Explore true stories of the dark side of the Internet with host Jack Rhysider as he takes you on a journey through the chilling world of hacking, data breaches, and cyber crime.
117: Daniel the Paladin
Daniel Kelly (https://twitter.com/danielmakelley) was equal parts mischievousness and clever when it came to computers. Until the day his mischief overtook his cleverness. Sponsors Support for this show comes from Keeper Security. Keeper Security’s is an enterprise password management system. Keeper locks down logins, payment cards, confidential documents, API keys, and database passwords in a patented Zero-Knowledge encrypted vault. And, it takes less than an hour to deploy across your organization. Get started by visiting keepersecurity.com/darknet. Support for this podcast comes from Cybereason. Cybereason reverses the attacker’s advantage and puts the power back in the defender’s hands. End cyber attacks. From endpoints to everywhere. Learn more at Cybereason.com/darknet.
116: Mad Dog
Jim Lawler, aka “Mad Dog”, was a CIA case officer for 25 years. In this episode we hear some of the stories he has and things he did while working in the CIA. Jim has two books out. Affiliate links below. Living Lies: A Novel of the Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program https://amzn.to/3s0Ppca In the Twinkling of an Eye: A Novel of Biological Terror and Espionage https://amzn.to/3y7B4OL Sponsors Support for this show comes from Linode. Linode supplies you with virtual servers. Visit linode.com/darknet and get a special offer. Support for this show comes from Juniper Networks. Juniper Networks is dedicated to simplifying network operations and driving superior experiences for end users. Visit juniper.net/darknet to learn more about how Juniper’s Zero Trust Data Center provides uncompromising visibility across all your data center environments. Visit juniper.net/darknet to learn more.
115: Player Cheater Developer Spy
Some video game players buy cheats to win. Let’s take a look at this game cheating industry to see who the players are. Sponsors Support for this show comes from Axonius. Securing assets — whether managed, unmanaged, ephemeral, or in the cloud — is a tricky task. The Axonius Cybersecurity Asset Management Platform correlates asset data from existing solutions to provide an always up-to-date inventory, uncover gaps, and automate action. Axonius gives IT and security teams the confidence to control complexity by mitigating threats, navigating risk, decreasing incidents, and informing business-level strategy — all while eliminating manual, repetitive tasks. Visit axonius.com/darknet to learn more and try it free. Support for this podcast comes from Cybereason. Cybereason reverses the attacker’s advantage and puts the power back in the defender’s hands. End cyber attacks. From endpoints to everywhere. Learn more at Cybereason.com/darknet.
114: HD
HD Moore (https://twitter.com/hdmoore) invented a hacking tool called Metasploit. He crammed it with tons of exploits and payloads that can be used to hack into computers. What could possibly go wrong? Learn more about what HD does today by visiting rumble.run/. Sponsors Support for this show comes from Quorum Cyber. They exist to defend organisations against cyber security breaches and attacks. That’s it. No noise. No hard sell. If you’re looking for a partner to help you reduce risk and defend against the threats that are targeting your business — and specially if you are interested in Microsoft Security - reach out to www.quorumcyber.com. Support for this show comes from Snyk. Snyk is a developer security platform that helps you secure your applications from the start. It automatically scans your code, dependencies, containers, and cloud infrastructure configs — finding and fixing vulnerabilities in real time. And Snyk does it all right from the existing tools and workflows you already use. IDEs, CLI, repos, pipelines, Docker Hub, and more — so your work isn’t interrupted. Create your free account at snyk.co/darknet.
113: Adam
Adam got a job doing IT work at a learning academy. He liked it and was happy there and feeling part of the team. But a strange series of events took him in another direction, that definitely didn’t make him happy. Sponsors Support for this show comes from Axonius. Securing assets — whether managed, unmanaged, ephemeral, or in the cloud — is a tricky task. The Axonius Cybersecurity Asset Management Platform correlates asset data from existing solutions to provide an always up-to-date inventory, uncover gaps, and automate action. Axonius gives IT and security teams the confidence to control complexity by mitigating threats, navigating risk, decreasing incidents, and informing business-level strategy — all while eliminating manual, repetitive tasks. Visit axonius.com/darknet to learn more and try it free. Support for this podcast comes from Cybereason. Cybereason reverses the attacker’s advantage and puts the power back in the defender’s hands. End cyber attacks. From endpoints to everywhere. Learn more at Cybereason.com/darknet. Support for this show comes from Varonis. Do you wonder what your company’s ransomware blast radius is? Varonis does a free cyber resilience assessment that tells you how many important files a compromised user could steal, whether anything would beep if they did, and a whole lot more. They actually do all the work – show you where your data is too open, if anyone is using it, and what you can lock down before attackers get inside. They also can detect behavior that looks like ransomware and stop it automatically. To learn more visit www.varonis.com/darknet.
112: Dirty Coms
This episode we talk with a guy name “Drew” who gives us a rare peek into what some of the young hackers are up to today. From listening to Drew, we can see that times are changing for the motive behind hacking. In the ’90s and ’00s it was done for fun and curiosity. In the ’10s Anonymous showed us what Hacktivism is. And now, in the ’20s, the young hackers seem to be profit driven. Sponsors Support for this show comes from Linode. Linode supplies you with virtual servers. Visit linode.com/darknet and get a special offer. Support for this show comes from Juniper Networks. Juniper Networks is dedicated to simplifying network operations and driving superior experiences for end users. Visit juniper.net/darknet to learn more about how Juniper Secure Edge can help you keep your remote workforce seamlessly secure wherever they are.
111: ZeuS
ZeuS is a banking trojan. Designed to steal money from online bank user’s accounts. This trojan became big, that it resulted in one of the biggest FBI operations ever. Sponsors Support for this show comes from Axonius. Securing assets — whether managed, unmanaged, ephemeral, or in the cloud — is a tricky task. The Axonius Cybersecurity Asset Management Platform correlates asset data from existing solutions to provide an always up-to-date inventory, uncover gaps, and automate action. Axonius gives IT and security teams the confidence to control complexity by mitigating threats, navigating risk, decreasing incidents, and informing business-level strategy — all while eliminating manual, repetitive tasks. Visit axonius.com/darknet to learn more and try it free. Support for this show comes from Keeper Security. Keeper Security’s is an enterprise password management system. Keeper locks down logins, payment cards, confidential documents, API keys, and database passwords in a patented Zero-Knowledge encrypted vault. And, it takes less than an hour to deploy across your organization. Get started by visiting keepersecurity.com/darknet.
110: Spam Botnets
This episode tells the stories of some of the worlds biggest spamming botnets. We’ll talk about the botnets Rustock, Waledac, and Cutwail. We’ll discover who was behind them, what their objectives were, and what their fate was. Sponsors Support for this show comes from Juniper Networks. Try SecIntel and Juniper Advanced Threat Prevention (ATP) Cloud today to see how IT teams are doing more with threat-aware networks. Visit juni.pr/darknet for a free one-year subscription. Support for this podcast comes from Cybereason. Cybereason reverses the attacker’s advantage and puts the power back in the defender’s hands. End cyber attacks. From endpoints to everywhere. Learn more at Cybereason.com/darknet.
109: TeaMp0isoN
TeaMp0isoN was a hacking group that was founded by TriCk and MLT (twitter.com/0dayWizard). They were responsible for some high profile hacks. But in this story it’s not the rise that’s most interesting. It’s the fall. Sponsors Support for this show comes from Thinkst Canary. Their canaries attract malicious actors in your network and then send you an alert if someone tries to access them. Great early warning system for knowing when someone is snooping around where they shouldn’t be. Check them out at https://canary.tools. Support for this podcast comes from Cybereason. Cybereason reverses the attacker’s advantage and puts the power back in the defender’s hands. End cyber attacks. From endpoints to everywhere. Learn more at Cybereason.com/darknet.
108: Marq
This is the story of Marq (twitter.com/dev_null321). Which involves passwords, the dark web, and police. Sponsors Support for this podcast comes from Cybereason. Cybereason reverses the attacker’s advantage and puts the power back in the defender’s hands. End cyber attacks. From endpoints to everywhere. Learn more at Cybereason.com/darknet. Support for this show comes from Linode. Linode supplies you with virtual servers. Visit linode.com/darknet and get a special offer. View all active sponsors. Sources Court records and news articles were used to fact check this episode. However Marq requested that links to his full name not be made available. https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/19/ring-doorbell-passwords-exposed/ https://www.wired.com/2010/03/hacker-bricks-cars/
107: Alethe
Alethe (https://twitter.com/AletheDenis) is a social engineer. Professionally she tries to trick people to give her passwords and access that she shouldn’t have. But her journey to this point is interesting and in this episode she tells us how she became a social engineer. Sponsors Support for this show comes from Skiff. Skiff is a collaboration platform built for privacy from the ground up. Every document, note, and idea you write is end-to-end encrypted and completely private. Only you and your trusted collaborators can see what you’ve created. Try it out at https://www.skiff.org/darknet. Support for this show comes from Blinkist. They offer thousands of condensed non-fiction books, so you can get through books in about 15 minutes. Check out Blinkist.com/DARKNET to start your 7 day free trial and get 25% off when you sign up.
106: @Tennessee
How much online abuse are you willing to take before you decide to let your abuser have what they want? Unfortunately, this is a decision that many people have to ask themselves. If someone can threaten you physically, it bypasses whatever digital security you have in place. Thanks to https://twitter.com/jw for sharing this harrowing story with us. Affiliate links to books: The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1593276486/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1593276486&linkCode=as2&tag=tunn01-20&linkId=0a8ee2ca846534f77626757288d77e00 Extreme Privacy:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0898YGR58/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0898YGR58&linkCode=as2&tag=tunn01-20&linkId=575c5ed0326484f0b612f000621b407f Sponsors Support for this show comes from IT Pro TV. Get 65 hours of free training by visiting ITPro.tv/darknet. And use promo code DARKNET. Support for this show comes from Ping Identity, champions of identity for the global enterprise. Give your users a loveable login solution. Visit www.pingidentity.com/. View all active sponsors.
105: Secret Cells
Joseph Cox (https://twitter.com/josephfcox), Senior Staff Writer at Motherboard (https://www.vice.com/en/topic/motherboard), joins us to talk about the world of encrypted phones. Books Affiliate links to books: The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1593276486/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1593276486&linkCode=as2&tag=tunn01-20&linkId=0a8ee2ca846534f77626757288d77e00 Extreme Privacy:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0898YGR58/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0898YGR58&linkCode=as2&tag=tunn01-20&linkId=575c5ed0326484f0b612f000621b407f Sponsors Support for this show comes from IT Pro TV. Get 65 hours of free training by visiting ITPro.tv/darknet. And use promo code DARKNET. Support for this show comes from Ping Identity, champions of identity for the global enterprise. Give your users a loveable login solution. Visit www.pingidentity.com/. View all active sponsors.
104: Arya
Arya Ebrahami has had quite a personal relationship with darknet marketplaces. In this episode you’ll hear about his adventures on tor. Arya’s current project is https://lofi-defi.com. Sponsors Support for this show comes from Linode. Linode supplies you with virtual servers. Visit linode.com/darknet and get a special offer. Support for this show comes from Blinkist. They offer thousands of condensed non-fiction books, so you can get through books in about 15 minutes. Check out Blinkist.com/DARKNET to start your 7 day free trial and get 25% off when you sign up. View all active sponsors. Sources https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/27-arrested-in-prince-william-county-narcotics-investigation/58441/ https://patch.com/virginia/manassas/undercover-narcotics-operation-nets-27-arrrests-xanax-distribution-ring
103: Cloud Hopper
Fabio Viggiani is an incident responder. In this episode he talks about the story when one of his clients were breached. Sponsors Support for this show, and for stretched security teams, comes from SOC.OS. Too many security alerts means alert fatigue for under-resourced SecOps teams. Traditional tools aren’t solving the problem. SOC.OS is the lightweight, cost-effective, and low-maintenance solution for your team. Centralise, enrich, and correlate your security alerts into manageable, prioritised clusters. Get started with an extended 3-month free trial at https://socos.io/darknet. Support for this show comes from IT Pro TV. Get 65 hours of free training by visiting ITPro.tv/darknet. And use promo code DARKNET. Sources https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/china-cyber-cloudhopper https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-cyber-cloudhopper-companies-exc-idUSKCN1TR1D4 https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber/apt-10-group https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=277A09ON7mY https://www.wsj.com/articles/ghosts-in-the-clouds-inside-chinas-major-corporate-hack-11577729061 https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/12/20/239760/chinese-hackers-allegedly-stole-data-of-more-than-100000-us-navy-personnel/