A hacker bent on thwarting his peers
Tech boffin builds career keeping systems secure
ABU DHABI // Before becoming Europe’s No 1 ethical hacker, Jamie Woodruff took advantage of his autism to become a computer boffin and started hacking when he was nine. In discussing with young people how challenges can be turned to opportunities , Mr Woodruff, 23, showed how he overcame autism, dyslexia and dyspraxia.
“I did not have access to education sectors that you would see. When I went to school it was socially awkward,” he said.
He lasted three months in college before he gave up to help people with special needs.
Then, one day, he was asked if he wanted to enter a hackathon, where the top hacker won an expenses-paid university degree.
He won the challenge and enrolled in the School of Computer Science at Bangor University.
“So I went back to uni, and started teaching [ethical hacking] while I was still a student.”
Today, he is paid by companies such as Bloomberg and Barclays to test their systems and tell them what is wrong with their security. He demonstrated to the audience of the Global Summit for Women Speakers of Parliament this week how he could break into a company’s CCTV camera.
“We can actually control it, not only see it but also move it left, right, up and zoom.”
He showed a device he built in one weekend that could monitor keywords and find out how many people were trying to hack Don- ald Trump for instance. “My advice is look at what you’ve got to protect and how it could be protected. “You should keep phones and everything up to date with the latest version of protection. But if someone wants to hack you, they will.
“Just by making a simple call I can reset someone’s password in five minutes.” He demonstrated another device, which could unlock any modern car that does not require a key, and make it move.
When he was invited to speak at a conference in Norway, the organiser insisted he perform a hacking trick. “So I broke into his hotel room, stole his laptop.”
The next day, with 800 people watching, Mr Woodruff asked the organiser to walk outside.
“I told him to stop and look to his right, there was his car right in front of him, I turned it on with my laptop. “He uses the same password for everything so I could recover everything.”
His most famous tricks include when he posed as a Domino’s delivery man – a job for which he applied and was accepted “very easily”, in order to break into the server room of a large financial institution. After monitoring the action at the institution he noticed that staff ordered from Domino’s every Friday.
“So, every Friday, this guy from Domino’s would appear to deliver pizza and pass by security and I was in. I could have stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars.”