CYBER

Police records reviewed by Motherboard show that, as security experts immediately predicted when the product launched, this technology has been used as a tool to stalk and harass women.

Of the 150 total police reports mentioning AirTags, in 50 cases women called the police because they started getting notifications that their whereabouts were being tracked by an AirTag they didn’t own. Of those, 25 could identify a man in their lives—ex-partners, husbands, bosses—who they strongly suspected planted the AirTags on their cars in order to follow and harass them. Those women reported that current and former intimate partners—the most likely people to harm women overall—are using AirTags to stalk and harass them.

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Close your eyes. Imagine it's 2010. You’ve just learned about something called Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency. You spend $50 and get 50 of the coins, thinking the whole thing is funny. Cut to 2022. What you spent around 50 bucks on in 2010 is now worth 2 million dollars.

There’s just one problem. You need a password to access that 2 million and 2010 was a long time ago. It’s a problem plaguing the world of cryptocurrency: an epidemic of millionaires unable to access their cash. But there are options.

To deal with the problem, a cottage industry of asset recovery specialists has emerged. One is Crypto Asset Recovery, a startup run by a father-son team in New Hampshire.

They are Chris and Charlie Brooks and they are here with me today to talk about the business of breaking in.

Chris and Charlie also appeared on an episode of Motherboard’s TV show Cryptoland, which you can stream at YouTube.com/motherboard.

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.

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For many, playing video games for a living is a dream come true. Whether you’re streaming on Twitch or doing speedruns for charity, there are viable ways to earn a living playing video games. But get NFTs and the blockchain in the mix and, well, you’ve got a whole different system.

Today we’re gonna talk about Axie Infinity, the most popular of the so-called ‘play-to-earn’ games. The promise of Axie and others is that you can earn money simply by playing the game. But how much? Is Axie fun? How easy is it to cash out? And wait … this game has bosses and managers? What the hell is going on?

This week on Cyber, Motherboard Staff Writer Edward Ongweso Jr. is here to help us untangle this hellishly complicated nightmare of “play-to-earn” gaming. His latest on the site is “The Metaverse Has Bosses Too. Meet the ‘Managers’ of Axie Infinity.”

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.

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We’ve got a special presentation on the show for you today, an interview with Yuliana Shemetovets, the spokesperson for a group of ethical hackers going to war with Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. They’re called the Cyber Partisans and they’re responsible for hacks against the Lukashenko regime.

Lukashenko is a die-hard Putin ally who has been in charge of Belarus since 1994. In that time, the country has become more unstable. Protestors have disappeared from the streets and Belarus has allowed Russian troops to move through the country to strike at Ukraine.

The Cyber Partisans have worked behind the scenes to disrupt Lukashenko’s regime. They’ve hacked the Belarusian railway system, which still runs on Windows XP, and obtained phone calls between government officials.

You’ll hear a little untranslated Belarussian in this episode. I only want to highlight one bit that I think is important. When Shemetovets is talking about acquiring phone calls, we’ll play the raw audio of Belarussian government officials talking. What you’re hearing is someone bragging about beating up a protestor.

“I open the…car door, and pull this [woman] by her hair. I kicked her, and told the riot police to..and that bitch started screaming.”

The translated audio has quite a few more explivites in it.

This is an on-camera interview that first aired on VICE News as an episode of SuperUsers. It was produced by Louise McLoughlin and Cal Bateman.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. 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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There are thousands of people still trapped in Ukraine and trying to flee. Millions are internally displaced and many are crossing the Polish border and finding refuge. But, for foreign students stuck in Ukraine, it can be much much more difficult to leave. A war zone is a terrible place to be no matter who you are, but these foreign students are facing unprecedented challenges. Thankfully, there are people trying to help.

That’s the subject of the Motherboard story “Inside the OSINT Operation to Get Foreign Students Out of Ukraine.” It was written by Sebastian Skov Andersen and Gabriel Geiger. One of the OSINT organizers is Chris Kubecka. On Cyber this week, all three are here to discuss the operation and the ongoing struggles of foreign nationals trying to flee a war zone.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. 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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Stories of the death of religion in America are overblown. If you’re in the right part of the country, there are vibrant Christian communities developing apps, working in Christian-startups, and spreading their faith on Instagram and YouTube. There is a whole community and culture just outside of the mainstream using tech in all sorts of wild and interesting ways.

This week on Cyber, we explore the weird world of evangelical tech with Corrina Laughlin. She is a professor of media studies at Loyola Marymount University and author of the book Redeem All: How Digital Life is Changing Evangelical Culture.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. 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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It started with SIM swapping and escalated into hacks of Okta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and EA. They’re LAPSUS$, a hacking collective that’s been the boogeyman of big corporations for the past few years. People have wondered about their motivations and identities.

Now, seven of them have been arrested. They’re mostly teenagers who used unsophisticated methods to get the better of some of the world’s most powerful companies.

On today’s episode of Cyber, Motherboard staff writer Joseph Cox walks us through what happened. It’s the subject of his story “LAPSUS$: How a Sloppy Extortion Gang Became One of the Most Prolific Hacking Groups.”

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. 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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We all type it. Some of us say it. Three little letters. L O L. Whether you’re laughing out loud or softening the blow of bad news, it’s so ubiquitous in the English speaking world that it’s almost become punctuation. But where did it come from and does it have a strict definition?

If you know anything about linguistics, you may already know the answers to those questions. Motherboard senior staff writer Shayla Love knows. She’s here today to talk about the origins of the phrase that’s part of our online world. It’s the subject of her new piece: “Why We Use ‘lol’ So Much.”

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. 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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The internet encourages the best and absolute worst of human behavior. Online led hate campaigns and conspiracy theories are often more than just frivolous distractions. They can ruin lives. In the U.S., I think the Gamergate movement from 2015 and 2016 opened a lot of people’s eyes to what was brewing under the surface of some of the darker places online. If Gamergate didn’t, then Qanon certainly did. But, across the Pacific Ocean, the people of Korea had a pretty good idea of how the internet can destroy lives long before it became a topic of think pieces in America.

That is the subject of the excellent Podcast, Authentic, a new show from VICE that focuses on the life of the Korean rapper Tablo and how the internet turned it upside down. With us today is its host and producer, Dexter Thomas. 

Authentic is available on iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio and pretty much every other podcast platform.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. 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.