CYBER
388 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 months ago - ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsHacking. Hackers. Disinformation campaigns. Encryption. The Cyber. This stuff gets complicated really fast, but Motherboard spends its time embedded in the infosec world so you don't have to. Host Matthew Gault talks every week to Motherboard reporters about the stories they're breaking and to the industry's most famous hackers and researchers about the biggest news in cybersecurity.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Episodes
How a Former Porn Performer Sued Her School for Discrimination—and Won
July 26, 2022 21:02 - 47 minutes - 38.2 MBWe don’t get a lot of feel good stories on Cyber. It’s often a podcast about hacking and tribulation. So we thought we’d do something a little different and tell the story of someone who fought back against abuse and won. Nicole Gililland is a former nursing student who began to experience discrimination when people at the nursing college she was attended began to dig into her past. Gililland was just trying to get a nursing degree, but the faculty at Southwestern Oregon Community College d...
Hacking BMW’s Heated Seats
July 21, 2022 20:27 - 36 minutes - 29.6 MBWhat do an iPad, the Department of Homeland Security, and heated seats in a BMW all have in common? Motherboard staff writer Joseph Cox has written about all of them. In this episode of Cyber, it’s a JC potpourri. First, how exactly does the Department of Homeland Security track phones across the country? Then we’ll get to the bottom of that viral story about BMW selling subscriptions to heated seats and what hackers might have to say about it. Finally, we’ll get to the bottom of JC’s new i...
Ukraine’s Decentralized Cyber Army
July 19, 2022 20:17 - 35 minutes - 28.7 MBThe war in Ukraine isn’t just happening on the ground, it’s also happening in cyberspace. It’s under reported and little understood, but just as the resilience of Urkainian’s kinetic defense is grinding against Russia, so too is the war online. Which is funny, because Russia is supposed to be good at this. At least … that’s what we all used to think. Hell, maybe it even used to be true. But now a team of volunteer hackers called the Ukraine IT Army is defending Kyiv and striking back agains...
Why Billionaires Seem Obsessed With Birth Rates
July 13, 2022 20:27 - 36 minutes - 28.9 MBLet’s talk about that hot new topic screaming from the lips of Tech’s hottest billionaires: birth rates. For some time, Elon Musk’s pinned tweet was about the declining birth rates in the United States. A man of conviction, Musk has sired at least ten children. Now Marc Andreesen of Andreessen Horowitz is in on the act. He recently went on Joe Rogan and had a wide ranging conversation that covered birth rates and eugenics. So why are some of the richest people alive obsessed with the U.S. ...
How the FBI Wiretapped the World
July 07, 2022 20:34 - 36 minutes - 29.6 MBFor years criminal organizations around the world were buying a special phone called Anom. The pitch was that it was completely anonymous and secure, a way for criminals to do business without authorities watching over their shoulder. It turned out that the whole thing was an elaborate honeypot and that the FBI and law enforcement agencies around the world were listening in. They’d help develop the phones themselves. The fallout from that revelation is ongoing and, here at Motherboard, we...
Listen to Disney Characters Talk About Targeted Advertising
July 06, 2022 20:19 - 33 minutes - 26.8 MBYou can’t scroll 1 inch on the internet these days without someone trying to sell you something. Facebook and Google rake in millions of dollars on advertising alone. When we talk about Ad Tech, those are the names that move through our mind. Not many people think about Disney. But they should. On today’s Cyber, Motherboard staff writer Joseph Cox comes on to talk about how Disney became a big player in the digital world of advertising. We begin with a set of surreal videos that use the Mup...
The Supreme Court Doesn't Care About What Americans Want
June 30, 2022 20:51 - 52 minutes - 42.1 MBOn June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that will have far reaching consequences about the power of the federal government to fight climate change. How did the landmark ruling even end up in front of the Justices, why did they decide to rule on it, and what will the consequences be for the environment and the country? On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Staff Writer Aaron Gordon sits down to answer all these questions and do more than a little ranting. Stories discussed in thi...
How the End of Roe Will Change Privacy
June 28, 2022 20:28 - 34 minutes - 27.8 MBThe Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, upsetting decades of precedent and ushering in a weird new world of conflicting laws and a lack of bodily autonomy for many women in the country. It’s a decision that will affect life in the U.S. in ways we’re only starting to comprehend. This week on Cyber we’re going to look at one small piece of all this: tech, data, and censorship. With me today is Motherboard Senior Editor Samantha Cole. She’s been working on a number of stories about pe...
Raising Rents at a Landlord Convention
June 23, 2022 20:00 - 42 minutes - 34.1 MBWhat do landlords talk about behind closed doors, among other landlords? Motherboard staff writer and Cyber host Matthew Gault attended in St. Louis recently. Landlords traded gossip, talked about raising rents, and tried to sell each on books and online classes. Outside of the convention, rents hit record medians, the COVID moratorium is ending, and a lot of tenants simply can’t afford to put a roof over their head. On this week’s episode of Cyber, Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler...
The Reply Guy From Hell
June 16, 2022 17:42 - 36 minutes - 28.9 MBReply guys. Maybe you’ve got one, maybe you are one. If you’re a public person online, and especially if you’re a woman, you tend to attract a few fans or detractors who respond to every single thing you post. Sometimes those interactions can be obnoxious. Sometimes, they can be so much worse. Today’s Cyber is about a reply guy from hell, a person who—for almost two decades—has used the internet to wage sustained harassment campaigns against multiple women. It’s a bizarre and disturbing sto...
You’re Afraid of AI For All the Wrong Reasons
June 14, 2022 20:30 - 44 minutes - 35.4 MBArtificial intelligence. It’s in your headlines and on your social media feed. AIs like Midjourney and DALL-E have filled my Twitter feed with algorithmically generated nightmare images of Tony Soprano as a Roman Emperor and Bigbird participating in the January 6 riots. At the same time, the press has become enamored with the story of Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer who the company let go after Lemoine insisted the LaMDA chatbot was sentient. Are we at the beginning of the AI apocalypse? H...
This Vigilante Keeps Crypto Safe From Thieves by Hacking it First
June 09, 2022 20:45 - 42 minutes - 34.4 MBCrypto is the wild west. Decentralized finance is the purview of the rich and the risk-taker. There’s millions to be had, but it’s easy—often too easy—to lose everything. If you read Motherboard you know that big and wild hacks are common. Maiar went offline recently after hackers stole $113 million from it. The Osmosis exchange just lost $5 million to hackers. And those are just the stories Motherboard reported on this week. If you’re an investor, an exchange, or a private holder, who do y...
Why Does Everything in Tech Feel Like a Scam?
June 07, 2022 20:37 - 45 minutes - 36.3 MBThe future is here, if you can pay for it. From NFTs, to web3, to virtual worlds, it seems like everyone has a pitch about what the future looks like and how we get there. For those involved, it’s a frenzied world of big money and massive opportunity. From the outside looking in, a lot of it looks like a massive scam. When I was a kid, the future meant flying cars and virtual worlds of our own creation. Now people are telling me it means clunky headsets, pictures of cartoon apes, and decent...
Discord Is The Center of the Crypto World and That’s a Problem
May 31, 2022 20:40 - 33 minutes - 26.6 MBDiscord. The popular chat app was once the humble home of gamers who were tired of paying for Ventrilo and Teamspeak servers. Now, it’s so much more. The crypto people have come and it doesn’t look like they’re going anywhere. From the Bored Ape Yacht Club to the next alt-coin with no backing, any project related to the blockchain probably has a space on Discord. But Discord was never built to be a place where people gathered together to manifest complex financial schemes and, because of th...
There’s a Housing Boom in a California Town that Burned Down 4 Years Ago
May 26, 2022 20:32 - 35 minutes - 28.5 MBIn 2018, the Camp Fire swept through California. It was the deadliest in the state’s history, destroying more than 18,000 buildings and killing 85 people. The town of Paradise all but burned to the ground at the time. Four years later, Paradise is in the midst of a housing boom. New homes are everywhere as people, some of them who lost their homes in the Camp Fire, return to the region. There’s no guarantee that another fire won’t sweep through the region. So why are people flocking to the ...
How Journalists Work With Hacktivists
May 25, 2022 16:00 - 40 minutes - 32.1 MBOn May 24, several news outlets reported on the internal workings of a Chinese run Uyghur internment camp in Xinjiang. The reports included detailed blueprints of the camp’s interiors, classified speeches from officials, and the personal information of police officers. An anonymous source hacked the information and got it out of China and into the hands of journalists. It’s part of a recent trend in resurgent hacktivism. On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Staff Writer Joseph Cox walks ...
America’s Complicated Relationship With Nuclear Power
May 19, 2022 18:56 - 33 minutes - 26.8 MBThe atom. For a few brief years in the middle of the 20th century, America and the world was cowed by the awesome possibility and terrifying reality of nuclear energy. Nuclear power had the potential to revolutionize the world but nuclear bombs could destroy it. But still … for a brief moment it seemed like nuclear energy would save the world. Then came Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and The China Syndrome. America fell out of love with nuclear energy. That might be changing. Climate change ...
Fired By Starbucks, Union Organizer Wears Fursuit to Rallies
May 17, 2022 19:09 - 47 minutes - 38.2 MBThe image is now iconic. An arctic wolf fursona in a Starbucks smock. Stance set wide. A sign in his hand held high that reads “UNION YES!” This was Michael Vestigo dressed in his Fursona as Apollo, a former Starbucks employee in Overland Park, Kansas. Why former? The company fired him for “displaying violent and threatening behavior” after he participated in a walkout of his location as part of a unionization effort. Vestigo is fighting to get his job back and he’s not the only person Sta...
BONUS: The Surprising Origins of Ransomware
May 12, 2022 18:40 - 33 minutes - 27 MBThis bonus episode of Cyber is sponsored by Command Line Heroes. If you like Cyber, you’re going to like Command Line Heroes. It’s an original podcast from Red Hat where listeners hear epic true tales of how developers, programmers, hackers, geeks, and open source rebels are revolutionizing the technology landscape. It’s an award winning show that’s been running for nine seasons. Every season has a theme and season 9 is all about the dark side of programming. Botnets, logic bombs, and—of co...
Crypto is Collapsing (For Now)
May 10, 2022 21:23 - 39 minutes - 31.3 MBSome days I think that maybe we’re not all gonna make it. It’s been a bad week for cryptocurrency and, as of this recording, it’s only Tuesday. Bitcoin is down. Ethereum down. Stablecoin seems not so stable. The NFT market is on fire. There’s copium all around, panicked posters, and soothing souls advising everyone to buy the dip. But won’t that just exacerbate the problem? Won’t that just delay what people outside the crypto space have been waiting to see happen: the great crypto crash. O...
Facebook Doesn’t Know What It’s Doing With your Data
May 05, 2022 20:21 - 36 minutes - 29 MBFacebook’s biggest strength is quickly becoming its largest headache. For years, Facebook has survived by tracking every little thing its users do and selling that on to everyone. But now a slew of regulations across the globe are looking to crack down on the social media site and, according to leaked documents, Facebook has no idea how to get compliant. Worse, the social media giant has no idea where any given piece of data goes once it enters its ecosystem. On this episode of Cyber, we si...
The Data Broker Tracking Abortion Clinic Visits Is Also Selling to the CDC
May 03, 2022 21:19 - 33 minutes - 26.7 MBYour data is valuable. Everything you do online and everywhere you go with your phone is tracked. And there’s a robust market for that data, a market that lets governments and private individuals purchase reams of your personal data. What if the CDC wanted to track people’s phones to see if they’re obeying Covid-19 lockdown orders? They can do that. What about a private individual paying to track the whereabouts of groups of people who visited Planned Parenthood? Also possible. On this ...
Hostile Takeovers and Poison Pills: The Week Elon Musk Came for Twitter
April 28, 2022 21:17 - 31 minutes - 25.3 MBElon Musk’s attempts to buy Twitter have sent ripples through the social media platform. There is a story here about panic, the limited reach of social media, and the increasingly fuzzy nature of the private/ public space … but I think all that is a surface level analysis. For me, the more interesting story is the corporate what lies just underneath. You see, Musk is the richest man not because he invented anything wonderful and world changing. No, he’s rich because he’s good at making mone...
The Cozy Relationship Between Cops and a Drone Manufacturer
April 26, 2022 19:27 - 51 minutes - 41.3 MBDrones are here to stay. The U.S. Military may have pioneered the art of using drones in a war zone, but America’s cops are pushing the tech on the homefront. From the Boston Dynamics dogs taking temperatures in Hawaii to quadcopters patrolling the skies, the cops are very interested in drone tech. One of the big companies in the field is Skydio. It advertises itself directly to police officers and has cultivated relationships with departments across the country. This week on Cyber, host Ma...
How Criminals Use Apple Pay to Abuse Credit Cards
April 21, 2022 19:34 - 36 minutes - 29.1 MBAre you using two-factor authentication for all your accounts? Do you have Apple Pay or another service hooked up to a bank card? Well, so do criminals. It’s the growth of a scheme Cyber first reported on about six months ago. Thanks to bots that help criminals trick you into giving up your 2FA codes, they're now able to set up links between Apple Pay bank cards. It’s shockingly easy to do and, bizarrely, shockingly hard to stop. On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Staff Writer Joseph C...
America’s Freight Train Drivers Are Exhausted and Overworked
April 19, 2022 20:37 - 49 minutes - 39.5 MBTrains, trains, trains. You might not think of them very often but they make America run. Getting stuff from point A to Point B is more than a full time job. Our world runs on logistical supply chains that are supported, in large part, by freight trains. But what happens if the people doing those jobs don’t get much sleep? What happens when the company running the trains implements systems that deprive its already weary workforce of much needed Zs? This week on Cyber, Motherboard Senior...
The RaidForums, Illegal ‘Club Penguin’ Servers, and the Blockchain in the DPRK
April 15, 2022 16:25 - 34 minutes - 27.9 MBEvery week we publish multiple incredible stories on Motherboard. This week there were so many that we couldn’t decide which one we wanted to focus on. So. We’re gonna do something a little different for this episode. That’s right, we’re going full Cipher. If you’re familiar with the show, Cipher is that infrequent segment we do where we decipher the week’s biggest tech stories. On this episode of Cyber we answer the questions: Is it illegal to run a private Club Penguin server? How is T-Mo...
Apple AirTags Are Being Used for Stalking
April 12, 2022 20:54 - 32 minutes - 29.7 MBPolice records reviewed by Motherboard show that, as security experts immediately predicted when the product launched, this technology has been used as a tool to stalk and harass women. Of the 150 total police reports mentioning AirTags, in 50 cases women called the police because they started getting notifications that their whereabouts were being tracked by an AirTag they didn’t own. Of those, 25 could identify a man in their lives—ex-partners, husbands, bosses—who they strongly suspected...
Meet the Father and Son Team Breaking Into Crypto Wallets
April 07, 2022 18:11 - 45 minutes - 36.7 MBClose your eyes. Imagine it's 2010. You’ve just learned about something called Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency. You spend $50 and get 50 of the coins, thinking the whole thing is funny. Cut to 2022. What you spent around 50 bucks on in 2010 is now worth 2 million dollars. There’s just one problem. You need a password to access that 2 million and 2010 was a long time ago. It’s a problem plaguing the world of cryptocurrency: an epidemic of millionaires unable to access their cash. But there are opt...
The Digital Colonizers of ‘Axie Infinity’
April 05, 2022 20:42 - 47 minutes - 37.8 MBFor many, playing video games for a living is a dream come true. Whether you’re streaming on Twitch or doing speedruns for charity, there are viable ways to earn a living playing video games. But get NFTs and the blockchain in the mix and, well, you’ve got a whole different system. Today we’re gonna talk about Axie Infinity, the most popular of the so-called ‘play-to-earn’ games. The promise of Axie and others is that you can earn money simply by playing the game. But how much? Is Axie fun?...
Meet the Ethical Hackers At War With Putin
March 31, 2022 16:34 - 10 minutes - 8.42 MBWe’ve got a special presentation on the show for you today, an interview with Yuliana Shemetovets, the spokesperson for a group of ethical hackers going to war with Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. They’re called the Cyber Partisans and they’re responsible for hacks against the Lukashenko regime. Lukashenko is a die-hard Putin ally who has been in charge of Belarus since 1994. In that time, the country has become more unstable. Protestors have disappeared from the streets and Belar...
OSINT Experts Are Helping Foreign Students Flee Ukraine
March 29, 2022 16:43 - 33 minutes - 27.1 MBThere are thousands of people still trapped in Ukraine and trying to flee. Millions are internally displaced and many are crossing the Polish border and finding refuge. But, for foreign students stuck in Ukraine, it can be much much more difficult to leave. A war zone is a terrible place to be no matter who you are, but these foreign students are facing unprecedented challenges. Thankfully, there are people trying to help. That’s the subject of the Motherboard story “Inside the OSINT Operat...
Inside Evangelical Start-Up Culture
March 25, 2022 19:12 - 39 minutes - 31.8 MBStories of the death of religion in America are overblown. If you’re in the right part of the country, there are vibrant Christian communities developing apps, working in Christian-startups, and spreading their faith on Instagram and YouTube. There is a whole community and culture just outside of the mainstream using tech in all sorts of wild and interesting ways. This week on Cyber, we explore the weird world of evangelical tech with Corrina Laughlin. She is a professor of media studies at...
The Rise of the Hacking Group LAPSUS$
March 24, 2022 17:28 - 33 minutes - 26.7 MBIt started with SIM swapping and escalated into hacks of Okta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and EA. They’re LAPSUS$, a hacking collective that’s been the boogeyman of big corporations for the past few years. People have wondered about their motivations and identities. Now, seven of them have been arrested. They’re mostly teenagers who used unsophisticated methods to get the better of some of the world’s most powerful companies. On today’s episode of Cyber, Motherboard staff writer Joseph Cox walks u...
The Many and Varied Uses of 'lol'
March 17, 2022 20:33 - 37 minutes - 29.7 MBWe all type it. Some of us say it. Three little letters. L O L. Whether you’re laughing out loud or softening the blow of bad news, it’s so ubiquitous in the English speaking world that it’s almost become punctuation. But where did it come from and does it have a strict definition? If you know anything about linguistics, you may already know the answers to those questions. Motherboard senior staff writer Shayla Love knows. She’s here today to talk about the origins of the phrase that’s part...
The Future of Drones from What’s Your Problem
March 17, 2022 07:00 - 13 minutes - 18.4 MBI'm sharing a special preview of the new podcast, What’s Your Problem? from Pushkin Industries. What’s Your Problem? explains the problems really smart people are trying to solve right now, from creating a drone delivery service to building a car that can truly drive itself. Jacob Goldstein, former host of Planet Money, talks with entrepreneurs, executives, and engineers about the future they’re trying to build – and the problems they have to solve to get there. In this preview, Jacob talks w...
How a Korean Celebrity Scandal Predicted Online Led Harassment Campaigns
March 16, 2022 20:38 - 32 minutes - 26.4 MBThe internet encourages the best and absolute worst of human behavior. Online led hate campaigns and conspiracy theories are often more than just frivolous distractions. They can ruin lives. In the U.S., I think the Gamergate movement from 2015 and 2016 opened a lot of people’s eyes to what was brewing under the surface of some of the darker places online. If Gamergate didn’t, then Qanon certainly did. But, across the Pacific Ocean, the people of Korea had a pretty good idea of how the inter...
CRYPTOLAND
March 11, 2022 19:44 - 33 minutes - 26.6 MBJason Koebler and Jordan Pearson talk about CRYPTOLAND, Motherboard's brand new documentary series about all things cryptocurrency. Watch CRYPTOLAND now at www.youtube.com/motherboard (please!!!) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Nightmare of Running a Delivery Company for Amazon
March 09, 2022 22:11 - 35 minutes - 28.2 MBAmazon. The company none of us can seem to get away from. Whether you’re a Prime member or just surfing the web on sites hosted by AWS, the company is inescapable. But it’s worse when you work for them. Especially if you’re an independent contractor running delivery vans. It’s a job where crushing debt, sudden shifts in policy, and impossible demands are the norm. These Amazon Delivery Service Partners, or DSPs, are key to Amazon's dominant position, and the way many people are able to get...
Hacking, War, and Cyberwar in Ukraine - the Latest
March 01, 2022 22:23 - 35 minutes - 32.5 MBJoseph Cox and Jason Koebler discuss various website defacements, leaks, and hacks associated with Russia's war in Ukraine. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Cyber Front in the War on Ukraine
February 24, 2022 22:00 - 37 minutes - 30.3 MBThere are a lot of companies out there willing to sell shady customers the tools they need to spy on just about anyone. All over the world software vendors like Hacking Team and NSO Group will help you break into a cellphone or read an email you’re not supposed to. But that might soon be changing. On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard senior staff writer Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai joins host Matthew Gault to talk about spyware vendors. It’s the subject of Lorenzo’s new piece, “The US Cra...
How Open Source Intelligence Is Debunking Russian Propaganda in Ukraine
February 23, 2022 21:15 - 38 minutes - 30.5 MBThe internet has created an explosion in audio and video captured from the frontlines of war zones. As Russia escalates the conflict in Ukraine, it’s also pushing propaganda harder than ever. But there’s so much information available online, and so many people willing to call bullshit on propaganda, that it’s hard to make a believable video that justifies a war these days. That hasn’t stopped Russia from trying. On today’s episode of Cyber, Motherboard journalist Matthew Gault sits down wi...
Listen as Tech Companies Lobby the Cops
February 17, 2022 20:33 - 38 minutes - 30.6 MBCops love technology. From robot dogs to drones to Ring cameras to tasers to facial recognition software, America’s police are often early adopters of the world’s newest dystopian tech. How does it happen? Often the tech companies are actively pitching police departments on stuff they say will make the cops’ life easier. Every month, conferences across the country are stuffed with tech companies and officers breaking bread and cutting deals. What goes on at these conferences, exactly? This ...
Hackers Are Making a Fortune Stealing from Kids in ‘Roblox’
February 15, 2022 20:53 - 35 minutes - 28.2 MBRoblox is one of the most popular and profitable video games ever created. Unless you’ve got kids, there’s a decent chance you’ve probably never heard of it. What makes it so engaging is that it’s a place where players develop and sell their own games and items. There is an internal economy and culture built around it. Roblox is, dare I say, a metaverse all its own. Lurking at the edges of that metaverse is a group of people called Beamers. With so many items floating around the Roblox eco...
The Lingering Mystery of the Rapper Who Allegedly Laundered $1B in Bitcoin
February 10, 2022 15:45 - 45 minutes - 36.1 MBIn 2016, someone hacked the crypto exchange Bitfinex and made off with 120,000 BTC. At the time, the bitcoins were worth $65 million. Now they’re worth around $5 billion. On February 7, authorities in the U.S. arrested Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife, Heather Morgan. The charge? Allegedly the couple laundered around $1 billion in stolen Bitcoin. As news of the charges spread, journalists began to dig into the couple and discovered that Morgan was extremely online. A wannabe rapper, Morgan ha...
The Decentralization of Disinformation (with Anna Merlan)
February 08, 2022 21:15 - 35 minutes - 28.5 MBMotherboard Senior Staff writer Anna Merlan joins to talk about where disinformation comes from and whether we can stop it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In the 1990s, the FBI Raided the World’s Horniest BBS
February 03, 2022 18:18 - 38 minutes - 30.5 MBThe late 80s and early 90s were a golden age of free stuff on the internet. If you could afford the equipment and the access, you could find just about any piece of software you wanted without paying for it. And also a lot of pictures of naked people. The Bulletin Board System, or BBS, was the lifeblood of this freewheeling time. It didn’t last long. This week on Cyber we’re bringing you the story of Rusty ‘n’ Edie’s BBS: the Friendliest BBS in the World. Here to tell the tale is Motherboa...
This Is Why There’s Been So Many NFT and Crypto Hacks
January 27, 2022 17:22 - 45 minutes - 36.1 MBIt’s been a wild few weeks for crypto and NFTs. The whole market took some hits, but the crypto markets especially have seemed to spiral. At the same time, there’s been so many hacks, stolen Apes, and ransomed tokens that it’s hard to keep track of them all. This week on Cyber, we go through it all. Who lost what and how? Also, what is it about the blockchain that makes it so vulnerable to hacks and schemes? Motherboard senior staff writer Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai and Motherboard Seni...
How Criminal Hackers Put on the White Hat
January 20, 2022 17:12 - 59 minutes - 47.9 MBWhat do you picture when you read the word “hacker?” I always see Cereal, Matthew Lillard’s character, from the movie Hackers. A dude with weird hair, intense need to make information free, and copies of 2600 magazine scattered around his dank apartment. That image is, and always was, a fantasy. What hackers are, and what they’ve become, is complicated. The word was once synonymous with “criminal,” but through years of activism and hard work, that’s changed. Now, “hacker” means so much mor...
Signal’s CEO Steps Down Just As the App Starts Allowing Crypto Trades
January 13, 2022 20:22 - 36 minutes - 29.6 MBSignal, the app, is synonymous with security. The end-to-end encrypted messaging platform is a go-to for discerning people who want to keep their communications private. Just remember to turn on the vanishing messages feature. But it’s CEO is stepping down. Moxie Marlinspike is out and Whatsapp’s Brian Acton is in. Motherboard staff writer Joseph Cox is on the show this week to talk to us about the changes at Signal, the history of end-to-end encryption, and what Marlinspike thinks of web3...