dontgetgot

In 1989, a Harvard biologist who studied baboons wrote the first ransomware and mailed it out on 20,000 floppy disks. 

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How a 1994 hobby project ended up running most of the internet, and quietly carried a twenty-year-old flaw nobody could exploit, until AI finally pulled it open this week.

Primary sources: Wiz Research, Calif Research, the PHP Foundation's security release, Google Cloud's advisory, and Huntress, with additional reporting from Help Net Security, SecurityWeek, Patchstack, SOCRadar, and watchTowr. As of publication, the full scope of affected configurations was still being confirmed and these vulnerabilities had not yet appeared on CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities list despite early exploitation reports.

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A group of guys in Lee County, Florida, were shooting a BB gun into the woods when a sheriff's drone out looking for a bear flew over them, and one of them turned the gun on it. Here's how that ended in an arrest, and what federal and Florida law actually say about drones flying over your backyard.

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USPS is testing cameras on 100 mail trucks in Washington, DC. This is part of a much bigger pattern.

This video covers the USPS mail truck camera pilot, the Postal Service's own history with mail surveillance after the 2001 anthrax attacks, and how Flock license plate cameras, smart glasses on delivery drivers, and purchased location data all get sold the same way: as safety. Then we get into what the Supreme Court has actually said about tracking people over time, and why one camera is harmless while a hundred of them add up to something else.

Sources
404 Media: https://www.404media.co/usps-to-put-cameras-in-trucks-that-scan-roads-for-community-safety/
Gizmodo: https://gizmodo.com/usps-is-putting-dashcams-in-mail-trucks-to-keep-an-eye-on-community-safety-2000819711

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#surveillance #privacy #usps

In September 2025, an Austin man got a message from a stranger claiming to be an investment adviser. Seven months and $1,408,850 later, police were waiting in a bank parking lot on West Slaughter Lane for the courier to show up.

This is the story of Eduardo, a fake trading platform called DAIQ that showed his balance climbing three to five percent a day, and the Taiwan-based courier who came to collect $40,000 and left in handcuffs. Then we break down how pig butchering scams work and what to do if you or someone you love gets pulled into one.

Chapters

0:00 Cold open

0:30 The pickup on West Slaughter Lane

1:50 Seven months earlier

4:25 The withdrawal fee

5:35 The sting

6:25 How pig butchering works

9:00 What to do

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Report a scam: https://www.ic3.gov

Check an investment firm before you send money: https://brokercheck.finra.org and https://adviserinfo.sec.gov

Sources

KXAN: https://www.kxan.com/investigations/austin-police-arrest-man-accused-in-1-4m-pig-butchering-scam/

Austin American-Statesman: https://www.statesman.com/news/crime/article/pig-butchering-scam-crypto-austin-arrest-22211689.php

Hoodline: https://hoodline.com/2026/04/south-austin-bank-sting-collars-alleged-crypto-pig-butcher-in-1-4-million-scam/

This episode is based on verified reporting, with certain moments dramatized. Charges are allegations, and Tzu-Hung Hsu is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.

#pigbutchering #scam #truecrime

Linwei Ding was a software engineer at Google, assigned to the team building the AI infrastructure that the entire industry was racing to replicate. He had access to confidential material most engineers only read about. And for a year and a half, he used it to quietly copy over 2,000 pages of Google's most closely guarded technical secrets, file by file, right under their noses. He had a startup in Shanghai waiting for him, investors lined up in Beijing, and a one-way ticket out of the country.

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Linwei Ding was a software engineer at Google, assigned to the team building the AI infrastructure that the entire industry was racing to replicate. He had access to confidential material most engineers only read about. And for a year and a half, he used it to quietly copy over 2,000 pages of Google's most closely guarded technical secrets, file by file, right under their noses. He had a startup in Shanghai waiting for him, investors lined up in Beijing, and a one-way ticket out of the country.

A fraud auditor at a small bank in Sri Lanka is reviewing transfers on a Thursday morning when a twenty million dollar wire comes through for an organization he's never heard of, with a name that's misspelled and a number that has no business showing up on a screen in Colombo. What he doesn't know yet is that he's looking at the edge of a billion dollar heist targeting the central bank of Bangladesh.

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Episode research sourced from Reuters, SWIFT security advisories, US Department of Justice indictments, Bangladesh Bank investigation records, Philippine Senate hearings, and Pan Asia Banking Corporation statements.

This story reveals the inner thoughts of an IT help desk employee whose routine Friday phone call opened the door to one of the largest cyberattacks in casino history. A ten minute conversation, a single password reset, and a hundred million dollars in damage. Inspired by the 2023 MGM Resorts hack by the teenage hacking group Scattered Spider.

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NOTES - Episode research sourced from ALPHV public statements, Okta security advisories, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, VX Underground, West Midlands Police, and US Department of Justice filings.

Before the stolen billions, before Hollywood appearances and rubbing shoulders with celebrities, before the yachts and the Picassos and the Golden Globes, Jho Low was a sixteen year old kid at a boarding school in London trying to keep up with Saudi royalty. This is the story of how he learned the game.

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