonna give you some evidence from a number of case studies and then we're gonna zoom out and look at what some challenges are for These groups that are targeted and also for information security professionals like everyone in this room and how you might help out in this space So for the provocative statement, let it pass it on to John. Always happy to be provocative, Masashi So the first and obvious point is that the internet is an essential part of civil society Civil society, of course is jargon for us What is civil society? It's not a clothing brand, although that exists civil society the organizations Activists citizen journalists and others who defend rights freedoms democracy pretty good people Generally folks you want to help but also people who are often thorns in the side of government and other groups in power So another obvious point this should be pretty familiar to people in the room It is cheap to connect but expensive to secure and nowhere is this more true than Threadbearer activist organizations doing their best to leverage new media to get their message out With the predictable result that we watch every day, which is they are all owned or soon to be owned So that was the provocative statement The good story is two things Two birds one stone first. It's a good story But it's also a little bit of a peek at how we at the citizen lab do an investigation So I'm gonna walk through that Let me introduce you to a pretty cool person. This is Janet his nostra she is an Ecuadorian journalist and television presenter and a Royal-sized thorn in the side of the Ecuadorian government Last year Janet began receiving Spanish language because Ecuador Gmail notifications account reset stuff account error stuff bread and butter fishing. Why should anyone care, right? Well for whatever reason These made their way to me through a network of Connections and I took a look at the fishing and what caught my attention was that it wasn't like fishing generator fishing This is the base domain em google dot us for those of you who can't read it So it's like that's interesting somebody went to the trouble to register this domain hosting the fishing straight there Raw dogging it. Why not? Let's look a little bit more so we did and The way we did this was kind of interesting so Janet was our patient zero and if you've got a bunch of people You don't know if they're targeted You don't necessarily want to expose too much interesting stuff to them.  What do you do? Well? It turns out you can stuff a large number of IOCs into a Gmail search link So you can just create a URL That obviously doesn't look suspicious at all right But if people trust you enough to click this thing this will search a Gmail inbox and what we did was We had it search their inboxes for all the terms that I found in Janet's email that I associated with this group and What did we find well? Some flash update notifications a bunch of other plug-in things bread and butter right again Okay, so we're looking at some kind of an interesting campaign probably some malware I couldn't get some of these things to drop, but then it got super weird The same email addresses were also seeding links to Political sites political news sites Big large-scale fake news websites with original content in like Venezuela and Argentina Which was mind-blowing because usually things are pretty compartmented right fishing malware not disinformation So at this point it's kind of like okay, this is interesting and then Paydirt an email from a fake anti-Korea movement. So Korea president of Ecuador had an attachment, which is our jambalam That attachment contained this utterly unconvincing word document And of course stuffed in an OLE was a piece of malware So we ran it looked at it and things got interesting and As we began getting more samples we discovered that we were looking at a ginormous campaign With malware going back to 2000 and late Different rats cybergate extreme rat alien spy adds a bunch of other stuff and what distinguished these was not the Malware that they were using but that they were packing them pretty effectively. So low to no AV detection good stuff large scale so Get on the multigos start looking at command and control Things are linked unsurprisingly infrastructure gets reused all the way back to 2008 which is pretty Pretty brazen of this group But what was really interesting was this particular? Domain day news sites net and that rang Cowbell size bell because that same domain was associated with a malware attack unsuccessful against Alberto Nisman who is an Argentine prosecutor who Allegedly shot himself in the head twice the day before he was going to present a dossier against the Argentine president This was something that a colleague of mine Morgan Marquis bar has spotted So now we knew that we were into something but we also began to get paranoid right. Oh, it's bad people and Just around at that time running this malware in some sandboxes. We started having an interesting moment. So One of the sandboxes was running a researcher who shall remain nameless for their own security was staring at the screen and this popped up And it says you like to play the spy. Well watch out. It could cost you your life for the next half hour The operator behind the campaign issued the following threats among others popping up on the screen to the researcher in the sandbox environment, so Right. I'm not sure what my favorite is But it's like we're gonna analyze your brain with a bullet and your family too or you know some classic IRC stuff You think you're living but we have your IP right now. You're in trouble Take your time and scan the processes. We're gonna get you quickly Well, they didn't get the researcher quickly, but what it did was flag to us something else that was interesting So here's Martha Roldos an Ecuadorian activist who had received physical threats in real life and via text message From a group that we believe to be the same group So we realized that we were playing with a group that felt emboldened to make these threats And this is kind of an interesting piece of information Usually an operator if they discovered that they're sitting on a sandbox is gonna close things down, right? Where possible restart the machine not these guys not at all For whatever reason they felt so emboldened that from their C2 they were issuing these clear text threats So from there we dumped into a documenting phase and what we tried to do was get a better and more Systematic perspective of the threats we pushed this Google link out the Gmail link out fairly largely And we began to see three broad categories of targets. We found journalists We found again civil society think clothing And finally government threats specifically people who were members of Ecuador's political opposition So what was interesting about this campaign is that it had these three parts It was malware fishing all standard and then disinformation and it wasn't just in one country It was in Venezuela. It was an Ecuador. It was in Argentina. I didn't mention it But we found malware associated with Brazil going back to 2008. So It wasn't me So what's going on there? Is that you massage? We began to get a sense that we were looking at a group that probably had the blessing of the regime that it was located in Felt emboldened as a result to conduct illegal activities and so emboldened that it would roll the same infrastructure for eight years Against political targets throughout Latin America So here we are nice little map right kind of the same story Well at this point and because we're not private sector, right? We didn't just put this in a report and share it with a client or close things down. We got to do the fun part which is Push the information out much more broadly So we wrote a really cool report and called them pack rat because they have rats that they pack But also they hang on to domains forever And we worked with a news organization to do a story. So here's Janet again One of the cool features of this was that we also dumped out all the IOC's and of course worked with Providers and hosters to take pack rat down Interesting fact further confirming and I'm not gonna state while I'm standing up here who we think they are After a couple of weeks of drama around this case their infrastructure popped back up and they're still rolling So further confirming the fact that these people feel that they're very likely completely outside of the touch of government or prosecution So with that we're gonna move to some evidence which Masashi specializes in So we're gonna go over a number of case studies But as we do this and do a couple deep dives into them I want you guys to keep in mind the big picture that throughout these cases from different regions around the world The message is the same civil society is being constantly targeted Well, how is this done? Well, there's one roll road to your webcam, but there's three possible paths It can take the first route is one that you know, everyone here here's a lot about advanced persistent threat What does that really mean? And you know, there's a number of different white papers out there They'll have various definitions. We have this one So we consider apt to be any national in-house capability that allows for development and Operations and you can think of a number of different well resource actors that can do this for example the NSA China Russia etc But that's just one route the second route that John will talk about a little bit later is Repurposing off-the-shelf malware for espionage operations And we have some very interesting cases of how this being done right now during the Syrian civil war The third route is commercialization and here We're looking at misuse important word there and we'll get back to that later of lawful intercept tools Such as finfisher and hacking team that y'all might have heard about But let's look at APT so again APT buzzword lots of people say it lots of people play it What does it mean and a lot of the reports you'll see discussion of attacks against governments attacks against the private sector But what about civil society? Well, we had that question and we did a study that we released a couple years ago called communities at risk So what were we looking at in that study? Well, we had 10 civil society groups the majority of which we're doing activities related to China looking at human rights issues In the region looking at minority ethnic groups such as Tibetans and we'll get back to that a bit later So just keep that in mind as we go through these examples So we worked with these groups for over four years And we wanted to understand how they're being targeted how they were reacting to it and both the technical and political Side of these kinds of attacks and we collected over 2,000 pieces of malware From 44 different malware families. So this is pretty interesting. This is a small sample 10 groups But you can see they're getting a lot of stuff. So what does this all mean? Well finding number one These targeted operations use the minimum necessary sophistication and we'll unpack that in a minute and The most important thing to consider here is the first target is the human on the other side of the keyboard and Unfortunately, all of us in this room have what we like to call forever-day vulnerabilities and they're very hard to guard against So what you see here is all of the CVE's of the malware that we collected over four years the little orange dots are Unique attacks and the gray lines are when that CVE was announced and I want to draw your attention to the two blobs You'll see here. So that's 20 10 33 33 and 2012 015 8 if anyone here is tracking these kind of actors You know what I'm talking about and you see a pivot from 33 33 to 015 8 Importantly, these are not zero days.  We did get one zero day So you see here the attack happened before the CVE announcement But this is an important thing to underline Because these are old days and you know if it's not broke don't fix it. Why would you burn a sophisticated? Capability against targets that are frankly usually soft-target. So again over four years of collection only one zero day And if you look at 2012 015 8 that was patched since April 10th 2012 But we still saw operators use it for over a year and a half after it was patched So what does that mean? It means it was probably working because the targets They were going after did not have updates on their machines Perhaps they're running pirated versions of windows and so forth.  Let's just do what works So we wanted to do a more rigorous analysis of the data set that we had So we created something called the targeted threat index and the idea here is we want to characterize and quantify Our data set and try to understand what the severity of them are both from a social engineering perspective And also of course from a technical perspective. So here's how the metric works It's calculated in two parts you take a base value score of how Sophisticated the social engineering is and then you have a technical sophistication multiplier We use a multiplier because the amount of resources time effort in some cases money To create a custom piece of malware for a target can be significant So just keep that in mind and you take those together and you get a TTI score. So that's a bit abstract So let's break down how this works. So here's our base value of social engineering. We go from zero to five and I'll show you some examples to better illustrate what we're looking at So all of these are real lures sent to groups that we worked with so here You see the value of one which means it's been targeted But it's not customized and in this case the email is inviting you to I guess some kind of event There's not really much information here. It did have malware, but you know, it's not so convincing Probably wouldn't open that Well, how about this one? So this is a two. It's targeted and poorly customized in this case It was sent to a Tibetan human rights group. It's about an issue that Tibetan groups care about but again It's coming from someone. You don't know it doesn't look like a real person not a lot of permanent details here I don't know if I'd click that But let's up this a bit. So now you have a three which is targeted and customized now We're getting a little more interesting This person that's named here is a real person. That is their real email This in fact could be a real message that they sent that was collected in previous Operations if you are working in the Tibetan community and you got this at your workplace seems pretty legit I might click that But let's up it even more so now we're looking at for it's targeted It's personalized the salutation is addressed directly to the target and this one is particularly Interesting because you can see there are people on the other side of this putting some consideration Into the targeting so in this case it says it's from a mr. Cheng Li Who's director of research at a China Center at Brookings Institution? Well, if you just googled this title You'll find this gentleman here looks legit, you know, he's got his title Okay, that's interesting. Let's take a little bit of a closer look at this email So, you know for those you pay attention out there in the crowd You might see some funny things like first of all, you know someone from Brookings is sending from AOL Okay, weird It's unsolicited so the person that received this has never met this person before they are a well-known China scholar So it's like wow they want my opinion as a Tibetan activist on a port in Tibetan issue And you can even see at the bottom it says thank you again and happy Tib lo Sar, which is Tibetan New Year interesting And he really really really wants you to open this file. So let's just keep that all in mind, but you know what? To can play this game So we wrote back mr. Cheng Li with the permission of the targeted individual and we said, you know We'd love to help out but we're having a bit of a problem with the attachment Maybe it's cuz we're on a Mac, you know Chinese character fonts computers I don't know and You know it took a little while for Cheng Li to respond, but hey, he's a busy man He was traveling, you know, okay that's that's legit and He has another interesting thing to send us and the interesting thing here is if you clicked on this URL It would look at your user agent and what operating system you're on and if you're on a Windows Hey, have some Windows malware, but if you're on a Mac. Oh, we got some nice fresh OS X malware just for you So no sir. Thank you. Thank you very much So that's a four. Wow people on that other side. They're really trying to work to get you to click What's a five? So it's targeted and it's highly personalized. In fact, it's so personalized We can't ethically show you a real example, but here's a little story of a real example So you're a NGO and you get an email from your actual funder and the actual program officer from that funding Organization and they say I have an important update for a meeting that we're having two weeks from now Which is a real meeting which was already scheduled. I don't know about you guys. I would probably click that so That's the social engineering across our data set. You'll see here. These are all the scores We saw a lot of threes, which were pretty good We saw some fours and fives, but the majority were threes That means there's a lot of effort being done in these operations to make these emails seem legitimate But what about the technical side of it? So again, we use a multiplier and what we're looking at here is a level of effort to obfuscate the code inside the binaries themselves And to obfuscate the functionality when it's on the network. Why do we look at obfuscation? Well, all the malware we're looking at the functionality is essentially the same They're all rats. They're all looking to do the same thing and we choose Obfuscation because it makes it harder to analyze which makes our lives harder It's harder to find it on the network which makes defenders lives harder and again, it's a way to To see the differences between them our because the functionality is mostly the same a two is like finn-fisher hacking team level Professional software development and we didn't see any of these in this data set But we'll talk more about what that stuff looks like in a bit So we saw a lot of ones a lot of one point two fives Some one point five so it's not very technically sophisticated Overall if you look at our scores and you put these together the highest TTI scores were based on high levels of social engineering Rather than technical sophistication. So just remember that's where the effort is going in these particular Operations and why because it works. Why up the technical sophistication if you don't have to Okay, so that was finding one finding two Who's doing this well? We found that the same groups that are targeting private sector and governments that we hear a lot about and all the white papers that are out There are also targeting civil society So who runs these ops while looking at the TTPs looking at the malware looking at shared infrastructure We identified ten distinct espionage campaigns and threat actors Four of which are known to target government and private sector And we know that because of previous reporting by our friends in industry and other research groups So here's some of them. How many people know net traveler? Okay, not a lot of net traveler fans in the audience, but they have targeted 350 government and industry and NGO groups another one DTL group reported by our friends at fire I they have targeted 11 different government and industry verticals plug X again a very Prolific group has targeted a number of government and private sector groups as well as NGOs Perhaps the most significant one we found were these guys APT one which I'm sure everyone in the audience knows it was reported by Mandiant apparently linked to a specific unit of the PLA and interestingly Recently the Department of Justice United States served an indictment of five individuals Who were apparently connected to this operation if you read that indictment and the Mandiant report You'll see all kinds of discussion of industry and government targets But you won't see any mention of civil society However, we saw them targeting one of our Tibetan groups and also Saw an active compromise against a large NGO Which is interesting and has over a thousand employees multiple offices enterprise level security helped us the works Probably similar to some of the networks that you guys look at in your day job And what we saw here is the APT one operators had access to the network of the headquarters of this organization for over Eight months. What do they do when they had access? Well, you know the typical stuff They move laterally they impersonated staff they installed rats and they expatriated data again You'll see this discussed in the Mandiant report, but not within an NGO group, which is important so a Non-governmental organization So finally we'll look at finding three and that's these operators Constantly adapt and we already saw that with our friend Cheng Li and the nice little pivot they did there But what's interesting is these adaptations are often in response to defensive measures from the targeted groups And I just want to share a story about the Tibetan community Now this is a community that have been facing these kinds of attacks for over a decade They are the canaries and the coal mines so to speak and they are not laying down on this they're trying to empower their community through education and through trainings to better equip them with a different mindset this is a quote from one of the Tibetan trainers and change their behaviors and they're doing this really based on data so in our study We found that file attachments sent in emails were the most common vector for Tibetan organizations In fact two of these groups if they simply didn't open attachments They would have mitigated 95% of the threats that they receive in over four years So that's interesting So the Tibetan community started this campaign called detach from attachments a nice play on a little piece of Buddhist wisdom that we should all take And it had very simple message and three steps number one stop opening attachments Number two stop sending attachments Number three if you must share a file through email Why don't you try something like Google Drive or Dropbox or some other cloud-based solution? Okay, so that's interesting, you know, we're looking at 95% mitigation here through a simple behavioral change But you know what the attackers were paying attention to so in 2014 We saw the first use of Google Drive links as a malware vector This one's particularly interesting because it's trying to send you a binary of a Tibetan Dictionary program, but of course that was also packaged with malware. So this was the first time we saw it But the trend continues. So you fast-forward a year later. We saw a whole campaign again sending these links out through Google Drive and Importantly, it's not just a bettons. So in some more recent work. We've done tracking Targeted operations against environmental groups working in Burma. They're also receiving Google Drive links and in our most recent publication We also saw the same vector used against pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong So that was route one and I passed off to John now for a different route to your webcam It's a route to commercial off-the-shelf also known as my cousin knows computers and I'm fighting a war and he's gonna help me fight it So in the background are a bunch of Syrians sitting on the ground drinking tea and doing stuff with their computers So finding number four harm is not expensive Masashi just talked about nation-state In-house approaches turns out you can go a long way with commercial over the shelf off the shelf malware And I'm gonna talk about one group. It's really done more than everyone else To explore that so back in the day 2011 beginning of the thing that ended up being called the Syrian civil war back then it was a revolution people were getting Onto the streets and as that happened parts of Syria were no longer under the control of the Syrian regime Right, so they're no longer sitting on the network. So that how do they regain visibility? Into the groups that they want to target will easy malware now They didn't have a lot of like existing relationships with malware vendors at that moment which we'll talk about in a minute I guess I'll talk about So what did they do? Well, they had people who had some degree of sophistication They just started rolling rats with social engineering and the two groups doing that one everybody's heard about the Syrian electronic army One not everybody has heard about malware groups working for the Syrian regime. So that's 2011 long time ago I barely had facial hair Fast forward a few years and we've got a bunch more groups all doing the same thing So Lebanese groups targeting the Syrian opposition and ISIS and Islamist groups targeting the Syrian opposition There are more, but this is just a couple What's interesting is that despite the proliferation of groups who all want to know what the opposition is doing for targeting They're basically rolling the same TTPs, which we'll talk about in a minute And I just had to put in this slide so Syrian electronic army 2016 big update very exciting and diamond rolls down Some pictures some names now public. So here are two members of the Syrian electronic army I wouldn't normally read from a slide, but this is just all together too good So here's an indictment against the SEA for blackmail, which it turns out they were doing on the side So Dardar, who's the guy on the right? Had hacked a bunch of companies in Europe and was trying to extort them for consulting fees And this is just like I guess if you're gonna do that. This is probably not how you want to do it. So Dardar demanded further payments, which he referred to as blackmail Which is really not what you want to do if you're blackmailing somebody and then just like the ultimate moment of Zen Dardar in the course of his communications with representatives from victim one, which is a large institution occasionally mentioned his affiliation with the Syrian electronic army and the fact that he was wanted By the FBI which if you're trying to convince a large risk averse company to give you some money is like, I don't know next level Despite that the Syrian electronic army is rolling along targeting the opposition as recently as this week actually New attacks and what's really exercising them at the moment is trying to target mobile phones The reason for this is that the Syrian opposition a lot of them are in places that don't have good Internet connectivity, but also not stable electricity. So everybody's moving their comms to phones and all their threat actors are moving there Let's talk about the malware group. Now. These are some super elite gentlemen, right? Here are their pictures, which they in judiciously posted on social media Somewhere under different names. So anyways, these are some pictures of the guys And when they're not doing malware, they're also shooting guns at these people Which is a characteristic of this kind of group and I think it's fair to analogize it to a militia Online not a lot of sophistication not necessarily uniform wearing shooting guns on behalf of somebody Digital or otherwise. So how do these malware groups target the Syrian opposition? What are they doing? Well, it turns out that the opposition is growing increasingly paranoid of the possibility that it's being targeted So malware actors realize this and push out a whole bunch of fake security tools and Circumvention tools into opposition forums. So of course, right like if people are afraid of things Why not give them like a maliciously bundled circumvention tool or a maliciously bundled VPN client or Amazon Internet Security? Which is a fake AV scanner which probably works But the very best one ever is there was a rumor in the Syrian opposition a couple years ago that Skype was not safe Which is obviously sort of true and The malware actors in a moment of genius released a Skype encryption program Which you can see on the right of this slide. You'd run this executable and You'd click the button and it would say like congratulations. Your Skype call is encrypted Nart Villeneuve friend of the lab now a fire. I formerly trend micro Released this report, but we had a great laugh when we saw this just absolute brilliance So what are these things bundled with?  This works How well does it work? Well, we all know That someone will always click when you target an organization, right? and The consistent finding of studies about social engineering is that if it's fairly well targeted 40 to 60% of people ish click right? This is not that different for studies that have been done in the Syrian opposition But how well does this really work? So I had this picture of a woman for the Lebanese groups earlier and I'll tell you why so this is a female avatar Who used Skypes and the Facebooks to seduce? generals and other members of the Syrian fighting opposition and Just brought home bacon 64 Skype account databases it turns out that a really good way if you want to know how an opposition that's heavily reliant on Skype Operates if you target their machines with a rat and then rather than staying persistent you just exfil the Skype databases which have it all Well, this group didn't really protect their exfil very well and I and Two very smart folks at FireEye Did a report on this their total hall was 240,000 individual Skype messages The comms backbone of the Syrian opposition everything from like the movement of weapons to meetings They were about to take place to political stuff and negotiations. So what does that look like? Well, here are 12,000 dots I'll get feed up right little social network analysis because I'm fancy This is data that I generated from their exfil And I mapped out the way that the targeting actually worked inside this group So you've got like a couple people who click first, right? So the attackers infected these people and then they pivoted around throughout the opposition and nailed some higher profile people who were engaged in comms with a lot of other folks and that's how they did it, right? The reality is opposition groups work in groups and get targeted as groups, right? It's not an individual thing It's an organizational thing despite the facts that the groups that we're looking at don't exactly have a centralized IT policy So here's the attackers I view of some of these targeted Syrians, right? So here's a guy we're looking at the attackers screen looking at the victim screen You know, I'd be really nice of the victim like tilt the webcam a little bit because The laptop's kind of badly focused there and here we have an image of the attacker using a combination of a pop laptop and its webcam and Then a little bit of open-source intelligence gathering on Facebook to try to ID their target who they Connected with a fighter working with the Syrian opposition. So pretty heavy-duty targeting But what they're getting is not just a porn browsing history, although that made up a good chunk of the X-FIL But a bunch of other stuff the information that they use that they get has been used in military raids Targeted assassinations not just in Syria, but also in Turkey Targeted bombing, right? You want to know where an opposition command center is Humiliation operations.  So basically like wholesale catastrophic. Oh, no compromise death and beyond right These are all cases where there's documented evidence. This isn't just talk Changing tack a little bit root 3 to your webcam commercialization. So this is some really fun stuff It turns out that every government wants access to secured communications, right? Both to block them and to filter them but also to gain access to denied devices and some of it's lawful and Done with a lot of careful oversight some of it's not and there's a giant industry of companies Some you may be familiar with like perhaps Finn Fisher or hacking team Some perhaps a less so like advanced German technology, which also sounded like a bad BMW advertising campaign selling Hacking tools and monitoring tools to gov and not just Western governments, but anybody who can pay so finding five Commercial malware has proliferated globally. So this is some stuff that I and my colleague Bill Marzak Claudia Guarnieri and Morgan Marquis bore have done and what we've done is documented the global proliferation of this stuff And also its abuse potential. So what's happening? Well companies that sell basically? Lawful intercept malware, which is just a fancy turn of phrase it borrows the term lawful interception from telecom interception Spins a little bit and describes it as something that you can do with malware They're basically just selling sophisticated malware with good obfuscation and persistence and they're pitched to governments is right You have new challenges today a lot of people's comms are encrypted Some of the stuff that you want is on device You want to be stealth you want to be untraceable you want to be hidden? Right by our stuff or don't So how do come how do countries use this? Well, here's some real examples, right? So this is an email so email attachment nuts and bolts malware seating But also just about every other vector you can think of right? Download poisoning over-the-year updates Provided of course that you can pay and an increasing number of governments are paying So what does this look like from the operators? I view well, this is some leaked stuff from hacking team So here they are with the gods I view of this little target here, right scroll back and forth look at movement look at contacts Across time look at social network Browsing stuff all the things that you can get when you're sitting on people's devices and One of the key pitches that these companies make that you know the sort of like rat forms can't is Defense against antivirus so when they sell they'll typically sell a certification That's like for the given period of our contract your stuff is going to be non-detectable by AV We guarantee it and usually there's also like some kind of an ode a service as part of the package now of course that feels like a challenge and Some of my brilliant colleagues and I have discovered that it turns out right if you have a collection Infrastructure and it touches the internet it too can be enumerated. So we did that and this was an enumeration that we did in 2014 that came up with 21 suspected government users we said suspected but we'll just say this is where the final chain of The obfuscation proxies was located, right? So some countries here that are perhaps Reassuring and then some that are definitely not like I can't imagine that Nigeria is going to be like heavily overseen in terms of how it uses surveillance powers or Egypt or Mexico or really anything else in this map So Let's talk about real cases though. So this is Hisham Hisham's a Moroccan journalist working with a Moroccan journalism Organization and he and a bunch of his colleagues doing nothing illegal Other than documenting civil rights abuses by the Moroccan government and arguing for the freedom of the press We're successfully targeted with hacking teams malware, right? Ethiopia Ethiopia has a big diaspora as anyone who's ever taken a taxi cab in Washington, DC will know and That diaspora among other things has its own journalists serious news organizations And perhaps the most paranoid group about the diaspora is the Ethiopian government Which bought hacking team and finfisher malware always went to hedge its bets and has been systematically targeting journalists in its opposition Now something happened last year Which was really interesting, which is hacking team became hacked team And got they selves doxxed massively So here's a tweet that happened last year on their Twitter feed since we have nothing to hide We're publishing all of our emails files and source code, right? It's the ultimate open source moment There was a lot of stuff in that dump That was interesting among other things it confirmed our findings and added countries to the list It also added new victims we discovered that their stuff had also been used to target journalists in Ecuador and many other places The key thing is the industry argument about a lot of this stuff is it's lawful intercept It's sold to governments who are going to oversee how it's used and use it for child pornography and anti-terrorism Investigations the reality of course is if you give a government especially a government with an issue with oversight and corruption and Paranoid leadership the ability to conduct secret surveillance history tells us they will abuse it They also at hacking team think a lot about us So it's always very interesting when you find yourself talked about especially in a document dump so Here we were reading about ourselves Prof. Dbert director of citizen lab right he seems to think that he's running a regulatory organization that has some authority over our worldwide business right they'd really prefer it if we just leave them alone and in fact despite the documented use of their tool against Completely undeserving victims in many countries around the world their narrative of course is we're the victims right we got hacked So finding six We've been doing this work since 2012 Targeting commercial malware, and I'd love to talk to you more about that in questions And what we've discovered every time we look every surface we scratch more countries are buying right post Snowden revelations every country kind of knows what they could get right and everyone would like to buy it and a lot of these companies Have recognized this as a market opportunity So repressive regimes have learned quickly and are sharing a lot of information to each other about what you might do to preserve Your government I've been talking about hacking team There are a bunch of others finfisher known to many people in the room is also used widely Here's a scan that we did last year looking at the endpoints of their obfuscation proxy systems Bunch of users many of them likely to use these tools in abusive ways So we talked about three routes to your webcam And what I'd like to do now is roll it over to my colleague Masashi to talk about some interesting challenges So first we want to think about the challenges facing civil society the community that we at the citizen lab care about and going forward What's going to be the state of these threats? Well, I hope you can all Have taken the observation that we've tried to share with you that the barriers to entry for conducting espionage Operations are dropping you don't need a tailored access operations league group You don't need you know this in-house development capability anymore if you have money you can buy these things You can even just take a rat from some forum and have some really Significant impacts in the real world so the barriers to entries are low So what does that mean? We think it means that we're gonna see a lot more threats against civil society groups around the world This is not just something for groups in certain communities This is not just something for groups that are rubbing certain powerful actors the wrong way This is something we're gonna see in a lot of places and we're gonna see it very soon So what about another observation? Well Organization political mobilization is going mobile in many of the countries and regions in the world that we're interested in People don't have a desktop computer. They have a pocket computer, and this is where their life is This is where they're organizing their activities. This is where their personal life is This is where their professional life is and this is where they're going to get targeted So prediction more threats against mobile very soon And it's probably already started So these are just some general ideas of what's happening around civil society. How does this affect all of you in the room? So y'all curious you don't want to know what you can do. I know some of you do. I know you're thinking I can hear it I can feel it One of the big challenge that I've observed over the past couple years We get a lot of people approaching us who are like, hey, what you do is really cool How can we help right? I've got some skills. I can reverse the things We like that One of the challenges that people often face if they've got some skills or desire to do engagement is actually the relationship process How to actually connect with groups who need help? There are things that people in this room do in hardware and then there are things that y'all do in software like relationship management some of those things can be very challenging and one of the things that we've observed is that When people who have great intentions and want to help cast out looking for a way to do it Unless you're connected with some fairly solid feedback about what needs actually look like and about what problems are you can waste effort You can get frustrated It can be challenging to actually know if you're accomplishing things and I know for a fact that a bunch of security companies have tried to do pro bono stuff and Found the sort of how to connect with real targeted groups to be one of the biggest challenges source of risk Reputational risk a bunch of other concerns. So our Recommendation is to connect with a group that has those relationships and perhaps good judgment allegedly at least so We're hiring and we're one of those groups. We'd like to think so but we also know the space pretty well And if people sitting in the room find this at all enticing or we'd just like to jam on some mobile reversing, right? The aforementioned especially APKs That we're looking at there are plenty of opportunities to do so So I'd encourage you to grab my colleague Masashi or if you must mean I'm just kidding And ask us and we can probably connect you either to somebody who's interested or talk to you more about Connecting and working with us. So with that we wanted to leave time for questions So we'd like to do our thanks. Yeah, so big. Thanks. First of all to the Northside organizers It's awesome being here with all of you you can check out all our reports online at our website And you know research is a team sport at the citizen lab There's a lot of collaborators and team members that made all this research possible their names are listed there So thanks to our team and collaborators and thank all of you for your attention. Yeah teamwork makes the dream work. That's right Thanks guys


Dundead booped it should be good to go and should be live here any moment So hello guys, hope you all are doing well And hope you all having a lovely day, and I'm just gonna sit here and stall and fart around for a moment while we wait for it to go live Yeah, sounds good to me Yep, baby. Huh? Nope Maybe Went from a 10 second delay to a 30 second delay. I know it's like a five minute delay Next I'm gonna have a beard and a baby Cool All right, sweet. I've better changed that before it's indefinite loop of weirdness So we're live. Hi everyone. How's it going today? We're doing our video critiques live Or we check out your videos to make sure you leave us the titles of your videos in the comments You can't post links and don't just say my channel say The title of the video so we can actually know what video you want us to check out because more times than not when we Just pick one at random. We don't pick a video that you want us to watch so anyways We have Jordan with us today as always so I let him say hi and stuff while we Fiddle around the comments Well do what in the comments? Never heard of fiddle before. It's a music. Yeah Yeah, sure. Yeah. Hi. Yes. My name is a George Wilde and hello and welcome to another week. Oh critiquing Also, I forgot to mention Let us know if you couldn't hear both of us. Okay, because I did check I did check real quick and we sound fine But you know how that got it did but it changes Yeah, it's published it then you can't hear Jordan anymore. You can't hear me or I'm peeking the whole time or Whatever so anyways, Jordan has people picked out for us Yes, so I shall send you the link now This is jump gaming and it is shout-out episode 3 black ops 2 Gameplay there's that and before we get started guys I'm gonna put this in the description so you guys can check it out as well and Watch it with us Yes, and there we are if you refresh it should be there now. Yay All right, so let's go ahead and check this out In this video, it's gonna be this community series So first off your mic sounds a little bit distant And you sound ill Unfortunately, that's commitment though. It's tough to make a video on days that you're sick or not feeling good There before it's asthma. Yeah, I have asthma One thing though like it's okay to be sick and stuff and Make content because I just kind of shows your dedication stuff But what I've tried to do like I get really bad allergies occasionally I'll get like really bad sniffles and stuff and I will mute the areas that I like Like in the microphone, so you don't hear that So it's not it's okay to be sick and do your commentary But like in the beginning in the first three seconds, you just like hack to cough and you could have muted that and said sorry guys I'm still I'm still sick. I've asthma, you know, it's not necessarily Necessary for it to be there You agree I do agree someone who suffers with asthma myself There are some videos I've done where I've had to like cut it every now and then be like Yeah, anyway, so Yeah, asthma is asthma is not fun especially When you're breathing everything you take it easy and stuff because otherwise you don't want to be getting worse throughout the video Yeah, because otherwise you can't hide that No, you are recording in 1080 Yeah, you do seem to have the energy throughout it even with asthma you're still Rolling up the words the whole time um Now that's for your actual like overall quality like I said say you do sound distant from the mic it sounds like You might be like playing on the Xbox and you're recording on the microphone That's like at your TV like maybe recording on the connect even or something, you know It doesn't sound like you have a microphone right up close on you So if you could do that that would increase your quality like seven-fold It's right now. It's kind of hard to understand what you're saying Yeah Probably just like in the intro you were very quick to be like hi miss. So what we're gonna do today is I don't know No, I didn't quite catch what you what you said So maybe slow down a little bit It's okay to be excited and have the energy and just you know, just Have fun with it But you need to make sure that people can understand you and one of the things with that is When you're at a far away distance and you're like echoing throughout the room it all blends together So you really have to enunciate and make sure people understand what you say on Microphone situation like that. So whether or not that means sit closer to it or bring the mic closer to you or however You're recording it. I'd recommend doing that and then you can definitely improve Yeah And I'll just check out your channel your channel is actually pretty cool. I mean you got the freedom logo there It's very nicely laid out you've got all your links there as well, which is very good So you can get to your Twitter and stuffs So if you need to find you that you're twisting you got Google plus Instagram freedom and You can get apparently you have a 5% off as well on something that's pretty cool now back to the video you Don't have any tags on your video, which I shouldn't need to explain the Neediness of tags, but there's none there afterwards that tried to take me to wave ology episode 3 Workout brush session crown product adding product aftermath shout out That was the next video that popped up after you So I mean when you start tagging and start targeting your videos You're gonna actually be able to search you're gonna have better results after that And I won't need to watch this video whatever it is no clue, but Looks like something about here This is what it was referring to me So I don't know if this is you or not if it is nice tats and it looks like you work out, but I Don't think that's you Anyways, let's go ahead and check out the next channel Okay, so as you can probably tell I've got a bit of it In my voice as well, but unfortunately we're live so we can't really edit that out That one were you with me on that live stream that I got the allergy attack? Uh, I don't know. Oh, man. I was like I was sniffling and sneezing everywhere and Pardon my motorcycle Either that or jack's just gone a steroid influence All right, so next we're watching don't drink and drive gta V online funny gaming moments gta 5 come on. I was just reading what I was saying. I'm sorry So once I get off post that leak in here so you guys can watch it with us If you guys have any questions in specific to even if it's not regarding your channel We'd love to chat and get off topic. We're really good at that. That's what I'm currently doing Oh, yeah Yeah What's the what's the topic? Uh, somebody was asking um, tennessee gaming was asking, um, would we consider ourselves as professional youtubers? And I said not really. I mean But we I know how to act professional Oh, yeah, I can I can words good. Yeah, but um, But the point is uh, he was saying so why do you have the authority to give Video critiques and we said well because we've been doing it a couple more years and most people Who we critique have been doing it so we feel we can give them some advice Yeah, I mean we're not You know, I'm sure we're not the most qualified people in the whole wide world But we have been doing content or I've been doing contents and it's like 2009. I was a filmmaker before that. I have a bachelor's degree I'm certified in social media. I'm certified youtube audience growth and blah blah blah blah blah And uh, jordan's been in college for audio engineering and currently you're in there for what's the actual degree Film and television. So, I mean even if we aren't, you know, youtube celebrities, it doesn't mean that we don't know how to make good content so Well, well Unless it's just me sat in a chair eating a pumpkin But uh, people would watch there's a And that's Halloween after all. Yep. So anyways, let's go ahead and check this out Do you like this game do would you would you get it? What Do you like this game? Do you would you would you get it? Do you like this game? Would you get it? GTA 5 see see see talking about willis For cheap alligator But not for full price Right straight away.  I love it.  They were playing uh gta 5 and don't drink and drive blah blah blah today I have so-and-so with me and we're gonna be doing this and then cut to the actual thing So that way you're involving the audience and you're building that connection with them because uh in the end community is kind of everything Yeah, I heard you Yeah I do like a good joke But the first answer you guys have so far and like the banter between two so you two are obviously friends You're not just like your standard two friends who met online due to youtube and no have no idea who each other are Which you which we do see a lot Not in this show, but I've seen it in loads of videos in the past And you can definitely tell there's a like a bit of awkwardness where we're not they're not quite sure what joke works And if it's gonna be too offensive and all this Hey, stop it. But then you get And you got these two who are just like hi, so I'm gonna kill my friend Um audio quality is good It can it can improve but it's still good. I mean for what you have right now. I think it's fantastic All right. Oh Just like that there was Michael Jackson music And But it was just for about a second, so I'm not sure if that's fair use But even then But even then it's still not a good idea I mean last week we viewed a channel who did a Battlefront Star Wars And they had copyright free music, but it was themed around Star Wars So it used the same it's it used the same Like sounds and like the same tones everything it just wasn't Star Wars and we knew straight away what it was meant to be So there's plenty of that out there. There's an audience from that. So which is hilarious Oh, so this is what he means by don't drink and drive Skipping ahead a little bit and this dude like stumbled around the The street with the Nikolo says sexy jordan or smelly mike That's me As for like the overall quality I I think it's good and like jordan said you can definitely see that camaraderie there I'd say just set up Set up your overall like branding throughout And you can you do have an outro slate, which is nice You have your subscribed previous video and stuff like that, but Involve the viewer just a little bit more than thanks for watching at the end Because like something I've started to learn recently is that the community just really really Matters and everything that you do as far as support as far as sharing your videos as far as just Engaging with people in the comments You know you could simply just ask a question and you're going to get doubled the amount of comments that you get because if I just Watched it right now that was enjoyable. Okay, cool. Go to the next video But if you ask a question, I'm going to be more tempted to go and leave a comment because I want to answer what you asked me so Little things like that just to give your viewers some thought And make sure that they know that you are paying attention to that they're watching the video So like I said in the intro you could have that funny clip and then cut like actually Acknowledge the people watching right now like this is the only acknowledgement is at the end where it says thanks for watching So I think that could be a huge improvement for your channel and that would help growth happen a lot quicker too Yeah Because see you are in here. You're responding to comments. That's nice and stuff like that but For a thousand subscribers and only having two comments. You should be you know, let's try to get that up to like 2030 maybe 50 comments So just to acknowledge your viewers a little bit more ask questions And try to get that community going so you could start getting more growth there Do you have anything to add or That's pretty much no Yeah, I think you pretty much nailed that on the head. Um, as far as the channel name, um Is it elite? Elite elite life elite life too. Yeah Yeah Oh, man, yeah elite life too Um, as far as because when I first found the channel when I was gonna link I was gonna link you to it. I couldn't read the name.  This is elite life too Uh welcome here if that's your branding make sure it's known Yeah Because definitely when you first start out people are going to be looking at your the way it's written on when on your suggested videos kind of thing So when people are going a lightly for And then they click on your channel and they go oh elite life And that is yeah, I think the issue there is it's in all caps So there's no separation So it's all running together like it could be a lead telly fat But like on the channel banner where it's lower cased and then you can actually see the difference in the letters It stands out a little bit more so but That might be something to consider maybe lower casing some stuff and separating it Um inferno music is wanting to us to check out a music channel um We would happily check out a music channel But I think for the sake of content if you had a like a music video like an actual video instead of just like um Just a track with a with music playing just because so we can actually help you improve I think there's still room to talk about. I mean not be able to go super in depth, but I mean, yeah, we could talk more business instead of more quality and content and stuff I mean, yeah, you can do I was just saying um as far as video critiquing and everything because I've just clicked on the channel and it's uh house music and All this a lot So um, yeah, let's let's briefly take a look at it. So we can kind of It's like we do like checking out different genres and stuff instead of always doing gaming videos. So Yeah, I've saved us more to talk about Oh, I I got it. Oh, I was checking out the house Fair run song So house music let's just get an idea of how it sounds This is more of my thing music wise. Yeah So first and foremost I actually like the video animation of it. Yeah, I do stereotypical waveform template that you see Yeah I like the particle use and I like how the waveforms kind of have their own motion to it That you know, the normal just up and down like you normally see on these type of videos Yeah And the background is kind of like a nice setting for The video so like jordan said, you know, you could always do more with like music videos But if you're just trying to showcase your content on here, I think you're doing a good job on that He says uh, check the second one because it's not copyright. Oh, this is copyright No When you say the second one, do you mean odd mob ruins? Sure, I'll just watch it really quiet So that being said If you are just like remixing copyrighted music and stuff like that I think that's it can only take your channel so far If you really want to go the next step and go further Work on wealthy free stuff and that way you can work with other creators and get your name out there more You can go do it like a top youtuber and say hey, you need music everybody needs music use my stuff all you need to do give me a credit You know that Super easy to do if you're good at music and good at content creating There's so much you could do if you're good at music Yes No, you can I'm playing for the you know, I'm currently working with uh, ken waters He's a producer that creates all of his own music And I use all of his music only his music in the vlogs and on the freedom videos that I make I use that in the background And when people ask me they're like, hey, who made or what's the song title? It's like, it's my music No one can have it wait for me You know, it's my music for my videos and it makes me unique And that's the cool thing about working with actual people that have talent in the music industry Injusty industry wow Yeah, definitely just be careful with the copyrighted stuff because if you start doing that and people are gonna frown away from your channel If it's royalty free Then I think it will grow a lot more in the community Whereas copyrighted stuff is just fun to listen to Yeah So I was checking out the tags of the odd mob ruin song And I see that the tags you're using like makeup tutorial music And uh Suicide sheep and all this lot. Okay. Um I can see what you're trying to do. I mean, it's a very it's a cheaty way of saying Tagging so you can get your suggested videos in other forms of media So your videos can be seen part of my motorcycle Jack on steroids, but um It's it's just usually not a good idea to have like makeup tutorial when it's a music video because Can you imagine if it was the only one you had and then you someone tried to find your music And they just couldn't find it for their life So I think he's saying this is free music for makeup tutorials creators Maybe maybe this is specifically what he saw when he created it. He's like this is makeup music So Your tags, that's a case. Yeah. Yeah, if that's the case, you can put that in the description saying this could be used for Such an session.  Yeah, that breaks their terms of service if you're Considering your videos are spammed and that's a really hippie Ground that you can get your channel deleted videos deleted blah blah blah for this information. So There's a lot of things you need to watch out for so That that's nothing like too bad there, but That's what said. Yeah um As far as music production since I'm more Educated in this side of things. Uh, I'm noticing that there's not much bass in your tracks You especially with them being house music and stuff like that bass But yeah You need to have a bit more bass in your in your tracks So just like maybe when you're doing the panning make sure the bass is staying in the middle If you know what I'm talking about Uh, the bass is staying in the middle then you pan the um stereo to left and right So the bass is right in the middle But apart from that And back to the business side of things definitely consider getting a website if your whole Entire like channel is around music and your talent You could get a website to kind of build that portfolio and that way you can have like a hire me tab you can have Submission forms whatever you need and that way you could start building your brand your overall business pretty effectively Yes So let's pick another person. I think that one's pretty much wrapped unless you have anything else To mention no pretty much got what I had to say Have you found anybody I just now looked over I'll be honest I see a beatboxing channel. Oh those are always fun Okay So he said that he got a better mic so you can hear and hear the bass better Uh-huh Please look at my new freestyle Freestyle I don't know how to beatbox was this the gamer person that we watched I don't know link me There was someone that we watched once that did a beatbox call of duty I don't know what it was called because of the air ban We'll see what the video starts so it's ginger beats freestyle 14 And see just how much you're good driving regardless. We'll take a look since he said he has better of you There's that dubstep intro, which I think it's okay considering it's box channel Yeah, however it should be your own your own beatbox dubstep beat Okay Boys So ginger beats. What do you use as far as your uh software for this stuff Because This is good but I know full well that you could do better than this because With your audio software you could layer this and make it sound more beefy And you could add some effects. I know I know what beatboxing is about it's all about using the Using what you have and not, you know Overdoing it, but if you're using software then you can at least layer it so it makes them more like beefy This is a freestyle though. Sorry.  Like that would be cool. But uh, I would be cool Yeah, definitely you could go and clean it up and add more to it. Yes, even if you get a free something like a dacity I don't like it, but you can do stuff at it. No, no, no all dastis are Hey, you have to work with what you got So what other what would be the next best free? Software out there if you have no money in your pocket Oh, that's a good question actually. So is there anything better than audacity? That's free Not to my knowledge. There probably is Like I use acoustic a mix trap, which I really like but uh There's been times I've had to settle for audacity I mean uh achievement hunter, which is part of rucity face. They use audacity to uh mix their Audio tracks really we're recording gameplay. Yeah, I didn't know that until I saw like very Very sneakily the screen that has their audio recording in the background. I was like, oh my god, that's audacity So what do you think of the actual like video like what we're watching here It's not boring I'm very grateful for that. Yeah, you don't necessarily need to see it to listen to what you're doing No, but It is pretty Yeah Maybe If you're doing a freestyle, that's what you're trying to show off Maybe show the freestyle like actually do it like webcam directly on the microphone showing that you're doing in one take So that way it's proven that you know, you didn't go back and fix stuff up later You could see it's in one take like that uh 20 second songs guy Like you actually see the waveforms in the background recording as he's singing So you can actually see that's legitimately like being recorded right then and there and uh I think that might improve it and it looks like you have a webcam. It's the next video had uh Thumbnail with you and oh, no, that wasn't you it was going to redirect to someone else. Haha, okay Um, but I mean, I assume you have a webcam or access to webcam or something where you could do that Yeah, yeah, uh, maybe not. Oh, yeah, there's there's your face. You have a webcam So, yeah, you should consider that and maybe you think about uh Working that into your free styles that way instead of just doing an animation you can You know show that off I definitely agree Anything to add It's kind of difficult with um beatboxing because especially with freestyling all I could really put in was what I said about um Going back in post production as they call it and uh No, yes post production not freedom editing show your editing show your face do beatbox for your dubstep intro Do a dubstep beatbox for your dubstep intro then it it would be awesome Haha Cool other than that you're you're talented. So And it sounds like you do have a good mic. It just needs to be tweaked in editing Okay, so this next one Is This is the minecast hd And they it's called the federal debate remade the minecast hd All right one second. I'll put it in the description for you guys to watch And again guys, I always say this but if we're reviewing a channel We're watching the video. We're not watching the comments So I'm doing my I'm doing my best, but yeah, yeah, but it doesn't hurt to actually watch with us So that way you can leave your own feedback We can help grow each other and talk to each other and communicate with each other in each other's videos So if you see something you like might not subscribe when I watch it help us all grow together It's freedom Merck platinum has just gone home from school. Hey, welcome back all right, so It is now in the description. I'm watching Sounds like some copyrighted music on that quite possibly creative commons Either way, it's your standard intro. Yeah, yeah So these annotations The fight for prime minister. Oh, I say in canada, uh Was this the video you asked us to watch? Yeah, the federal debate remade, okay So Hopefully you enjoy So as for the annotations I I think they were The intro with them like scattered all over the frame Normally you see those on like spam videos that you don't want to watch And you end up just like closing out of it just because the whole screen is filled up with annotations So was that one that said like um, we made this in two hours or something Yeah, so you can still leave that information But do like a little notes up at the top or at the bottom or even in text like in your editing software So that way you can still show it and that way you're not just blocking the screen and not you know You made me go and close it so I could see what was going on Like I actually had to physically close the annotations to watch the video. So That's more work for me to watch your video And if I was just a normal casual viewer hanging out what it's going by I might not you know Do that. Sorry. Sorry. I just noticed when um, when one of the characters shot the other character He broke the microphone Oh, yeah And the intro No, no, no have way through the video and that and he looks at his microphone very sneakily like oh Like the diaphragm's hanging out of the microphone Still using it So I can obviously that you guys are young and you're pretty much just doing this as a laugh Because this is this right here is pretty much how I started out with um Filmmaking like I would just get my friends over and we would just set up a camera and go for it We didn't have we didn't know at the time. Well, we didn't have any knowledge about audio or like, um Grainliness of the video and stuff like no and copyright music. So we literally just went for it That being said though with the lower quality cameras They have they're not as good in low light. So that's kind of why you're getting this pixelation here Yeah, the grain and this grain is just because the camera is bumped up and it's trying to get this gain And that's why it's kind of looking Like hazy on these darker areas Now if you do have this and you don't have the good enough lighting to make it like perfectly clear What you can do and any editing software I've actually never seen an editing software that doesn't have this feature Is brightness and contrast You turn down the brightness just a little bit and contrast up a bit and it blends it all out So then you can actually see Or you can't see rather the pixels and it just makes it more smooth looking So I'd recommend that for your video. Like even if you just turn it down like negative three negative five on brightness And then contrast up that same amount And it will help it look a lot more clear Yeah So when I was talking what I was saying early about how when I first started this is pretty much what I did But if I started if I was my age now If I started now and I was when I first started if that makes sense I would because we have so much more technology and we have this show for example I would go out and research What would probably be look best and stuff because back when we started it was literally YouTube wasn't even a thing when we started so When we started it was kind of like I don't know what to do so Now they have all this technology you can always branch out and say Right, so we have this camera and we have ourselves Can we make it any better? So we go on youtube and we have a look at it and we find and then we find monday critiques videos and we're like, oh So Meanwhile, definitely This is a good starting point. So go from here. Yeah, you talk mics. I need to go to the bathroom. Enjoy jordan I will actually i'm gonna go to the bathroom too. Bye guys. No No, um This is one of the things that we were talking about earlier with jordan I you know we may not be like youtube celebrities, but I did go to film school I do have my bachelor's degree and uh filmmaking and stuff like that And one of the things that we learned pretty quickly is your biggest friend as far as lighting is the sun Now you can set up these debates and do something like outside with like a pretty like bush like background put up like a Some type of backdrop or something so it looks professional and you have this huge source of light outside And you're not going to have this pixelation that you're having inside the house Because you actually have just light from everywhere at the camera is able to use And it doesn't have to kick up the gain So although it's easier and more comfortable to do it inside your house But if you're wanting like the top notch quality you can go outside and just utilize the sun utilize these different things And you can get a lot more better picture For uh less equipment But if you do want to continue moving forward with this and keep on branching out and growing Your channel and the future you are obviously going to need some sort of equipment Whether it's like a dslr lighting kit and audio stuff like that But the fact that you worked with what you do have is pretty cool Only So Yeah, I mean really though with the equipment you have it's not bad It's one of those things like as you continue to grow to grow and test out new stuff. That's what I recommend So let's go ahead and check out another channel If you guys will leave your video titles and the comments for you to check out I will pick one and we can check out the next channel And I think I got one Let me send this over to Jordan real quick for when he gets back And I'm going to put this in the description for you guys to watch Okay, cool.  So just let's do this Cuts and tons and tons of fun Oh The ai is even worse So far so good I like that intro actually Whether or not it's a template or not. It's it's nice. It stands out and it's different from your typical step thing that you see in every single Channel and welcome back to the sunday drive This one is now because this adds is the music and Game or is this something that you're actually Putting in later and ending Here we go Go dammit. It's a little bit loud and regard this The ai is going insane. I think it needs to turn it down a little bit So whether you're recording it in-game or putting it in later Take a look at your And your editing software or even while you're recording it directly depending on if you record your channels differently or not I'd recommend recording your channels differently like audio on One layer and then your game audio on the separate so that you can mix them down properly Ideal Oh, i'm back. Hey I'd linked you a video to watch. Here we go. Six opponents in fact Do torrent Kind of told what we were looking for as far as funny moment videos And Talked about the music levels Okay The music is kind of loud in comparison to his voice Basically So another thing I want to say about the funny moments thing is The general idea of funny moments is they are moments So the video would be consisting of about three minutes worth of stuff that happened in this game that you're playing That were really funny instead of the entire gameplay because otherwise it's not a funny moments video. It's just a Assetto Corsa trial mountain video. So The idea of funny moments is It's funny parts in the game. You just played But yeah, now he is He is cutting around the dole moments though so It may not be like constant laughter throughout the whole thing, but he is Cutting out these things and cutting to like different situations So it's just a long video. I think is what you're getting at Am I correct there? You are like long for a funny moments video. Yeah, I mean the difference between 11 minutes with Dota and doing it and say markiplier with gaming is markiplier Uploads games daily videos daily And you'll leave it a month before he does a highlight video. He does a highlight video every month or so And because he does one every day, he's literally got 15 minutes worth of beautiful content to use in this one video, but It's obviously obviously for smaller youtubers. We're not going to have that. We haven't got that much of a commitment. Unfortunately so 11 minutes of funny moments I can I can see the I can see the attraction, but I think after a while it might get a bit boring Especially the same video But that's my opinion Yeah, I think this would just be kind of a better Sunday drive video like a funny sunday drive video Yeah, instead of classifying as funny moments like it is funny moments throughout the whole thing, but This is kind of like similar to how I would edit my gameplay I just cut out all the dull moments So it's nothing but the funny stuff and then on a funny moments video You just keep all the funniest parts of that funny stuff Looks like you don't want to have any dry Parts in your video that are boring that people want to skip through you want people to enjoy the whole thing So you have the right idea as far as like the gameplay goes and the editing of that gameplay I think you just need to classify them a little bit differently. Yeah Um overall quality of everything. I think it's good The only thing that's bugging me as far as the quality is your orange lighting in your webcam That's the filmmaker me coming out hoping that you would use white lights instead of yellow indoor bulbs Is that is that orange light or is that wood that's giving off that orange look? I mean, he's he's orange in the background's orange and Oh, yeah, the boxes behind them are have an orange tint to it So they're if he used the white soft Uh bulbs then it would have counteracted that Yeah, I mean so another Uh equivalent to that because obviously if you haven't got the money to spend that if you have a monitor Just have it on a white screen. That's good enough I I do that sometimes if I have a if I need to make a video where I'm talking and my soft boxes aren't working that day Because I don't a pack of four white light bulbs is five dollars and monitors a hundred plus Come on Yeah, not understanding where I'm going Maybe he hasn't got the money So I usually if my soft boxes aren't working for that day because sometimes they don't and it's really annoying I need to get some new ones I would turn my tv on and I put it on to like a white background and there you get you've got yourself Oh Every time we go grocery shopping We buy a five dollar pack of white light bulbs to switch out some of the yellow lights in our house And we've been slowly little by little getting rid of all the yellow Look to our house when we do our vlogs in the house. We don't have that yellow tint. It's all white So we don't need to set up soft boxes and stuff. We just Do that That's pretty cool.  So this is Yeah, overall, I think It's a really solid gameplay video What I love about what I love about um Dottern himself, I'm gonna call you Dottern as a person It's just it's just hilarious how he's just playing this with the actual um Actual steering wheel and he has and he has his hood up and he's got his headphones He looks like a right character like somebody who you probably see in a car who would like his dream his dream is to speed in these cars He looks like he's having a right laugh Now, um, one last thing like I said, I really enjoy the overall quality of it. I like the editing style I like The just everything about it so far um The outro in my opinion does not live up to like the intro graphics And quality the outro just kind of looks like it was quickly slapped together like just google green Funky background and then throw text on there you go. Yeah, um Not necessarily fond of that Color scheme, I guess Yeah, the orange The orange the orange clashes with the green Well, it's Christmas colors. It's like it's like a red and green. It's the same with his uh Banner and avatar too though. So like you do have the cross platform branding Yeah, and now that I'm looking at the green like fire that kind of has a nice idea For what your channel is like the speed the cars the stuff like that But I don't necessarily like I guess the red text is what's bothering me on top of it Yeah So If it was like, you know, even like a yellow or Something like that it would help pop a lot more and it won't clash Yeah, just just research about what works with what I mean, yeah putting putting green with with orange. I mean I mean, it sounds like it's it sounds like it could work, but then you look at it and you're like, oh Is that orange on your monitor? No, I was just saying green and orange. Okay, because it's it's a red for me I had to quickly think of two things that clash Now we took a whole 11 week course over color theory and like what colors work together and blah blah blah blah It's like forever ingrained in my mind. It's like I feel like my teacher slapping me in the face whenever I pick the wrong colors But uh Yeah, like I like The use of the background. That's all I really can think of. It's just maybe a different color of text Yeah Or a different color background like change use the same type and maybe make it Because I noticed I noticed that the watch the watch more and the the d And the d looked all right, but as far as a subscribe one It looks a bit pinkish or like a light light red almost pink I feel I feel the red works, but maybe because there's like a There's an outline around it. So it's like kind of making a stand out where subscribe is just on so Yeah, it's just Being picky. We're trying to help Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, overall. I think it's really good. So And yeah, this is all our opinion. I mean you can take this on if you want or you can go Nah Yeah, like even if you go to like the whole video list and then look at the little banner that he has on the thumbnails Like that that lightish pink red is kind of hard to read Yeah, yeah, so I think green is an overall good branding color But I think as far as text I think is what you need to Focus on to make it more easily readable Okay, so we uh Are we good with that one? Yeah, you're up I've sent you the link This is the the lucky boy five four three two one and lift off from a certain program in the 80s Okay, so this is prop hunt highlights tlb versus clint to min Clint to min that is now in the description I already like his comedy style and we're playing something We have never ever played Mike we knew you're gonna have some fun with this one.  It makes me think like you're setting up for like a music channel Yeah, so it doesn't necessarily fit with yo what up T.O.B. If we're playing something we have never ever played on this channel before Now Green screening that's that's tough. Oh, that's interesting This is what i was saying No, like they're recording They're recording in the same room on one green screen just on each each side of it Are they yeah, there's a scene in it where he pulls it back at each other guy. How cool is that? That's cool. That's clever really utilizing that green screen. That's awesome. Um now what I was Nora You want to be in the live stream? How about you Joy? Okay? That's really cool. Nora's gonna talk about green screening because she knows how Lucky boy, can I take your technique of the double-sided green screen? I make videos on my channel with that technique. Okay. We got Nora and the green screen Oh, yeah, I forgot you was on webcam All right, come here We're gonna make you invisible. There you go. Are you literally gonna tell us how to do green screen with your dog? Yeah, she's gonna help us All right So Let's see if I could do this real quick Probably not Probably not Nora will probably lose interest within a minute There you go. She's keyed you can see through Nora So You can see right here how it's only keying out parts of the green. It's not keying out everything I'm just sat here waiting for the stream to catch up so it's because There's wrinkles in it. It's not let it's not pulled out properly And it's not lit properly either So it's hard to get that even key throughout everything So in your situation over here You're seeing that there's some issues alongside that And there's a lot of things you got to do with the green screen to get a perfect key And you have to make sure it's pulled tight. You need to make sure it's iron correctly And you need to make sure that it's lit correctly too Now in your green screen here This one actually doesn't look too bad Yeah, one side looks a bit Um Pixelated the other one looks a lot better. I think part of that, you know, whether it's lighting or it's Whatever but you could see on your friend here on the right. He has some green spill onto him Now since you are both recording in the same room This makes it tough, but the green screen is too close to him and the light is balancing the green Off of the green screen onto him So what you have to do I got dog for my mouth is Ideally the green screen should be like 10 feet back Taking up the whole wall and you light your green screen and then you light you So you should have like a three light set up on you and a three light set up on the green screen Not everyone has that luxury So you really have to work around it and play with it But since he's sitting so close here to the background You can see that he's casting a shadow on the screen screen So it's going to make it harder to key and you're going to have that spill So even if you were just screwed up like another foot or so And then if you put a light on the back of you You create a rim light and that would make it separate better so you can green screen but Piri Piri made a good comment saying if you are able to do it Instead of using a green screen just get a green card or some green like solid Material because then you don't have to iron it and then it's a lot easier to light It does light though a little bit more It completely depends on the surface if it's if it's like wood then yeah, but um You even construction paper would bounce light The fabric kind of absorbs light I suppose it depends if he's doing the whole I'm sat in 10 feet in front of it, maybe but 10 feet good lord a couple of meters ahead of it But oh, I just saw a um, oh nice on reference in there You've worked with a nice on haven't you? Back in the day But uh, yeah, I'm scared to nice on scares me But um Yeah, it's a good idea to if to be using green board because I've used it in the past I've used like a solid material for green screen um But then again cloth is a lot cheaper and a lot easier to use But I think for the fact that you're using two people with the same screen on each side Yeah, the fact that you could pull it back and like look at your friend. I think yeah It's cool. It adds to the comedy factor Yeah, yeah, you know if you did do I am running somehow mount Instruction paper like some type of board behind you You'd have to just have that hanging from the ceiling and that'd be really really awkward and weird If it was in the middle of your room Like that's something you have to kind of mount on the wall So the fact there's two of you that makes it more difficult I mean that is a very I have seen it done before but I haven't seen it been done in ages And I kind of want to do it myself The whole two-sided green screen thing. I haven't seen that in a while. I've never seen it. That's new for me So Once you hit about six minutes and 50 seconds you get to the letterbox video I don't know why it's scaled down, but it's kind of a little pet peeve of mine Overall I like the effort I like what you're doing. I like the work that's being put into it I think it's funny that you guys are doing this and the fact that you have a pokemon wall That's awesome too. My friend and I we've had a whole entire wall dedicated to pokemon cards So you need to keep on working Man Have you ever played prop hunt mike? Yeah It's pretty I wish I could play They have a minecraft version You could ride minecraft k you Um now that's for quality We've talked about the green screen how to get that a little bit better. Uh, that's all with practice and perfecting the setup like Oh, the green screen is so tough to get perfect But besides that The only other thing I could really think to be improved upon is your audio quality um It's not terrible, but in the future if you do want to grow and you do want to Bump your overall production value. That's something you should look into Lucky boy says someone noticed my pokemon wall. Yay I wish I could show you the pokemon wall that we had It's so funny It was like literally the whole entire rude was just pokemon walls Yes green screen. Yeah, so you say about audio and green screen Because I have a very my experience with green screen and And stuff like that one of my videos where I attempted green screen for the very first time And unfortunately somebody got a hold of it and put on reddit and my video got slated As mike as mike as mike remembers. Yes, and it got absolutely slated but um Thankfully, hopefully this will never happen to you because there are people out there who are just there to make you feel Bad about yourself Gaming video where you're not like that's not your goal. You were doing like a film where you were Yeah, but then again, I I used it to my advantage and I got um partnered with uh an x partnership Because I had to get a certain amount of views and I got it and I was like so but yeah, and then Lastly just video quality um The green For your one friend here is like a really just strong green That's why he's getting a better key and then you cut over to the other one I don't I assume that this is you for whatever reason. I don't know why I'm talking to one person particular But it's more like a yellow green and it's the same green screen So there's obviously a difference in quality of cameras there So maybe in the future you can get two of whatever cameras used here and you'd have Matching quality overall and it will look a lot better like here. You can see you guys both side by side This one it's more hd and crisp and this one's more pixelated Reaction zed says where is your camera jordan? uh well problem is problem is if I go on camera that Amazingly it can screw up the quality of the video and the sound because that's just how internet works Yeah, whatever we turn on video, then we start getting lag. We start getting blub blub wash Yeah, so I I like to stay off camera. Yeah, we tried it one week, but um, yeah That's why I stay off you can come find me in my channel though if you want to see jordan's face Watch all of his videos subscribe like and leave five comments Do that All right So Let's go ahead and review one more. We have hit our our mark, but I think we could wrap it with one more Okay, I'll let you All right, so I could be a beatboxer could you know no All right So I think what we're gonna do We're gonna pick Pesid drifter I don't know how you say the name pack a drifter. Pesid drifter. He said he's never been featured before And he asked us to watch One of his csgo videos Okay, so we'll do the featured one and guys again, this is the last one So if you didn't make it on today's video or live stream rather Uh, don't be discouraged. We can only get to so many and one day So we try to get to as many as possible and give everyone a fair chance by Picking new people each week So we'll be back next monday and you guys could watch this more then And in the meantime check out the channels that we featured And watch with us and just enjoy this last one with us All right, so we've already mentioned kind of what we look for within a funny moments video Yeah, so we kind of wanted to see fast-paced Chopped out all the funny moments. There's not really any dragging spots. So before we get into it. That's just kind of our expectations So I'm talking so I touched on this last week. Um There's a there's a thing that says Simon going full retard Um As far I know the reference because that's going from the film. You never go full retard, but The difference between you and a multi-million Uh production film is they have their lawsuits And they can handle they can handle if they had any problems whereas you can't So you need to watch what you're saying with the word retard and all this lot because There are people out there who are going to get offended and To be honest, they have every right to they say I don't like you saying the word recording people retard because To be honest, it's it's it is offensive But I know that there is a comedy sense to it and I completely understand the side of comedy to it But you just need to be careful with that.   It's going to be rather distracting So like this I'm looking towards what I'm showing you guys and I'm directing it towards that. So it's it makes it Just a little bit distracting to be looking away from what you're playing Sorry And of course it's not very flattering Me being a slightly bigger person I would hate to have a camera down there because you see all the chins So this is also something I've kind of touched on in the past When you play with other people It's hard to make your videos about you So like You're you're definitely talking throughout it, but a lot of these funny moments are are your friends talking or your friends saying something Or you reacting to what your friends are saying So don't be afraid to speak up and speak over top of your friends and make sure that it's It's known and it's heard when I speak because this is your video And this is about you and your channel. So speak up more talk more and make the video all in all about you more Yeah, it's always fun to play with more people because you could feed off of them But you need to make sure they're not overpowering you in your own video again with the um Again with the uh century common with the alex alex bar thing Really watch what you're putting Because there's some people that just straight up don't care and that's what they make their brand about is like being offensive You know, yeah, so like if that's what you're going for that Sure, but it depends on if you're trying to be appropriate for all ages and for all viewers Then you're kind of limiting yourself, but if you want to be known as that person that just doesn't care And I am who I am so shut up. It's like, you know That's fine. You know like cast some g I don't know if you guys watch him or not But he's known for being kind of a rude person in his videos and that's what makes him fun to watch so You know there's people that make There's a channel there's a there's a channel a british channel called I hate everything And it's literally just a video going I hate this video and if you disagree me.  It's like, all right Yeah, yeah, there's it's hard to um Like with offensive comments and stuff like that.  I try to make it appropriate for all ages and There was once that I actually did say like retarded a video and I think I lost like 20 subscribers that day Yeah, and it depends on what your channel is and what it's targeted towards if you want to make these phrases and stuff, you know If you don't care because that's who you are Sure go for it But if you're trying to be family friendly then that's when you need to start thinking more about what you say It's especially difficult when you have friends who swear openly as well Yeah, you're filming them smiling at them, but you can see in your eyes. You can see in your eyes. You look you're dead to me So Overall quality, I think it's good quality. I think Things sound good. I like that you take the extra time to add it and put like the text that comes up on the screen Because that makes things more funny and it makes it emphasize on these funny moments Um, I think that's good use of that You can tell you put extra work into it Um, yeah, I I definitely like it when gamers do that because it just shows they care enough to actually spend the extra 30 seconds To put a text slot there and then a text slot the next time and it does add up So like a lot of people don't do it and that's I think what separates it just a normal youtuber from Someone that really cares about their channel and wants to grow it He's definitely on the right track. He's uh, you're definitely Obviously you can improve in some place another so if you actually work on that and you're gonna be You're gonna be having a quite a good channel on your hands here then uh Lastly Let's check your channel real quick What I've always been told Is even if you just start out the channel and you don't necessarily have like a following to make them Make social medias So make make a twitter make a facebook make all this stuff And on here it does look like you have a twitter or at least there's an icon for twitter on your logo there But your description doesn't have anything about it and your channel doesn't have anything about it either So update your defaults whenever you upload it has these social medias and even if no one's there to watch it Just share it to all these platforms if you're using something like tube buddy It makes it really easier or something some other social media site that posts to all of them just with one go So that way you don't need to actually manage anything But just by posting your videos on these sites it gives it more weight and more seo worth So it'll be seen better and it has more chance at growth So it's not just don't think of it as you know, you set up a facebook page. No one's liked it yet There's still benefit in posting there even if no one has liked your page So once you post it people start coming then it's going to grow and have extra weight to it in the seo world Yeah Anything else to mention? No, I think we pretty much nailed that on the uh the headsail Oh guys, I think that's it for today Something i've never done before I think we fun people seem to like this i'm going to put you guys in the vlog Hey Right now and if you guys want to be in the vlog feel free to say hi. I'm recording the chat And you guys could say hi to us and uh, you'll be featured Hi You're so i want to be in the vlog we're like 15 seconds So much for a delay But yeah guys, thank you for hanging out with us if you want to see more of jordan He's in the description as well as the cards and if you want to see more of me I'm in the cards and description as well And uh, also the description has all the featured channels that we featured today So you can check out their channels and subscribe to them and leave them a comment say hi And uh, then we'll be next we'll be back next monday right around the same time. So Anyways guys, that's it and we'll see you next time. See ya Goodbye There we go