Cyber Casts

The war in Ukraine isn’t just happening on the ground, it’s also happening in cyberspace. It’s under reported and little understood, but just as the resilience of Urkainian’s kinetic defense is grinding against Russia, so too is the war online.Which is funny, because Russia is supposed to be good at this. At least … that’s what we all used to think. Hell, maybe it even used to be true. But now a team of volunteer hackers called the Ukraine IT Army is defending Kyiv and striking back against Moscow.This week on Cyber, Motherboard staff writer Lorenzo Franchesci-Biccherai takes us into the Ukraine IT Army.Stories discussed in this episode:Inside Ukraine’s Decentralized Cyber ArmyRussia Released a Ukrainian App for Hacking Russia That Was Actually MalwareWe’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 podca

Let’s talk about that hot new topic screaming from the lips of Tech’s hottest billionaires: birth rates.For some time, Elon Musk’s pinned tweet was about the declining birth rates in the United States. A man of conviction, Musk has sired at least ten children. Now Marc Andreesen of Andreessen Horowitz is in on the act. He recently went on Joe Rogan and had a wide ranging conversation that covered birth rates and eugenics.So why are some of the richest people alive obsessed with the U.S. having more kids? On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard staff writer Edward Ongweso Jr. comes on to talk about longtermism and America’s history of being weird about who gets to have kids.Stories discussed in this episode:Why Are Elon Musk and Marc Andreesen Obsessed With Birth Rates?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 liste

For years criminal organizations around the world were buying a special phone called Anom. The pitch was that it was completely anonymous and secure, a way for criminals to do business without authorities watching over their shoulder. It turned out that the whole thing was an elaborate honeypot and that the FBI and law enforcement agencies around the world were listening in. They’d help develop the phones themselves.The fallout from that revelation is ongoing and, here at Motherboard, we’ve just learned how the phones work. On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Joseph Cox comes on to discuss the code that powered the Anom phone.Stories discussed in this episode:This is the Code the FBI Used to Wiretap the WorldWe Got the Phone the FBI Secretly Sold to CriminalsFBI's Backdoored Anom Phones Secretly Harvested GPS Data Around the WorldWe’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 yo

You can’t scroll 1 inch on the internet these days without someone trying to sell you something. Facebook and Google rake in millions of dollars on advertising alone. When we talk about Ad Tech, those are the names that move through our mind. Not many people think about Disney. But they should.On today’s Cyber, Motherboard staff writer Joseph Cox comes on to talk about how Disney became a big player in the digital world of advertising. We begin with a set of surreal videos that use the Muppets and Star Wars to talk directly to advertisers. Want to hear Muppets extol the virtues of targeted advertising? Stick around.Stories discussed in this episode:Leaked Videos Show Disney Is the Biggest Ad Tech Giant You've Never Heard OfWe’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. See acast.com/priva

On June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that will have far reaching consequences about the power of the federal government to fight climate change. How did the landmark ruling even end up in front of the Justices, why did they decide to rule on it, and what will the consequences be for the environment and the country?On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Staff Writer Aaron Gordon sits down to answer all these questions and do more than a little ranting.Stories discussed in this episode:Supreme Court Kneecaps Federal Government’s Ability to Fight Climate ChangeDemocrats Are Not Going to 'Vote Harder,' Primaries ShowHere's What America Looked Like Before the EPAWe’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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, upsetting decades of precedent and ushering in a weird new world of conflicting laws and a lack of bodily autonomy for many women in the country. It’s a decision that will affect life in the U.S. in ways we’re only starting to comprehend. This week on Cyber we’re going to look at one small piece of all this: tech, data, and censorship. With me today is Motherboard Senior Editor Samantha Cole. She’s been working on a number of stories about period tracking apps and data and she’s here to walk us through how the Roe decision is not just a blow against bodily autonomy, but also against privacy.Stories in this episode:The #1 Period Tracker on the App Store Will Hand Over Data Without a WarrantHere’s What Period Tracking Apps Say They Do With Your DataTech Companies Won't Say If They’ll Give Cops Abortion DataFacebook Is Banning People Who Say They Will Mail Abortion PillsWe’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get

What do landlords talk about behind closed doors, among other landlords? Motherboard staff writer and Cyber host Matthew Gault attended in St. Louis recently. Landlords traded gossip, talked about raising rents, and tried to sell each on books and online classes. Outside of the convention, rents hit record medians, the COVID moratorium is ending, and a lot of tenants simply can’t afford to put a roof over their head.On this week’s episode of Cyber, Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler interviews Matthew about what it’s like to attend the 21st Annual Mr. Landlord.com National Landlord Convention.Stories discussed on this episode:Among the LandlordsWhere People Pretend to Be 'Landchads' and Make Fun of 'Rentoids'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. See acast.com/privacy for privac

Reply guys. Maybe you’ve got one, maybe you are one. If you’re a public person online, and especially if you’re a woman, you tend to attract a few fans or detractors who respond to every single thing you post. Sometimes those interactions can be obnoxious. Sometimes, they can be so much worse.Today’s Cyber is about a reply guy from hell, a person who—for almost two decades—has used the internet to wage sustained harassment campaigns against multiple women. It’s a bizarre and disturbing story that involves Twitter DMs, revenge porn, and Animal Crossing.On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Anna Merlan walks us through the story of the man who has been harassing women online for almost 20 years.Stories discussed on this episode:These Women Say One Man Terrorized Them Online for Years. Then, They Decided to Band TogetherWe’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 u

Artificial intelligence. It’s in your headlines and on your social media feed. AIs like Midjourney and DALL-E have filled my Twitter feed with algorithmically generated nightmare images of Tony Soprano as a Roman Emperor and Bigbird participating in the January 6 riots.At the same time, the press has become enamored with the story of Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer who the company let go after Lemoine insisted the LaMDA chatbot was sentient. Are we at the beginning of the AI apocalypse? Have our machines finally become sentient?Simply: no. And conversations about AI outpacing human artists and chatbots becoming sentient are part of a tired news cycle around AI. They also mask the actual dangers of the technology we should be watching out for.On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Editor Janus Rose walks us through the real and imagined terrors of Artificial Intelligence.Stories discussed on this week’s episode:Technologists Are Using AI to ‘Expand’ Famous Works of ArtGoogle's AI Isn’t Sentient, But It

Crypto is the wild west. Decentralized finance is the purview of the rich and the risk-taker. There’s millions to be had, but it’s easy—often too easy—to lose everything. If you read Motherboard you know that big and wild hacks are common. Maiar went offline recently after hackers stole $113 million from it. The Osmosis exchange just lost $5 million to hackers. And those are just the stories Motherboard reported on this week.If you’re an investor, an exchange, or a private holder, who do you turn to when your crypto is being stolen? The authorities are so far behind it’s funny. No, remember, this is the wild west. Sometimes the only thing that can handle a black hat is a white hat.Today we’re gonna meet one of the vigilante white hat hackers who saves crypto from thieves… by stealing it before they can.With me today is Motherboard Senior Staff writer Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, who wrote about the phenomenon on the site and LP, one of the white hats who hacks millions in crypto before thieves can get to it

The future is here, if you can pay for it. From NFTs, to web3, to virtual worlds, it seems like everyone has a pitch about what the future looks like and how we get there. For those involved, it’s a frenzied world of big money and massive opportunity. From the outside looking in, a lot of it looks like a massive scam.When I was a kid, the future meant flying cars and virtual worlds of our own creation. Now people are telling me it means clunky headsets, pictures of cartoon apes, and decentralized platforms that make absolutely no sense but will make those involved filthy rich.What the hell is going on?With me today is Motherboard managing editor Jordan Pearson and special guest Jackson Palmer. Palmer is perhaps most famous for creating the Doge coin, but he’s also a musician, programer, and host of the new show Griftonomics.Griftonomics is available in iTunes and YouTube.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

Discord. The popular chat app was once the humble home of gamers who were tired of paying for Ventrilo and Teamspeak servers. Now, it’s so much more. The crypto people have come and it doesn’t look like they’re going anywhere.From the Bored Ape Yacht Club to the next alt-coin with no backing, any project related to the blockchain probably has a space on Discord. But Discord was never built to be a place where people gathered together to manifest complex financial schemes and, because of that, it’s rife with scammers, grifters, and hackers. On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai walks us through the perils of using Discord as a financial chat app.Stories discussed in this episode:Discord Is the World’s Most Important Financial Messenger, and a Hotbed for ScammersWe’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

In 2018, the Camp Fire swept through California. It was the deadliest in the state’s history, destroying more than 18,000 buildings and killing 85 people. The town of Paradise all but burned to the ground at the time. Four years later, Paradise is in the midst of a housing boom. New homes are everywhere as people, some of them who lost their homes in the Camp Fire, return to the region.There’s no guarantee that another fire won’t sweep through the region. So why are people flocking to the area?On today’s episode of Cyber, Motherboard Staff Writer Aaron Gordon sits down to talk about what’s going on in Paradise.. Gordon is newly back from California where he chased some dogs through some forests and talked to a few of the town’s residents.Stories discussed in this episode:Paradise Burned to the Ground. Now It’s Another Hot Housing MarketWe’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 May 24, several news outlets reported on the internal workings of a Chinese run Uyghur internment camp in Xinjiang. The reports included detailed blueprints of the camp’s interiors, classified speeches from officials, and the personal information of police officers.An anonymous source hacked the information and got it out of China and into the hands of journalists. It’s part of a recent trend in resurgent hacktivism. On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Staff Writer Joseph Cox walks us through the recent hack and what it’s like when journalists work with hackers.Stories discussed in this episode:Hacker Leaks Mountain of Files From Inside Xinjiang CampsWe’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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The atom. For a few brief years in the middle of the 20th century, America and the world was cowed by the awesome possibility and terrifying reality of nuclear energy. Nuclear power had the potential to revolutionize the world but nuclear bombs could destroy it. But still … for a brief moment it seemed like nuclear energy would save the world. Then came Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and The China Syndrome. America fell out of love with nuclear energy.That might be changing. Climate change and scientific advances might just be the shot in the arm the flagging nuclear energy industry needs. But did the dangers actually go away?That’s the subject of the excellent podcast Wild Thing. Its third season is all about the shifting landscape of nuclear energy. It’s comprehensive, excellent, and it’s produced and hosted by former NPR editor Laura Krantz. On this episode of Cyber, Krantz sits down with Matthew to discuss Going Nuclear.We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there

The image is now iconic. An arctic wolf fursona in a Starbucks smock. Stance set wide. A sign in his hand held high that reads “UNION YES!”This was Michael Vestigo dressed in his Fursona as Apollo, a former Starbucks employee in Overland Park, Kansas. Why former? The company fired him for “displaying violent and threatening behavior” after he participated in a walkout of his location as part of a unionization effort.Vestigo is fighting to get his job back and he’s not the only person Starbucks has retaliated against for trying to form a union. As Apollo, he’s become a symbol of a movement that’s sweeping the country. Apollo joined us on today’s episode of Cyber to answer your burning questions about Unions and Starbucks. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This bonus episode of Cyber is sponsored by Command Line Heroes. If you like Cyber, you’re going to like Command Line Heroes. It’s an original podcast from Red Hat where listeners hear epic true tales of how developers, programmers, hackers, geeks, and open source rebels are revolutionizing the technology landscape.It’s an award winning show that’s been running for nine seasons. Every season has a theme and season 9 is all about the dark side of programming. Botnets, logic bombs, and—of course—ransomware. If you’ve ever wanted to know about the origins of some of the things you hate most on the internet, this season of Command Line Heroes has you covered.With Matthew on this show are Command Line Heroes producers Kim Huang and Johan Philippine.Command Line Heroes Is Available wherever you listen to podcasts.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 CYB

Some days I think that maybe we’re not all gonna make it. It’s been a bad week for cryptocurrency and, as of this recording, it’s only Tuesday. Bitcoin is down. Ethereum down. Stablecoin seems not so stable. The NFT market is on fire. There’s copium all around, panicked posters, and soothing souls advising everyone to buy the dip.But won’t that just exacerbate the problem? Won’t that just delay what people outside the crypto space have been waiting to see happen: the great crypto crash.On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Managing Editor Jordan Perason is here to answer all our burning crypto questions.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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Facebook’s biggest strength is quickly becoming its largest headache. For years, Facebook has survived by tracking every little thing its users do and selling that on to everyone. But now a slew of regulations across the globe are looking to crack down on the social media site and, according to leaked documents, Facebook has no idea how to get compliant. Worse, the social media giant has no idea where any given piece of data goes once it enters its ecosystem.On this episode of Cyber, we sit down with Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai to talk about the regulation “tsunami” facing the social media site.Stories discussed in this episode:Facebook Doesn’t Know What It Does With Your Data, Or Where It Goes: Leaked DocumentLawmakers Call For Better Facebook User Data OversightWe’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

Your data is valuable. Everything you do online and everywhere you go with your phone is tracked. And there’s a robust market for that data, a market that lets governments and private individuals purchase reams of your personal data. What if the CDC wanted to track people’s phones to see if they’re obeying Covid-19 lockdown orders? They can do that. What about a private individual paying to track the whereabouts of groups of people who visited Planned Parenthood? Also possible.On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Joseph Cox comes on to discuss SafeGraph and the data it’s selling to anyone who is willing to pay.Stories discussed in this episode:Data Broker Is Selling Location Data of People Who Visit Abortion ClinicsCDC Tracked Millions of Phones to See If Americans Followed COVID Lockdown OrdersHow the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary AppsLeaked Location Data Shows Another Muslim Prayer App Tracking UsersGoogle Bans Location Data Firm Funded by Former Saudi Intelli