Shadowing Practice: Capabilities of Hackers, Tools Hackers use, and 5 Things You Can Do To Protect Yourself - Learn English Speaking with Video

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I'm not gonna hack your Wi -Fi, but I'll give you a little example of what I could do.

So all of these networks here, they probably appear to be legitimate, right?

It's very illegal to do that, of course.

But if I wanted to go outside right now, I could even demonstrate later for you.

I think, you know, I pull this antenna out.

This is just a small antenna.

And we can receive airplanes, see where they're at.

There's nothing illegal about receiving them.

Transmitting is where it gets a little bit funky.

Man, you are a dangerous man.

you personally could hack if you wanted to.

Um.

It's countless, but I could give you some major daily things.

ED HARRISON: Absolutely.

Let's talk about some of the devices, those devices you have right here, let's talk about all the stuff you can hack into.

Sure.

And then we'll get into maybe how we can.. prevent that a little bit.

So, I guess we'll just start with a daily routine.

You wake up in the morning, you make your coffee or maybe you take your phone off the charger and you check your phone in the morning.

You might check your email.

You might have to make sure every email that you have while you're half asleep is coming from-- a real person, it's not a phishing email, someone pretending to be a company that they're not, stealing your credentials.

Then you go outside to your garage, you get in your car, And you have to make sure

that there's nobody out there listening for your car key frequency

while jamming your car so that they could steal your car later or access your car later.

And then when you go hit your garage door button that somebody doesn't capture that frequency on 433 megahertz.

And those rolling codes have already been broken for most of the models.

So then you get in your car and you're driving to your office or to your kid's school, doing whatever you want.

You know, you could get out, you let your kid out to school, and now somebody, as you walk into school, just skimmed your back pocket and stole your credit card information.

So, I mean, all of that plus anything remote, infrared, like a TV remote that goes for projectors,

audio devices, ceiling fans, I mean, very simple stuff, along with access control badges.

anything sub gigahertz like key fobs or remote controls for anything.

um parking gates So much.

-Everything.

I mean, anything with a battery and a connection, a remote connection, in any type of way where it reaches the outside of that device is hackable.

or has been hacked.

What are these devices here?

This is a water bottle.

So this right here is a...

This is a Flipper Zero with some custom modifications.

Thank you.

And it does a lot.

So this is just a proof of concept device.

But when you start to add your own little additions onto it like this, Um...

Let me enable, for example, Wi -Fi.

hack your Wi -Fi, but I'll give you a little example of what I could do.

I'll just do something stupid.

Thank you.

Okay, and then we'll do...

I'm not going to shut your network down.

Okay, so now if you...

I can show you on my phone or you can look at your phone, but you'll see that Instead of me mirroring your network, I just created a bunch of fake networks.

Thank you.

So all of these networks here, they probably appear to be Legitimate, right?

Yeah.

But they're not.

These are all fake networks?

They're all powered by me.

So as soon as you connect to any of those I have your password.

I have anything in between. So that's one thing.

That's just Wi -Fi.

And you just...

Oh man.

So this is, so this is, is this how people are - Stealing information.

- This is one of many ways.

- In an airport.

In an airport?

Oh yeah, I mean, airport, Starbucks, when you, it's called a man in the middle attack.

So if I'm on the same network as you, I can essentially control the traffic as if I was the modem or router.

So, instead of when you type google .com, instead of your computer telling the router you want google .com, you're telling my computer you want google .com,

and I'm giving you what I'm telling you google .com is.

It would be called a DNS attack.

Is this what people are using in the airports when there's-- I've heard about-- Not this specific device.

This is just something that I concocted together.

But the flipper you can buy, this thing on the top here is custom.

I guess what I'm asking, is this the method?

So could you, so let's, what is, um...

like Wi -Fi flight or GoGo?

GoGo in flight?

Yes.

They're actually, I mean, you can, obviously, you can hack anything.

But GoGo in flight, they have a pretty good.. segment on their network, so you're pretty safe with GoGo.

There's a chance of getting hacked, but not the same as like a Starbucks or here.

Your network has to be segmented into chunks.

segments it pretty well.

- Okay, I guess what I'm saying is, could you create a fake Wi -Fi network with that thing that says, Go go In flight one,

people are like, oh, that must be it.

I could do that here.

I mean, it's, I can make any, they're called BSSIDs, SSIDs, the name of a network.

You could do that with any name, but instead of that, what you do is you just scan the local area, and then now I know all the network's names around here, and then I'll target all of them at the same time.

so that that way anyone in this complex or where we're at Um, Anyone that connects to a network is going to think it's their network.

and they're gonna connect to me instead.

Holy shit.

That's just one of many Wi -Fi attacks.

So there's many ways.

Yeah, what else can this thing do?

This thing's like the size of the palm of your hand.

Yeah, well with this little custom extension, especially when I have my big, these aren't the big antennas, but I got big antennas because I want to get long range.

But uh You know, that's Wi -Fi.

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This side of things is also Wi -Fi, but also it's an NRF 24.

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So it does wireless mice and keyboards.

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If you use a wireless mouse and keyboard, not every single one of them is vulnerable, but a lot of them are.

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I'd highly recommend you go back to Wired.

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Even though it sounds old school, that's what you should do.

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Because I could control your mouse and keyboard with this device and send keystrokes way faster than you can type them.

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and take over your computer without even having to see you or it.

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So I could do that through the wall.

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Um, this is scaring the shit out of me.

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- Thank you.

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And then I, you know, I.. the sub gigahertz stuff with bigger antennas, of course I can go further away.

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So with car keys, garages, gates, anything that's radio frequency, I could do with this.

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RFID, that's access control badges for doors and pool keys, anything that has a little beeper where you beep into the door.

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NFC is credit cards and access control.

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And it does also some more things too.

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You could also like, I could tap your phone and give you my Instagram, or tap your phone and give you my business card.

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So NFC is a little more versatile than RFID, but they both essentially are, I believe it's called passive devices.

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They're powered by the the receiver.

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They don't have a battery in them.

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So what, let's just run through, Just a list of all the things you can hack with that one little device.

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I mean, I don't want to make it into an ad about Flipper because it's not Flipper itself.

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I'll tell you, but I'm just saying that Flipper itself, if you're going to go online and buy one of these and expect to be able to do everything that...

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i'm talking about you need to have custom firmware or software, whatever you want to call it, that allows you to do that, and you need to know how to modify it.

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So don't go out spending $180 on this device thinking you're going to hack somebody's car or steal their credit card, because that's not going to happen.

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But if you want to go down the list, I mean, there's a ton of things.

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There's like, you know, all the radio things I just told you about.

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The RFID stuff, the NFC, which is the credit cards and more, infrared, which is TVs, projectors and many other devices.

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GPIO, which is just anything that connects to the outside of this device, so I can make devices and this be the controller for it.

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I button, which is a form of authentication that uses these things, these little metal prongs as a key.

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Bad USB, which emulates a keyboard, types like a couple thousand words a second, Or I'm sorry, a minute, I'm sorry.

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A thousand words, a couple thousand words a minute.

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And then it also has some use cases that aren't hacking, like two -factor authentication.

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This is an offline device where you can generate your two -factor without needing a device that's connected to the internet.

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So it does that too.

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And then there's a ton of other sub applications that are on here, like hundreds of them that do little little things, so.

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a lot, just with this one device.

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This thing You know, it does just radio, but it does a lot more than this thing.

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Really?

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- Yeah.

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- What does that one do?

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- This one you can hack

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airplanes with i mean that i mean that's the extreme

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but that's something that you can actually accomplish with this using adsb you can choose to either receive or transmit Okay.

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So you can choose either receive or transmit ADS -B with this device, and that's the frequency to tell a plane,

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you know, his call sign, position, and more. And it's...

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Very illegal to do that, of course.

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But if I wanted to go outside right now, I could even demonstrate later for you.

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I'd pull this antenna out.

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This is just a small antenna.

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And we can receive airplanes, see where they're at.

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There's nothing illegal about receiving them.

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Um...

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Transmitting is where it gets a little bit funky, you know?

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But yeah, ADS -B, this one does a lot.

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Something like a joke, for example, touch tunes at a bar.

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There's little jukebox machines that you pay for.

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- Yeah.

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- This device brute forces them, meaning goes through 000 to 9999 looking for a pin code.

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and once it gets it i can fully control

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that jukebox like like i have like i'm the owner of it

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so you know just just for fun

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or subaru cars some some years of subaru i have this pre -programmed

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that can unlock and unlock unlock and lock a subaru no problem um I could do that with this as well, but this thing, way stronger,

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bigger range, way more support, way more programs out there.

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This device is a lot more dangerous in my eyes than that device.

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Really?

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Yep.

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- Thank you.

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Man, you are a...

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I think this is the fifth time I've said it, I think.

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You are a dangerous man.

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Well, I'm safe, you know, ethical.

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You could be if you wanted to be.

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I'm trying to go into detail about these things just for the nerds out there like me that are listening.

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I'm not going into...

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exhaustive detail about these devices because most people are not going to care.

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So I'm just giving the general overview.

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- Oh, I think they're gonna care when they realize how vulnerable they are.

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- No, I don't mean they don't care about what they can do, but they care about the technical specifics.

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We get a lot of our, pretty much everything that we have is from China.

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Okay.

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All of our electronics, everything, it all-- What?

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What do you say, 90 % of it probably comes from China?

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We need to worry about what they're putting in our electronics.

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Yeah, yeah.

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I mean, I'll give you one example.

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I bought this awesome vacuum and mop that's in one, an all -in -one vacuum mop called Tinoco. And, uh...

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It completely connects to a Chinese server to transmit and receive information.

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Like I made a joke out of it, I actually have a video of it, where you could turn the audio on for it.

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Like when you plug it in, it says "Charging started, charging stopped." Like when you port it on and off.

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I could control that with my computer through a Chinese cloud server.

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There's no reason that that vacuum and mop should connect to a Chinese cloud.

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cloud infrastructure whatsoever, but it does.

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And at any point they could change the way that functionality works and take over my home network with this vacuum mop.

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Are you serious?

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With a vacuum mop?

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Yep.

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How many devices do you think have these things in them?

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anything with a Wi -Fi connection, it's, you know, not everything's going to be China beaconing back and forth, but anything with a Wi -Fi,

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Anything with Wi -Fi capability is going to open up an attack vector washing machines, refrigerators, just...

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Why does a vacuum mop have Wi -Fi capability?

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I'd love to tell you.

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I have the video I could show you.

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I could find it sometime, but I have that.

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And then I have the app I could show you.

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I could adjust the volume.

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I could check when the last time I used it.

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Does it need to be cleaned?

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It tells you all that stuff.

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but it's using a Chinese server.

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that I can control from my computer now that I've captured the traffic between the mop and the server.

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How many devices do you think we have that are connected to a Chinese device?

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server and what would they be getting out of it?

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I mean, it's all about data nowadays. So.

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I mean, I think that data is the most important thing to them because it's worth money. And advertising...

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dollars would be spent better for, you know, with targeted demographics.

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So I think that they're using that information to target you on the stuff that they you need.

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You know, if you or someone that you love is looking up something, obviously Google's going to figure out how to target you on that thing,

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and then sell that data to other people, and they call it retargeting.

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Whereas if they have access to your direct network, and they could see, you know, things that you didn't even fully search out, or you're typing on a different application,

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like a chat application, where you're not even searching about it, you're just talking about it, that data is very valuable because they know about something before Google does or somebody,

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some other large data broker.

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Interesting.

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What are five simple things that people can do to protect themselves from hackers.

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Use the password manager.

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Um...

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Install an antivirus or consult with an IT company that has cybersecurity expertise or a cybersecurity company.

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One of those many options, but talk to somebody unless you're an expert yourself.

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Use an RFID blocking wallet and potentially

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if you want to be extra safe use a key fob that has an RFID shield on it.

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That way your key fob doesn't work outside of that shield, can't be cloned.

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Some cars require, you know, tap to start.

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you know, use something like that.

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Be careful with the websites that you're visiting.

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If the browser's telling you the site looks unsafe, then it's probably unsafe. And if...

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If you're told otherwise, make sure who's telling you otherwise is legitimate.

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Thank you. And...

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But just be careful.

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Just use your common sense.

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If something looks too good to be true, it probably is.

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ED HARRISON: OK.

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What about we live in a day and age where-- You're getting spam calls every five minutes, you're getting spam texts every five minutes,

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and a new marketing email's coming in every...

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two minutes.

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I mean, it's ridiculous. Do we need...

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Do we need to worry about that stuff?

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If I open a text, Thank you.

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- Could I be hacked just from opening the tax?

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- Technically, yes.

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I mean, like I said earlier, the zero click attacks that they're willing to pay a ton of money for, there's government agencies that already have them.

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There was one going around for quite a long time.

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There was one going around for quite a long time called Pegasus, and then there was another one called Pegasus 2 .0.

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And it didn't require any user interaction from anyone.

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You would just send to a phone number.

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They'd have full remote access to your phone.

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Even without opening the text?

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Without opening anything.

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Holy shit.

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How do you defend against something like that?

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You can't.

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There's no way to defend yourself.

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That's why they're so valuable, because there's nothing you can do.

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How do most hackers get in?

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Do you have to click a link?

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Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's a link, sometimes it's a file, sometimes it's a photo, sometimes it's a chain of exploits of multiple things that turn into it.

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It could be a Word document, it could be anything.

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When it comes to zero days and zero click exploits, It doesn't require any user interaction, and you will not know that your phone's infected.

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Hey everybody, I'm Sean Ryan.

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Click here to subscribe to The Sean Ryan Show YouTube channel for the hottest

269

and and most compelling interviews that you will not see anywhere else.

270

I've also made a playlist of all the previous SRS episodes so they're easy to find.

271

You can find that right here.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Capabilities of Hackers, Tools Hackers use, and 5 Things You Can Do To Protect Yourself”. This video has 271 sentences and 3053 words to shadow. The speech runs for 18:14. The speaker talks at a natural 167 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
antenna noun	/ænˈtɛn.ə/	An appendage used for sensing on the head of an insect, crab, or other animal.
vacuum noun	/ˈvæ.kjuːm/	A region of space that contains no matter.
flipper noun	/ˈflɪpɚ/	In marine mammals such as whales (or other secondarily aquatic animals such as sea turtles), a wide, flat limb adapted for swimming.
transmit verb	/tɹænsˈmɪt/	To send or convey from one person, place or thing to another.
keyboard noun	/ˈki.bɔɹd/	A set of keys laid out in a gridlike pattern, used for typing on a typewriter, computer, etc.
unlock verb	/ʌnˈlɑk/	To undo or open a lock or something locked by, for example, turning a key, or selecting a combination.
airplane noun	/ˈɛɹˌpleɪ̯n/	A powered heavier-than-air aircraft with fixed wings: a fixed-wing aircraft with at least one engine or electric motor.
authentication noun	/ɔːˌθɛntɪˈkeɪʃn̩/	Something which validates or confirms the authenticity of something; or the process of doing so.
cybersecurity noun	/saɪbəsɪˈkjʊəɹɪtɪ/	Security against electronic attacks such as cyberwarfare or cyberterrorism.
gigahertz noun		One billion hertz, 10⁹ Hz.
jukebox noun	/ˈd͡ʒukˌbɑks/	A coin-operated machine that plays recorded music, with push-buttons to make selections.
projector noun	/pɹəˈd͡ʒɛktə/	Someone who devises or suggests a project; a proposer or planner of something.
router noun	/ˈɹaʊ.tɚ/	Someone who routes or directs items from one location to another.
unsafe adjective	/ʌnˈseɪf/	Not safe (various senses); dangerous.
hacker noun	/hækəɹ/	Someone who hacks.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
take over verb		To assume control of something, such as a business or enterprise, and sometimes by force.
figure out verb		To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
get out verb		To leave or escape.
get out of verb		To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of.
go back to verb		To stem from; to originate in.
go down verb		To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one.
go out verb		To leave, especially a building.
look up verb	/ˌlʊk ˈʌp/	To have better prospects.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

I'll just do something stupid.
I guess what I'm asking, is this the method?
Do we need to worry about that stuff?
How do you defend against something like that?
Do you have to click a link?

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	been broken · has been hacked · would be called
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have already been broken · has been hacked · I've heard
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	NFC, which is · GPIO, which is · button, which is

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 82 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, they're, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: authentication /ɔːˌθɛntɪˈkeɪʃn̩/, ethical /ˈɛθɪkəl/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: authentication /ɔːˌθɛntɪˈkeɪʃn̩/, credential /kɹɪˈdɛnʃəl/, phishing /ˈfɪʃɪŋ/, modification /ˌmɑdɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/, accomplish /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ/
Long words — get the stress right: authentication /ɔːˌθɛntɪˈkeɪʃn̩/, cybersecurity /saɪbəsɪˈkjʊəɹɪtɪ/, capability /ˌkeɪ.pəˈbɪl.ɪ.ti/, electronics /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɑ.nɪks/, antivirus /ˈantɪvʌɪrəs/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like antenna, vacuum, flipper.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Capabilities of Hackers, Tools Hackers use, and 5 Things You Can Do To Protect Yourself - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?