Rachel Tobac
speaker
124 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2024
last heard Apr 2024
Rachel Tobac’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Okay, my origin story. So... My first time that I ever thought about being any sort of hacker was when I realized that being a spy is a job that people do. And it's a job that girls could do. And I learned this through the movie Harriet the Spy. She goes around sneaking into people's houses, spying. She takes her notebook everywhere.
She sneaks through the dumbwaiter in this rich woman's house and gets caught. And I just thought, oh my, I had no idea that a girl could be a spy. So that basically became my personality for my childhood.
I did not get into computers. I wanted to get into computers. I went to my guidance counselor in, I think, sixth grade. And I said, hey, I want to take these coding classes. And my guidance counselor, she said, Rachel, you don't want to take those coding classes. Those coding classes are 40 boys. You'd be the only girl there. Just take home ec instead. Wow.
I know. And me being a child, I was like, oh, good call. I mean, yeah, I don't want to like blame her for like me never learning to code. I mean, I could have tried later in life, right? People try later in life all the time. But no, I've actually never written a single line of code. I ended up getting my degree in neuroscience and behavioral psychology. I was a teacher's assistant for statistics.
I never got into code.
Yeah. So my path to InfoSec and hacking, to the untrained eye, it doesn't make any sense. It's almost completely nonlinear. To me, looking back, it makes a lot of sense. So I got my degree in neuroscience and behavioral psychology. I was doing improv on the weekends. I was a teacher. I then was like, hey, I want to try and get into tech. I moved to San Francisco.
I was a community manager at a tech company. I actually ended up leading a UX research team. And then while I was at that tech company, my husband was in security the entire time. I actually met my husband in high school. I met him when I was 15 years old. So my husband was like, hey, I heard about this thing called DEF CON. I think you would get a kick out of it. And I was like, uh, pass.
I think I'm not going to do that.
They do this thing where... They put you in a glass booth. It's soundproof in front of an audience of 500 people. You call companies and you try and solicit information out of them over the phone. It's the exact same skill that you use every month to get the bill lowered. When you call these companies, you build rapport, you get a deep discount on things like the cable bill. You'll love it.
He called me back and he's like, I just saw more of these calls, these social engineering calls. You have to come. Like, I promise you, if you don't like it, we'll just go gambling. As an aside, I love gambling. So I was like, okay, fine. I pack my bags. I get the first flight out Saturday morning.
And as you know, if you're at DEF CON Saturday morning, it's like DEF CON's like a third over at that point, if not more. So I show up, I see a few calls.
I see a few calls and I'm like, oh my, this is me. Like, I can do this. I was born for this. And my husband was like, I know, right? I told you.
And I was like, oh, I got just the thing. I made this Twin Peaks style video to convince them to let me get in. And somehow they agreed to let me participate. Hundreds of people apply and 14 contestants are selected every single year.
I contact my target company. I pretend to be an employee who's confused, who's just starting out. And I end up getting flag after flag. And I get out of the booth and I'm like, maybe I did okay. And then there's like a standing ovation. I'm like, oh, maybe I did better than okay. And I ended up getting second place that first time ever hacking anybody.
That first time ever hacking somebody happened in a glass booth in front of 500 people.
And then I ended up getting second place the second year, and I got second place the third year as well.
After folks started seeing me get second place at DEF CON, they'd see me on stage, they'd be like, hey, I want to chat with you. Can you come speak at my company about how you hack and how we can catch you? And I live in Silicon Valley, so I got really lucky. that people started asking me to do things that like, are a job, right? Like, I'm like, Oh, I guess I need to make a company.
So I made social proof security in 2017. And I mean, I live in Silicon Valley, I was so lucky. Some of my first clients were like Facebook, Snapchat, PayPal, Twitter. And from there, it was like US Air Force, NATO, Uber, Google, Cisco, it's like, Oh, my gosh, you know, I feel like I just got really lucky in this life.
Oh, it's totally wild. I mean, if you would have asked me decades ago, like, what did you think you were going to get into? The word hacker would have never even made the top 100 list because I didn't know it was possible, didn't know it could be a job, and I certainly didn't think I would be good at it.
When I saw the concept of a hacker in TV or movies, it was usually a guy who wore a hoodie in a basement. I mean, I wear hoodies and basements are fine, but I didn't think that I was going to be good enough. Yeah, you just have to see yourself in the position. And I've had multiple women come up to me and say like, hey, I saw you in that competition.
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