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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.
©2024 Recorded Future News
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.
©2024 Recorded Future News
A week before the election, we sat down with Ret. General Paul Nakasone and he talked about North Korea, Russian hackers, his life after the NSA and why he hasn’t ruled out taking another government job.
Recently, a lot of smart people who work on space problems gathered at the Value of Space Summit in Colorado Springs and talked to us about the things that keep them up at night. At the top of their list? Earthlings hacking satellites and speeding bits of space junk.
We sit down one-on-one with Retired General Paul Nakasone, the man who dreamed up the US response to the latest iteration of foreign election chicanery. He explains why he’s so confident the 2024 vote will be safe and secure.
While the world was taking selfies against the colorful backdrop of solar storm auroras this past spring, officials at the Space Watch Center in Colorado Springs were searching for something more nefarious.
NASA has off-loaded much of the space program onto the private sector. Companies are building space suits and moon buggies and lunar landers. We tell the story of a scrappy little lander — and how earthlings had to hack it to save it.
We talk to the NSA’s Director of Cybersecurity, David Luber, about Ukraine, adversaries in cyberspace, and the importance of partnerships.
176. Spamouflage: Is China’s best known disinformation gang taking new aim at the US?
We talk to Nick Percoco, Kraken’s chief security officer, about joining forces with a popular YouTube scambaiter.
174. Beyond Ukraine: Russia wages low-grade, hybrid attacks on Europe
We re-visit our conversation with Analyst1 senior researcher Jon DiMaggio about how hackers settle their disputes – think People’s Court without all the robes.
When Stephanie joined a WhatsApp group to get advice on cryptocurrency investing, it began a wild ride that included the CEO of a large investment firm, cybercriminals half a world away, and a brush with a rag tag team of computer nerds in Alabama chasing a $5 billion problem.
In the U.S. criminal justice system, a lot of things hinge on the simple police report. As departments begin to use AI and large language model software to help cops write them, American University law professor Andrew Guthrie Ferguson worries people don’t understand the possible downstream effects.
170. AI is writing police reports: Should we be worried?
Leaders from Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft told the Senate Intelligence Committee that they were doing all they could to combat foreign interference ahead of the November election. The senators weren't convinced.
We sat down with US Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia to talk about election interference, his recent hearing with tech execs on misinformation and disinformation, and the future of cybersecurity.
167. Mic Drop: TikTok’s day in Appeals Court
166. The curious case of Esma Memtimin’s disappearing TikTok videos
The Russian-speaking cyber gang, FIN7, has fooled red team hackers into doing their dirty work by masquerading as legitimate cybersecurity companies just looking for talent. Silent Push’s Zach Edwards talks about the scam.
Investigators have been chasing the Russian-speaking cyber gang for years — and they’ve stayed just one step ahead. Threat researcher Zach Edwards lays out why bringing gangs like this to justice has always been so hard.
Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership may have smashed TVs in the 1990s, but these days their embracing slickly-produced videos and social media influencers to try to rehab their image abroad. Afghan anthropologist Omar Sharifi unpacks whether its working.
Technology has changed the way countries wage war, and today, we look at an app in Afghanistan that wanted to change the way people on the ground experienced it.
New legislation is seeking to designate some ransomware attacks as acts of terror. Former FBI agent John Riggi talks about the proposal and how it might change the battle against ransomware gangs.
Sky Lakes Medical Center in south central Oregon never imagined it could be on the receiving end of a ransomware attack. Then Ryuk put them in the crosshairs.
Just a stone’s throw from the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, the National Cryptologic Museum displays dozens of rarely seen code breaking machines that, quite literally, changed the course of history. We take a tour and chat with the museum’s affable director, Vince Houghton.
158. The antidote to our disinformation woes? Just a dash of fun
We talk with Unit 221B’s Allison Nixon about young cybercriminals, radicalization, and the search for self in the virtual world.
This isn’t your typical hacker tale. The one about boy meets computer, boy loves computer, boy weaponizes computer to commit crimes. This is about what comes after that.
The latest on disinformation researcher Nina Jankowicz’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News — and why the Dominion Voting Machine settlement doesn’t necessarily help her case.
A new wave of piano scams is targeting the weakest link on the internet: humans.
Today, we’re talking to TJ Nelson at Recorded Future in a bid to understand how the CrowdStrike outage caused millions of computers around the world to fade to black.
152. The curious case of Tigran Gambaryan -- a renowned cryptocurrency investigator and Binance employee now on trial in Nigeria
In an ancore episode of Click Here's Mic Drop, we speak with the leader of one of the most prolific ransomware-as-a-service gangs the world has ever known — LockBit. We spoke to him weeks after Operation Cronos, a global police action against the group.
150. SPECIAL FEATURE: 'The Hack' from An Arm and a Leg
Chinese hackers are stepping up their game, according to Nigel Inkster, the former director of operations for Britain’s MI6. In an encore episode of Mic Drop, he says Chinese hackers are taking on a new swagger in cyberspace and borrowing things from a familiar playbook: a Russian one.
148. They’re just hackers, living off the land
147. Mic Drop: The problem with the Nigerian economy has nothing to do with crypto
146. SPECIAL FEATURE: 'Modi's India' from Understood
From an encore episode of Mic Drop. Everyone is talking about the power of Al 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.
144. Generative AI: Is it creative or just copying the rest of us?
Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins has been working with young people not just to show them how to sort fact from fiction, but to give them a reason to believe that truth can still empower the weak and hold the guilty accountable.
Antibot4Navalny is a small but mighty group of anonymous researchers calling out Russian disinformation — and punching way above their weight.
141. Legislative solutions for deepfake abuse finally begin to take shape
After years of shouting into the wind about deepfakes and deepfake porn, we take a look at some possible solutions that offer not just deterrence but accountability. Plus, something we rarely see these days: bipartisan agreement on a bill in Congress.
139. Mic Drop: GhostSec’s quest for redemption: their leader claims their life of crime is over.
138. Almost every cyber attack begins with a key ingredient: an Infostealer
137. Mic Drop: Inside a secret drone school in Ukraine
136. Money and fame — not just social change — are creating a new kind of hacktivist.
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.
134. Are autocrats winning the disinformation war?
133. Mic Drop: A surprising thing about war games and cyber attacks and why the military can’t trust AI
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.
126. The future of robotics from MIT’s "Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Labs Alliances" podcast
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.
116. Detained execs, a bold escape, and tax evasion charges: Nigeria takes aim at Binance
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.
107. SPECIAL FEATURE: ‘In the cockpit with AI’ from In Machines We Trust
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?
105. Jordan’s wave of spyware infections
104. Generative AI: Is it creative or just copying the rest of us?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Dictators use bombast and bullying as a kind of malevolent calling card. Meet the people who have found surprising and creative ways around that.
Three stories about technologies that started out doing one thing, and ended up doing quite another — from online tractors, to tasers in schools, to cellphone hackers who take their online battles into the real world.
94. They’re just hackers, living off the land
93. Tech that allows ordinary people to make peace with wartime
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.
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.
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.
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.
87. SPECIAL FEATURE: ‘How AI Will Turbocharge Misinformation’ from Humans vs. Machines
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?
85. What Wagner Group learned from ISIS
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.
83. “Ding-dong ditch” on steroids
82. The Clop gang’s in love with a special kind of bug
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.
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.
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.
78. Trouble in the cloud
77. SPECIAL FEATURE: ‘The internet is at the bottom of the sea’ from Things That Go Boom
76. The Mexican army’s love affair with spyware
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.
74. Reality Winner and the handling of secret documents
73. Can satellite surveillance save Sudan from itself?
72. Exclusive: Inside an American Hunt Forward Operation in Ukraine
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.
70. An unlikely teacher: What Wagner Group learned from ISIS
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.
68. SPECIAL FEATURE: The Slave Armies Powering a New Kind of Golden Triangle Cybercrime from The Underworld Podcast
67. Hive’s WeWork experiment — and what went wrong
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.
65. Morality in Iraq: You should worry because there’s an app for that
64. Portrait of Bassterlord as a young man
63. Tracers on the stage: Andy Greenberg, Michael Gronager and Tigran Gambaryan talk cryptocurrency tracking
62. How a mathematician and an entrepreneur helped law enforcement take a bite out of crypto crime
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.
60. Clear the runway: Ukraine's model pilots
59. What the cyber war in Ukraine is teaching us
58. Enemy of the State (Part 2) : ¿Quién es Guacamaya? (Who is Guacamaya?)
57. Enemy of the State (Part 1): Mexico, spyware, and a secret military intelligence unit
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.
55. Oyez, Oyez, Oyez: Twenty-six words get their day in the High Court
54. Miss Lonelyhearts and the money mules
53. Xi's Brave New World
“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.
51. Exclusive: Axon still wants to put Taser drones in your kid’s school
After spending more than a year undercover with the notorious ransomware gang LockBit, one researcher explains how the group revolutionized the business of ransomware.
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?
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.
47. SPECIAL FEATURE: ‘Summer in Caputh’ from Exile
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.
45. SPECIAL FEATURE: ‘Saving Ukrainian Cultural History Online’ from The Last Archive
44. Throwing bricks for $$$: violence-as-a-service comes of age
“Big Brother: North Korea's Forgotten Prince” from School of Humans and iHeartPodcasts introduce you to the person who should have been North Korea’s leader – had he not been on the receiving end of what may be the 21st century’s most bizarre assassination plot.
North Korea has launched an unprecedented number of missiles this month. So we bring you an encore episode about a team of researchers using open-source intelligence to track the hermit kingdom's nuclear ambitions. Plus, the Yanluowang ransomware group finds itself the victim of a leak.
Washington and the tech world have been talking about public private partnerships in cyberspace for decades. The NSA and Cyber Command have intelligence about attacks; cybersecurity companies have the means to block them. It looks like they are finally working together — not in the U.S, but in Ukraine.
40. Selling Vice Society: old exploits, easy targets, and the illusion of greatness
Ben Adida is the executive director of a voting technology non-profit that provides software and operational support to states during elections. He’s embarked on an almost impossible missile: to restore faith in our election system. The way he proposes to do that? With open-source software that everyone can see.
38. The Supreme Court case that could change the internet
37. ‘Presence Matters’: Nakasone and Easterly on Ukraine, collaboration and midterm elections
36. The hijab will never be the same
35. Reality Winner and the handling of secret documents
The town whose name has become synonymous with Russian atrocities in Ukraine is rushing to digitize information about the dead --- not just to identify them and give families closure --- but to hold Russians accountable for the wanton brutality in Bucha. Plus, scandal in the elite chess world.
33. Throwing bricks for $$$: violence-as-a-service comes of age
32. The great tractor jailbreak
31. Seagulls in the park
30. The scariest piece of malware since Stuxnet
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.
28. A return to Stanislav
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.
26. Pegasus is listening
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.
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.
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.
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.
21. Son of Conti
20. North Korea’s cryptocurrency obsession
19. Gilman Louie and the dance with wolf warriors
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.
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.
16. Roe v. Wade in a world of digital dust
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.
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.
13. Spyware and ‘a world of Bond villains’
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.
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.
10. Are America’s nuclear systems so old they’re un-hackable?
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.
Can crypto help save Russia?
Ukrainian cyber officials claim half a million people are part of the Ukrainian IT Army
An interview with Alexander Vindman
One of the most successful ransomware gangs In the world, has a leak problem.
Russia has launched one of the simplest of cyber attacks, but for how long?
A rare interview with NSA leaker Reality Winner
The importance of dark markets
How a hack on Texas changed the business of ransomeware.
All things cyber and intelligence
Mic Drop: The man behind a Binance exec’s Nigerian detention
February 14, 202513min 4sec
Nigerian authorities detained a mid-level Binance executive named Tigran Gambaryan for eight months last year. Some observers say officials hoped to extract millions of dollars in fines from the company. Others maintain they just wanted to send a message. Matthew Page from Chatham House gives us some backstory.
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