Darknet Diaries - 150: mobman 2

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

In Episode 20 of Darknet Diaries, we heard from Greg aka “mobman” who said he created the sub7 malware. Something didn’t sit right with a lot of people about that episode. It’s time to revisit that episode and get to the bottom of things.SponsorsThis show is sponsored by Shopify. Shopify is the best place to go to start or grow your online retail business. And running a growing business means getting the insights you need wherever you are. With Shopify’s single dashboard, you can manage orders, shipping, and payments from anywhere. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/darknet.Support for this show comes from Axonius. The Axonius solution correlates asset data from your existing IT and security solutions to provide an always up-to-date inventory of all devices, users, cloud instances, and SaaS apps, so you can easily identify coverage gaps and automate response actions. Axonius gives IT and security teams the confidence to control complexity by mitigating threats, navigating risk, decreasing incidents, and informing business-level strategy — all while eliminating manual, repetitive tasks. Visit axonius.com/darknet to learn more and try it free.Support for this show comes from ThreatLocker®. ThreatLocker® is a Zero Trust Endpoint Protection Platform that strengthens your infrastructure from the ground up. With ThreatLocker® Allowlisting and Ringfencing™, you gain a more secure approach to blocking exploits of known and unknown vulnerabilities. ThreatLocker® provides Zero Trust control at the kernel level that enables you to allow everything you need and block everything else, including ransomware! Learn more at www.threatlocker.com.Sourceshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDMc2PZM4V4https://www.illmob.org/notmymobman/https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/20

I remember the first time I posted something online. It was a video game guide in the 90s. And there's an internet adage that I think is true. It goes like this. The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer. I posted a guide on how to beat a video game and it immediately got downvoted, mocked, ridiculed,

and I was told to get good. At first I thought they were joking, like I've beaten this game 100 times with this strategy. What are you talking about? Get good. But then after some pushback, they started cluing me in, telling me exactly where my advice was wrong and giving me tips on how to properly do those parts of the game. I was blown away.

What I thought was impossible to do in the game, people were actually doing. Now, dear listener, this experience shaped me for who I am today. If you post something genuinely helpful online and people mock you, that could be the end of you ever posting anything online again. It's enough to ruin your self-confidence and hate everyone online. But I had the opposite reaction. I loved this game and played it thousands of times. They were giving me tips and strategies on how to be way better than my best strategy that I had. And I genuinely wanted to be way better. Not only that, I got to make friends with other people who were really passionate about this game. It was an amazing experience. Fast forward to today.

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Support for this show comes from Black Hills Information Security. This is a company that does penetration testing, incident response, and active monitoring to help keep businesses secure. I know a few people who work over there, and I can vouch they do very good work. If you want to improve the security of your organization, give them a call. I'm sure they can help. But the founder of the company, John Strand, is a teacher. And he's made it a mission to make Black Hills Information Security world-class in security training. You can learn things like penetration

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and find links to their webcasts to get some world-class training. That's blackhillsinfosec.com. blackhillsfosec.com. BlackHillsInfosec.com. Over the years, one episode I've published has haunted me. Episode 20 called Mob Man. Take a listen to this short clip of it. I made this Sub 7.

It's a remote access tool, and it was a Trojan horse virus. He built a program that would allow him to take control of another computer. You could open and close the CD-ROM. You could flip the screen. You could hide the start button. You could move the mouse on their screen and, you know, click

around. You could open up their C drive, change their wallpaper. This is an episode where I interviewed a guy named Greg, who went by the name Mob Man, who claimed to have made the Sub 7 malware back in the 90s. The episode haunts me because I have received numerous comments that listeners don't believe he's the guy who created Sub 7. For instance, there's a Reddit post where someone said, I just started listening to Mob Man this afternoon and couldn't finish it.

I just don't believe this guy made Sub-7 or could have created a rat at all. It's not just his attitude or personality. It just seems as if he only has a cursory knowledge of any of the technology used. Multiple times throughout the interview, something he said just didn't quite make sense or didn't match up with what I remember from that time period. Then some other commenter said, I had the same impression too. And someone else said, he's fakey wakey. And then someone else said, I remember the creator was Romanian and that guy is not Romanian.

I fact check my guests as best I can. But I do most of the research and writing for this show. And I can only check so much. Before publishing that episode, I spoke to some people research and writing for this show, and I can only check so much. Before publishing that episode, I spoke to some people who knew Greg personally from Tampa, where he's from, and they told me he's legit. On top of that, he was featured in a Rolling Stone magazine article saying he's the one who created Sub7.

I figured Rolling Stone would do some fact-checking themselves, right? And also, Greg offered to show me the source code for Sub7, and he demonstrated how he has control over the Sub7 domain name. So I just show this to people who didn't buy the story. But as I listened to people and read more theories about this, it started to make me think, maybe they're right. Maybe I interviewed the wrong person. See, I interviewed a guy named Greg who goes by Mobman,

and on every version of Sub 7, it was created by someone calling themselves Mob Man. So I was starting to think, wait, if Greg didn't make Sub 7, then are there two Mob Men out there? If so, where's the second one? Somewhere around 2004, the Sub 7 creator, Mob Man, disappeared. And Greg just so happened to get arrested the same time too. And so he says, that's why he disappeared. So did two mob men disappear at the same time? If there are two, then Greg is the only one who came back as mob man. The other mob man is still out there somewhere. Well, a guy named Ill Will took it upon himself to find the real mob man. And he spent years hunting through the internet looking for him.

And eventually found a clue which led him to a potential email address used by the real mob man. He emailed him and sure enough, he said, yeah, I'm the one who created Sub 7. You found me. And I got connected with this mob man to hear the story. Hello, hello. Hi. Very punctual. Read a 12 on the dot.

Yeah, why not? Now, you have the tag here, mob man, here in our call. I do. Is that your nickname? Yes. When did you start using that? 1999. I do. Yes. When did you start using that?

1999, I want to say. And what is the meaning of it? It comes from a Romanian rap band called BUG Mafia. It's Bucharest Underground Mafia. That's their name. I's a Bucharest underground mafia. That's their name. I'm a big fan of them. And when I was thinking coming up with a new nickname, it just had a nice ring to it.

Mobman, you know? Yeah, yeah, I like it. Yeah. It's a trip, you know, to get here because for the last six years, I've known Mob Man to be a different guy. I'm aware. And now I feel like I've met a new Mob Man. So let's go back to the 90s.

What was your early experience with just cybersecurity? It wasn't really a hacking thing. It was more of a programming thing. I taught myself to program when I was very little. I did a whole bunch of little games. This was back when I was still in Romania. So in 97, moved to Canada with the whole family. Then I found out about Delphi.

I wanted to start learning in Delphi. So I just happened to pick a rat to work on. Basically, yeah. That was it. That's how everything started. And so, the story goes, Sub-7 was born. Yeah. Well, it all stemmed from Netbus, right? It preceded Sub-7 was born. Yeah. Well, it all stemmed from Netbus, right? That was, it preceded Sub-7.

It was one of the original remote, one of the original Trojans. It was called Netbus. So I played around with that a little bit, and that's kind of what inspired me to create something similar. What did Netbus do? It was the same thing, a remote access Trojan, a rat.

It had a little UI and a server. You would send somebody and then connect to them. So that's kind of what I was trying to emulate when I started. And then after I got a couple of features going, I packaged it up and uploaded it to a hacking site. That started picking up steam. I had my contact details on there. And people started sending me emails, contacting me, oh, can you add this? Can you add this? Can you add this? So that's kind of how it grew from there. I was like, hmm, I wonder

if I can do this in Delphi. So I would look into it, do some research, see if I can find it out. And if it was possible, I would just do it. If you created this as like a coding challenge, did you ever feel bad when people used it for malicious purposes?

It was all fun. At the beginning and for the first many versions, it was all just fun. Having fun with people, you know, playing tricks on them, pranks and things like that. That was the whole motivation behind it and everything else.

But then started hearing all these stories about people using it for malicious purposes. Always in the back of my mind was sort of like, well, there's many of these tools available. They just happened to pick the one I made. They would have just picked a different one if it wasn't for Sub7. So I mean, it's part of why I left, I guess, in the end. I wanted to get into something else, some sort of different. Throughout the whole thing, I was always tagged as a hacker, but I was just a programmer. I was trying to learn to program. The thing is, as this tool began getting popular,

it started to be used more and more in criminal activity, using it to take over someone's computer. You can see exactly what they're doing on it. Or you could steal their files or session cookies or wipe their computer and delete everything. The problem is, creators of malware have sometimes been arrested just for creating it, not even doing anything bad with it. Because those creators were knowingly creating tools or weapons for criminals to do crimes with. Sub-7's official reason for existence was to prank people.

It was for jokes and stuff. You know, some of the most popular features in it were the ones just for fun, like the Matrix one. You just turn your whole screen black and you type letters one by one. It was basically a chat, but you couldn't get out of it. You couldn't do anything. You would just chat back and forth with whoever was on the other end. But as it started being used for more malicious reasons, that's when Mob Man decided to leave the scene and basically not look back. He went on to programming and leaving the name Mob Man in the past too. The very first time I heard about

somebody impersonating my name and taking credit for all this stuff was stemmed from your podcast. I had a local friend, Sebastian, we call him Seta, that is a big fan of your podcast and heard that you had an interview with Mobman. Obviously, he knew who that was, you know, and was looking forward to listening to it and listen to it.

And he's like, what is this? Who is this guy? He sent me a message. He's like, yo, I listened to the podcast expecting you. And there's this other guy talking about some random stuff. I don't know what's going on. That's how I found out first. And then a couple of months later, Ilwil contacted me. He's the one that started the whole process. He sent me a little zip file with a couple of details about me. He had a picture of my car. And he was like, the password for the zip file is your full name. So if it's really you, then you should be able to open it. He's like, I'm'm 99 sure that it's you that i've

traced you there and i replied i said well you're right you can be 100 sure now and he was the one that kind of not convinced me because i was a little bit indifferent right like i this was a long time ago i don't know if i really want to get back into any of that but he made a good point like a lot of people have made their start with this, you know. And it's not right to have somebody else take the credit. Like history should be set straight. So let's set the record straight. This is the real mob man, the actual creator of Sub7.

But even though this real mob man heard my interview with another mob man, he still didn't want to contact me to fix it. Because the whole thing was I didn't want to publicly say who I was. I didn't want to publicly admit all this stuff. And why was that? I don't know. I don't know. After a really, really long time, it didn't really make any sense to still stay hidden.

Yeah, I mean, it makes sense of what you were saying a minute ago, which was like, I was young when I did that. I'm done with that. I don't want to be part of that. I don't want to revisit that. I can see there's a lot of reasons. What I was worried was like,

oh yeah, some people did some awful things with that and the FBI is looking for me. I think people started getting in trouble for making tools like that at that point. Like you said, you know, like just for making them, not for actually using them. So that contributed to like, I need to get out of here. Yeah. And did you get any heat from law enforcement?

No. No, I didn't. Because you had your email there and I could see somebody being like, all right, we got to put an end to this guy. Yeah. No, no, I didn't know. Because you had your email there and I could see somebody being like, all right, we got to put an end to this guy. Yeah, no, no. I never got into any actual trouble or heard of anything. But I kept everything private, like everything. Nobody knew my name, even the people that are closest to me, closest to me in the scene, like part of the crew and things like that. Nobody actually knew.

They knew the city I was in. The very first version said the city I was in. It said from Windsor, Ontario. Okay, this makes sense. This is a tool that while, yeah, has started a lot of cybersecurity careers, has also caused a lot of damage. And with people like Marcus Hutchins being arrested like three years after creating some malware, it makes sense for the real mob man to let someone else take credit since it'll allow him to stay hidden in

real life. He has a bunch of family and stuff and just wants it all behind him. But after looking through Illwill's research and speaking with this mob man for an hour, I'm convinced this is him. Wow. Six years after posting the episode, we finally discover the truth. And now we can lay it all to rest. But there's still something that's bugging me. Why would Greg pose as Mob Man all these years? We're going to take a quick break, but stay with us because when we come back, I'm calling Greg. This episode is sponsored by SpyCloud. With major breaches and cyber attacks making the news daily, taking action on your company's exposure is more important than ever. I recently visited SpyCloud.com to check my darknet exposure

and was surprised by just how much stolen identity data criminals have at their disposal, from credentials to cookies to PII. Knowing what's putting you and your organization at risk Thank you. and criminals' ability to profit from stolen data. With SpyCloud, a leader in identity threat protection, you're never in the dark about your company's exposure from third-party breaches, successful phishes, or info-stealer infections. Get your free Darknet exposure report at spycloud.com slash darknetdiaries. The website is spycloud.com slash darknetdiaries.

Okay, time to call Greg, a.k.a. Mob Man. Hey, you there? Yeah, I'm here. Oh, hey, man. How have you been? Pretty good. Just busy working and sleeping and doing kid stuff. The story of Sub-7 has been researched more thoroughly since you have appeared on my podcast. And it just wasn't adding up for some people. And I was put in contact with the original author of Sub-7.

A Romanian fella named Mobban. Okay. So, I mean, clearly, at this point, I'm believing that he's the one who created it, right? And so now I'm wondering, well, hold on. You're the one who said you created Sub-7. What's going on here? Right. well, hold on, you're the one who said you created Sub-7. What's going on here? Right, so you introduced him through, I'm assuming, Will.

Yep, Will Will. So they all made a person. Did you check his ID or anything? But yeah, he seemed to be able to produce some evidence, right? So, I mean, I have a lot of that stuff, too. And I showed it to a couple

other people that I know in my inner circles. So, are we talking about the same sub-seven, though? Because this conflicting story is just not going to work for me. I've gotta have like a source of truth here neil wills claims on his website we could go to right you put in my man it comes up in the google searches and there's all kinds of claims on that website it's like it's reaching for straws every little thing and then after you know years, he finally gets enough straws to put together a whole fake persona or whatever he's doing for this other mob man person.

My God, Greg is doubling down. He's saying he's the real mob man. And this other guy is a made up persona. All right. And then what about the Gmail account and the domain name? Okay, go ahead. Tell me. Well, does this other person have access to it or run it?

To the Gmail account and domain name? Yeah. That's hard-coded into the source code. And you're saying you do? I do. Okay. And then you can see the do? I do. Okay. And then you can see the registration dates on them and stuff and how it aligns with all the times that have ever been

kind of changed. Yeah. So maybe we get this other dude and me together. Alright, I'll see if I can. You'd be wanting to talk with him. Will you get Illwill on the call too? I'd rather not talk with Illwill. I mean see if I can. You'd be wanting to talk with them. Illwill on the call too? I'd rather not talk with Illwill. I mean, I think, you know, and quite honestly, you know, I try not to even talk about the subset or even anything that I've done in the past. But they got all these laws and computer laws and shit nowadays.

It's like I don't want them to go retroactively and find some crap to get me even more in trouble. I'd like to meet the guy. Whatever. And then we can see. We can get to the bottom of it. Alright. Alright. I'll see what I can do.

Thanks for this call. I'll keep in touch alright bye bye we got two mob men here now this is crazy I need some answers though I went back to the other mob man I was like hey can we do a call with both of you

and he's like yeah let's do it so we did the call and I'll just play for you the conversation, mostly unedited. Hello. Hey, what's up? Hello. So I hit record already because this is such an epic call. I've never had two people of the same name on my podcast at the same time.

There was nobody else named Jack? Honestly, as I was chatting with both of you, I was getting confused on who's who. When? Oh. Just because you're both named Marban. Oh, I know it sucks because I'll be like trying to play video games and I'll sign up and I'll put my name in there and then I'll see it's taken. It's like, who the hell made that?

Well, now today you get to meet the person who made it. Yeah. Well, I don't know if he plays games. The one with the Romanian accent is the real one just to set that up front. So do you play video games? Like Call of Duty or something? Who are you asking? I'm not here to socialize dude. Okay, so yes. Let's get into it. What are we here for? I'm not here to socialize, dude.

Okay, so yes. Let's get into it. What are we here for? We are here to discover. It's not so much the name, right? People reuse names. There's a lot of Jacks in the world. I'm not worried about my name being reused or probably Mob Man has been reused before.

But the question at hand here is the creation of Sub-seven is being claimed by both of you. And the tricky part here is neither of you really want to claim it because it's like, hey, man, that's kind of a sensitive subject. I don't really want to put my face in front of that thing because it has been used for purposes that maybe you don't want to claim or whatever. And so it is a tricky subject to try to navigate. But here is the situation where I'm trying to explain what this tool is, and I'm getting confused on who actually made it.

Well, a few people made different versions of it. No, they did not. Only one person made all the versions. Oh, yeah. Go into every single version that was released into the credit screen. And on the programmer, there's only one name ever. There's also multiple Romanian quotes from BUG Mafia. It's quite obvious that the author is fucking Romanian.

Not some great guy from Florida, really. Why was there only one programmer of this app? Because it was just me doing everything. The whole source, I was in possession of it the whole time.

Why is that? Today you have GitHub and it wasn't the same back in the 90s, but with GitHub people at the old time. Why is that? I mean, today you have GitHub and it wasn't the same back in the 90s. But with GitHub, people can contribute and help out. You didn't want other people to help out. You didn't want to share the source code. Why was that?

It's because it was a mess. I learned Delphi by working on Sub7. It was my very first project. It was spaghetti code. That was the main reason it wasn't shared. And every single version was dedicated to BUG Mafia. How do you explain that, Greg?

So I found these YouTube videos and people made something called Sub7, S-A-T. And then I know I think... How is this related to Sub7? Read101 made something. And then John and then I know I think Reed 101 made something

and then John he made some too this was at the very end after I left the scene there was one version released by Reed 101 that's what you're bringing up? I don't know how do you explain

the UG Mafia in the credits? Can you answer the question? The band? Because they're... Yeah, the band. The Romanian hip-hop band that was mentioned in every single release. It's the band where the nickname Mob Man comes from. How do you explain that?

Let me pull up the videos of... We used to listen to. Videos of what? In 1999, first version that does mention it, BUG Mafia didn't even have any songs online, man. I brought tapes with me from Romania.

They were only on tape. You could not have heard of them on the internet in 1999 when this was put into the about credits. They were. It just doesn't make sense, man. Like everything. You mentioned that you made it for some Ultima Online things, like to steal credits or something.

What was the story, Jack? Because he mentioned it on your podcast. Yeah, just to mess with his friends, it sounds like to me. It was all an Ultima Online thing. You would find traces of it looking up Ultima Online EXE or INI or something. You could open it up because the server opens up files, and you can find those file names if you open the exe in like a text editor so you'd find like it had a method where it would modify

win.ini to to start up so you could find that reference in the exe there if none of the versions have any sort of reference to any Ultima online things files or exes or program names or like the stuff that you

came up with doesn't make any goddamn sense, man. I'm surprised that it lasted this long, honestly. I'm surprised you were able to push it for this long. And the master passcode? The master passcode has my birthday in it. That's another one. It has my birthday in it. Are you another one. It has my birthday in it. Are you born in October 15, 1980?

How do we know that that's your birthday? I'll send you a picture of my driver's license. I want to hold up my driver's license too because it says the same thing. I highly doubt that it says that. I doubt that you's true. I doubt that you were born on October 15, 1980.

You show me a picture. It's in my arrest record and everything too. But I can put the ID up. Oh, is that what started the whole thing? The whole stealing the identity because the birthdays matched?

Well, then how would I know that that's your birthday? Because it was mentioned. It's on the Sub-7 Wiki, man. It was a known fact. Right. The Wikipedia gets changed like every other month. Okay.

And I'm mostly the one correcting it. So on the official Sub7 website, there were multiple references to Romania and Craiova, the city where I'm from. How do you explain those? No, no. I was still on the birthday.

This is related to the birthday. I'm just going back to the Romanian thing. Like, there's multiple verses in Romanian This is related to the birthday. I'm just going back to the Romanian thing. There's multiple verses in Romanian in the about screens, in a couple of the different versions. When you hit the about and the help, yeah. It's obviously a Romanian that made it. That's some great guy from Florida. From the Canada? I made it. That's some great guy from Florida. Again.

From Canada? And also, yeah, speaking of which, the first five or six versions, the first thing that the abouts credit said was from Windsor, Ontario. Were you ever in Windsor, Ontario? Do you see these credits on the on the software? Yeah, you can get any of the any of the versions, download any of the old

versions. There's multiple this 1250. Do you have them all? Every single one, you can go to the About screen. Yeah. And the first five or six say from Windsor, Ontario, dedicated to BUG Mafia. And some of them have quotes in Romanian. Yeah, they all say that, yes, for the BUG. Have you ever been to Windsor, Ontario? No.

I haven't been to Canada. Then how do you explain that? They don't let me go to Canada. I know they don't because you have a record. How do you explain that then in the credits? You can't, dude. You can't. You can't come up with bullshit fast enough.

I'm missing the Euros for this, you know. You're what? You're wasting Euros for this? I'm missing the Euro 2024. It's a long game. You'll be alright. I'm missing the Euro 2024 soccer game. It's a long game. You'll be alright.

I'm just kidding. Romania played yesterday. I didn't even know there was a soccer game going on. Greg, how did you get into Delphi? Just learning programming, right? It's one of the languages that were just hanging out. It had a GUI instead of just that you could make

menus and stuff like that. What does all the Delphi programs, what do they start with? What does the function start and end with? What does the Delphi function start and end with if you're such a good programmer?

The functions? Yeah. What's the header thing? A function. What's the first thing you do after the function? What is the beginning and the end of the block of code? How is that denoted in Delphi? No. How do you define the beginning and the end of a function?

You know in C you have the curly brackets? What do you have in Delphi? Like Jack, this is ridiculous man. I doubt this guy even touched Delphi. So are you talking about like the semicolon ending all the functions at the end or like the question mark or whatever for like PHP or you know when you

start it, to call it. So let's say you define a function, right? You type the word function and then you put the function name, yeah. Then what's on the next line? You begin, you end, you do stuff. That's what I was looking for, man. The beginning and the end.

Okay. I mean, I don't know. It just sounds pretty basic. That's what I mean. So you don't even know basic stuff, man. I didn't know that you were asking something. So I was trying to figure out what exactly you're asking. I doubt you actually're asking something. I was trying to figure out what exactly you're asking. I doubt you actually program.

Well, how about we program something in live time? We got the euro to get back to. We don't want to be spending our time programming here. Exactly. Just get back to facts. We're not sure of proof. Actual proof of something. So, Greg, what is your proof

that you're the creator of Sub7? I don't have any proof. I'm going to let it go. Of course you don't. I have notes. I have multiple backup CDs that I burnt with multiple stages of the source. I have a hoodie that I used to sell back then in the

store. I took pictures of it. I have the source code. I have multiple proof took pictures of it. I have the source code. I have multiple proofs. I have the source code as well. I have multiple copies of it on backup CDs and stuff that basically I don't even think no longer even work. I don't even have a CD drive anymore. I was able to pull all of them out.

I was able to pull them out too, like 10 years ago and show it to people. Did you show it to anyone right now? Well, not right now because I'm on a call right now with you guys. And it's not in person. No, but like come up with the actual proof, man. We have the whole source. We have the source, yes. And I posted it.

You're claiming that. You're not showing it. It's been on my GitHub for several years. Where? On my GitHub. At this point, you're just bullshitting. Because there's no GitHub. There's no source.

Or if there is, it's definitely not a sub-7 source. Okay. It's zero-zero proof. It's all talk. I have multiple things that I've put out there. I gave them all to Illwill and he posted them on his Twitter. There's notes. There's little handwritten notes with ideas in because I worked on this like four years.

I put a lot of hard work into it. This wasn't just some script to fucking steal Ultima Online credit. Like, really, dude? So, Greg, you were telling me that you have control of the domain, Sub7Crew. That's the only actual proof he came forward. And that was never actually owned by the real mob man. Never.

It's not documented anywhere. I never owned any domains back then because I was trying to stay anonymous. Everybody else was buying them. So all he did is he bought an expired domain. So in the credits also, there's a Gmail account as well. There's no Gmail account in the versions that I released. So where did Gmail come out in? In like 2004?

Something like that. So sub-7 in the 90s would not have, Gmail didn't exist. No, no. So we're talking about later versions at some point. It's a pretty long con, I'll give you that. It's what, a decade now? It's been longer than a decade, right?

Going to places and stuff. How long has it been? It's been longer than a decade, right? How long has it been? It's hilarious. I feel sorry for you, man. Your biggest accomplishment is impersonating somebody else. I feel sorry for you. I wouldn't think of anything of it as accomplishments

nor even riding a rat back then, right? Like, I don't even tell pretty much anybody in person or any of that stuff. Oh, is that why you go to all the conferences saying you're a mob man? You don't even tell anyone?

I don't, because a lot of people don't even know. It has pictures of you at DEFCONs, multiple DEFCONs. When you're going around with mob man and telling everybody you made Sub-7, but now you're saying you don't tell people. Come on. Just come out with it.

You know you are, no? Come on. Well, like I said at the beginning, it's tricky because... It's not tricky, Jack. Who wants to say that they're the creator of this? I'm saying it right now. I'm coming out and saying it. All right, they're the creator of this. I'm saying it right now. I'm coming out and saying,

you're the creator. This guy's unknown. Be careful around Will then. When he got arrested and stuff and a few other people got in trouble taking down around him. How is this related?

Don't change the subject. I try not to make any absolute proof that can be used anywhere. So it's fine. I'm happy with saying I'm not.

Because I don't even care. So you have been coming out and saying the truth. Are you going to stop going to places and claiming you're a mob man? That's all we do. I've been saying I'm a mob man for the past... I'm trying to think how many years. You can say you're a mob man,

just not the one that made Sub-7. Big difference. How many years now? Huge difference. I'm trying to count. History needs to be set straight. 97, 95. I appreciate you, Jack, for doing this right now.

24. He's still doing the math. Greg, listen. He's saying you can continue using MobMan. You can have multiple people saying the same name. People keep taking it. Other Call of Duty users can

use it too. That's not a copyrighted name. But he's asking you to stop claiming that you're the creator of Sub-7. Exactly. Can we agree on that? Come on. You know you want. You've been living a lie. I don't claim it

in person anymore to anybody. I don't even it in person anymore to anybody. I don't even claim that at all. So that's easy to do. We can do that. If anybody, like for the listeners out there, right? Like if you think you can like challenge me or anything like that, or if you knew me from back in the day, just send a message.

We'll talk it out. I'm not hiding anything. I can show all the stuff that i talked about you know the cds i i still have the hoodie i can put in pictures i can you know meet you up if you come over here i'm still in windsor still in windsor ontario you know if you're ever around uh Detroit, it's right across the river. I'm confused if you're asking to fight someone or if you're asking to prove that you're the real mob man. To prove, to see the proof, right? To see the proof. If anybody wants to challenge me in any way or wants to actually see all this stuff that I'm talking about, I didn't think you were going to show up, honestly. Really, what could you have said?

Why wouldn't I show up? Because you're being outed. Because you're being outed for how much bullshit you've been spewing. Why would I care if somebody disputes it or not? They've been disputing it for like a decade. Because they saw through your bullshit.

And then, yeah, it took them a decade to get all the the bullshit together to like call me out of the from something from 30 years ago that I don't even care about

for something you don't care about you sure as hell spent a lot of time and effort this isn't just some some fad how much time and effort do you think

this is a decade do you do you like do you monitor my social medias or something? Well, I mean, personally, I don't like you telling me that you did something that you didn't do. That looks bad for me and my show and my

credibility. Exactly. You've been going around giving interviews as the author of Sub 7. How is that not effort put into it? You've been going to DEF CON conferences. It's a long-running con, man. And the reason why I believed it is because of that damn Rolling Stone article saying that you were.

Yeah, nobody faults you for this. Rolling Stone must have fact-checked it. So I think this must be legit. Well, so that's when the source code was. So I had the source code back then on whatever computer I was using. You're really going with this, man? Like, really? What source code?

Why do you keep going back to it? I thought we agreed on you're not going to claim that no more. Well, do you want me to explain the story? What are you still trying to prove? What happened and how I was able to prove it? You said sub-7 source, so I'm not going to let you bullshit right now because that's not the sub-7 source. That has never left my hands until it was released by Illwill on GitHub.

Never. You'll not find a copy of it anywhere in the world. On any website, on any backup except the ones I have so like as soon as you said sub-7 source, like no dude, stop you gotta stop I want to hear how you got the

the Rolling Stone article you were about to say something about how all that started right so we sat down in a room The Rolling Stone article. You were about to say something about how all that started. Right. So we sat down in a room and I had my laptop, opened it up, pulled up the source code of it, compiled it, and showed it around and showed the hash match, the ones that you can download from the website, and all that.

Was involved in any way back then. What happened to you during those years? Were you arrested too? It was all bullshit if listened to you in any way. Our conversation began getting circular and we started talking over each other at that point and so

I ended the call. But I think we got a half-assed confession out of Greg, didn't we? He said he'd stop saying he's the author of Sub 7 and we'll let it-assed confession out of Greg, didn't we? He said he'd stop saying he's the author of Sub 7 and we'll let it go. It was hard to hear that, but he did say that. So I think that's the best I'm going to get from him. And I'll have to take that. Oh, and I looked up Greg's birthday on his arrest record and it shows October 27th, not October 15th, like he said a moment ago. But honestly, I'm not too upset about this. In fact, I knew this would happen eventually.

I grew up in the same culture as these guys, right? On IRC, downloading viruses, pranking people with tools. I remember once I was in a computer class, and the teacher had his computer connected to a projector, which was projecting on the front of the class. And I sent a network message to his machine, which made a pop-up show for the whole class. It was epic for a teenager.

And one thing I know about this culture is just how much hackers like to mess with the press. Cult of the Dead Cow, in particular, learned that the press will publish just about anything that a hacker says. If you're in a hacker group and you say, oh, we hacked NASA, the press will just take your word for it and publish it.

So they started creating all these wild claims to see how far the news would just spread just to mess with everyone. And later on, 4chan picked up on this too, trying to get fake news to spread also. So this culture is just big on simply messing with the media. And it's partly just to show how crappy the media is for getting it wrong and how gullible people are. I mean, look at the whole birds aren't real movement, right? I'm sure you've heard someone say that birds aren't real. That whole thing was just created to prove how conspiracy theories and misinformation is so easily spread. So I know the people I talk to, hackers, are known for giving misinformation, which means I have to

be allergic to conspiracy theories in order to navigate this effectively and to bring you the most factual podcast I can. And to do that, I have to really know my history and understanding of tech and the scene to be ready for anything coming my way. So I guess I'm saying I'm not surprised that someone at some point pulled one over on me.

But man, this was quite a long con, wasn't it? I mean, this is elaborate to have your friends watch for you and to have all this proof that you were the creator of Sub7. Wow. I'm more impressed than I'm mad at this point. Greg messaged me after that call

and wanted another call with me. He wanted to apologize to me if he caused any problems. And I started to record the call. And it's no disrespect to you or anybody else that I've, you know, if they felt hurt or betrayed or lied to or whatever,

you know, it's nothing personal. It's none of that. You know, like I was telling you, I respect your craft and everything. And it's good that you actually, you know, dug it up. You know, as I was going through all this stuff with you, the other way,

you know, I'm thinking of all this stuff. I'm like, man, if I actually reflect back and look at like all the shit that the stupid sub seven story that I done, I mean, I went,

I went to capital one. I went to Facebook. I went to these businesses like to interview. And on the impression of, oh, this guy wrote Sub 7. Let's interview him. Let's fly him up here to Virginia at our headquarters, give him a badge, bring him in, interview him, and do all this stuff with him. So in a nutshell, it's pretty good social fucking engineering to get all the way to do that. I mean, into one of the biggest financial institutes.

That's true. So I think of things like that, right? And then using that variety where these kids that are coming out or whoever, right? And they listen. They heed my advice. Don't screw up your life like I do. That's a great way to end this whole episode.

Don't be like my man. Not my fake man. A big thanks to Ill Will, the real Mon Man, and Greg for being good sports and taking us on this wild adventure. This episode was created by me, Mr. Packet Loss, Jack Recider. Our editor is the infinite loop lover, Tristan Ledger.

Mixing done by Proximity Sound and our intro music is by the mysterious Brickmaster Cylinder. Why do server rooms often have raised floors? So that technicians can get under the server rack and get to the root of the problem. This is Darknet Diaries.