60 Minutes - 04/14/24: Scattered Spider, Knife, Tasmanian Tiger

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

SCATTERED SPIDER – A surprisingly young cohort of hackers paralyzed some of Las Vegas' biggest hotels and casinos last fall, demanding an exorbitant ransom. The FBI and cyber security researchers call them "Scattered Spider" and say they are predominantly made up of native English-speaking hackers from Western countries, including the United States. Correspondent Bill Whitaker reports on the attack that brought operations at the MGM Grand, Aria and Bellagio, among others, to a standstill, and how the hackers teamed up with the notorious Russian ransomware gang behind the recent hack on UnitedHealth Group. Graham Messick is the producer. KNIFE – In his first television interview since he was attacked at a literary festival in Chautauqua, New York almost two years ago, author Salman Rushdie details his experience to correspondent Anderson Cooper. Rushdie, who was stabbed 15 times and lost his right eye, has come to terms with the attack by writing about it in his new book, KNIFE (Penguin, 2024.) He talks to Cooper about Iran's religious decree—or fatwa—that called for his death 35 years ago, his years in hiding, and how he reclaimed his life in the U.S. before he was nearly killed by an assailant wielding a knife. Michael Gavshon and Nadim Roberts are the producers. TASMANIAN TIGER – 60 MINUTES correspondent Jon Wertheim reports from the Australian island of Tasmania on the mysterious thylacine or Tasmanian tiger – an apex predator not seen since last century, but renowned through local folklore. Though the tiger was declared extinct 40 years ago, Wertheim meets those looking for the creature in the bush and the lab, and one way or another, are certain of its enduring survival. Jacqueline Williams is the producer. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the costliest ransomware attacks in history happened here in Las Vegas, when English-speaking hackers teamed up with elite Russian hackers. It may be just the beginning. How many people are involved? There's thousands of people involved at this point. Did people try to kill you? Yes. Author Salman Rushdie has been a marked man for nearly half his life, and in 2022, a knife-wielding attacker almost killed him. This is his first television interview. One of the surgeons who had saved my life said to me, he said, first you were really

unlucky and then you were really lucky. I said, what's the lucky part? And he said, well, the lucky part is that the man who attacked you had no idea how to kill a man with a knife. This is a Tasmanian tiger, or was a Tasmanian tiger. Most scientists believe the apex predator to be extinct. But like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, plenty of people believe otherwise,

that this tiger is still roaming this beautiful island. And then all of a sudden, was there a mighty hail like this. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cec Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim.

I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. Why do fintechs like Float choose Visa? As a more trusted, more secure payments network, Visa provides scale, expertise, and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at visa.ca slash fintech. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most?

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tech companies, Las Vegas's biggest hotels and casinos have been paralyzed by ransomware attacks in which hackers break into a corporate network, encrypt or lock up critical files, and hold them hostage until a ransom is paid. It's a crime that has been growing more costly and disruptive every year. Now, cybersecurity researchers fear it's about to get worse. With the emergence of an audacious group of young criminal hackers from the U.S., U.K., and Canada, the FBI calls Scattered Spider. More troubling? They have teamed up with Russia's most

notorious ransomware gang. This past September, one of the most pernicious ransomware attacks in history was unleashed on MGM resorts, costing the hotel and casino giant more than 100 million dollars. It disrupted operations at a dozen of the most renowned gaming palaces on the Las Vegas Strip. MGM Grand, Aria, Mandalay Bay, New York, New York, the Bellagio. Anthony Curtis is a Las Vegas fixture. He's so good at counting cards, he's been banned from card games here. He now publishes the Las Vegas Advisor, a monthly newsletter on all things Vegas.

Incredibly, when it happened, I was in an MGM property. And it happened while we were having dinner, and there just began to be a rumbling that something was going on. When I went down into the casino, I could see then that slot machines were sitting dark, people were scrambling around, the shutdown was starting to take effect. Across the Vegas Strip, thousands of slot machines suddenly stopped paying out. So all of a sudden now, people are going, how do I get my money, what's wrong? And the people were sitting there waiting and couldn't get paid. Were they angry?

They were getting angry, yeah. And this was just the tip of the iceberg. Elevators were malfunctioning. Parking gates froze. Digital door keys wouldn't work. As computers went down, reservations locked up and lines backed up at the front desks. Anything that required technology was not working.

Sounds like chaos. Nobody knew what to do. And including the employees. The employees just had to, you know, beg forgiveness and patience. Look, it's corporate terrorism at its finest. The company declined our interview request, but at a conference a month after the hack, MGM's CEO admitted the disruptions were devastating.

For the next four or five days, with 36,000 hotel rooms and some regional properties, we were completely in the dark. The hackers demanded $30 million to unlock MGM's data. The company refused, but they still paid a price, $100 million in lost revenue and millions more to rebuild their servers. So how did the intruders get in? Through a technique of deception and manipulation called social engineering. First, hackers zeroed in on an employee, gathering information from the dark web and open sources like LinkedIn. Next, a smooth-talking hacker impersonating the employee called the MGM tech help desk and convinced them to reset his password. With that, the hacker was inside

MGM's computers and unleashed the destructive malware. Anthony Curtis says it was the cyber criminals' version of an Ocean's Eleven heist. They're doing it the old-fashioned way. I mean, they're doing it the new way, but with the old-fashioned goal. They want to get the money. What do you make of that?

I don't want to be too glowing, like I like these guys, because they're just crooks, right? But these hackers were able to turn the tables. The casinos have their systems, they have their protections, they have their experts, they have their security. These guys are better. Later, MGM's biggest competitor, Caesars, admitted it also suffered a social engineering attack around the same time, suspected by the same group. But Caesars paid a ransom, reportedly $15 million, and suffered no disruptions. From an FBI perspective, our position is we recommend a ransom not be paid, but we understand it's a business decision during a time of crisis.

Brian Vordren is head of the FBI's Cyber Division. He told us ransomware attacks have grown increasingly brazen. Any way you look at the numbers, it's a problem for the global economy and for the U.S. economy and for the security of the United States. There's estimates that global losses exceed one billion U.S. dollars per year. Have you made any arrests in the Las Vegas cases? We're not going to talk about specific cases or specific companies with whom... But he did point us toward the prime suspect. When we talk about the actors

behind some of the more recent ransomware attacks, the name that's generally raised is Scattered Spider, and that's a criminal group that we have a lot of attention on because of the havoc they're wreaking across the United States. Scattered Spider is what the FBI calls a loose-knit web of predominantly native English-speaking hackers responsible for the casino hacks and dozens more. Their specialty is social engineering.

Part of their success is because they are fluent in Western culture. They know how our society works. They know what to say to get someone to do something. Allison Nixon is chief research officer at Unit 221B, a cybersecurity firm that focuses on English-speaking cyber criminals. She says Scattered Spider is just one of many illicit hacking groups, all part of a sprawling collection of online criminals calling themselves the community, or the comm. The comm is a subculture. It is specifically an English-speaking youth subculture that has arisen in the past few years. It's very new, but it's surprisingly disruptive. Members of the comm have hacked into companies like Microsoft,

NVIDIA, and Electronic Arts. How many people are involved? Years ago, it was maybe a few hundred people. But since 2018, the population has exploded because of the money coming into these groups. And there's thousands of people involved at this point. How are they connected? They connect over the internet,

social spaces where people hang out, gaming servers. It's almost analogous to like maybe the back alley where the bad kids hang out, but on the Internet. How old are we talking about? Males under the age of 25. Under 25 down to how young? Like 13, 14. Involved in pulling off major crimes?

Yeah. Members communicate and post pictures on messaging apps like Telegram. Their chatter? A toxic stew of racism, sexism, boasting about the money they've scammed and how menacing they are. There are these toxic online spaces where young people can socialize and mingle with criminals and gang members. And the end result of all of this is this online subculture has formed that glorifies crime, that measures one's personal worth by how much harm they can cause the world. Scattered Spider is one of the most sophisticated offshoots of the comm. Their criminal exploits caught the attention of cybersecurity companies and other hackers, including the most notorious Russian ransomware gang, Black Cat. They saw the young native English-speaking Westerners

as a force multiplier. Both claimed credit for the MGM attack. Historically speaking, Russian cybercriminals did not like working with Western cybercriminals. There was not only a language barrier, but also they kind of looked down on them and viewed them as unprofessional. The Russian and Western hackers met in the shadowy corners of the dark web and now are powerful partners in crime. Scattered Spider uses its English and social engineering skills to break into Western companies' networks. Black Cat provides its experience and its malware,

used in some of the most shocking ransomware attacks. Including the 2021 attack on Colonial Pipeline, which caused gas shortages up and down the East Coast, and this year's attack on United Health Group, which disrupted pharmacies nationwide. The State Department is offering a $15 million reward for information on Russia's Black Cat. This is Black Cat's data leak site. John DiMaggio, a former analyst at the National Security Agency, now investigates ransomware as chief security strategist for the cybersecurity company AnalystOne. So there's a term, it's called ransomware as a service, that's been given to the structure and the format of these gangs. DiMaggio says ransomware as a service has taken the crime to a new level.

The long-established Russian gangs like Black Cat offer their services, malware, experience negotiating ransoms and laundering money to what they call affiliates like Scattered Spider. So in return, when a victim pays an extortion, the profit that comes from it is now shared amongst those criminals. The most successful Russian gangs are run like legitimate companies, with easy-to-navigate online platforms, 24-hour service desks, even human resources to hire software developers. There are people that specialize in developing malware and ransomware, and they're in very high demand. You said you've gotten to know some of these people.

Yes. Are they mostly young men? The leadership are, you know, people in their 40s, late 30s. They're people that have got experience, the people that have a financial background. DiMaggio says the Russian government provides a safe haven for ransomware gangs. As long as they don't target an organization that falls within Russia or the former Soviet state, they don't get prosecuted. It's not considered a crime. It's not considered a crime to attack American businesses? It's crazy, right?

That's how it works, though. So it's like they operate with impunity? A hundred percent. That's the whole reason why this is such a popular crime. Russian ransomware has become such a threat, the elite cyber warriors at the National Security Agency have joined the fight. Before retiring last month, Rob Joyce was NSA's director of cybersecurity. He told us the Colonial Pipeline attack was a wake-up call.

It caused us to step back and decide that we had to put more resources into this foreign threat. So one of the things NSA has, we have hackers. And it really at times takes a hacker to defeat a hacker. That's the value NSA can bring is we can identify people, specific people involved in some of these activities. The NSA helped identify the Russian hacker responsible for the Colonial Pipeline attack. And in January 2022, after months of negotiations, Russia arrested him and other accomplices. But five weeks later, it all came undone. Following the Ukraine invasion, those people were let out of jail. So they're back in

business. Yes, sir. And now they've teamed up with the young native English speakers of Scattered Spider. The FBI's Brian Vordren calls it an evolution of cybercrime. In the case of Scattered Spider, is it powerful that they are with Black Hat? Of course. I think that it's important to know that we are against a very capable set of adversaries. They're very good at their work. We're also very good at our work. In January, the Bureau arrested a 19-year-old from Florida, Noah Urban, charged with stealing cryptocurrency. He's pleaded not guilty. Cyber investigators have tied him to Scattered Spider, but so far not to the casino heists. The Scattered Spider hackers

who did pull off the attack are still online, hiding in plain sight, in unholy alliance with Russians. Allison Nixon calls Las Vegas a harbinger. The level of cybercrime has risen to the point where it feels overwhelming. And every year it gets worse. And it feels like, as defenders, it's almost like we're winning every battle and losing the war. Meet Tim's new Oreo Mocha Ice Caps with Oreo in every sip. Perfect for listening to the A-side.

Or B-side. Or Bull-side. Order yours on the Tim's app today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. Sometimes historic events suck, but what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more.

The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck. Available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Salman Rushdie has been a marked man for nearly half his life. In 1989, Iran's leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, declared his novel The Satanic Verses blasphemous, an insult to Islam, and called for the Indian-born writer's assassination. Rushdie went into hiding with around-the-clock police protection for 10 years. He eventually moved to the U.S. and thought he was safe. But in August 2022, as he was about to speak at a literary festival in Chautauqua, New York,

Salman Rushdie was attacked by a Muslim man with a knife. Rushdie, who's now 76, lost his right eye and came close to dying. He's come to terms with the attempt on his life by writing a book about it called simply Knife, which comes out Tuesday. This is his first television interview since the attack. You had had a dream two days, I think it was, before the attack.

What was the dream? I kind of had a premonition. I mean, I had a dream of being attacked in an amphitheater. But it was a kind of Roman Empire dream, you know, as if I was in the Colosseum. And it was just somebody with a spear stabbing downwards, and I was rolling around on the floor trying to get away from him. And I woke up and was quite shaken by it. And I had to go to Chautauqua, you know, and I said to my wife, Eliza, I said, you know, I don't want to go. Because of the dream.

Because of the dream. And then I thought, don't be silly, it's a dream. Salman Rushdie, one of his generation's most acclaimed writers, had been invited to the town of Chautauqua, close to Lake Erie, to speak about a subject he knows all too well, the importance of protecting writers whose lives are under threat. Did you have any anxiety being in such a public space? Not really, because in the more than 20 years that I've been living in America, I've done a lot of these things. You haven't had security around you, close protection detail for a long time.

A long time. But, you know, what happens in many places that you go and lecture is that they're used to having a certain degree of security, venue security. In this case, there wasn't any. The irony, of course, is you were there to talk about writers in danger. Yeah, exactly. And the need for writers from other countries to have safe spaces in America, amongst other places. And then, yeah, it just turned out not to be a safe space for me. For years, no place was safe for Salman Rushdie, whose sprawling 600-page novel The Satanic Verses

offended some Muslims for its depiction of the Prophet Muhammad. Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, a religious decree calling for Rushdie's death in 1989. There were worldwide protests from London to Lahore. The Satanic Verses was burned, and 12 people died in clashes with police. The book's Japanese translator was murdered, and others associated with it were attacked.

Did you have any idea that it would cause violence? No, I had no idea. I thought probably some conservative religious people wouldn't like it, but they didn't like anything I wrote anyway, so I thought, well, they don't have to read it. Were you naive? Probably.

You know, I mean, it's easy looking back to think, but nothing like this had ever happened to anybody. And of course, almost all the people who attacked the book did so without reading it. I was often told that I had intended to insult, offend people. My view was, if I need to insult you, I can do it really quickly. I don't need to spend five years of my life trying to write a 600-page book to insult you. Rushdie was living in London when he went into hiding, and for the next 10 years,

the British government provided him with 24-hour police protection. Did people try to kill you? Yes. There were maybe as many as half a dozen serious assassination attempts, which were not random people. They were state-sponsored terrorism professionals. After diplomatic negotiations, the Iranian state called off its assassins in 1998. Rushdie finally came out of the shadows. He moved to New York and for the next two decades lived openly. He was a man about town. He continued writing, became a celebrated advocate for freedom of expression. So when he received the invitation to speak in Chautauqua in August 2022, he gladly accepted. I was seated at stage right. In his new book, Knife, he describes what happened next.

Then in the corner of my right eye, the last thing my right eye would ever see, I saw the man in black running toward me down the right-hand side of the seating area. Black clothes, black face mask. He was coming in hard and low, a squat missile. I confess I had sometimes imagined my assassin rising up in some public forum or other and coming for me in just this way.

So my first thought when I saw this murderous shape rushing towards me was, so it's you. Here you are. So it's you. Here you are. Yeah. It's like you've been waiting for it. Yeah, that's what it's you. Here you are. So it's you. Here you are. Yeah. It's like you've been waiting for it. Yeah, that's what it felt like.

It felt like something coming out of the distant past and trying to drag me back in time, if you like, back into that distant past in order to kill me. And when he got to me, he basically hit me very hard here. And initially I thought I'd been punched. You didn't actually see a knife? I didn't see the knife. And I didn't realize until I saw blood coming out

that there would have been a knife in his fist. So where was that stab? Here. In your neck? In my neck, yeah. Then there were a lot more. The worst wounds was there was a big slash wound like this across my neck, and there's a puncture stab wound here. And then, of course, there was an attack on my eye. Do you remember

being stabbed in the eye? No. I remember falling. Then I remember not knowing what had happened to my eye. He was also stabbed in his hand, chest, abdomen, and thigh, 15 wounds in all. He was both stabbing and also slashing. I think he was just wildly... The attack lasted 27 seconds. To feel just how long that is... This is what 27 seconds is. That's it.

That's quite a long time. That's the extraordinary half minute of intimacy in which life meets death. What stopped it from being longer? The audience pulling him off me. Strangers to you? To this day, I don't know their names. Some of those strangers

restrained the attacker, while others desperately tried to stem the flow of Rushdie's blood. There was really a lot of blood. You were actually watching your blood? I was actually watching it spread. And then I remember thinking that I was probably dying.

And it was interesting because it was quite matter-of-fact. It wasn't like I was terrified of it or whatever. And yeah was interesting because it was quite matter of fact. It wasn't like I was terrified of it or whatever. And yeah, there was nothing. No heavenly choirs, no pearly gates. I mean, I'm not a supernatural person. I believe that death comes as the end. There was nothing that happened that made me change my mind about that. You have not had a revelation? I have not had any revelation except that there's no revelation to be had. His attacker, the man in black,

was hustled off the stage. In the book, you do not use the attacker's name. Yeah. I thought, you know, I don't want his name in my book. And I don't use it in conversation either. But that is important to you, not to give him space in your brain. Yeah.

He and I had 27 seconds together. You know, that's it. I don't need to give him any more of my time. Paramedics flew Rushdie to a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania, 40 miles away, where a team of doctors battled for eight hours to save his life. When he finally came out of surgery, his wife, Eliza, a poet and novelist, was waiting. He wasn't moving and he was just laid out. He looked half dead to you? Yes, he did. He was a different color. He was cold. I mean, his face was stapled,

just staples holding his face together. Rushdie was on a ventilator, unable to speak. Eliza and the doctors had no idea whether the knife that had penetrated his eye had damaged his brain. Someone from the staff said that we would use this system of wiggling the toes. To communicate? To communicate. Do you remember the first question you asked to get a wiggle? I think I said, Salman, it's Eliza, can you hear me? And there was a wiggle. And I asked him, I think, do you know where you are? And he wiggled.

And it was very basic, simple questions. Because you can't express yourself with any subtlety with your toes. Which is your favorite thing. After 18 days in the hospital and three weeks in rehab, Rushdie was discharged. One of the surgeons who had saved my life said to me, first you were really unlucky and then you were really lucky. I said, what's the lucky part? He said, well, the lucky part is that the man who attacked you had no idea how to kill a man with a knife.

You're not a believer in miracles, but the fact that you survived, you write in the book, is a miracle. This is a contradiction. How does somebody who doesn't believe in the supernatural account for the fact that something has happened which feels like a miracle? I mean, I certainly don't feel that some hand reached down from the skies and guarded me.

But I do think something happened which wasn't supposed to happen. And I have no explanation for it. His attacker was a 24-year-old from New Jersey who lived in his mother's basement. He's believed to be a lone wolf. He's pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and is awaiting trial. In an interview, he told the New York Post he'd only read a couple pages of the satanic verses and seen some clips of Rushdie on YouTube. He said he didn't like him very much because Rushdie had attacked Islam. Does it matter to you what his motive was? I mean, it's interesting to me because it's a mystery.

If I had written a character who knew so little about his proposed victim and yet was willing to commit the crime of murder, my publishers might well say to me that that's under-motivated. You need to develop that character better. Yeah, not enough of a reason, you know, not convincing. But yet that's what he did. Rushdie's knife, his 22nd book, is one he initially did not want to write. That was the last thing I wanted to do. Because you didn't want this to yet again define you?

Yeah. It was very difficult for me after the Satanic Verses was published that the only thing anybody knew about me was this death threat. But it became clear to me that I couldn't write anything else. You had to write this first. I had to write this first. I just thought, you know, I need to focus on, you know, to use the cliche, the elephant in the room. And the moment I thought that, kind of something changed in my head.

And it then became a book I really very much wanted to write. You say the language was my knife. If I had unexpectedly been caught in an unwanted knife fight, maybe this was the knife I could use to fight back, to take charge of what had happened to me, to own it, make it mine. Yeah, I mean, language is a way of breaking open the world. I don't have any other weapons, but I've been using this particular tool for quite a long time. So I thought this was my way of dealing with it. It's been almost two years since the attack, and Rushdie is back home now in New York,

slowly getting used to navigating the world with one eye. How much time did it take to kind of readjust? I'm still doing it. You still are? Yeah. Do you feel like you are a different person after the attack? I don't feel I'm very different, but I do feel that it has left a shadow. I think that shadow is just there.

And some days it's dark and some days it's not. You feel less than you were before? No, I just feel more the presence of death. In an interview almost 25 years ago, you said of the fatwa, I want to find an end to this story. It is the one story I must find an end to. Have you found that ending and an ending to this story as well? Well, I thought I had, and then it turned out I hadn't.

I'm hoping this is just a last twitch of that story. I don't know. I'll let you know. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. I don't know. I'll let you know. every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public Mobile, different is calling. There's the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland, and in the Himalayas, there's the Yeti, the Abominable Snowman. In Tasmania, a teardrop of an island under the eye of the Australian mainland, there's the Thylacine, a creature that brings out folklore and folks, armed with grainy

images, convinced they've seen the thing. But unlike other mythical creatures, the Thylacine, or Tasmanian Tiger, actually indisputably existed. An apex predator the size of a small wolf roamed the island as recently as last century, which gives hope to so many obsessives, dreamers, and true believers looking for the Tasmanian tiger in the bush, and, as you'll see, in the lab. This is a story that says as much about human nature as it does nature nature. Further proof that even in the face of science and logic, passion survives in the wild just fine. You've been doing this how many years now? I've been doing this for over 30 years, and every day's an adventure. All right, here we go. Getting there wasn't easy, but Adrian Richo

Richardson, a retired military man turned self-declared tiger seeker, retraced his steps. Tramping around the dense outback of Tasmania on January 28, 2017, 12.45 p.m, he heard the sound. And then all of a sudden was this mighty howl like this. Oh! I was gobsmacked. The hairs on my arm and my neck stood on end. And as that call finished, another one come from the other side of the forestry track. Another howl like that.

What did that one sound like? Exactly like. Richo craned his neck but saw no creature. Still, he's sure of what it was, a Tasmanian tiger. The whole environment went quiet for about a minute. It was an unbelievable feeling. I just can't explain it. Yeah, you're still emotional talking about this.

Look, I'm going to remember that call for the time I die. And then I had to try and prove to others what I've heard. When he returned to his home in Hobart, Tasmania's capital, he didn't go down to the pub to share his account. No, he took to his desk

and stayed up writing a detailed report, flush with 22 footnotes. What my passion is, it's the thylacine. I know it's there. And this only reinforced your faith? Oh, without a doubt. One slight hitch, one crimp on the barbie, as it were.

The creature Richo described so vividly and breathlessly, it was declared extinct almost 40 years ago. Thought, you know, maybe it's a dingo, maybe it's a wolf. In Tasmania, we do not have anything remotely like it. We do not even have wild dogs in any form. The only feral thing we have around here is deer or cats. I don't think deers are making that noise you just made. No, sir, they did not. The Tasmanian tiger roamed these parts for thousands of years.

More wolf than tiger, it was, is, a marsupial weighing about 55 pounds. The Tasmanian tiger, easily distinguished by his straight, unjointed tail. It was also a carnivore that preyed on farmer's sheep. Recalling the fate of the wolf of the American West around the same time, the local government paid out bounties to hunters presenting carcasses. By the mid-1930s, the Tassie tiger population had dwindled to one, captive at Hobart's Beaumaris Zoo, where it died in 1936. With the required 50 years elapsing without a confirmed sighting, the tiger was put on the extinct list in 1986. Yet, putting the mania in Tasmania, the search became a national obsession.

And the Tasmanian tiger, not the Tasmanian devil, became a sort of local mascot. Its image adorns Tasmania's coat of arms and government buildings. Here's the island's current license plate. At local watering holes, the regulars put down their Tassie tiger beer long enough to tell you they've seen the animal, or know someone who has. I stood there and held the torch on it for 40 seconds, I reckon. When Nick Mooney was a full-time Hobart biologist, it fell to him to investigate the various Tasmanian tiger accounts.

Now in retirement, he's the island's unofficial arbiter. I know several people who've got clusters of cameras in very remote areas, serviced remotely by satellite, and who go and check on the cameras with their own helicopter. All sorts of things. I've moved way beyond the guy with binoculars saying, I think I may have seen something. Oh, absolutely. He can't help notice no one ever quite captures a clear image.

Still, reported sightings come by the thousands. Have you ever gotten a report or ever looked into something that gave you a little pause? Yes. Sometimes people are dead accurate with the times, the places, the distances, and they're very good naturalists. Often don't exaggerate. Like, they take their skills very seriously. And it's very hard to say to those people, I don't think you saw a thylacine. For the devoted army of seekers, the investment isn't just one of hope and time. Each year, Richo spends more than he cares to admit dollars

on trail cam batteries alone. How much money have you sunk into this obsession? Sir, I wouldn't like to speculate, and please don't tell my wife. Make it our secret. That's our secret. She often asks, and I go, don't get your hair done, darling. Can I stop that one? Can I stop that one?

Can you redo that one again? In the bush, we met another enthusiast, Chris Rayburg, who flies down from mainland Australia and approaches the search in the manner of a CSI detective. Apart from the cameras, I gather you've been scouring for prints, fur, even poo? Yeah, everything. So scats. Footprints is a big one. And I found a series of 18, 19 individual steps in a track line that are an excellent

match for Tassie tiger. Not only are they an excellent match, the quality of the prints is pristine. Scats, keep an eye out, check it out. What's the animal been eating? Yeah, and calls if you hear them. There are even tracking collectives. Richo was part of the Booth-Richardson Tiger team. Thank you for joining us on what we believe is a historic day.

Which made worldwide news in 2017 after calling a press conference to announce a sighting. But when they provided this image as proof, Nick Mooney assessed it as a chance, but not an official confirmation. What is the middle ground? You can be right, you can be lying, or you can have an illusion. And there's all sorts of ways that memory can be affected by time. I've had lots of talks with psychiatrists and detectives trying to figure out this. You really often have to make a choice, a personal call in the end. Do you essentially tell them they're wrong and their mind is deceiving them? You can't tell them that because you don't know. Essentially, if you weren't there, you don't know. Richo and all the other seekers won't have to wait long.

They won't even have to go into the bush if a group of tech investors and biologists deliver on their goal. Andrew Pass counts himself among the Tassie tiger transfixed. He comes to the quest, though, armed not with binoculars, but a microscope in his tiger lab. Envision that day when you're not just wearing it on a pin. Yeah, 100%. I think about it all the time, what it would be like to be in that landscape and just to see one walking past in the bush, what it would be like to be in that landscape and just to see one walking past in the bush, an actual one rather than a crappy photograph. Tell us exactly what you're doing.

We can't magically bring the Tasmanian tiger back. We have to start with a living cell and then engineer our thylacine back into existence. So the way you do that is you find the closest living relative to your animal that has gone extinct. And for us, that is a small marsupial species called the fat-tailed dunnart. A developmental biologist at the University of Melbourne, PASC has raised $15 million for a de-extinction project that recalls Jurassic Park. In partnership with American company Colossal Biosciences, which counts, wait for it, Leonardo DiCaprio, Paris Hilton, and even the CIA among its backers. He's adamant he'll replicate

the genome of a dunnard, a mouse-like marsupial, and turn it into a much larger Tassie tiger. We'll let him explain. We examine all of its DNA. We compare that to the DNA of your extinct species, the Tasmanian tiger. And we look at everywhere that those two genomes or those two piles of DNA, if you like, are different. And once you've identified those differences, it's just a matter of then going in and making all of those edits to turn your fat-tailed dunnart genome or cell into a thylacine cell. And you're saying that dunnart, that little field mouse marsupial dunnart, is closer than, say, the Tasmanian devil. But that little dunnart is a ferocious carnivore, even though it's very, very small, and it's a very good surrogate for us to be able to do all of this editing in.

A native of Minnesota, Chris Helgen is director of the Australian Museum Research Institute in Sydney. He understands the push to de-extinct the Tassie tiger. This is one of my favorite mammals. Really? And I love all mammals. I am a mammal guy. This is a special, special animal. He took us upstairs to his lab to show us why. So this is Tasmanian tiger of the 19th century. See the stripes, see the thick tail, see this gaping mouth with the sharp teeth. What do you make of this de-extinction effort with respect to the Tasmanian tiger? You know, I would be the first person to line up to see this animal if it could be somehow brought back from extinction.

That said, Helgen is the skeptic, gently explaining that wishing Tassie tigers were running rampant doesn't overcome science. The idea that you could actually tweak the DNA of this mouth-sized animal into making this apex predator of Australia. It stretches imagination in many different ways. This is an impossible project. We all love optimism. We all love innovation. What they're saying is, we're going to modify the genome of a dunnart to create a genetically modified dunnart that might look a bit more like a thylacine.

Maybe we'll be able to tweak it genetically that might look a bit more like a thylacine. Maybe we'll be able to tweak it genetically and it gets a bit bigger. Maybe we'll be able to tweak it genetically and it has some stripes on it. But there's about a thousand and one steps in between. Hogan has thought about the source of the current Tassie Tiger passion and wonders how much of it is driven by remorse. It's a special symbol about Australia and about what we've lost. We've had a lot of extinctions here in the last 100, 200 years. 30 mammals alone.

So in the United States, only one or two mammal species have disappeared entirely. So why are people taking this seriously and why are people investing so much in this? So many people have the dream, if we could just get this animal back, maybe it would help us think different about extinction or the guilt that we might feel of having removed such a special animal from the planet. Whether, you know, they imagine it might be still hiding in Tasmania or in a lab to be reborn. There's this burning hope. Richo reckons that if his countrymen in the DNA sequencing labs can resurrect a Tassie tiger, good on them. But regardless, he'll continue coming here.

Faith unshaken, he's certain this animal, most famous for being extinct, is not extinct at all. If someone accused you of being obsessed, would you please guilty? Oh, sir, I'll put my hand up to that. Your Honor, I am guilty. You're a Tasmanian tiger obsessive. I am indeed. It's been my love. Why is that?

Why have you continued to search so long for this? I just know it's there. I do. In my own heart, I know it's there. And if it isn't there, well, we say, what's the harm in searching? Coming to the planet's basement, bush bashing this gorgeous terrain, there are worse ways and places to spend your days. Now, the last minute of 60 Minutes. Now, an update on our story from November about the Social Security Administration demanding repayment from people the agency has mistakenly overpaid,

sometimes years or even decades ago. Last month, Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley told a Senate hearing he's making some changes. Many of you probably saw the television journalism piece done by 60 Minutes highlighting the injustice that we do to Americans when, through no fault of their own, we overpay them and then claw back, in a rather brutal and summary way, 100 percent of their check. Social Security will now withhold no more than 10 percent of the monthly payment and make it easier for beneficiaries to request a waiver. I'm Anderson Cooper. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.