Stay ConnectedHacking. Hackers. Disinformation campaigns. Encryption. The Cyber. This stuff gets complicated really fast, but Motherboard spends its time embedded in the infosec world so you don’t have to. Host Matthew Gault talks every week to Motherboard reporters about the stories they’re breaking and to the industry’s most famous hackers and researchers about the biggest news in cybersecurity.
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It feels like the old internet is breaking apart and no one is sure where to go. The first three pages of search results on Google are dreck. Reddit is shutting down the third party apps that make it usable. AI generated content is flooding beloved old websites.
This might just be the end of the usable internet. On this episode of Cyber, we talk it all out with Motherboard editor-in-chief, Jason Koebler.
Stories discussed in this episode:
Threads: The Motherboard Review
You Can't Look at Porn on Any Reddit Third-Party App Now
AI-Generated Books of Nonsense Are All Over Amazon's Bestseller Lists
The Reddit Protest Is a Battle for the Soul of the Human Internet
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.
Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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Discord and Minecraft servers are part of an ecosystem where young people brag about crimes. SIM swapping, cryptocurrency, extortion, and violence-for-hire are all part of an disparate online community where people gather to swap stories and videos about crime. It’s called The Comm, and this week on Cyber, Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox comes on the show to tell us all about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoDl73J5EJY
Stories discussed in this episode:
Firebombs and Shootings: The Rise of IRL Harassment and Violence as a Service
'The Comm': The Group Linked to a Nationwide Swatting Rampage
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.
Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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Did you know that AI is set to automate as many as a third of your tasks? In the future we’re all going to be saving a lot of time. That’s as long as no one invents artificial general intelligence that fires all the nukes or turns us all into paperclips. Which, some experts seem to think, will surely happen.
Today we’re gonna talk about hype. Not the exciting kind of hype, but Criti-Hype, a kind of techno doomerism we’re often fond of here at Motherboard. Social media, biogenetics, Artificial Intelligence. These things could ruin us all. At least … that’s what people tell you when they’re selling something.
Lee Vinsel is a professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech and the host of the People & Things podcast. His Medium post that caught our eye is: You’re Doing it Wrong: Notes on Criticism and Technology Hype.
Stories discussed in this episode:
You’re Doing It Wrong: Notes on Criticism and Technology Hype
The Open Letter to Stop 'Dangerous' AI Race Is a Huge Mess
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.
Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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Customs and Border Protection is scanning people’s social media, the feds have arrested some swatters, and the FTC has ordered Ring to cough up a fine. This week on Cyber, Motherboard’s premier cyber crime reporter Joseph Cox is back to walk us through the latest in privacy violations done by Washington and the private sector. We’ll also take another look at the criminal world of SIM swappers and auto-swatters.
Stories discussed in this episode:
Homeland Security Uses AI Tool to Analyze Social Media of U.S. Citizens and Refugees
'The Comm': The Group Linked to a Nationwide Swatting Rampage
FTC Orders Ring to Pay $5.8 Million in Refunds For Surveilling Customers, Failing to Stop Hackers
Russian FSB Accuses U.S. of Hacking Thousands of iPhones in Russia
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just 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.
Is there anything artificial intelligence can’t do?Debt collectors want AI to push people into coughing up what’s owed. An AI created photo of an attack on the Pentagon generated a minor panic. There’s an AI that can read your mind and the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, just testified before Congress.
This week on Cyber, Motherboard reporter Chloe Xiang comes on to walk us through the big headlines in the world of AI.
Stories discussed in this episode:
Debt Collectors Want To Use AI Chatbots To Hustle People For Money
Verified Twitter Accounts Spread AI-Generated Hoax of Pentagon Explosion
AI Reconstructs 'High-Quality' Video Directly from Brain Readings in Study
Worried About Sending Your Data to a Chatbot? 'PrivateGPT' Is Here
OpenAI Tells Congress the U.S. Should Create AI 'Licenses' to Release New Models
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just 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.
Crypto and crime, crime and crypto. They go together like spreadsheets and tax evasion. When cryptocurrency hit the scene it was, according to its evangelists, going to usher in a world of decentralized currency and free everyone from the shackles of oppressive central banks. Turns out it’s also been a pretty great way to launder money.
It’s also the subject of the new book Red Team Blues, a novel from writer Cory Doctorow. In Red Team Blues a 67 year old forensic accountant finds himself at the center of a crypto-crime mystery that takes him from the heights of silicon valley to the depths of the Tenderloin. This week on Cyber, Doctorow walks us through a brief history of the valley and why he wrote three books about an old accountant during the pandemic.
Doctorow is the author of more than two dozen books and too many articles to count. He’s currently blogging at pluralistic.net.
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just 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 talk a lot about encrypted phones on Cyber. Everyone loves a secure communication channel that no one can peer into. But some companies, well, if there’s criminal activity going on they’re gonna sell you out. And the cops have gotten very good at setting up honeypots and hacking into existing networks.
But there’s one encrypted service out there that is, as far as we know, still secure. It’s called No. 1 Business Communication and it’s a favorite of the Italian Mafia. On this episode of Cyber, Joseph Cox comes on to explain how and why No. 1 Business Communication has survived in a world where authorities have shut down the competition.
Stories discussed in this episode:
Inside the Italian Mafia’s Encrypted Phone of Choice
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just 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.
If you’re watching or listening to this show you’re probably doing it on a device that owes its very existence to the Apple II. But these days we remember the iPhone, 90s era Windows, and even the Macintosh as these big benchmark moments in widespread adoption of tech.
But all those devices wouldn't be here if it weren’t for the little Apple II board that could and the people who turned a hobbyist curiosity into a fundamental part of every household in the world.
That story is the subject of the new book The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal. This week on Cyber, author Laine Nooney comes on to talk about The Apple II Age and how the little machine ushered in a new world of personal computing. Nooney is also an assistant professor of Media and Information Studies at New York University and the founding editor of ROMchip: A Journal of Games Histories.
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.
Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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When Elon Musk posted a video of himself arriving at Twitter HQ carrying a white sink along with the message “let that sink in!” it marked the end of a dramatic takeover. Musk had gone from Twitter critic to “Chief Twit” in the space of just a few months but his arrival didn’t put an end to questions about his motives. Musk had earned a reputation as a business maverick. From PayPal to Tesla to SpaceX, his name was synonymous with big, earth-shattering ideas. So, what did he want with a social media platform? And was this all really in the name of free speech...or was this all in the name of Elon Musk?
From Wondery, the makers of WeCrashed and In God We Lust, comes the wild story of how the richest man alive took charge of the world’s “digital public square.”
Listen to Flipping The Bird: Wondery.fm/FTB_Cyber
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It looks like a bluetooth speaker or an old Nokia cellphone. But that’s a disguise. Inside these small devices is everything car thieves need to break into your vehicle. There are telegram channels now where, for a few thousand dollars, you can buy a device that will break into a car in seconds.
Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox is here on Cyber this week to walk us through it.
Stories discussed in this episode:
The Car Thieves Using Tech Disguised Inside Old Nokia Phones and Bluetooth Speakers
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just 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.
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