CYBER

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.

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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 CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

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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 Document

Lawmakers Call For Better Facebook User Data Oversight

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.

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 Clinics

CDC Tracked Millions of Phones to See If Americans Followed COVID Lockdown Orders

How the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary Apps

Leaked Location Data Shows Another Muslim Prayer App Tracking Users

Google Bans Location Data Firm Funded by Former Saudi Intelligence Head

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.

Elon Musk’s attempts to buy Twitter have sent ripples through the social media platform. There is a story here about panic, the limited reach of social media, and the increasingly fuzzy nature of the private/ public space … but I think all that is a surface level analysis. For me, the more interesting story is the corporate what lies just underneath.

You see, Musk is the richest man not because he invented anything wonderful and world changing. No, he’s rich because he’s good at making money. He’s a businessman first and foremost. Through that lens, the story of the Twitter acquisition becomes one of shitposts and SEC filings, a bizarre fight between tech titans, a rehashing of old corporate techniques like “poison pills” and “hostile takeovers.”

On this episode of Cyber, we sit down with Motherboard features writer and editor Maxwell Strachan. He’s here to answer all your burning questions about Musk’s attempted Twitter takeover.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Twitter Loses Elon Musk the Board Member, Regains Elon Musk the Shitposter

Twitter and Elon Musk Are Now at War

We Spoke to an Old-School Corporate Raider About Elon Musk and Twitter

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.

Drones are here to stay. The U.S. Military may have pioneered the art of using drones in a war zone, but America’s cops are pushing the tech on the homefront. From the Boston Dynamics dogs taking temperatures in Hawaii to quadcopters patrolling the skies, the cops are very interested in drone tech.

One of the big companies in the field is Skydio. It advertises itself directly to police officers and has cultivated relationships with departments across the country. This week on Cyber, host Matthew Gault and Motherboard Editor-in-Chief Jason Koebler discuss the close relationship between Skydio and America’s police.

Stories discussed in this episode:

When Police Do Marketing for Surveillance Tech Companies

World’s Richest Man Gets What He Wanted (Elon Musk Becomes King Shit of Turd Mountain)

Everything You Need to Know About Ring, Amazon’s Surveillance Camera Company

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.

Are you using two-factor authentication for all your accounts? Do you have Apple Pay or another service hooked up to a bank card? Well, so do criminals. 

It’s the growth of a scheme Cyber first reported on about six months ago. Thanks to bots that help criminals trick you into giving up your 2FA codes, they're now able to set up links between Apple Pay bank cards. It’s shockingly easy to do and, bizarrely, shockingly hard to stop.

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Staff Writer Joseph Cox walks us through how criminals are circumventing 2FA and using Apple Pay to go on spending sprees.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Criminals Abuse Apple Pay in Spending Sprees

The Booming Underground Market for Bots That Steal Your 2FA Codes

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.

Trains, trains, trains. You might not think of them very often but they make America run. Getting stuff from point A to Point B is more than a full time job. Our world runs on logistical supply chains that are supported, in large part, by freight trains.

But what happens if the people doing those jobs don’t get much sleep? What happens when the company running the trains implements systems that deprive its already weary workforce of much needed Zs?

This week on Cyber, Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Aaron Gordon is here to answer all those questions. 

Stories discussed in this episode:

‘The Worst and Most Egregious Attendance Policy’ Is Pushing Railroad Workers to the Brink

Amtrak Is Streaming an Empty Railroad on Twitch to Beef With Freight Rail Companies

‘What Choice Do I Have?’ Freight Train Conductors Are Forced to Work Tired, Sick, and Stressed

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.

Every week we publish multiple incredible stories on Motherboard. This week there were so many that we couldn’t decide which one we wanted to focus on. So. We’re gonna do something a little different for this episode.

That’s right, we’re going full Cipher. If you’re familiar with the show, Cipher is that infrequent segment we do where we decipher the week’s biggest tech stories. On this episode of Cyber we answer the questions: Is it illegal to run a private Club Penguin server? How is T-Mobile dealing with hackers? And why can’t I get on to the Raid Forums and what happens if you make an illegal trip to North Korea to spread the gospel of the Blockchain.

Here to help sort through these headlines is the man who wrote many of them: Motherboard Staff Writer Joseph Cox.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Cops Arrest 3 People for Running ‘Club Penguin Rewritten’ Beloved by Millions

Law Enforcement Seizes RaidForums, One of the Most Important Hacking Sites

T-Mobile Secretly Bought Its Customer Data from Hackers to Stop Leak. It Failed.

US Extradites Man Who Allegedly Sold Backdoored Phones for the FBI

Ethereum Programmer Jailed for North Korea Trip Wanted to Clone Dogs, Become ‘Crypto Hero’

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.