The podcast that tells true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world. We take listeners into the world of cyber and intelligence without all the techie jargon. Every Tuesday and Friday, former NPR investigations correspondent Dina Temple-Raston and the team draw back the curtain on ransomware attacks, mysterious hackers, and the people who are trying to stop them.
Oren Etzioni used to be one of those AI optimists. Now, not so much. In fact, he’s so worried about AI-manipulated content, he created a non-profit, TrueMedia.org, to help ordinary people sort AI fact from fiction.
US adversaries are on a propaganda offensive around the world. Earlier this month, the Council on Foreign Relations in DC convened a discussion about the changing landscape of disinformation campaigns with James Rubin, special envoy at the Global Engagement Center at the State Department, Jon Bateman from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Anne Applebaum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. CLICK HERE moderated the conversation, and here are some highlights.
When the Hoover Institution’s director of war gaming, Jackie Schneider, started organizing war simulations more than a decade ago, she assumed that participants would respond to cyber attacks the same way they responded to traditional weapons of war – but it turns out that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
When North Korea hacked Alejandro Caceres, he expected the U.S. government to rush to his defense. When they just shrugged, he took matters into his own hands.
On the battlefields of Ukraine, Russia has become very adapt at electronic warfare — both jamming GPS satellites and spoofing satellite signals. We explain how it works and its ripple effects beyond the front lines.
A story about satellites, electronic warfare, and a team of American techies who MacGyver-ed a way to keep the power flowing in Ukraine.
In an interview, LockbitSupp, head of the Lockbit cybercrime operation, told us that the U.S., U.K. and Australia have the wrong guy — he’s not Dmitry Khoroshev, the 31-year-old Russian national they’ve charged with hacking. What’s more, he says more attacks are coming.
In a year that could bring a perfect storm of disinformation, meet Doppelgänger, a Russian-backed group seeking not just to shake up the world’s elections, but its institutions too.
The White House’s top cyber official is keen to set minimum cybersecurity standards for industry, put contingencies in place in case cyberattacks are successful, and start looping ordinary people into an effort to make products secure by design.
An episode from the ‘ CSAIL Alliances Podcast ’ from MIT CSAIL Alliances . Host Kara Miller talks with MIT robotics researcher and professor Daniela Rus about how we can use a new generation of robots to help humankind. Rus is the co-author of the new book, "The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots."
Before Nigerian authorities detained two mid-level Binance executives back in February, they were telling anyone who would listen that the cryptocurrency platform was manipulating the value of its currency, the naira. It turns out the more likely culprit is more than a decade of economic mismanagement. We explain.
A former American IRS investigator responsible for some of the earliest dark market takedowns has been in Nigerian custody since February. Neither Nigerian nor the US authorities seem to be distinguishing Tigran Gambaryan from Binance, the company where he works.
Chinese hackers are stepping up their game, according to Nigel Inkster, the former director of operations for Britain’s MI6. He says they are taking on a new swagger in cyberspace and borrowing things from a familiar playbook: a Russian one.
The US and UK made a splashy coordinated announcement last month about a years-long cyber espionage campaign by Chinese state-backed hackers. The US indicted seven, the UK leveled sanctions. They just neglected to do one thing --- let some of the victims know.
North Korea has a unique way of testing malware — they are less concerned about getting it right than getting it out… a kind of “smash-and-grab” approach to cyber attacks. Sentinel One’s Tom Hegel explains.
North Korea may be best known for the Lazarus group’s epic cryptocurrency heists. But there’s another special unit of state-backed hackers who have a different specialty: spying on journalists, dissidents, and cybersecurity experts. We look at the ScarCruft gang and their very crafty phishing campaigns.
Everyone is talking about the power of AI in conservation, but a professor at Arizona State University has found an even simpler, more elegant solution – and all you have to do is listen.
Cornell University’s Elephant Listening Project has been trying to get real-time monitoring of the Central African Republic’s forest elephants for years. FruitPunch AI and a roster of other AI researchers are closer than ever to making that a reality.
Matthew Page from the London-based think tank Chatham House pulls back to look at the potential economic fallout between Nigerian government and Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
This week, Nigeria charged Binance and two of its executives with tax evasion in the latest twist in a month-long dispute between the cryptocurrency giant and the Nigerian government. Nigeria detained Binance’s regional manager and a former US federal agent for nearly a month after they flew to Abuja at the end of February to meet with officials there. Now, one executive has slipped away and the other has become a pawn.
We talk to Analyst1 senior researcher Jon DiMaggio about how hackers settle their disputes – think People’s Court without all the robes.
We speak with the leader of one of the most prolific ransomware-as-a-service gangs the world has ever known — LockBit. Just weeks after Operation Cronos, a global police action against the group, LockBitSupp tells us about the takedown, his attempt to rebuild, and his plans for the future.
Our interview of the week: LockBitSupp says his ransomware platform isn’t dead yet.
Newly leaked files from a private Chinese hackers-for-hire company provide a fresh look into China’s “cyber industrial complex” – and it appears to be bigger and more mature than observers had previously imagined.
Our interview of the week — a one-on-one with arms control policy expert, Jeffrey Lewis.
We talk to a team of open source analysts and weapons inspectors who have pieced together how Pyongyang avoided sanctions to get Russia missiles it needs for the battle in Ukraine and look at why Kim Jung-un is feeling he’s got his groove back.
Our interview of the week — a rare one-on-one with FBI Director Christopher Wray.
FBI Director Chris Wray sat down for a rare interview with Click Here to talk about Operation Dying Ember, the uptick in nation-state hacking, and how just about everyone is now in hackers’ crosshairs.
An episode from ‘In Machines We Trust’ from MIT Technology Review. How we train fighter pilots—both real and artificial—is undergoing a series of rapid changes. In order for these systems to be useful we need to trust them, but figuring out just how, when and why remains a massive challenge. Jennifer Strong reports on how AI is being used to teach human pilots to perform some of the most dangerous and difficult maneuvers in aerial combat.
Some 600,000 people are reported missing in the U.S. every year. Thousands of bodies lie unclaimed and unidentified in American morgues. Facial recognition software could put a name to these faces, so why hasn’t it?
