CYBER

By VICE

What's CYBER about?

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

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The Real History of the Lud...

09.29.2023

Luddites! It’s a dirty word, right? One that’s become synonymous with anti-technology crusaders that want to return us to an idyllic past where everyone is free from their phones. But who were the Luddites? Where does the term come from? ...

CYBER episodes:

09.29.2023 The Real History of the Luddites Luddites! It’s a dirty word, right? One that’s become synonymous with anti-technology crusaders that want to return us to an idyllic past where everyone is free from their phones. But who were the Luddites? Where does the term come from? ...
09.25.2023 Operation Underground Railroad, Psychic Intelligence, and ‘The Sound of Freedom’ This summer, a movie called The Sound of Freedom took America by storm. The hero was Tim Ballard, the founder of an organization called Operation Underground Railroad. The movie depicted Ballard as an avenging hero who rescued trafficked children from ...
09.15.2023 ‘Extremely Online’ With Taylor Lorenz It’s time for a new history of the internet, one that focuses on the recent revolutions that define the world we all live in. Social media has changed the way many of us live and work. It’s a world defined ...
09.05.2023 Hot Labor Summer The heat is still here, but the summer will soon be over. Here at the precipice of fall I wanted to take a moment to reflect on one of the big stories that Motherboard covered this season: labor, strikes, and ...
08.25.2023 The Jason Koebler Exit Interview, Part Two It’s part two of our bittersweet episode of Cyber where we bid farewell to Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler. This week we do a deep dive into the Motherboard lore. The stories that broke us, the controversies that made us who ...
08.18.2023 Rare Motherboard Lore and a Goodbye to Jason Koebler It’s a bittersweet episode of Cyber as we bid farewell to Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler. It’s a long episode so we’ve split it into two parts. This week you get some discussions about the topics of the day including Planet ...
08.04.2023 The Viral Science Video That Will Save the World or Do Nothing At All Room-temperature superconductors are here! Maybe! Look, science is a liar sometimes, especially in the internet age. Motherboard science reporter Becky Ferreira is here to help us parse the truth from fiction of LK-99. It’s either one of the biggest science ...
07.28.2023 The Barbenheimer Special We’ve got a super sized Cyber for you today that’s all about the two hottest movies in theaters. One is a mythological take on the creation of the modern world and the devastating weapons that ushered it in. The other ...
07.24.2023 Adam Conover On the Hollywood Strike It’s a brutally hot summer, a great time to cool off in an air conditioned movie theater or to catch up on some of those TV shows you’ve had on your list forever. But did you know the people who ...
07.14.2023 The False Claims Behind an Anti-Trafficking Group’s Hollywood Moment A movie about a Mormon anti-trafficking activist made headlines when it beat Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny at the box office. But Sound of Freedom’s box office numbers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be and the group ...
07.07.2023 Celebrating the End of the Usable Internet 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. ...
06.23.2023 The Increasingly Violent Discord Servers Where Kids Flaunt Their Crimes 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 ...
06.16.2023 Big Tech Wants You to Think AI Will Kill Us All 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 ...
06.02.2023 The DHS Is Reading Travelers' Posts at the Border 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 ...
05.26.2023 AI Can Read Your Dreams and Collect Your Debts. What’s Next? 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 ...
05.19.2023 CYBER: Crime and Crypto with Cory Doctorow 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 ...
05.11.2023 CYBER: Inside the Italian Mafia’s Encrypted Phone of Choice 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 ...
05.04.2023 Apple II and How the Computer Became Personal 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 ...
05.03.2023 Wondery Presents - Flipping The Bird: Elon vs Twitter 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 ...
04.20.2023 Thieves are Stealing Cars Using Old Nokia Phones 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, ...
04.14.2023 Someone Is Selling Computer Generated Swatting Services Automation is making everyone’s lives easier, including people who call in fake bomb threats on crowded public locations. We live in a world where pranksters and criminals can summon a massive police presence with the click of a few buttons. ...
04.11.2023 What We Know about the Pentagon Leaks Top Secret classified Pentagon documents leaked on a Minecraft Discord server. The pages of documents contain sensitive information about troop placements in Ukraine, rumors about allies, and—weirdly—a character sheet for a tabletop roleplaying game. On this episode of Cyber, host ...
04.07.2023 Uber's April Fools Glitch A terrible April Fool’s day glitch screws over Uber drivers, tenants in California are striking back against landlords, and private banks: do we need them? Today’s episode of Cyber is a cypher, that infrequent version of the show where we ...
04.06.2023 How Russia Uses Facial Recognition to Stop Protestors Facial recognition systems are here. They’ve been deployed extensively along America’s southern border and in its cities. Authoritarian regimes in Iran and Russia are using the technology to crack down on dissidents and what’s going on in Moscow right now ...
03.31.2023 What’s Driving the AI Hype? Love it or hate it, you can’t escape artificial intelligence. People are using Midjourney to make viral photos of Donald Trump’s arrest and the Pop’s puffy coat. Redditors are creating entire fake historical events and backing it up with AI-generated ...
03.29.2023 The DEA Is Skipping Warrants and Buying Data from Rogue Employees In America, no one can protect you from a transportation employee being paid off by the feds. The Drug Enforcement Agency has a single remit: to prosecute America’s long-failed war on drugs. Joseph Cox is on today’s episode of Cyber ...
03.24.2023 Why Does Congress Want to Ban TikTok? America is thinking about banning the most popular social media app in the world. TikTok has exploded in the past few years and whether you love it or hate it, you can’t deny its huge influence. Legislators in America are ...
03.23.2023 Scalpers Are Selling Whole Ticketmaster Accounts Now It’s almost impossible to get retail priced tickets to The Cure’s newest live tour. Fans are, once again, turning to the secondary market despite the band’s insistence that Ticketmaster shut it down. This week on Cyber, Joseph Cox and Motherboard ...
03.17.2023 You're going to love The Hustle Daily Show Today we’re sharing an episode of The Hustle Daily Show — a daily dose of irreverent, offbeat, and informative takes on business & tech news. In this episode, they take a look at how getting stuff for “free” affects consumer ...
03.16.2023 This Is Why America's Trains Keep Crashing In America the trains never seem to run on time. On February 3, a train crashed in East Palestine, Ohio releasing toxic chemicals into the air. Almost a month later, another train owned by the same company also derailed in ...
03.14.2023 WTF Is Up With the Silicon Valley Bank Bailout? Collapse. It’s the word on everybody’s lips. Silicon Valley Bank and Signature are no more. The banks, folks, they’ve collapsed. But don’t worry, these aren’t your typical banks. SVB and Signature were not the kinds of places working class folks ...
03.09.2023 LastPass Isn’t Safe and Your Hiking App May be Tracking You It’s Cipher time, baby. It’s that infrequent style of Cyber we do where we decipher Motherboard’s tech coverage in a potpourri for the panopticon age. On today’s episode we’ve got a little bit of everything. A popular hiking app reveals ...
03.07.2023 The Great Balloon Panic Has Been Weird But Good for Balloon Hobbyists On February 4, 2023, an F-22 fighter jet committed the first air to air kill in the weapons history. It was an alleged Chinese spy balloon near Myrtle Beach. In the days that followed the F-22 would score another kill, ...
03.02.2023 How Tubgirl Became a TikTok Sensation YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok are awash in people reacting to horrifying videos. 2 girls 1 cup, Tubgirl, Goatse, and websites like Ogrish.com shaped the modern internet. Appropriating and sharing these horrifying images and videos was a big part of what ...
02.23.2023 We Broke Into a Bank Account With an AI-Generated Voice Banks in the U.S. and Europe tout voice ID as a secure way to log into your account. We proved it's possible to trick such systems with free or cheap AI-generated voices. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
02.09.2023 Voice Generating-AI Is Now the Plaything of 4Chan AI has made the voice of Emma Watson say some very strange things, and 4Chan is to blame. But trolls playing with new machine-learning tools aren’t the only villain in this story. Actors are being asked to sign away the ...
02.08.2023 What's the Deal With AI Seinfeld? What if you could watch new episodes of your favorite shows, forever? That’s one of the promises of artificial intelligence. On Twitch, the show Nothing, Forever pumped out episode after episode of content that was kind of like an episode ...
02.02.2023 One Man’s Obsession With Being 18 Forever What would you give to live forever? Hell, what would you give to have the body of an 18-year-old well into your 40s? That’s the goal of tech CEO Bryan Johnnson. He is, by his own estimation, the most measured ...
02.01.2023 Iran’s AI-Powered Surveillance State On January 31, a court in Iran handed out a combined sentence of 10 years to a couple who danced outside of Azadi Tower in Tehran, Iran. A film of the brief dance went viral on Instagram and Twitter. They’re ...
01.27.2023 What Was Havana Syndrome, the Mystery Illness that Hit American Spies? In 2016, Americans working in Cuba began to experience something strange. Something that is, to this day, unexplained. They felt a pressure in the brain, a ringing in their ear, and in the aftermath … a distressing sense of fatigue. ...
01.24.2023 The Nextdoor Poster to Political Activist Pipeline We've all heard about how Facebook is destroying democracy. How Twitter enables the loudest, dumbest voices to have the most influence. How Instagram has ruined an entire generation's self esteem. But what if there is a social media network even ...
01.18.2023 Replika, the AI Chatbot Users Say Is Sexually Harassing Them Replika is a chatbot that you can find on the App Store. It bills itself as a companion that can, if you pay, become something more. The ads on the internet offer a repertoire of sexually suggestive services including kinky ...
01.12.2023 The Government Isn’t Coming for Your Gas Stoves Recent remarks from Richard Trumka Jr., one of the three commissioners with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), sparked outrage in some circles. As it turns out, gas stoves aren’t great for you, and the CPSC has considered regulating ...
01.10.2023 Hacking Digital License Plates Encrypted app for criminals Cipher is rebranding to go above-board, California has got new digital license plates with strange security implications, a researcher made deepfaked demands for a refund to Wells Fargo, and the American military is trying to ply ...
01.05.2023 The Trans Dataset Built Without Permission and Stored Improperly Facial recognition technology is here. Whether we like it or not, cameras all across the world are scanning faces and building databases. There’s a popular misconception that technology is objective and unbiased. But that’s not true. All systems carry the ...
12.14.2022 Cops and Courts Don’t Know How to Handle Apple’s AirTag Stalking Problem Apple has democratized stalking for the modern world. With the Airtag you can keep track of your luggage and your estranged spouse. There’s been an uptick in stalking cases with Apple Airtags at the center and the legal system doesn’t ...
12.09.2022 The Invisible Workforce that Makes AI Possible We all love a good chatbot, some nice AI art, and a pleasant automated system. Artificial intelligence is here and these fancy decision trees are supposed to make our lives easier everyday without a human ever having to lift a ...
12.06.2022 The Online Prophet Whose Followers Keep Getting Arrested An online prophet that claims to be god. A murder in the Alabama woods. A child holding a shotgun in the middle of a camp. Reptilians. Urine therapy. The American South. Police violence. Conspiracy. Robot birds. The uniquely American black ...
12.02.2022 Railroad Strikes and Killer Robots This episode of Cyber is an action packed double feature that feels like it’s been pulled directly from a Cyberpunk novel. That’s right, today is all about railway strikes and killer robots. It’s hard to be a railway worker in ...
11.29.2022 The Rise of the Robot Landlords Landlords. Most of us have to deal with them. They can be nosy, weird, invasive, and lazy. The best kind of landlord tends to be one that’s hands off. Well what if I told you that you can look forward ...

Older episodes

CYBER

What's CYBER about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

CYBER episodes:

The Real History of the Luddites

Operation Underground Railroad, Psychic Intelligence, and ‘The Sound of Freedom’

‘Extremely Online’ With Taylor Lorenz

Hot Labor Summer

The Jason Koebler Exit Interview, Part Two

Rare Motherboard Lore and a Goodbye to Jason Koebler

The Viral Science Video That Will Save the World or Do Nothing At All

The Barbenheimer Special

Adam Conover On the Hollywood Strike

The False Claims Behind an Anti-Trafficking Group’s Hollywood Moment

Celebrating the End of the Usable Internet

The Increasingly Violent Discord Servers Where Kids Flaunt Their Crimes

Big Tech Wants You to Think AI Will Kill Us All

The DHS Is Reading Travelers' Posts at the Border

AI Can Read Your Dreams and Collect Your Debts. What’s Next?

CYBER: Crime and Crypto with Cory Doctorow

CYBER: Inside the Italian Mafia’s Encrypted Phone of Choice

Apple II and How the Computer Became Personal

Wondery Presents - Flipping The Bird: Elon vs Twitter

Thieves are Stealing Cars Using Old Nokia Phones

Someone Is Selling Computer Generated Swatting Services

What We Know about the Pentagon Leaks

Uber's April Fools Glitch

How Russia Uses Facial Recognition to Stop Protestors

What’s Driving the AI Hype?

The DEA Is Skipping Warrants and Buying Data from Rogue Employees

Why Does Congress Want to Ban TikTok?

Scalpers Are Selling Whole Ticketmaster Accounts Now

You're going to love The Hustle Daily Show

This Is Why America's Trains Keep Crashing

WTF Is Up With the Silicon Valley Bank Bailout?

LastPass Isn’t Safe and Your Hiking App May be Tracking You

The Great Balloon Panic Has Been Weird But Good for Balloon Hobbyists

How Tubgirl Became a TikTok Sensation

We Broke Into a Bank Account With an AI-Generated Voice

Voice Generating-AI Is Now the Plaything of 4Chan

What's the Deal With AI Seinfeld?

One Man’s Obsession With Being 18 Forever

Iran’s AI-Powered Surveillance State

What Was Havana Syndrome, the Mystery Illness that Hit American Spies?

The Nextdoor Poster to Political Activist Pipeline

Replika, the AI Chatbot Users Say Is Sexually Harassing Them

The Government Isn’t Coming for Your Gas Stoves

Hacking Digital License Plates

The Trans Dataset Built Without Permission and Stored Improperly

Cops and Courts Don’t Know How to Handle Apple’s AirTag Stalking Problem

The Invisible Workforce that Makes AI Possible

The Online Prophet Whose Followers Keep Getting Arrested

Railroad Strikes and Killer Robots

The Rise of the Robot Landlords