It seems like we hear about new cyberattacks almost every day. The targets used to be just big companies and government agencies. Now they are focused on you. Every Tuesday, former NPR investigations correspondent Dina Temple-Raston dives deep into the world of cyber and intelligence. You’ll hear stories about everything from ransomware to misinformation to the people shaping the cyber world, from hacking masterminds to the people who try to stop them. If you want more news like this delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Cyber Daily newsletter here: https://go.recordedfuture.com/cyber-daily
105. Jordan’s wave of spyware infections
A report published last week by Access Now revealed that since 2019 nearly three dozen journalists, human rights officials and political activists in Jordan have had their phones infected with spyware. The documentation of the widespread use of NSO’s Pegasus spyware in the Kingdom isn’t just rattling civil society, but raising new questions about how to stop its proliferation.
2/6/2024 • 31 minutes, 9 seconds
104. Generative AI: Is it creative or just copying the rest of us?
Today’s generative AI knows how to write, compose music, and even create works of art. But it learned to do all these things by training on data made by human creators, without asking their permission. Now independent artists and giant media companies are fighting back and -- if they prevail -- it could fundamentally change the human-AI relationship.
1/30/2024 • 30 minutes, 37 seconds
103. Dr. Dolittle never spoke whale, AI just might
Some data scientists and acoustic biologists have joined forces to see if artificial intelligence can ferret meaning out of non-human language. And one of their early subjects is a perennial favorite: humpback whales.
1/23/2024 • 28 minutes, 11 seconds
102. Cyber Av3ngers and their unlikely targets
We take a look at the part of the Israel-Hamas war that is harder to see – the battle raging in cyberspace. Hacktivists are joining forces with Iran-backed operators to target victims with gossamer connections to Israel.
1/16/2024 • 27 minutes, 27 seconds
101. Bug bounties with Chinese characteristics
Vulnerabilities and exploits are the building blocks of hacking. We look at how China is flipping the script on how the world thinks about both.
1/9/2024 • 28 minutes, 7 seconds
100. The 2023 cyber year in review
In a recent conversation on WAMU’s nationally syndicated news show 1A, Click Here’s Dina Temple-Raston looks back on cyber in 2023 and discusses what we might expect in the year ahead.
1/2/2024 • 24 minutes, 38 seconds
99. Meet the hackers
Hackers and cybercriminals may not be so different from the rest of us after all. We talk to three real life hackers from an early dark market entrepreneur to an accidental recruit to the latest addition to the FBI’s most wanted list.
12/26/2023 • 55 minutes, 15 seconds
98. Lessons from the world's first hybrid war
Ukraine is the world’s first truly hybrid war, and the battle is raging on two fronts --- on the ground and in cyberspace. What does the conflict mean for the future of war?
12/19/2023 • 54 minutes, 40 seconds
97. Policing Morality? There’s an app for that.
We look at the use of digital tools that have imposed an authoritarian version of morality on the masses, and the creative, inspiring way ordinary people have learned to respond.
12/12/2023 • 53 minutes, 20 seconds
96. The art of decoding dictators
Dictators use bombast and bullying as a kind of malevolent calling card. Meet the people who have found surprising and creative ways around that.
12/5/2023 • 55 minutes, 15 seconds
95. Reality Bytes: the URL-IRL crash
Today, three stories about technologies that started out doing one thing, and ended up doing quite another — from online tractors, to drone-mounted tasers, to a gang of cell phone hackers who’s online battles burst into the real world.
11/28/2023 • 53 minutes, 57 seconds
94. They’re just hackers, living off the land
There’s a specific kind of cyber attack targeting big industrial systems that is coming back into fashion: it’s called a ‘living off the land’ attack. What makes it particularly scary is that unlike traditional attacks in which bad actors break into a system and plant malicious code, in living off the land attacks, there’s nothing to find — bad actors leverage what’s already in the network.
11/21/2023 • 26 minutes, 22 seconds
93. Tech that allows ordinary people to make peace with wartime
If you want to know how Ukrainians are coping with the war, look at the Ukraine apps in the app store. From an air raid alert built in the first week of the invasion to a map that helps work-from-homers find electricity, technology is helping Ukraine find some sense of normalcy in wartime.
11/14/2023 • 32 minutes, 29 seconds
92. Israel, Gaza and all the light you cannot see
We talk to two ordinary people who decided to tackle two extraordinary problems: identifying the thousands who went missing in Israel in the days after the October 7th attacks, and one man’s leap of faith to get internet and cellphone service into Gaza.
11/7/2023 • 33 minutes, 14 seconds
91. Bucha wants to be known for something else: Justice.
Bucha, a bedroom community just outside of Kyiv, is best known for enduring Russia’s atrocities during a month-long occupation in the Spring of 2022. Now the citizens of Bucha don’t want revenge, they want justice.
10/31/2023 • 33 minutes, 57 seconds
90. Saving Ukraine’s cultural heritage with a click
When a Russian bomb damaged a beloved library in the Ukrainian town of Chernihiv, locals feared that it would be lost forever. Then a cutting-edge technology came to the rescue.
10/24/2023 • 34 minutes, 32 seconds
89. Exclusive: Ukraine says joint mission with U.S. derailed Moscow’s cyber attacks
We traveled to Ukraine last month to learn more about a hunt forward operation Cybercom and cyber operators from Ukraine secretly launched before the war. This is the first time the Ukrainian side of the story has been revealed publicly.
We travel to Ukraine to look at its grassroots defense industry and take you into its secret drone factories where entrepreneurs are able to put innovative weapons into the hands of soldiers at the front in a matter of weeks, not months.
10/10/2023 • 30 minutes, 18 seconds
87. SPECIAL FEATURE: ‘How AI Will Turbocharge Misinformation’ from Humans vs. Machines
An episode from “Humans vs. Machines” from Aventine Research Institute and Pineapple Street Studios.
Misinformation has influenced elections, ruined reputations and fundamentally changed society’s relationship with the truth. Now, large language models like ChatGPT have the potential to create and spread misinformation at a scale we’ve never seen before. As technology improves, the question won’t be, ‘What we can believe in?’ but whether we’ll be able to believe in anything at all.
10/3/2023 • 30 minutes, 21 seconds
86. What will Moscow do with the Wagner Group now?
The Russian private army known as the Wagner Group has been tied not just to atrocities in Ukraine but to operations in Africa that helped Russia extend its reach. The looming question for Moscow: what do we do with Wagner now?
9/26/2023 • 30 minutes, 29 seconds
85. What Wagner Group learned from ISIS
Back in August, the leader of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was killed in a fiery plane crash. So we decided to revisit an episode we did a few months ago about the Wagner group and how it recruits. It turns out they tore a page from the ISIS playbook.
9/19/2023 • 31 minutes, 35 seconds
84. Dutch police, cyber booby traps and a dark market takedown for the ages
Led by a motley crew of old-school cops and cyber whiz-kids, a Dutch police unit takes control of one of the dark web's most notorious drug markets and make history.
9/12/2023 • 31 minutes, 58 seconds
83. “Ding-dong ditch” on steroids
Remember ding-dong ditch? You and your friends rang a doorbell and then ran away? These days the prank of choice among the young cyber set is something called swatting: calling the police with a hoax report that sends them rushing – guns drawn – to some address and unsuspecting victim. After years of writing it off as childish mischief, legislators, law enforcement and tech companies are finally trying to address it.
9/5/2023 • 32 minutes, 13 seconds
82. The Clop gang’s in love with a special kind of bug
Back in May, a Russian-speaking cyber gang named Clop broke into MOVEit, a little-known file transfer program. They managed to steal data from some 60 million people (and counting). While the scale of the attack was impressive, what really raised eyebrows was how they did it.
8/29/2023 • 27 minutes, 45 seconds
81. Ilya Sachkov v. the Kremlin
Ilya Sachkov co-founded the cybersecurity company Group-IB to make the world safe from Russian-speaking cybercriminals. Then he asked Russian authorities to help round them up, and things went spectacularly wrong.
8/22/2023 • 32 minutes, 26 seconds
80. Meet ChatGPT’s evil twin
Wave “goodbye” to those pesky emails from Nigerian princes and say “hello” to the latest generation of AI enabled email scamming. It’s smarter, faster and, by the way, looks like it’s coming from your boss. The only thing that might stop them? AI itself.
8/15/2023 • 27 minutes, 27 seconds
79. One woman’s Orwellian experience with disinformation
We look at an American disinformation campaign that makes clear online abuse directed at women goes far beyond a couple of mean tweets. And, an update on a Syrian activist who was on the receiving end of a misinformation crisis of her own.
8/8/2023 • 29 minutes, 15 seconds
78. Trouble in the cloud
Putting your data in the cloud used to be seen as the gold standard of information security. Why have your small IT team protect your data when the experts at Microsoft or Google or AWS can do it instead? And then in May, Chinese hackers broke into the Microsoft cloud, exposing not just a flaw in the code, but a glitch in company’s business model as well.
8/1/2023 • 21 minutes, 56 seconds
77. SPECIAL FEATURE: ‘The internet is at the bottom of the sea’ from Things That Go Boom
This week, we share an episode from PRX and Inkstick Media’s “Things that Go Boom” podcast about the thousands of miles of fiber optic cable lying at the bottom of the sea. Some 95 percent of the world’s electronic data is traveling through them and cables are taking centerstage in the high-stakes competition between the U.S. and China.
7/25/2023 • 43 minutes, 18 seconds
76. The Mexican army’s love affair with spyware
Since our story on spyware in Mexico aired back in March, researchers have discovered a roster of Pegasus spyware infections on the phones of local journalists, activists, and even officials within the Mexican president’s inner circle. This week, we return to our deep dive on the use of spyware in Mexico and the revelation that the army created a secret military intelligence unit dedicated to its use.
7/18/2023 • 28 minutes, 43 seconds
75. SPECIAL FEATURE: 'Life, death and AI' from Endless Thread
From WBUR's “Endless Thread" podcast, a story on a growing segment of artificial intelligence: immortalizing the dead through predictive AI text and how bots can help us understand grief.
7/11/2023 • 36 minutes, 5 seconds
74. Reality Winner and the handling of secret documents
We revisit a sit-down interview we had with NSA contractor Reality Winner shortly after she spent 4 years in prison for passing a single classified document to a reporter. Given all the focus on classified documents and the way they’ve been handled in recent weeks, it seemed a good time to take another look at what happened to Reality.
7/4/2023 • 26 minutes, 7 seconds
73. Can satellite surveillance save Sudan from itself?
Two decades after Arab militias first torched villages and killed hundreds of thousands of people in West Darfur, violence has returned to the region. We tell the story of one group of researchers who use open source intelligence, algorithms and satellite imagery in a bid to quell the violence in Sudan.
6/27/2023 • 32 minutes, 2 seconds
72. Exclusive: Inside an American Hunt Forward Operation in Ukraine
We go behind the scenes of U.S. Cyber Command’s Hunt Forward Operation in Ukraine. We interviewed half a dozen American cyber warriors who were on the ground in Kyiv, and they provide new details about the effort to defend Ukrainian networks against Russian cyber attacks in the weeks before the war.
6/20/2023 • 32 minutes, 34 seconds
71. A return to model drone pilots and Ukraine’s spring offensive
As Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive begins, we revisit a story we did last winter about some unusual Ukrainian women training to become part of the nation’s Army of Drones.
6/13/2023 • 22 minutes, 53 seconds
70. An unlikely teacher: What Wagner Group learned from ISIS
The Russian private army known as the Wagner Group is trying to persuade young men to join the fight in Ukraine. Their online recruitment efforts don’t just hint at the future of modern warfare: they’re a callback to an earlier time, when a group called ISIS lured young men to fight in Syria.
6/6/2023 • 29 minutes, 38 seconds
69. Wazawaka: ‘Most Wanted’ and, he says, undeterred
This month, the FBI added Mikhail Pavlovich Matveev to their Most Wanted hacker list for his alleged role in a number of ransomware attacks against U.S. targets. In a rare interview shortly after the FBI announcement, he talked about the new designation and what he wants to do next.
5/30/2023 • 25 minutes, 25 seconds
68. SPECIAL FEATURE: 'The Slave Armies Powering a New Kind of Golden Triangle Cybercrime' from The Underworld Podcast
From “The Underworld” podcast, a conversation about casino towns, gangster owners, and a new twist on scamming operations. Nathan Paul Southern and Lindsey Kennedy took a trip along the Mekong River and revealed new details about southeast Asia’s latest scourge: cyber slaves.
ADDITIONAL READING: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3195932/laos-criminal-casino-empire-chinese-gangsters
5/23/2023 • 27 minutes, 9 seconds
67. Hive’s WeWork experiment — and what went wrong
When the FBI and Justice Department took down a collective of cybercriminals known as Hive earlier this year, it targeted a group that made a name for itself, in part, by holding hospital and healthcare systems for ransom during the pandemic. What made the group so effective was its own twist on WeWork-style collaboratives… and it led to their demise.
5/16/2023 • 21 minutes, 34 seconds
66. ‘Operation Cookie Monster' and the Genesis takedown
The Department of Justice says last month’s effort to bring down the Genesis Marketplace represents a departure from traditional law enforcement actions. ‘Operation Cookie Monster' wasn’t about nabbing masterminds. It was about making it harder for JV hackers to enter the world of cybercrime.
5/9/2023 • 24 minutes, 53 seconds
65. Morality in Iraq: You should worry because there’s an app for that
The Iraqi government has unveiled an app that helps ordinary citizens report “indecent” content online. Since its introduction, the Ballegh app has received some 144,000 reports. And the Iraqi app isn’t the only one: A roster of similar morality apps have popped up across the region, raising new questions about the future of free speech in the Middle East.
5/2/2023 • 28 minutes, 46 seconds
64. Portrait of Bassterlord as a young man
What makes a hacker tick? That’s what we wanted to find out when we reached out to Bassterlord, a 27-year-old hacker in Ukraine who joined some of the most infamous hacking crews of our time. Researcher Jon DiMaggio of Analyst1 has released a report about him, and he gave Click Here an exclusive first look. Then, we spoke to Bassterlord ourselves.
4/25/2023 • 27 minutes, 54 seconds
63. Tracers on the stage: Andy Greenberg, Michael Gronager and Tigran Gambaryan talk cryptocurrency tracking
We go behind the scenes of the new book by WIRED’s Andy Greenberg, "Tracers in the Dark." It explains how a handful of entrepreneurs and investigators demystified cryptocurrency tracking. Recently, we spoke with Andy and some crypto tracers onstage at the Links 2023 conference in New York City. Plus, North Korea’s ingenious effort to launder its stolen crypto.
4/18/2023 • 33 minutes, 4 seconds
62. How a mathematician and an entrepreneur helped law enforcement take a bite out of crypto crime
When cryptocurrency burst on the scene in 2008, it was touted as anonymous — a boon to cyber criminals all over the world. Then a few mathematicians and some federal agents proved otherwise, in a way so big it birthed an industry. With a tip of the hat to Andy Greenberg’s new book “Tracers in the Dark,” we talk to them about how they did it.
4/11/2023 • 26 minutes, 52 seconds
61. Snowmen in the park and Iran’s quiet viral dissent
Six months after demonstrators took to the streets of Iran hoping to end its draconian hijab laws and push for a change in the leadership, the protests have moved online — into a quiet civil disobedience campaign that leadership is finding hard to control.
4/4/2023 • 25 minutes, 30 seconds
60. Clear the runway: Ukraine's model pilots
Drones of all shapes and sizes are part of the war effort in the skies above Ukraine. Some are helping kill the enemy; others spy on formations and guide bombs to their targets. We take you inside a school meant to boost that effort by training women to fly them. Plus, a leading dark web hacking forum meets its demise.
3/28/2023 • 24 minutes, 46 seconds
59. What the cyber war in Ukraine is teaching us
In a recent conversation on WAMU’s nationally syndicated show 1A, we talked about lessons learned one year into the world’s first truly hybrid war. The conversation happened amid a report from Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center that found new worrying signs on the Russia-Ukraine cyber front. They believe Sandworm, a cyber military unit of Russia’s intelligence service, has been launching new phishing campaigns, cyber espionage operations, and is stepping up coordination with hacktivists groups.
3/21/2023 • 26 minutes, 36 seconds
58. Enemy of the State (Part 2) : ¿Quién es Guacamaya? (Who is Guacamaya?)
We follow up last week’s episode on spyware and the Mexican military with a look at Guacamaya, the hacktivist collective that helped provide key documents that showed the army purchased Pegasus spyware used on human rights advocates and local journalists. Guacamaya isn’t just targeting Mexico, though. The group has been hacking into military servers all over Latin America, and its efforts have people asking: ¿Quién es Guacamaya? (Who is Guacamaya?)
3/14/2023 • 27 minutes, 58 seconds
57. Enemy of the State (Part 1): Mexico, spyware, and a secret military intelligence unit
A new report has published classified documents and internal memos that make clear the Mexican Army bought Pegasus spyware and systematically deployed it against journalists and activists in Mexico. R3D, a Mexican digital rights group, and University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, also found evidence of a formerly unknown military intelligence unit whose sole focus appears to be secret surveillance and deployment of spyware. Some of the sensitive material published in the report came from a massive hack into the Ministry of Defense by the hacktivist group Guacamaya last year. Click Here was part of a small group of journalists given early access to their findings.
3/7/2023 • 25 minutes, 31 seconds
56. Ukraine’s drone whisperers: What the weapons are telling us
Russia has deployed the Iranian-built Shahed drone to wreak havoc on Ukraine’s infrastructure. We speak to a man who is a kind of drone whisperer. After years of taking these Shahed drones apart, he says if you listen, they have amazing stories to tell.
2/28/2023 • 22 minutes, 35 seconds
55. Oyez, Oyez, Oyez: Twenty-six words get their day in the High Court
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in a case that will consider a 1995 law that shields social media companies from liability. Gonzalez v. Google could allow people to sue tech companies that use algorithms to sort through their content. Plus, we check in with Alexander Martin, The Record's UK editor, about his takeaways from the Munich Security Conference.
2/21/2023 • 25 minutes, 46 seconds
54. Miss Lonelyhearts and the money mules
In a special Valentine’s Day episode, we look at the evolution of romance scams. They aren’t just about bilking lonely people out of their life savings anymore – scammers have diversified, and they’re making victims accomplices in a roster of cyber crimes from email scams and check fraud to money laundering.
2/14/2023 • 27 minutes, 20 seconds
53. Xi's brave new world
At a time when an errant spy balloon has raised new questions about President Xi Jinping’s absolute control over all things Chinese, we take a look at how his regime quelled last year’s Covid protests and how an arsenal of digital weapons helped tighten his grip on power. Plus, facial recognition’s latest nemesis: knitwear.
2/7/2023 • 27 minutes, 31 seconds
52. SPECIAL FEATURE: Shoot the Messenger: Espionage, Murder & Pegasus Spyware
“Shoot The Messenger” from Exile Content Studio and PRX looks at what happened to the murdered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The first weapon used against him was digital - a sophisticated spyware called Pegasus.
1/31/2023 • 45 minutes, 39 seconds
51. Exclusive: Axon still wants to put Taser drones in your kid’s school
This week, Axon, the company that developed the Taser, is hosting a conference in Las Vegas called TaserCon. The event is billed as an opportunity to talk about law enforcement and public safety. Axon is expected to use the occasion to reintroduce a controversial plan: to put the company’s gun-equipped drones in police departments and schools to prevent mass shootings. And, cybercriminals’ new best friend: ChatGPT.
1/24/2023 • 31 minutes, 35 seconds
50. LockBit Diaries: A researcher's year undercover with the world’s most dangerous ransomware gang
After spending more than a year undercover with the notorious ransomware gang LockBit, one researcher explains how the group revolutionized the business of ransomware.
1/17/2023 • 26 minutes, 10 seconds
49. Genshin Impact: trying to balance mass appeal with Beijing's blessing
Genshin Impact put the Chinese video gaming industry on the map. While the game has delighted players, it begs the question: Can China’s Communist Party and a massively popular video game peacefully co-exist?
1/10/2023 • 24 minutes, 41 seconds
48. Call me crypto curious
We take a deep dive into a corner of the cryptocurrency economy that hasn’t (completely) tanked yet: Bitcoin mining. It is part cryptography, part math, and part luck.
1/3/2023 • 25 minutes, 12 seconds
47. SPECIAL FEATURE: ‘Summer in Caputh’ from Exile
An episode from “Exile” from the Leo Baeck Institute and Antica Productions. At the height of his fame, a shirtless, barefooted Albert Einstein escapes the bustle of Berlin for a simpler life. The best thinkers of the time gather at his beloved summer house in Caputh to laze by the water, swap ideas, and gossip. There, he can escape the pressures of global fame, but his summer haven can’t keep him safe from the growing Nazi threat rising in Germany.
12/27/2022 • 34 minutes, 5 seconds
46. The musicians who came in from the cold
At a time when Vladimir Putin is attempting to redraw the Iron Curtain, we revisit an earlier episode in which we take a trip back to the Soviet Union circa 1985 when four American musicians smuggled messages in and out of the Soviet Union — with music.
12/20/2022 • 23 minutes, 39 seconds
45. SPECIAL FEATURE: ‘Saving Ukrainian Cultural History Online’ from The Last Archive
Sharing a special episode of another podcast, The Last Archive, a show about the history of truth -- or the lack thereof. Harvard historian Jill Lepore uncovers the secrets of the past the way a detective might. In this episode, Jill chats with Anna Kijas, a co-organizer of SUCHO: Saving Ukrainian Cultural History Online. Lepore and Kijas talk about her effort to preserve online resources that are at risk of disappearing because of the war in Ukraine.
You can hear more episodes of The Last Archive at https://link.chtbl.com/clickherearchive
12/13/2022 • 15 minutes, 4 seconds
44. Throwing bricks for $$$: violence-as-a-service comes of age
We go back to an episode we did earlier this year about a gang of SIM swappers who are behind something called violence-as-a-service. Doxing or defacing websites, they told us, just doesn’t send enough of a message. So, they are throwing molotov cocktails or slashing tires of their rivals instead. Trouble is – it is getting more popular and commonplace and is bound to affect the rest of us.
12/6/2022 • 23 minutes, 9 seconds
43. SPECIAL FEATURE: ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ from Big Brother: North Korea's Forgotten Prince
“Big Brother: North Korea's Forgotten Prince” from School of Humans and iHeartPodcasts introduce you to the person who should have been North Korea’s leader – had he not been on the receiving end of what may be the 21st century’s most bizarre assassination plot.
11/29/2022 • 43 minutes, 34 seconds
42. North Korea's monster fake out
North Korea has launched an unprecedented number of missiles this month. So we bring you an encore episode about a team of researchers using open-source intelligence to track the hermit kingdom's nuclear ambitions. Plus, the Yanluowang ransomware group finds itself the victim of a leak.
11/22/2022 • 35 minutes, 16 seconds
41. Rounding up a cyber posse for Ukraine
Washington and the tech world have been talking about public private partnerships in cyberspace for decades. The NSA and Cyber Command have intelligence about attacks; cybersecurity companies have the means to block them. It looks like they are finally working together — not in the U.S, but in Ukraine.
11/15/2022 • 31 minutes, 9 seconds
40. Selling Vice Society: old exploits, easy targets, and the illusion of greatness
Vice Society burst on the ransomware scene in early 2021, attacking a roster of government offices, hospitals and, notoriously, schools. But cybersecurity experts say the group isn't your typical ransomware operation: they're some of cyber crime's biggest posers, using old exploits on easy targets to give the illusion of greatness.
11/8/2022 • 22 minutes, 59 seconds
39. Is open-source software the solution to our election woes?
Ben Adida is the executive director of a voting technology non-profit that provides software and operational support to states during elections. He’s embarked on an almost impossible missile: to restore faith in our election system. The way he proposes to do that? With open-source software that everyone can see.
11/1/2022 • 25 minutes, 49 seconds
38. The Supreme Court case that could change the internet
Nohemi Gonzalez was killed in the 2015 ISIS attacks in Paris and now is at the heart of a Supreme Court case that will reconsider a 1995 law that shields social media companies from liability. Gonzalez v. Google could allow people to sue tech companies that use algorithms to sort through their content.
10/25/2022 • 24 minutes, 50 seconds
37. ‘Presence Matters’: Nakasone and Easterly on Ukraine, collaboration and midterm elections
The head of NSA and Cybercom Gen. Paul Nakasone and CISA director Jen Easterly came to the Council on Foreign Relations last week for a rare sit-down interview. They talked about hunt teams in Ukraine, public-private partnerships and threats ahead of the midterms, with Click Here host Dina Temple-Raston presiding over the session. Plus, one researcher bests Charming Kitten.
10/18/2022 • 25 minutes, 23 seconds
36. The hijab will never be the same
The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in Iran has ignited the most powerful protests the country has seen in years. In addition to violence, authorities have responded with a host of new tools to throttle mobile phone connections, block social media sites, and make it harder for people to organize. Plus, Iran's diplomatic kerfuffle over a cyber attack in Albania.
10/11/2022 • 29 minutes, 41 seconds
35. Reality Winner and the handling of secret documents
As the wrangling continues over classified documents former President Trump took to his Florida home, we take a second look at the case of Reality Winner, the NSA contractor who served time in prison for passing a classified document to a reporter. We had a rare interview with her in February.
10/4/2022 • 25 minutes, 40 seconds
34. Ukraine’s mass graves have stories to tell
The town whose name has become synonymous with Russian atrocities in Ukraine is rushing to digitize information about the dead --- not just to identify them and give families closure --- but to hold Russians accountable for the wanton brutality in Bucha. Plus, scandal in the elite chess world.
9/27/2022 • 31 minutes, 1 second
33. Throwing bricks for $$$: violence-as-a-service comes of age
Young people who have been making millions hacking mobile phones — known as SIM swappers — have found a new way to intimidate and harass their rivals. They call it “violence-as-a-service” or “IRL jobs,” and it includes a Telegram channel where they can order brickings, firebombings, and even shootings in the real world.
9/20/2022 • 23 minutes, 22 seconds
32. The great tractor jailbreak
The talk of DEF CON 2022 was the handiwork of a white hat hacker named Sick Codes. On stage, he demonstrated how he broke the digital locks of a John Deere tractor. He did it with such ease, it made people start to wonder: just how hack-able is the world’s agriculture sector?
9/13/2022 • 28 minutes, 19 seconds
31. Seagulls in the park
Hydra was a darknet superstore. It started out as an online illegal drug site and morphed into a billion-dollar business with codes of conduct, customer support, and legal and medical services. It had started offering money laundering services when German authorities finally shut it down in April. Now people are asking: who or what will replace it?
9/6/2022 • 25 minutes, 5 seconds
30. The scariest piece of malware since Stuxnet
Back in April, cybersecurity officials discovered the notorious “Industroyer” malware in the Ukrainian electrical grid. It might have been the scariest infrastructure hack since malware destroyed centrifuges at an Iranian uranium enrichment plant in 2010 – were it not for a TGIF miracle. Plus, a visit with the IT Army of Ukraine and a different kind of information operation.
8/30/2022 • 28 minutes, 25 seconds
29. The musicians who came in from the cold
At a time when Vladimir Putin is attempting to redraw the Iron Curtain, we take a trip back to the Soviet Union circa 1985 when four American musicians smuggled messages in and out of the Soviet Union — with music. Plus, DefCon’s answer to those alien transmissions.
8/23/2022 • 35 minutes, 2 seconds
28. A return to Stanislav
We first spoke with Russian business owner Stanislav back in early March, shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Almost six months later, we check back in with him to see how he’s doing, and look at a new report that suggests the Russian economy is cratering. Plus, inside a massive breach affecting a police database in Shanghai.
8/16/2022 • 28 minutes, 32 seconds
27. Exclusive: North Korea’s monster fake out
Thousands of satellites watch the world from above. We offer a mystery story about an infamous North Korean video, a team of very observant researchers, and a search for the truth.
8/9/2022 • 28 minutes, 21 seconds
26. Pegasus is listening
Carine Kanimba’s father may be one of the most famous Rwandans on earth – Paul Rusesabagina. He was the manager of the Hôtel des Mille Collines, and he sheltered more than 1,200 Rwandans during the 1994 genocide. Now his daughter is at the center of a Capitol Hill inquiry into the proliferation of commercial spyware, a particular program called Pegasus, and the future of the company that created it.
8/2/2022 • 25 minutes, 23 seconds
25. Lapsus$ - The script kiddies are alright
An encore performance of one of our favorite episodes about LAPSUS$, a cyber extortion gang that convinced the world its low-tech hacking operations were really high-impact heists. Plus, we hear how two high school computer geeks almost brought down IBM’s computer center in Manhattan.
7/26/2022 • 27 minutes, 22 seconds
24. SPECIAL FEATURE: ‘El Salvador's Bitcoin Experiment’ from Nothing is Foreign
Earlier this year, the CBC's Nothing is Foreign podcast reported on how El Salvador's promise of a cryptocurrency paradise runs up against reality.
7/19/2022 • 29 minutes, 16 seconds
23. The post-Roe digital world
An encore performance of one of our most popular episodes. Five years ago, a Mississippi woman named Latice Fisher was charged with murdering her stillborn child. The evidence against her: a controversial 400-year-old test and the search history on her cellphone.
7/12/2022 • 24 minutes, 12 seconds
22. SPECIAL FEATURE: ‘NSO’ from Darknet Diaries
Last August, the Darknet Diaries host Jack Rhysider did a story about the NSO Group’s most famous product — Pegasus — a surveillance program which has the ability to turn just about anyone’s phone into a pocket spy.
7/5/2022 • 1 hour, 13 minutes, 13 seconds
21. Son of Conti
The Conti ransomware group appeared to be on ropes earlier this year when its internal chat logs went public –revealing the inner workings of a hacking cartel. Then, the gang surprised everyone by launching a cyber attack against Costa Rica aimed at overthrowing its government. Plus, what happens when a company actually wants to talk about being the target of a ransomware attack - how much will they say?
6/28/2022 • 23 minutes, 48 seconds
20. North Korea’s cryptocurrency obsession
For years, North Korea was known for making such a perfect counterfeit hundred-dollar note, the Treasury Department had to change how it printed them. Now, North Korea is all about crypto – and it has been cooking up all kinds of crazy schemes in order to get the Big Score. Plus, we hear from a two-time North Korean defector.
6/21/2022 • 26 minutes, 53 seconds
19. Gilman Louie and the dance with wolf warriors
In a wide-ranging conversation on the fringes of this month’s RSA Conference, we sat down with Silicon Valley venture capitalist and Presidential Intelligence Advisory Board member Gilman Louie. We talked about the Chinese cyber threat, the growth of superpower competition, and the importance of bringing high-tech manufacturing back to America.
6/14/2022 • 32 minutes, 1 second
18. The dog-eat-dragon world of Chinese gaming
Genshin Impact put the Chinese video gaming industry on the map. But while the game has delighted players, it begs the question: Can China’s Communist Party and a massively popular video game peacefully co-exist? Plus, we hit the ground at this year’s RSA Conference in San Francisco.
6/7/2022 • 27 minutes, 43 seconds
17. REvil and the Texas hack that changed ransomware as we know it
An encore performance of the Click Here pilot episode on REvil and how it landed on a new business model. It happened in an unlikely place: Texas.
5/31/2022 • 29 minutes, 3 seconds
16. Roe v. Wade in a world of digital dust
Five years ago, a Mississippi woman named Latice Fisher was charged with murdering her stillborn child. The evidence against her: a controversial 400-year-old test and the search history on her cellphone. We explain how in a post-Roe world, pattern data will be an even greater threat. Plus, the DOJ tweaks its use of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
5/24/2022 • 26 minutes, 33 seconds
15. At war with facial recognition: Clearview AI in Ukraine
Facial recognition technology is changing the war in Ukraine. It is finding infiltrators, providing evidence for war crimes and, more darkly, providing fodder for propaganda. We talk to Clearview AI’s CEO about its role in the conflict and what it means for the future.
5/17/2022 • 28 minutes, 22 seconds
14. ‘Cream of the cream’: Russia’s high-tech brain drain
Tech entrepreneurs and developers are fleeing Putin’s Russia in droves. Meet three members of the exodus: a young successful entrepreneur… a corporate manager… and a high-school computer whiz who can’t wait to leave. Plus, DHS’ Rob Silvers on how ransomware ends.
5/10/2022 • 31 minutes, 4 seconds
13. Spyware and ‘a world of Bond villains’
Ron Deibert founded The Citizen Lab, a high-tech human rights watchdog at the University of Toronto. He's concerned the Internet could unleash our darkest angels. Now, he has an even bigger worry: spyware. It's become so normalized even democratic nations are using it as high-tech oppo research. Plus, a pause in open source mapping in Ukraine.
5/3/2022 • 25 minutes, 13 seconds
12. Lapsus$: The script kiddies are alright
How a new cyber extortion team called LAPSUS$ managed to convince the world that it had turned low-tech hacking operations into high impact heists. And two high-schoolers who tinkered with a punch card and almost brought down the IBM computer center in Manhattan.
4/26/2022 • 28 minutes, 36 seconds
11. The entrepreneur and the Jihadist
A Los Angeles tech entrepreneur reveals for the first time the role he played in bringing one of the world’s deadliest hackers to justice. And the founder of Craigslist talks about his effort to build a cyber civil defense force.
4/19/2022 • 27 minutes, 17 seconds
10. Are America’s nuclear systems so old they’re un-hackable?
In its latest defense budget, the Biden Administration has asked Congress to fund the modernization of America’s nuclear weapons systems.The current system – that until recently was still using eight inch floppies – is seen as so old that it’s virtually un-hackable. So if you modernize, now what? Plus, cyber hits from Nigeria’s music scene.
SHOW NOTES:
At The Brink podcast
Herb Lin's book Cyber Threats and Nuclear Weapons
How cybercrime remixed the Nigerian Music scene
4/12/2022 • 27 minutes, 40 seconds
9. The rise of high-tech despotism
Noura Al-Jizawi thought she’d left the repression of the Assad regime behind her when she left Syria with her sister. Instead she became the target of an online subversion campaign. Plus, we meet the founder of a retro computer museum in Mariupol, Ukraine.
4/5/2022 • 30 minutes, 22 seconds
8. War, sanctions and crypto’s big moment
As sanctions squeeze the Russian economy, ordinary Russians are having to navigate a financial system in mid-collapse. For some, the solution has been cryptocurrencies. We talk to a small businessman in St. Petersburg who explains. Plus, the hack heard ‘round the indie music world.
SHOW NOTES:
Grimes Admits to Blackmail, Extortion, and Hacking in Vanity Fair Video Interview
3/29/2022 • 24 minutes, 38 seconds
7. Fighting Russia with computers, not rifles
A volunteer army made up of thousands of IT professionals from around the world is seeking to fight Russia in cyberspace. We talk to some of its members and discover new limits to Russia’s hacking efforts.
3/22/2022 • 22 minutes, 29 seconds
6. 'Baggage from a severely harmed relationship'
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman explains how we – in a few short years – went from a controversial phone call between an American president and Ukrainian leader to the largest territorial aggression in Europe since WWII. Plus, Ukraine’s all volunteer IT Army.
SHOW NOTES:
Here, Right Matters
The Day After Russia Attacks
America Must Do More to Help Ukraine Fight Russia
3/15/2022 • 27 minutes, 8 seconds
5. Conti leaks: the Panama Papers of ransomware
Not long after the Conti ransomware group threw its weight behind Vladimir Putin and the invasion of Ukraine someone leaked two years’ of its internal chat logs. What they’ve revealed has rocked the cyber world and made clear that running a world-class ransomware operation isn’t as easy as it used to be. Plus, a new look at information warfare with author Amy Zegart.
SHOW NOTES:
Conti ransomware gang chats leaked by pro-Ukraine member
3/8/2022 • 26 minutes, 30 seconds
4. 'They are fighting like lions'
The most surprising thing about the Russian invasion of Ukraine – aside from the invasion itself – is how small a role cyber operations have played to this point. That’s likely to change. Plus the administration’s unusual weapon against misinformation campaigns: declassifying intelligence.
SHOW NOTES:
Russia appears to deploy digital defenses after DDoS attacks
Biden: U.S. ‘prepared to respond’ to Russian cyberattacks as invasion of Ukraine continues
Russia or Ukraine: Hacking groups take sides
NetBlocks tracking internet disruptions
3/1/2022 • 23 minutes, 7 seconds
3. In touch with reality
In a rare interview, Click Here catches up with former NSA contractor Reality Winner. Back in 2017, she leaked a five-page classified document to journalists that showed how Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 elections. She went to prison for it and talks at length about why she did what she did and how it so spectacularly backfired. And a chat with the head of the internet watchdog, Netblocks.
2/22/2022 • 41 minutes, 18 seconds
2. A place called darkode
Ryan Green helped start one of the largest English-language dark markets in the world: Darkode. He takes us behind-the-scenes of how it started, how it ended, and how it managed to come back again. Plus, we look at a Russian misinformation re-tread.
SHOW NOTES:
CBS NEWS: How authorities infiltrate the Internet underworld
Department of Justice announcement on Darkode’s takedown
Russian 2014 fake news story
2/15/2022 • 28 minutes, 27 seconds
1. A new franchising opportunity
Our first episode is an origin story. Ransomware-as-a-service got its start in an unlikely place: Texas. We tell the story of how a Russian cyber gang called REvil went toe-to-toe with a bunch of Texas towns and emerged with a new business model.
SHOW NOTES:
An interview with REvil’s Unknown
Surveillance video of REvil's hacks
2/8/2022 • 27 minutes, 12 seconds
Introducing Click Here
It seems like we hear about new cyberattacks almost every day.
The targets used to be just big companies and government agencies. Now they are focused on you.
Every Tuesday, former NPR investigations correspondent Dina Temple-Raston dives deep into the world of cyber and intelligence. You’ll hear stories about everything from ransomware to misinformation to the people shaping the cyber world, from hacking masterminds to the people who try to stop them.
Click Here. Produced by The Record Media