Malicious Life

In the 1950s and 60s - even leading into the 1990s - the cost of storage was so high, that using a 2-digit field for dates in a software instead of 4-digits could save an organization between $1.2-$2 Million dollars per GB of data. From this perspective, programming computers in the 1950s to record four-digit years would’ve been outright malpractice. But 40 years later, this shortcut became a ticking time bomb which one man, computer scientist Bob Bemer, was trying to diffuse before it was too late.

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The 2008 Russo-Georgian War marked a turning point: the first time cyberattacks were used alongside traditional warfare. But what happens when the attackers aren't soldiers, but ordinary citizens? This episode delves into the ethical and legal implications of civilian participation in cyberwarfare, examining real-world examples from Ukraine and beyond.

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In 1991, Kevin Mitnick was bouncing back from what was probably the lowest point of his life. He began to rebuild his life: he started working out and lost a hundred pounds, and most importantly - he was finally on the path towards ditching his self-destructive obsession of hacking. 

But just as he was in the process of turning his life around, his brother introduced him to a hacker named Eric Heinz, who told him about a mysterious piece of equipment he came across while breaking into Pacific Bell: SAS, a testing system that allowed its user to listen in on all the calls going through the telephone network. SAS proved to be too great of a temptation for Mitnick, who desperately wanted to wield the power that the testing system could afford him.

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For Kevin Mitnick - perhaps the greatest social engineer who ever lived - hacking was an obsession: even though it ruined his marriage, landed him in scary correction facilities and almost cost him his sanity in solitary confinement, Mitnick wasn't able to shake the disease that compelled him to keep breaking into more and more communication systems. 

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Right now, hundreds of thousands of people in the southern African country of Namibia are faced with a choice. At the end of next month, their phone service is going to be shut off permanently: to prevent that from happening, they’ll have to give up their data privacy. As a result, nearly two million Namibian citizens are facing a data privacy problem which may haunt them for years to come - and hundreds of thousands more are set to join them, or else they’ll lose their phone service for good. All of which raises the question: was making everybody register their SIM cards a good idea in the first place?

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In 2008, The 12 million PCs strong Mariposa Botnet infected almost half of Furture 100 companey - but the three men who ran it were basiclly script kiddies who didn't even knew how to code.

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Valdimir Levin is often presented as "the first online bank robber," and appeares on many lists of the "Top 10 Greatest Hackers." But a few veteran Russian hackers cliam that Levin's infamous hack had been mangled by the journlists who wrote about it. What's the truth behind the 1994 $10.7 million Citibank hack?...

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About a year ago, six academics from Ruhr University Bochum and the CISPA  Helmholtz Center for Information Security set out to survey engineers and developers on the subject of satellite cybersecurity. But most of these engineers were very reluctant to share any details about their satellites and their security aspects. Why were satellite engineers so reticent to talk about cybersecurity? What was so secretive, so wrong with it, that they didn’t feel they could answer even general questions, anonymously? Because let’s be clear: if there’s something wrong with the security of satellites, that’d be a serious problem.

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When investigators discovered in 1996 that US military networks were being extensively hacked, they didn't realize they were witnessing the birth of what would become Russia's formidable Turla APT espionage group. We uncover the 20-year metamorphosis of this original group of hackers into one of the most sophisticated and dangerous state-sponsored threats that's still active today.

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In August 2021, a port in Houston, Texas, was attacked. Over the following months, a series of attacks occurred in various locations, reminiscent of a serial killer's pattern. Targets included telecommunications companies, government agencies, power plants, and water treatment facilities. How did Volt Typhoon manage to evade authorities and analysts for such an extended period?

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