It's a five-alarm fire in the fifth instalment of our call in show. We hear from a caller who accidentally won a naval war-game by unplugging a radio, a person whose company hired someone who clearly lied about their technical background, a very wholesome story about Counterstrike, and a person who decided to do a scavenger hunt by scavenging online instead of the real world.

Hotline Hacked is brought to you by DeleteMe. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for DeleteMe. Now at a special discount for our listeners: Today get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/HACKED and use promo code HACKED at checkout.

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In which we discuss alleged Spotify streaming ad fraud that brought in millions, extremely poor voter outreach and an extended tangent on AI.

Correction: we failed to make the "Ramen Empire" joke. Our apologies.

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Fourth times a charm. Share your strange tale of technology, true hack, or computer confession at hotlinehacked.com. We discuss stealing login credentials with microphones, hacking courses for cybersecurity classes for instant grades, and parking pits.

Hotline Hacked is brought to you by DeleteMe. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for DeleteMe. Now at a special discount for our listeners: Today get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/HACKED and use promo code HACKED at checkout.

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You can do lot of damage by changing someone's bike gear at the wrong time. A collection of stories including a DIY laser mad science project that aims to replicate a $150,000 piece of equipment, and one of the largest leaks of US Social Security Numbers.

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DEFCON: The Biggest Hacking Event in the World

Every year DEFCON, the world’s biggest hacking conference, descends on Las Vegas for a weekend of digital mad science, security, and community building. We braved the desert heat to go find out what it’s all about and to see how many people would talk into a microphone at privacy-centric event. 

Check out the Capture the Flag replays here: https://www.youtube.com/@livectf

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We all just watched one of the largest IT events in years unfold in real time with the CrowdStrike incident. We wanted to understand it better, so we called up security researcher and educator John Hammond to get to the bottom of it. 

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We got a lot of messages about the Ticketmaster hack that went down since our last episode. We dive into all the weird angles of that evolving story, a strange real time news update about the AT&T hack, and spend a surprising amount of time hyping a Canadian movie about Blackberry. 

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Few things impact the shape of the internet more than Google Search, yet its inner workings are mostly a mystery. In May, Rand Fishkin received alleged leaked documents that peal back the curtain as to how it works. We speak with Rand Fishkin about his involvement in the Google API leaks.

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We discuss a bunch of stories, including the bizarre tale of how an anonymous business registration company let a massive IT scam unfold in the US, a TikTok zero day, Microsoft recall and Apple Private Cloud Compute, and a home-brew cell tower hack in the UK.

NOTE: I (JB) misspeak at about 18 minutes in. I say "US" when we're talking about the UK.

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It's our third call in episode and we're cooking now. Share your strange tale of technology, true hack, or computer confession at hotlinehacked.com. We discuss accidentally causing internet outages, creating a botnet pandoras box, and the proud tradition of hacking into stuff to play great songs the man does't want you to.

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