CYBER

Years before he became the world’s most well known MacOS hacker, Patrick Wardle was a high school nerd curious about hacking. His first hack was figuring out that he could program his fancy calculator and hide a backdoor in it that could help him with his calculus tests. His teacher never caught him, and he actually learned how to solve calculus equations by programming his calculator. “So I’m sure that in retrospect my calculus teacher would be stoked...or that’s what I tell myself,” Wardle said. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s safe to say that video games are now an essential part of our culture. Globally it’s already dwarfing other classic industries. Even the U.S. military, by far the most powerful war-machine in human history, uses video games to recruit the generation soldier. On the show today is VICE News Correspondent Dexter Thomas who is hosting the new VICEtv series. RESET: The Unauthorized Guide to Video Games. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s a mixture of Internet trolling, Reddit threads, the fall of capitalism as we know it, and that movie Big Short. If like me you have but a cursory understanding of the stock market and you continually see mention of this GameStop fiasco making headlines the world over. That’s right: A failing video game store has been turned into a multibillion dollar company, by day-trading cartels who live on the Internet. Motherboard EIC Jason Koebler, who knows something about stocks, is on the show to explain more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well folks, whether you were #resistance or MAGA, he’s arrived. The 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden. What’s he going to do about Russian hackers? Big Tech? Disinformation? Facebook? The NSA, the CIA? All that and more on this week’s episode with Motherboard EIC Jason Keobler. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Parler. Gab. The President being suspended from almost every mainstream social media entity and finally prevented from engaging in his favorite addiction: Tweeting. Besides the horned Qanon shaman and the disgusting violence on Capitol Hill last week, it has been a hell of a week for social media. Motherboard EIC Jason Koebler and I break it all down for you on today’s episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As President Trump exits office in a hail of conspiracy and baseless allegations about a fraudulent election, the time has come for us to discuss the much vaunted QAnon, led by a shadowy online figure known as “Q.” The verifiably absurd, online conspiracy theory that has ruined lives and families, has seduced millions and even helped propel members of congress into seats. And it just inspired a violent occupation of our nation’s capitol hill. Marc-André Argentino, a PhD candidate at Concordia University who studies QAnon and someone who has become a leading voice on the extremist political movement, is on the show to talk Q. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Let’s be honest, I know history types keep saying that like the year 536 was way worse than 2020, but I do not care. 2020 was unadulterated trash by almost every metric available. In the cyber world it was also a year that helped advance insidious surveillance tools, the proliferation of disinformation, and more Russian hackers. Jason Koebler, Motherboard EIC, is on the show for the last time in 2020. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we have a very special guest on the show: All-star sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow, a fellow Canadian, and someone who has written about the dystopian near future with stunning accuracy.His latest novel, Attack Surface, tells the tale of a counterterrorism agent and the terrifying power of the surveillance state. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every pro hacker started somewhere. In this interview series, hackers and security researchers tell their origin stories. For the first episode, we spoke to former government hacker Emily Crose, who now works for a critical infrastructure security startup. Here's Emily's first hack, in her own words." "My first hack happened in high school when I was playing around with Back Orifice 2000 or BO2K, the infamous remote access trojan made by the hacking group Cult of The Dead Cow. My first victim was, well, myself. This was an accidental self infection, that's the technical term" Crose said."I infected my own computer with BO2K, and it took me a while to figure out what had happened, but when I did figure it out, I got a chance to learn the software. It's not a thing that people will talk about certainly, but even professional developers these days just run the wrong thing in the wrong place and, oops, oopsie, doopsie," she said. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who ya gonna call when you are one of the greatest, multibillion dollar cybersecurity firms in the world, known for investigating breaches into governments and major corporations, when you’re hacked?Well in the case of Fireeye, known for being staffed by ex-intelligence and doing the forensics on massive hacks, they came out and responsibly disclosed that it had been breached.It’s big news in the hacking world and with me today is Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox to breakdown what happened and why it matters. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.