CYBER

Deadly storms swept through parts of the U.S. last Friday, killing at least 90 people. Six of those worked in an Amazon warehouse in Illinois. As the deadly tornado hit the warehouse, the walls fell inward, the roof collapsed. Moments before his death, worker Larry Virden texted his girlfriend to say “Amazon won’t let us leave.”If you’ve ever worked retail or shipping during the holidays, you know that what is a restful period of joy and relaxation for much of the world is a stressful nightmare for you. Winter brings inclement weather, icy roads, and snow. Sometimes the choice is either putting yourself in danger or losing your job.This week on Cyber, Motherboard Senior Staff writer and expert on all things labor, Lauren Kaori Gurley explains Amazon’s policies around inclement weather, worker safety, and why OSHA has opened an investigation into what happened the night of the deadly Tornado in Illinois. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In which we go deep on ConstitutionDAO, and DAOs in general. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cyber’s intro music has clips from various movies. The first is from WarGames, a 1983 film where a hacker squares off against an artificial intelligence that’s in control of the nukes. Almost forty years later and AI is beating people at Starcraft 2, which is not quite the organization of a nuclear war but can still feel scary. But how smart are these systems really? Is AI, or “machine learning” as practitioners prefer to call it, the next big thing or just another in a series of promises about the future that hasn’t quite materialized? What are the actual dangers of these systems?Here to help us answer this question is Os Keyes. Keyes is PhD student at the University of Washington’s Department of Human Centred Design & Engineering and an occasional Motherboard contributor. Their area of expertise is, broadly, how technology constructs the world we live in.It’s a wide-ranging conversation that covers everything from Henry Kissinger to Human Centipede and the hard limits of artificial intelligence. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Encrypted messaging apps. We all love them. You don’t have to be doing anything shady to want to make sure your messages are end-to-end encrypted. And for most people there’s dozens of options. Signal, Wicker, even WhatsApp boasts end-to-end encryption.But what if you need something a little more secure? That’s where encrypted phone companies like Sky Global and Phantom come in. These companies cater to a more discerning clientele with a need for a more secure messaging environment. Which is part of how they get into such trouble with the feds.With us today is Motherboard journalist Joseph Cox. He’s gonna tell us about his newest feature: Crime Boss or Tech CEO? An Encrypted Phone Company Sues the Government to Save Itself.We’re recording CYBER love on Twitch. Follow us on Twitch to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience. Yours just might end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we are sharing an episode from one of our newest series -- A Show About Animals. This season, we tell the strange and wonderful story of the wildly famous Koko the “talking” Gorilla. In the early 1970s, a grad student named Penny Patterson set out to investigate a big question: is language unique to humans? So she begins an ambitious experiment -- with the help of a young gorilla named Koko. Pretty soon, Penny says Koko is learning sign language. But, of course, that’s not the whole story. You can listen to our weekly series, A Show About Animals, in all the places you get your podcasts. A Show About Animals is hosted and reported by Arielle Duhaime-Ross and produced by Julia Nutter and Pete Lang-Stanton. Our associate producer is Leily Rezvani. Sound design and original score by Pran Bandi, with additional support from Steve Bone. Annie Aviles is our executive editor. Our executive producer and VP of Vice Audio is Kate Osborn. Special thanks to Maximo Anderson for fact-checking. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Apple recently announced a plan to sell customers manuals and parts that will let them fix their own iPhone 12s and 13s. It’s a huge win for the right to repair, but what are the specifics of the plan and what does it mean for the future of the repair movement in America?This week on Cyber, Matthew Gault and Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler sat down with heavyweights of the right-to-repair movement to answer that question. This conversation between iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens, Repair.org’s Gay Gordon-Byrne, and U.S. PIRG’s Nathan Proctor covers everything from John Deere tractors to lies Apple tells when it’s lobbying against the right-to-repair.A non-comprehensive list of the Motherboard reporting mentioned in this episode:Half the Country Is Now Considering Right to Repair LawsFTC Formally Adopts Right to Repair PlatformApple Is Lobbying Against Your Right to Repair iPhones, New York State Records ConfirmApple Is Telling Lawmakers People Will Hurt Themselves if They Try to Fix iPhonesWhy American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors With Ukrainian FirmwareJohn Deere–Backed Lobbying Groups Host Anti-Right to Repair ConferenceDepartment of Commerce Says We Need Fewer Repair RestrictionsApple Said It Will Stop Breaking Face ID on Independently-Repaired iPhone 13s Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Metaverse. The term was coined by author Neal Stephenson in his book Snow Crash. It was a digital playground where people were only limited by their imagination.Facebook has changed its name to Meta and says it’s trying to make the metaverse a reality. Now, other companies are rushing to get a piece of Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of the future. Here to help me puzzle out the nightmarish world Silicon Valley billionaires want for us is Motherboard Senior Editor Janus Rose and panopticon expert and professor of English at Macomb Community College Chris Gilliard.This wide-ranging conversation starts with Rose’s recent piece, “Zuckerberg’s Meta Endgame Is Monetizing All Human Behavior”, but it gets into the deeper and systemic issues around machine learning, artificial intelligence, and the kind of future we want.We’re recording CYBER love on Twitch. Follow us on Twitch to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience. Yours just might end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’ve all gotten phone calls from someone trying to talk to us about our car’s extended warranty, even if we don’t own a car. But has a robot ever called you to try to get the code your bank sends you when you log on? If it hasn’t happened, it might very soon.It’s the subject of Motherboard staff writer Joseph Cox’s new piece: The Booming Underground Market for Bots That Steal Your 2FA Codes.We’re recording CYBER love on Twitch. Follow us on Twitch to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience. Yours just might end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

BONUS SERIES: Dune is out! And it's the biggest movie in America. In this special series, Motherboard and friends dissect all things Dune. In this episode, we look at how Frank Herbert approaches war, geopolitics,and desert power and how Denis Villeneuve handles it in the blockbuster movie. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

BONUS SERIES: Dune is out! And it's the biggest movie in America. In this special series, Motherboard and friends dissect all things Dune. In this episode, we look at how Frank Herbert approaches mysticism, spirituality, spice, and psychedelics and how Denis Villeneuve handles it in the blockbuster movie. Note to CYBER listeners: We're doing this series in addition to our normal CYBER episodes, which will still be released this week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

BONUS SERIES: Dune is out! And it's the biggest movie in America. In this special series, Motherboard and friends dissect all things Dune. In this episode, we look at how Frank Herbert approaches eugenics and race in the book series, and how Denis Villeneuve handles it in the blockbuster movie. This episode features: Hood Feminism author Mikki Kendall, Edward Ongweso Jr., Gita Jackson, Jason Koebler, Brian Merchant, and Tim Marchman. Note to CYBER listeners: We're doing this series in addition to our normal CYBER episodes, which will still be released this week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

BONUS SERIES: Dune is out! And it's the biggest movie in America. In this special series, Motherboard and friends dissect all things Dune. In this episode, we look at how Frank Herbert approaches oil, environmental destruction, and what it can tell us about how we treat our planet. Note to CYBER listeners: We're doing this series in addition to our normal CYBER episodes, which will still be released this week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello out there in cyber land. It’s striketober in America.From the John Deere factory floor to the cereal crunching halls of Kellogg's, workers are telling management they’ve had enough. It’s labor unrest the U.S. hasn’t seen in my lifetime.Thankfully today I’m joined by Motherboard Senior Staff writer and expert on all things labor, Lauren Kaori Gurley.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On October 6, a massive leak of Twitch data revealed how much cash its biggest streamers made. The leak isn’t the first time Twitch’s security has been called into question and as the fallout from the leak spiraled, Motherboard reporter Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai went looking for an older story, the story of Urgent Pizza. This week on Cyber, Lorenzo tells us the story of the biggest hack in Twitch history. In 2014 unskilled hackers walked right into Twitch’s code and made off with everything. It was right after Amazon had paid nearly $1 billion for the company. Later, Lorenzo breaks down everything Activision is doing to prevent cheating in Call of Duty. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When America withdrew from Afghanistan it left people behind. Interpreters, aid workers, allies, and even some U.S. citizens remained in the country as the Taliban took over. Since the official U.S. military exit, dozens of groups have sprung up to try to help people safely flee the country. Not all of them are competent, but most of them are asking for money.Vice Motherboard features editor Tim Marchman and senior Staff Writer Anna Merlan looked into this for a piece titled The Anti-Trafficking Movement Is Pivoting to Afghanistan. Marchman is here today to talk with us about the weird world of online led anti-trafficking groups and how they’ve latched onto Afghanistan as their newest cause. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Cyber this week we bring you an episode from the podcast Darknet Diaries by Jack Rhysider. In 2016, America went to war against ISIS at the head of an international coalition. The U.S. sent ships, soldiers, and material to the Middle East to fight off the Islamic State. It also sent cyber warriors to combat ISIS online. This is the story of Operation Glowing Symphony, an inside look at how the U.S. hacked the Islamic State and how the future of war is completely online. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An anonymous poster on 4Chan published 135 gigabytes of what appears to be internal data stolen from Twitch, including exactly how much money the platform’s biggest streamers make on Twitch. On Wednesday, the poster published a link to a torrent of 135 GB, calling it "an extremely poggers leak" which allegedly includes source code for all Twitch clients for different operating systems, an unreleased Steam competitor, and internal tools that Twitch's security team uses.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Syniverse, a company that is a critical part of the global telecommunications infrastructure used by AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and several others around the world such as Vodafone and China Mobile, quietly disclosed that hackers were inside its systems for years, impacting more than 200 of its clients and potentially millions of cellphone users worldwide. Plus! Facebook is extremely down. What's going on? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you’re on Facebook then there’s a company you’ve probably never heard of that makes it bearable. Accenture. The little-known consulting firm is one of the biggest companies in the booming market of content moderation. But you’ll probably never hear its name come out of the lips of Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg.When it comes to the world’s largest social media site, you either love it or you hate it. But chances are you don’t want to see a video of a dog skinned alive while you’re checking in on people from high school. That’s where Accenture comes in. AI gets rid of a lot, but sometimes a human has to make a call. The psychic cost of that work is devastating but it’s worth a lot of money to Facebook.Here to help us understand the bizarrely secret world of Facebook’s content moderation is Mike Issac of The New York Times. Isaac is a best-selling author who just co-wrote a story about all this titled The Silent Partner Cleaning Up Facebook for $500 Million a Year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amazon's new robot called Astro is designed to track the behavior of everyone in your home to help it perform its surveillance and helper duties, according to leaked internal development documents and video recordings of Astro software development meetings obtained by Motherboard. The system's person recognition system is heavily flawed, according to two sources who worked on the project.The documents, which largely use Astro's internal codename "Vesta" for the device, give extensive insight into the robot's design, Amazon's philosophy, how the device tracks customer behavior as well as flow charts of how it determines who a "stranger" is and whether it should take any sort of "investigation activity" against them. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Rob Graham, an independent security researcher who is also known as ErrataRob on Twitter. What if you could go back in time and make sure you made the deadline on a college assignment? That’s basically what Rob did by hacking his professor. Rob is very well known in the community for having created Masscan, a tool that lets anyone scan the entire internet in just a few minute and for his sometimes controversial hot takes on Twitter. Rob was recently at the ridiculed cybersecurity conference organized by the MyPillow CEO. He was one of the only actual experts there, and one of the few people who wore a mask.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A strange press release went out on September 13th. Retail giant Walmart, it seemed, would soon be accepting crypto currency. “The eCommerce giant intends to give its millions of shoppers across the world an opportunity to seamlessly make payments with cryptocurrencies,” the press release said. The press release was bullshit.The world of cryptocurrency is rife with scams. Pump and dumps, fake coins, massive hacks. Members of a professional eSports influencer house have been accused of running a crypto-based charity scam, a hacker recently made off with $600 million in Bitcoin, the SEC is investigating a crypto backed fraud case that’s alleged to have screwed investors out of billions.The list goes on and on. What is it about these digital currencies that makes them so vulnerable to getting ripped off and how do you keep yourself safe?Here to help us navigate the murky waters of Crypto currency and its many scams is Motherboard Senior Editor Jordan Pearson. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two-factor authentication is simple and easy to use, right? Whenever you log in to your email, work account, or social media platform you get a text message or email asking you to confirm your identity.  It’s easy and safe and we’re all using it. Right? Well … the numbers don’t look good. Information Security professionals are always trying to get their clients to adopt multi-factor authentication, but the clients don’t seem to be listening. Twitter recently disclosed that the number of accounts using 2FA is only 2.3%, a depressingly tiny number. Especially given the amount of security breaches we’ve seen lately. A recent T-Mobile breach is said to affect nearly 50 million customers.Here to walk us through the merits 2FA is Rachel Tobac. Tobac is a hacker and the CEO of SocialProof Security, a company that aims to get your organization politely paranoid. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you’ve played video games online, it’s happened to you. You’re holding it down in the warzone, helping your squad score a dub when suddenly your head explodes and there’s no way anyone on the enemy team could have known where you were let alone make the shot that killed you.Do you just suck or could it be … a hacker?Claiming a hacker killed you instead of taking the L with dignity is a time honored tradition in gaming. But in a lot of online shooters and Call of Duty in particular, hacking has become ubiquitous. The issue is so prevalent that Activision literally can’t remove them from the game fast enough and the people selling the hacks are running out of stock.Here to walk us through the dark side of Call of Duty is Motherboard staff writer Joseph Cox. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Double agents are a Cold War trope. An American spy has *gasp* secretly been working for the Soviets the whole time. These days, you’re more likely to run into a double agent in the world of corporate information technology. Sometimes hackers are selling company secrets while helping the very corporations they exploit.Andrey Shumeyko was one such double agent. The hacker cruised the digital hangouts of people who bought and sold the secrets of Apple. Facing financial pressure and—to hear them tell it, a sense of guilt—they reached out to Apple.Things didn’t go quite as Shumeyko expected.This is the story of Apple’s Double Agent, brought to you by Motherboard’s Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Ophir Harpaz, a security researcher at Guardicore. Her first hack was to reverse engineer the classic Windows game Minesweeper. Her goal was to force the program to put flags on all squares with mines—as soon as the board shows up. That essentially makes it incredibly easy to beat the game. That exercise changed her life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we're doing things a little differently.VICE's 2030 Fellow Samir Ferdowsi spoke with Setareh Soroush, The Women's Rights Director for Middle East Matter's, a community of online activists aiming to bring untold stories and news from the region across borders and in front of Western audiences.We sat down with Soroush to find out how the organization works, and what being a Middle Eastern activist in a volatile and sometimes, downright dangerous digital landscape looks like. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s an old story with a new twist. A top administrator of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops resigned after someone leaked information about their private life. Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill left his post after a Catholic oriented Substack accused him of being a frequent user of Grindr.Simple on the surface, but our obsession with the sex live’s of the clergy is masking something darker. How, exactly, did the Substack know that Monsignor. Burrill was using Grindr? How many of our apps are spying on us and collecting this kind of data? And just how easy is it for a viscous third party to get hold of that data for nefarious ends.Here to answer those questions and more is Motherboard staff writer Joseph Cox. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you’ve tried catching an Uber recently you may have noticed that prices and wait times are worse than they’ve ever been. Rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft didn’t fare well during the pandemic and now that restrictions are easing, drivers just aren’t coming back.Motherboard Staff Writer Edward Ongweso Jr spent some time talking to Uber drivers to find out what’s going on. He’s here to tell us what he found out, but here’s a preview: Uber and Lyft Can’t Find Drivers Because Gig Work Sucks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fascists love to perfect a look. Hugo Boss’ Nazi Uniforms, the striking headquarters of the Italian Fascist party, and the sleek presentation of Islamic State’s Dabiq all have one thing in common—they’re visually striking.So too with today’s extremists. Neo-Nazis from Atomwaffen Division to the Order of the 9 Angles have a certain aesthetic flair. And that’s largely down to a few influential artists. VICE extremism reporter and Cyber host Ben Makuch recently went in search of ‘Dark Foreigner:’ The Artist Who Fueled a Neo-Nazi Terror Movement.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A heat dome in the Western part of the continent reached 117 degrees. A town in British Columbia burned to the ground, and temperatures in Europe are shattering records. Climate change is here and it’s killing us. But it’s not just the heat. It’s the humidity. That’s why scientists are studying “wet bulb conditions”— or temperatures at which humans spontaneously die.What, exactly, are “wet bulb” conditions and when do we need to start worrying about them? Can we do anything to stop them? Are people already dying? Here to answer these questions and more is Motherboard intern Audrey Carleton, who has been covering this for the site. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

More than 1,800 years ago, Marcus Aurelius wrote, “When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly.” If you’ve ever thought the same before logging into social media, you aren’t alone. In addition to being Emperor of Rome, Aurelius is one of the founders of Stoicism—an ancient philosophy that’s recently become widely popular among the Silicon Valley elite.But what do ancient Roman philosophers have to do with billionaire tech bros like Jack Dorsey? A lot, it turns out. Vice Senior Staff Writer Shayla Love wrote the ultimate stoicism explainer and she’s here with us today to talk about what it means that the world’s rich and powerful are turning to ancient texts for life advice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Andrew Tierney, better known online as Cybergibbons, earned his reputation hacking things like thermostats, home alarms, and other hardware like cryptocurrency wallets. So it makes a lot of sense that his first ever hack back in the 90s was to take control of his high school’s heating system from his bedroom. Here's the story of Andrew's first hack. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imagine you’re at work, it’s a long day and you lean back in your chair only to hear a chime and a disembodied voice.The voice fills the room and it tells you to stop leaning and get back to work.There’s a sense that someone is always watching and ready to reprimand you for the slightest infraction.That’s the promise of Live Eye—a CCTV camera system which, for a monthly fee, will monitor a store's security cameras 24/7 and step in if there’s trouble. It sells itself as a safety feature, but as a new report from Motherboard's Todd Feathers’ shows …. It’s anything but safe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Just as Amazon founder and richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, announced that he was going into space via his private rocket company and news broke that he pays shockingly little on his income taxes, New York state is set to pass a groundbreaking antitrust law that will challenge the labor practices of the tech giant. At the same time, Motherboard reporter Lauren Gurley broke the news of yet-more ill treatment of Amazon workers that will blow your mind. With more on that she’s on this week’s show to tell us more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s basically the FBI’s greatest fantasy come to life: Owning an operating an encrypted communications company exclusively used by some of the world’s most hardened and organized criminals.“Anom” the subscription based network operated by the feds, was used as the ultimate spy tool that gave an almost godlike view of organized crime to FBI agents who watched users discuss murder, drug deals, and millions of dollars worth of criminal activity. And it all came to a screeching halt this week when a coordinated law enforcement effort around the world took down its customer base.Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox is on the show to talk in more details about the latest takedown by the FBI. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Central Intelligence Agency. Since its inception during the Cold War days it’s taken on the mystique as the silent hand of the US government. It’s been entwined in controversies ranging from the Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War, to Watergate and most recently, it’s role in the universally condemned torture of detainees during the decadeslong War On Terror. But then in 2014, something happened that heralded a brand new era in the once ultra-secretive (and not very public) spy agency: It got a Twitter account. Since, the CIA has been undergoing some kind of public rebranding. But why does an intelligence agency that’s whole existence is based on how good at being secret it is, need a public presence? Motherboard reporter Edward Ongweso is on the show to talk spies and tweets with me. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Before he even knew he wanted to be a hacker, Haroon Meer figured out “on a whim” that he could mess with all the high school computers by just changing one single character in a configuration file. With this newly acquired power, Haroon pranked his best friend using a quote from a classic Jean-Claude Van Damme 1980s movie. He also made his clueless computer science teacher really mad. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The many Mexican cartels of the last few decades have developed into what the US government sees as a not only criminal but a geopolitical enemy, joining the ranks of the Taliban, ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Russian hackers. This means the full force of American surveillance has been aimed at groups like Los Zetas, or the Sinaloa Cartel once-led by the infamous El Chapo. But when it comes to hackers and cybersecurity, there isn’t a lot of talk on how the cartels view their own online safety, so today we’re talking to VICE News Reporter Keegan Hamilton who has intimately covered the cartels from inside Mexico.Trust me this man has a lot of guts and he’s on the show to chat with me this week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So another band of hackers struck again: a criminal gang known as ‘DarkSide’ unleashed a ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline, which shut down an integral line that supplies the East Coast with oil and gas. While the cyberattack itself didn’t physically knock out the pipeline with a string of code, the resulting attack majorly disrupted a critical piece of US infrastructure: Fuel. While the Biden administration is scrambling to deal with the fallout, questions surrounding DarkSide and its motivations persist. To chat more on that, Motherboard reporter Lorenzo Francheschi-Bicchierai is on the show.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An ‘avalanche of cardboard’ is completely overwhelming card grading companies as collectors try to cash in on Pokemon’s resurgent popularity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For years, Apple has claimed its devices are the most secure in the world, poo-pooing PC and Android devices for being as clean as a public swimming pool. But just this week, Motherboard’s very own Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai reported on what is being described as one of the biggest security flaws of Apple products exploited by hackers ever, and it could have affected you. He’s on the latest episode to talk about this and the year so far in Mac exploits. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s easily one of the world’s most popular messaging apps, owned and operated by Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook empire.But more recently WhatsApp has come under some serious scrutiny for some very specific privacy concerns by experts and journalists alike. Motherboard reporter Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchieraiis on the show this week to tell us more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since Capitol Hill everybody has become pretty intimately familiar with how radical and violent the far-right truly is. Online it exists in cesspools like the encrypted app Telegram, or Gab, a Twitter knockoff popular among extremists and Maga types alike.And one thing many forms of far-right have in common is their hatred porn and the name-brand of porn, PornHub. Our Motherboard reporter Sam Cole dug into the world of anti-porn Nazis so you don’t have to, and is on the show to talk about it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if we told you that your phone could be hacked 16$ and all of the texts that were meant for you, were rerouted to someone else with nefarious designs on your most personal exchanges? It’s a real thing and it happened to Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox who is on the show to explain how a simple hack, costing nothing at all, could happen to you.In fact, we were recording another interview and Joseph was being hacked in real-time. We start there on this week’s episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Katie Moussouris is now a recognizable name in the cybersecurity industry. She is one of the pioneers in the world of bug bounties after starting Microsoft’s program. But before she became a famous hacker, Moussouris started like many others: hacking video games. Here’s the story of her first hack. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a re-run of an episode originally released on July 18th, 2019 A Silicon Valley company with a history of CIA funding, a suite of highly sought after intelligence software tools, and a gallivanting billionaire founder with connections to the Trump Administration is set to become one of the biggest IPOs in recent memory.Yet many outside of the infosec world don’t even know its name or that it even exists—a sharp difference Palantir doesn’t share with other similar-sized startups based out of the Silicon Valley.But Palantir’s surveillance software, which essentially siphons up monumental amounts of data on the public using state, police, and federal databases can map interpersonal relationships between people and provide that info to the fingertips of police and spies in a matter of seconds.Among the list of past and current Palantir clients are the NSA, CIA, Department of Homeland Security and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement—which directly uses its technology to fuel its controversial raids on undocument workers. Motherboard reporter Caroline Haskins obtained a copy of one of the company’s top-secret police manuals describing how to use its software. The revelation gave privacy-concerned onlookers a rare insight into just how invasive Palantir technology can be.On this week’s CYBER, Caroline sits down with host Ben Makuch to map out what Palantir is and how this company influences the very technological landscape of the modern world.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

He’s been a Hollywood superstar for what feels like, well, forever. Top Gun, Mission Impossible, hey even that weird Hitler assassination movie where he doesn’t speak German or even fake an accent. Tom Cruise is everywhere was in everything and most recently made headlines for being deep faked. And this was just any Deep Fake, this was the creepiest most realistic Deep Fake, probably ever. For more on what that means, Motherboard reporter Sam Cole is on the show to chat. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wanna hear a story that involves automatic license plate reader technology, AI-powered cameras that detect the movements of cars across the United States, cops, and well, Burger King? Well today on the show we have Motherboard reporter of all-things-surveillance, Joseph Cox, on to tell us about Flock: a little-known company that’s hawking smart-surveillance cameras that are quietly creeping individual neighborhoods across the country for police. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It is arguably America’s favourite fast-food restaurant. Home of the Big-Mac, McNuggets and that creepy clown that used to haunt my dreams. McDonald’s is classic Americana that has spread all over the world. But lately, a Motherboard exclusive shows, Ronald’s house of burgers allegedly used private spies to surveil it’s workers. For the latest on this, we have our very own Lorenzo Francheschi-Bicchierai on to discuss. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.