Since the dawn of the Patriot Act, a sweeping surveillance bill enacted shortly after 9/11, it’s been both the bane of privacy hawks and the favourite tool of the Intelligence Community. But lately, the Senate, courtesy of Mitch McConnell, helped the IC by giving agencies like the FBI the power to warrantlessly search the browser history of American citizens. That’s terrifying and today we’ve got Motherboard editor/reporter Janus Rose on to breakdown how this happened and what’s next. Hoste...
May 21, 2020•45 min•Ep 77•Transcript available on Metacast On the show, we talk a lot about the state of Orwellian world we’ve found ourselves in: big data, corporate and governmental surveillance. You know, Big Brother. But where did it come from? What’s it’s historical context? To answer these questions, we have author and Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama, Lawrence Cappello on the show who wrote a book called None of Your Damn Business: Privacy in the United States from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age. In it he traces the over 100 ye...
May 14, 2020•41 min•Ep 76•Transcript available on Metacast In 2017, amidst the backdrop of the Mueller investigation and Russian spy paranoia, the world learned, via a New York Times bombshell, that the Pentagon had a top secret UFO program. The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, AATIP for short, had a $22 million dollar black budget and looked into an aerial threat nobody could understand: UFOs. The details were terrifying, US fighter jet pilots regularly came into contact with other worldly flying objects that nobody understood. There w...
May 07, 2020•34 min•Ep 75•Transcript available on Metacast Back in 2013, between the many revelations on mass surveillance abuses by the NSA coming from the trove of Snowden leaks, Americans also learned agents at the signals intelligence agency were snooping on their love interests. Dubbed LOVEINT (a play on ‘Love-Intelligence,’ apparently), a number of agents around the world were caught spying on their love interests using the godlike spy tools of the NSA. Now an employee from an infamous surveillance company was caught trying to do the exact s...
Apr 30, 2020•29 min•Ep 74•Transcript available on Metacast The DNC hack. It was a tale of espionage and intrigue. But behind closed doors, Russian intelligence knew just how to play the media in a liberal democracy. And that is a tale as old as time. Thomas Rid, a world renowned academic on national security and intelligence, wrote a new book called Active Measures tracing secret history psychological warfare over a century. On this week’s episode we have him on the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Apr 23, 2020•45 min•Ep 73•Transcript available on Metacast The mechanics of voting really hasn’t changed since the dawn of democracy. People line up, mark a ballot for their candidate and then leave. But in today’s pandemic, the lines for the Wisconsin primary illustrated the legitimate dangers of having thousands of people line up with one another to vote. Likewise, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo delayed his state’s primaries from April to June for the same reason. All of this forces us to ask the question: In an age where everything is done online, wh...
Apr 16, 2020•34 min•Ep 72•Transcript available on Metacast Hi Cyber listeners! Friendly podcast producer Ricardo here with a new bonus podcast from the Vice Audio team. The Distance features short, first-person stories from all over the world about how the pandemic is changing the way we live. We're sharing the "DJ set" episode on our feed for y'all, but you can click here for more ! Javi streams a two hour tropical set from his living room in Madrid. Check it out: https://tinyurl.com/s8f246v Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informa...
Apr 10, 2020•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast It was implicated in the hacking and spying of activists in Mexico. It may have helped the Saudis kill and behead Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Now, it’s inserting itself into the pandemic news as if it needed more bad press. NSO Group, the infamous Israeli spyware company with links to intelligence agencies, developed software tracking coronavirus-infected citizens. But, as our Motherboard reporter Lorenzo Franceschi Bicchierai tells us, that’s likely just a way for it to expand i...
Apr 09, 2020•30 min•Ep 71•Transcript available on Metacast This time of pandemic and social isolation is introducing a lot of new normals to us all. While we’re all holed up in our apartments, the need to interact with our friends and the outside world hasn’t just suddenly ended. In fact, people are FaceTiming and setting up Google Hangouts just to feel normal. But one app, that I never even heard of until now, seems to be coming out on top as the choice video conferencing platform: Zoom. And its services have allowed us all to have chaotic Zoom p...
Apr 02, 2020•29 min•Ep 70•Transcript available on Metacast Right now, many people are sitting indoors quarantined from the world, stocked up on supplies and watching way too much Netflix. Some might even feel the impulse to order goods to their doorstep. So they fire up their Amazon Prime accounts and order some quarantine trinkets. Before this plague happened that whole process seemed completely normal. But behind that push of a button an entire workforce of Amazon workers, some with no health insurance or a union protecting their employment...
Mar 26, 2020•29 min•Ep 69•Transcript available on Metacast Yes, friends, this week’s CYBER podcast was recorded from the comfort of our apartments. Because, well, the global pandemic. Today on the show, we thought it would be important to discuss how coronavirus will affect state and corporate surveillance. Yes, because, like 9/11 and the quick enactment of the Patriot Act, there is already evidence of a boom for the spy industry. One company is advertising tech that leverages video surveillance software it says can spot people who have a fever, w...
Mar 19, 2020•24 min•Ep 68•Transcript available on Metacast It’s cliche to say it, but it’s true, we’re living in a frighteningly similar world to George Orwell’s 1984. Where it’s not just people that are spies, but everything can be a spy. And people are making money off of it to fuel this Big Brother world. It’s a panopticon of mass surveillance and here at Motherboard, Jason Koebler and Emanuel Maiberg broke the news of yet another company hawking its dystopian services. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Mar 12, 2020•43 min•Ep 67•Transcript available on Metacast In late 2014, North Korean hackers made their blockbuster debut in popular culture after the infamous Sony hack . It was one of those watershed cybersecurity moments when a hacking story finally dominated news headlines with a made for Hollywood plot: A Seth Rogen stoner comedy catching the ire of the Hermit Kingdom so much so that Kim Jong Un deployed his team of skillful hackers to embarrass the movie company that made the film. Even when the NSA confirmed North Korea was the culprit, pe...
Mar 05, 2020•29 min•Ep 66•Transcript available on Metacast It used to be that if you wanted to interact with your favourite celebrity you’d have to do elaborate things like camp out near a red carpet in Hollywood, lying in wait, until you finally got the chance to scream-ask Queen Bey for her autograph amongst a gaggle of other fans. Well, in 2020, like everything else in this world, including our dating lives, our health, and voting there’s an app for paying celebrities to give you personalized shoutout videos. That’s right, the app Cameo provides you ...
Feb 27, 2020•31 min•Ep 65•Transcript available on Metacast When we think of the titans of industry, we used to think of names like Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt. But today, in 2020, we have new names that dominate the world economy: Zuckerberg, Cook, Musk, and Thiel . Above them stands one man: Jeff Bezos. Although those names control industries that are less obvious than the sprouting giant steel bridges or skyscrapers of the Second Industrial Revolution, their products arguably have just as big of an impact on our lives. Silicon Valley h...
Feb 20, 2020•42 min•Ep 63•Transcript available on Metacast Luxury cars, like everything else in this entire world, including sex toys , pacemakers , firearms , the electric grid , and ISIS , can be hacked. But most people aren't hackers, which is why a device that can automatically hack a keyless entry vehicle by the push of a button is quite useful for car thieves The so-called “relay attack” is ideal for the era of increasingly digitized vehicles, requires something called a “keyless repeater” to fake the signal of the keys to a targeted car and&...
Feb 13, 2020•28 min•Ep 62•Transcript available on Metacast On this week's CYBER Cipher, we have Breaking News about the app that delayed the Iowa Caucus results , how it was made, and the company that made it. But first: it’s finally here. And I know it’s slightly off brand, But. I. Do. Not. Care. Because, who needs cybersecurity when aliens could exist? THEY COULD INVADE? Whatever they are or could be, here at Motherboard we have one of the best reporters on the UFO beat on the planet, MJ Banias. And recently he’s done some groundbreaking reporting on,...
Feb 06, 2020•42 min•Ep 61•Transcript available on Metacast The Dark Web has been around for as long as the internet has existed, but most people still don't know what it actually is. From easily obtained illicit drugs to rumors of cannibalism and human trafficking, it's been difficult for the average person to separate fact from fiction. On this week's Cyber, we've invited VP of Research at Terbium Labs and Dark Web expert Emily Wilson to talk us through what the Dark Web actually is, a few of its most infamous websites, and how it's a part of more peop...
Jan 30, 2020•36 min•Ep 60•Transcript available on Metacast In a special breaking edition of Cyber Cipher, Joseph Cox sits down with us to go over the alleged hacking of Jeff Bezos' phone by Saudi Arabia. After the break we have one of Motherboard’s newest reporters on the Uber beat, Edward Ongweso Jr., to tell us all about Uber and its troubles. When Uber truly came onto the scene in the mid-2010s it completely up ended an entire, century-old cab industry. And revolutionized the way we pay for taxis, how we hail them and how we interact with them. But b...
Jan 23, 2020•33 min•Ep 59•Transcript available on Metacast At its height, the hacktivist collective known as Anonymous was the bane of Scientologists, the FBI , CIA , Mastercard, Paypal , Middle Eastern dictatorships, and in its latest effective iterations, even ISIS . But in recent years, Anonymous has all but disappeared. It leaves a legacy: It single-handedly brought back the Guy Fawkes mask as a true symbol of civil disobedience, was the obvious inspiration for the hit TV show Mr. Robot, and is also associated with all sorts of more nefarious and ne...
Jan 16, 2020•46 min•Ep 58•Transcript available on Metacast If you’re at all plugged into the global news cycle, you’ll know the U.S. assassinated Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani, a commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and leader of the secretive Quds Force. Since that night, experts have been wondering what the blowback from Tehran will be. Naturally, in the age of cyberwarfare, people are getting pretty worried about the threat of Iranian hackers , who, if you were to believe some newscasts, are practically hiding in your mod...
Jan 09, 2020•29 min•Ep 57•Transcript available on Metacast On this week's CYBER we're re-upping our longform interview of none other than Mr. Edward Snowden, a person who might've affected the infosec world more than any singular human over the last decade. We'll be back next week with a fresh new episode for our 2020 season. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jan 02, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep 56•Transcript available on Metacast It occurred to us at Motherboard that for this final episode of CYBER in the 2010s we could recount the year in stories that we’ve done. The real scoops , traffic hogs , and think pieces . But then again, this is the decade that changed infosec. This was the decade that made hackers critical players on the world stage, our personal digital information sacred, and our political systems fixed into some strange, social media hellscape. Since its founding in 2009, Mothe...
Dec 26, 2019•46 min•Ep 55•Transcript available on Metacast Imagine installing security cameras in your house to protect your family. Then one day those cameras start talking to you. Trolling you, in fact. After last week when the news broke that Amazon’s super sketchy security camera company Ring, had its products compromised, Motherboard got even more scoop: There’s a livestream-podcast over a Discord channel where hackers take over people's Ring cameras and use their speakers to troll its owners in the comfort of their own homes. Then Motherboard test...
Dec 19, 2019•31 min•Ep 54•Transcript available on Metacast This week we talk to Adam Minter, author of “Secondhand,” about the end-of-life supply chain for our cell phones, computers, and all the other stuff we keep in our houses. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Dec 12, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep 53•Transcript available on Metacast Researchers learned that telecom companies are implementing the successor to SMS in vulnerable ways, making everyone’s text messages unsafe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Dec 06, 2019•29 min•Ep 52•Transcript available on Metacast On this week's episode we introduce the newly named "Cypher" part of the show where we round up the tech stories of the week that we think you need to know. On deck we discuss infamous hacker Phineas Fisher and an actual investigation called: "Who farted?" We'll be off next week for Thanksgiving, because Ben is going back to Canadia. Good luck eating too much, everyone! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Nov 21, 2019•16 min•Ep 51•Transcript available on Metacast Some of the most fascinating hacks are the types that don’t just pwn a shady malware company , the trade secrets of America or embarass the Democratic National Committee, but the kinds that target water systems, nuclear power plants and the oil and gas sector. Critical infrastructure hacking was brought into the public psyche by former Secretary of State and CIA director, Leon Panetta, in a much taunted 2012 speech where he warns of a coming “ Cyber Pearl Harbour .” On this week’s CYBER we...
Nov 14, 2019•36 min•Ep 50•Transcript available on Metacast It’s the classic story of a corporate giant swallowing up a darling startup into its ranks and destroying its core business. Originally a spawn of the Alphabet company—Google’s parent umbrella—Chronicle was a cybersecurity startup considered by many to be a game changer: it was going to leverage machine learning and Alphabet’s endless supply of malware samples and technical data via Google, and fuse it into an over the counter product that infosec units in companies all over the world could use ...
Nov 07, 2019•34 min•Ep 49•Transcript available on Metacast The tale started with an encrypted phone company, Morroccan gangsters, the Scottish mafia, and a blogger. It ended with an assassination outside of a sex club in Amsterdam. Last week, Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox broke the news that MPC—a Scottish company that hawked special encrypted phones that could evade police surveillance—had been connected to the murder of crime blogger Martin Kok. Kok was a former criminal himself who had previously served a jail sentence for two murders. Kok’s c...
Oct 31, 2019•28 min•Ep 48•Transcript available on Metacast 
