Hacked - Halloween with Darknet Diaries' Jack Rhysider

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

We celebrate the spooky season with Jack Rhysider, creator of the fantastic show Darknet Diaries. We discuss telling unsettling stories, how the way we use technology reveals stuff about us, and some of our favourite episodes of his show. Also! We have merch! Check out shop.hackedpodcast.com to buy some swag and support the show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

storytelling is such a powerful thing. Like I can trigger dopamine's in your head. I can trigger oxytocin. I can trigger all kinds of different chemicals. Just boom, your head now has chemicals in it. And it's interesting when you bring this one up. Like, why do people like feeling unsettled? Yeah, I mean, I feel like a cliffhanger releases there's a chemical for it

where you're on the edge of your seat and you're interested. And you're like, I want to know what's next. I can't you can't you can't you cannot turn it off right here I want to know right yeah and so you're glued to it and there's something that's like in our brain that's triggering chemicals that's like give me more and sometimes that and unsettling stuff is like I need this to resolve I need this to feel like it's good again I can't have the world be this out of control I need things to be normal and and put back into place so I think there might just be uh something in our brain like just as a real chemical level of like get it back together man don't let it unravel happy spooky season scott

happy Halloween jordan who uh we got a fun one this episode who who do we have on this episode scott people have people might already know they've heard the intro but for anyone that is unfamiliar with his work who do we got this episode we have we have someone that you know probably none of our listeners have heard about he he runs he runs a small podcast Small upstart A small upstarted podcast called Darknet Diaries. I'm not sure if you've heard of it.

His name's Jack Reisider. Might ring a bell. He's new, but he's good. We got Jack Resider, creator of Darknet Diaries. If you listen to this show, you almost certainly listen to Jack's. Darknet Diaries is a brilliantly produced

narrative and journalistic show about the dark side of the internet. I'm going to avoid any more back padding than we do in the show. because there's a lot. But suffice it to say it's essential listening and you should definitely be listening to Darkness. If you are not currently.

Yes, yes. He was a blast to have on, really great guy. You can tell his love of the art of podcasting. And you can tell that via his episodes and how well produced his podcast is. And we hope to have him back sooner than later. It was really great getting to hang with him. So it was really good.

Great conversation. Yeah, celebrate the spookiest time of the year with your hopefully, I hope two of your favorite spooky tech shows. We're just happy to have you there. But before we get to our conversation with Darknet Diaries, Jack Recyter, I think we have a fun. Well, we got a couple announcements, don't we? I do. Yeah, we got at least two of them. At least two of them.

At least two. I'm going to go first and say, Hotlinehacked.com. We've already got a few submissions. We're loving it. It seems that people love the concept. So please, if you've got great stories about, you know, something you've done, something you've been a part of, something you've seen,

please give us a shout, send us an email, let us know, hotlinehack.com. Very excited about this concept. Yeah, it's been cool getting to hear this stuff. Like we talked about cybercrimes. talked about little stuff, like just little strange tales of tech and little hacks and things you've cooked up over the years. And some of the early stuff we've gotten covers the whole gamut. So I'm pretty pumped. Yeah, I just want to hear more. I just like listening to them. So please send it in. Totally. If you'd like to talk about it on the show or even just to hear it,

please send it in. We'd love to hear it. I think the fact that we like listening to these things 100% should imply that it will make a great. episodes. So I'm excited and passionate about it. I can't wait. Okay. Hotline hacked. And then the other thing we got to talk about before we get to our chat with Jack is. It's hat time. We, it's it's mug city. We have merch. We have a merch store. We have a merch store. It is not mug city. It is, it probably will be shop.h.hackpodcast.com restore or both. Dot hackpodcast.com.

Yeah. The URL will be in the episode description. We'll post it on Twitter and the Discord. We just literally don't have the URL figured out at the moment of recording, but it will be, if you are listening to this, you can buy hacked merch. You can buy, you can buy dad hats, five panel hats, bucket hats. We haven't done a beanie. We should do a beanie.

Winter is quickly coming for those of us that live, you know, in the north. we should definitely do a beanie. And then we have my favorite product, which is the visor in a late 90s, early 2000s throwback. I can't see a world where the visor doesn't make another comeback. Even there's like a novelty hat among niche groups, like golfers. Sure. Ironic.

Yeah, ironic visors. You got to tilt them. You got to do that like. trucker cap von dutch era shit 45 degree angle hat precariously perched on top of your head it's going to be a thing like get on it it's getting cold you need a mug

you got to carry around cocoa and something and why not get our logo in cool asky design because we'll sell you one you can also drink that cocoa while wearing a hacked t-shirt and maybe a hacked hoodie over top of that we are not making

any hacked jackets as, you know, that's just too much. But I think hoodie, the hoodie is the basis of a merch store. And we will have hoodies. So there will be hoodies. We're going to have hoodies. There will be t-shirts. There will be hats. There will be coffee mugs.

And there might be a beanie. Let's see. Who knows? We'll all find out together. Find the link to that. I'm sure it'll be on our Patreon. It'll be in the episode description. Look at us go.

We got a hotline. We got merch. Wow. Coming up in the world. We are in our spring, as one of my old friends would say. Okay. We got hotlines, we got merch, and we got a conversation, a very spooktacular Halloween conversation with Darknet Diaries, Jack Recyter to get to.

This was a real fun one. And again, our thanks to Jack for coming on the show. Absolutely. I think if there's nothing else, we'll, we're going to go to that conversation. We'll catch you on the other side. Take care, everybody. Happy Halloween. Jack Reesider from Darknet Diaries.

Welcome to Hacked. Happy Halloween. Thank you for having me. Happy Halloween. It's such a crazy thing to be here. Can I explain for a second? Sure. Please. When I was first starting my show, was like six years ago, I had this idea of, okay, I want a

podcast where we're going to dive into like the drama of hacker stories, like true crime meets cyber crime kind of stuff. stuff. And I was like, surely there's a show out there that's already doing this. And I found your show. Hacked was there. And I was like, oh, this is great. This is exactly it. This is good. Okay, I don't need to make my show. I found the show I want. And I think you had like five episodes and then you stopped making it. And I was like, no, I need more. I need like 100 episodes of this wife. And I reached out to you then. And I was like, what happened? But you were just gone. You just like disappeared. Really? I wonder if we can find your

email in our inboxes. I didn't know you reached out to us. That's crazy. Yeah, I was like, what happened? I need more. I'm kind of glad we did bail because that means in a small way that you made Darknet Diaries and it's some of my favorite stuff in this world. Like you figured out how to tell these stories so beautifully.

Yeah, I was like, crap, I got to do this myself. So there you are. That's awesome. That's a great story. Do you know what happened and why we were on and off? Did you ever? Yeah. So we originally, like we put out like whatever it was four or five episodes and then boom,

we got contacted by multiple production companies to make a TV show out of it. So that we were in the rights of negotiating rights with channels and stuff. So we actually stopped making it as a, I don't know why, realistically why we stopped, but we stopped essentially to figure out the deal. And then we could make the new content under the TV deal. And then that all fell through like eight months later. and we just kind of lost, I don't know, lost the passion. Motivation almost, yeah.

I'm glad you're back. I'm glad you're back. Well, we're glad to be back. And the funny thing about it is, it's funny you bring that up because your show was a really big part of why we brought it back. It goes full circle. It goes full circle. It came full circle. They're on the back.

Yeah, totally. Like a tennis match, just like lobbing cybersecurity podcasts back and forth. Well, yeah, you weren't influenced. So I was like, this is it. You guys are doing it. Same to you, man. Yeah, totally. I want to start really, really broad and we'll narrow it down as we go along.

Why do you think people are drawn to stories that unsettle them? Wow. It's broad but deep at the same time. I love this. So storytelling is kind of like my thing, right? And so part of storytelling, I mean, the storytelling is such a powerful thing. Like, I can trigger dopamine's in your head.

I can trigger oxytocin. I can trigger all kinds of different chemicals. Just boom, your head now has chemicals in it. And it's interesting when you bring this one up. Like, why do people like feeling unsettled? Yeah, I mean, I feel like a cliffhanger releases, oh, man, there's a chemical for it. where you're on the edge of your seat and you're interested and you're like,

I want to know what's next. You cannot turn it off right here. I want to know, right? And so you're glued to it. And there's something that's like in our brain that's triggering chemicals that's like, give me more. And sometimes unsettling stuff is like, I need this to resolve. I need this to feel like it's good again.

I can't have the world be this out of control. I need things to be normal and put back into place. So I think there might just be something in our brain. just as a real chemical level of like get it back together man don't let it unravel yeah i think about like i think even scott and i've talked about this before but like the way pop songs work where the first chorus of a pop song doesn't work but the second one does and it's that little bit of anticipation i kind of know where this is i think i know where this is going and then when it happens it feels good it's satisfying and i think that when you listen to a show and a really good storyteller like

you when that cliffhanger gets lobbed up in the air you're like i know it's going to deliver i know there's going to be something on the far side of it um yeah kind of reminds me of that yeah i mean with music you you want to play with that dissonance and that tension and that we're far from home kind of feeling and then when you come back home in the music to the you know first chord in the in the scale it feels good you're back home you're like oh yes this is this feels good again so it gives do this kind of sense of adventure in certain songs. And yeah, I suppose I like to do that. And that's funny.

I'll start looking for where the five-seventh chord is of my stories from now on just because I never thought of it like that. I take it your, you're a musician then. Sounds like that. I've been playing guitar a lot lately. Nice. It started up a few years ago. Very cool.

Very cool. Were you a piano player too or did you start with guitar? No. I mean, I tried all the instruments, but I just never really got good at any of them and recently I started picking up guitar. Very cool. That's awesome. Scott and I both make music too.

Comes up every so often on the show whenever we can shoehorn it in. Do you make your own music for the show? Yeah? Yeah, we do. That's awesome. I haven't done that yet. I'm picking up from music libraries and stuff still. I haven't made my own.

Jordan is an accredited, awarded, you know, music sound designer for film and stuff too. So we do a lot of film. in our other jobs. And Jordan's very notable in his production. That's great. Thanks, man. You're welcome. I have to think most folks listening right now

who listen to our show also listen to yours. I hope they do. I hope they do. Because we only have so many episodes and it's like, okay, I finish that one. What's next? Okay, this one. It's easy, like, boom, let's go to the next one.

Yeah, it's like a family of spooky tech content. for the small tiny subset who don't. And they all should. Like, what's your elevator pitch for Darknet Diaries? How do you explain it to people that maybe aren't familiar with tech and security? Like, how do you explain it around like a family dinner table? I like to call it true crime meets cybercrime. Nice.

You know, it's true stories from the dark side of the internet. And that's the 10-second, 10-word description. And I feel like I try to fit that into every episode. It's like, you know, people send me this, oh, this crazy thing happened to me. FBI agents followed me home. And I'm like, where's the cybercrime part of it? That is spooky, but where's...

So I need it to be part of that, you know, computer world, tech world. But then I also want it to be a true story and it has lots of twists and lots of drama. And I, you know, I like to decorate it with all kinds of music and lots of editing, high production. So I have that kind of theory in my head where I want, you know, this to be the prime time listening of your of your podcast experience right it's not just like

um you know there's there's a lot of shows out there that are like let's let's do two episodes a week three episodes a week i'm like one episode a month put everything in there to make it the best podcast you're going to listen to all months right like that's my goal is this high quality high value podcast and not not just like lots of content but um you know high quality stuff instead yeah you can tell you're your production value is always very high. And the podcast, he comes across blatantly how well it's produced.

Thanks. Yeah. It kind of evokes, I remember seeing a tweet years once where you were talking about finding your voice and like that production quality comes to mind because I think you cited a couple early influences, folks like Rod Serling,

narrator and host of Twilight Zone. Awesome. Great reference. But then you said something interesting about that kind of journey of going from chasing that inspiration to eventually just you find your own voice and you realize that's where you should be all along. Can you like talk to that a little bit? Yeah. I mean, when you're starting, you have this idea in your head of what it sounds like. I want it to sound like hacked.

But it's like, no, you have this idea. And so like, okay, well, how do I get there? Well, this voice is what's in my head of what it's going to sound like. So I'm trying to get that voice out, but that voice isn't my voice. What's going on here? That's Ed Norton's voice or something else, right? what is happening so um you're like oh shoot okay i got to work with what i what i have and it doesn't it's not quite there you feel a little i don't know like there's a gap between where you want it to be and where it is and i think that's kind of the goal for the first couple of years is try to close that gap of get to where you want the show to be and it did take me a few years um but yeah yeah there was something else i was going to say but i forgot now that's all good it is funny i i i can

taking a few years, you wouldn't think that talking in your own voice would take a few years. But then I listened to myself a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. I'm like, who, what bit was I doing? What affectation was I putting on? It's interesting to hear yourself change over time on Mike. Yeah, yeah. And I think, I think it's the same with just with our heroes, right? You try to find like, okay, who should I, who should I emulate in the world?

And it's difficult because as soon as you find someone, someone that's great. you're like, oh, well, they're a terrible parent or a terrible husband or a terrible co-worker or something that's just like, oh, I don't actually want to be all of them. I just want to be the way they speak in front of a crowd. They're a great orator. And so then you're like, okay, well, just take that piece of them.

And then you take this piece of them and that piece of them. And you can't find like a single hero that you want all their pieces. And it's kind of weird like that. Like, why isn't there a person in the world that's just great all around? But whatever. And so it's kind of the same thing with making your craft, right? you say, oh, I really like the intro that this podcast did.

And I really like the storytelling craft that these people do. But I also like the voice of what they're doing. And I like the music and the sound of design of that one. And so you're kind of the taste maker of your craft and of yourself. I can make a bigger picture too, right? How you live your life. But at least of your craft. And so your audience learns to trust you on that.

They learned to trust you that. Your storytelling craft, what you would put in your show would be, what they also appreciate. And they're trusting it to filter through you and only the stuff that you think is good would hit their ears. And so, yeah, you're just like the tastemaker in that way of let's bring in what I like

and it just so happens to be what you like too. That's great, let's go. Yeah, it's always an interesting process when you have someone that's a big influence, kind of a hero to bore your language. And then you, you know, the more you listen to them, they start talking about who their heroes and influences were. And then you hear those people

and you realize, wow, this person who had a huge impact on me is actually kind of a stitched together version of these five other people. And you can kind of intuit that that probably just goes on forever. There were all just like synthesizing people that inspire us and passing on the cool parts to the next set of creators. Yeah. And there's always there's always this like divide in my head of like I want to be that person that's just like hanging out at the beach, totally relaxed. But I also want to be that person that never has breaks. It is always busy. And you know, it's, And it's weird.

Like, how do you, how do you balance this? Because the person at the beach is the one who's getting the inspiration. They're the ones coming back, being like, oh, I have this totally new idea. And I have unraveled all my thoughts. And now I have clarity of my own mind. Like, I like that. But I don't have that time when I'm working my bit tail off. And so, yeah, you can't even, like, grab on to one persona in your head of who you are.

You have to always battle it out between am I the person who meditates all the time? or am I the person that's busy all the time? It's difficult to even balance it in your own self. It sure is. You brought up something, a funny distinction earlier, of the kind of stories that you tell versus the ones you don't. It can't just be, you know, FBI agent follows you home. It has to have that root in technology.

So let's talk about that a little bit, about this idea of technology as a way into telling stories about people. Why do you think the way people use tech reveals, feels so much about them, especially when that tech offers people maybe anonymity. That's an interesting question. Well, you got some good ones. He came prepared. Yeah, I should have been hanging out at the beach.

I thought you were going to ask, like, why is tech, like, you know, the road there? And to me, I was like, well, we all use tech. Tech is so involved in our world. We have to use tech to, like, get by, to do anything anymore. Everyone's using technology. And the fact that everyone's touching it every day and interacting with it every day. makes this podcast effectively interesting to everyone. And so that's where I thought you were going with this.

But now you're saying, well, how does it reveal information? Well, clearly we're giving tons of stuff away to websites and apps and stuff. They know tons of things about us. There's a lot of revealing stuff there. But I don't think that's where you're going with this question. You're saying, wait, how are you using it? And what does that say about you? And, you know, I do kind of find these patterns in some of the hackers.

stories I cover, which is like, you know, a teenager, hacks into some government office and does something. I'm like, wait, let's back up. You started with video games, didn't it? It's always there. It's always, yeah, I was. And then you started learning how to hack video games, didn't you? Yes, or actually, I've been hacked in a video game, and it seems to, you know, start there. And so it, there are some patterns of what you're doing with tech and how much you're pulling it into your life and where are the places you go that sort of kind of drive you to where you end up. And I do find this fascinating

on more of a philosophical level of like the things that grace your eyeballs, the stuff you're looking at online becomes kind of your world, right? And so if you're looking at vacation, Instagram stuff, you're going to be like really upset that you're not on vacations because you're like,

why is everyone in the freaking world at the beach right now? This is insane. or if you're like all of a sudden you got the bug to like have a baby. You see everyone is pregnant on Facebook and you're like, oh my God, everyone is a baby but me. And it just feels like that's your whole world. And if you're in a hacker forum, you're going to be looking around and you're going to be saying, everyone is hacking into government websites but me or something, right? And it just feels like that's your entire world.

And that shapes us in such a way. Everything we Google, that's, you know, a custom algorithm just for us because it's like, oh, well, we've read all your emails and we know all your emails. and we know all your search history and we know what you like on YouTube. So we're going to give you this because we think this is your political side of things and how you want answers.

And you know what? We'll just make up articles for you too. So it's interesting that tech kind of what we see on the computer really does shape us to be who we are. And I wonder how much of that is really in our control and how much of that is the computer influencing us. And I think as time goes,

AI is going to really have some agenda. where it's going to be like, well, how do we get more customers to our site or something? Let's get, you know, weavele our way into, like, their eyeballs even more in some other ways. And so, yeah, it's really crazy how much a computer influences us. That's a great answer because if you think about, like, the nature and nurture argument about, like, who we are and what we become, you're really saying that, like, a lot of our nurturing now is happening via the Internet, which I can kind of completely agree with. Yeah, and interesting because it's, what generation are we in here? We're in the first, second generation of, let's see how this works.

I don't have my grandparents to tell me, oh, yeah, you got to watch up for that Google algorithm. They didn't help me here. I'm on my own. And so it's going to take a few generations before we can even start educating our younger ones to be like, oh, yeah, hold on. This is a bad idea. You can't have that app. I feel like it's going the other way. Like the amount of time I spend on the phone with my mother

explaining to her that people aren't spying on her because the internet knows everything she wants and is talking about. I'm like, no, no, this is just how it works now. Totally. It's not that bad. I was like, there's nobody that's hacked your phone. You don't need to go buy a new phone. It's just the way the internet is.

Be wary of the internet, not wary of your phone. No, you're absolutely right. We're the ones teaching the generation before us how to work this technology. So it is going to take quite a while before we finally get to, I don't know, a responsible state, a safe state, a understanding state of what is going on here. I think about that a lot. Like, what is the thing when I'm older that a younger person is going to have to like politely explain to me about technology? Because for my whole life, almost as long as I can remember, I was the one kind of unpacking how the computer in the basement worked for my parents.

Like, what's that thing going to be for us? Here's my theory on that. I think it's going to be all the ubiquitous controls, right? So if you're waving your hand in the air to type a message, if you're just twigling your fingers in the air, and that means like some emoji, you're going to be like, I am not adopting this. You guys are looking like goofballs, like waving your arms in the air

just to type of message. Like this doesn't make any sense, or just voice commands, or something that's like, I need a keyboard and a mouse. Don't you kids have this stuff? What happened to keyboards and mice? And I bet that's where you're going to feel, like a fossil. Yeah, that's a good take. I saw the Apple Watch now has like a pinch to to use motion that they're borrowing from the Vision Pro that's coming out. I'm like, right,

that's the beginning of that. Tick-Tock danceification of user input on a computer of like, if you don't know the mind moves, you're really not going to be able to hang with us. We talked about the Apple Vision Pro and we were like, I was like, you know, 10, 15 years ago, if you even had the idea of wearing something like that around in public, you'd be I don't know, it'd be a mockery of society. And now it's like, yeah, I fully expect to see hundreds of people out and about in public wearing one of those things.

That, I think, is a transformation for society right there that shows my age. Yeah, and I mean, we've got to watch out for this because it's easy for us to, like, laugh at the TikTokers out there. Like, what are you doing, putting all these videos out there and stuff? But if that was around when we were teens, we would have been doing the same thing.

Totally. It just happened to be like it was a lot. And to have your whole life documented in this way, it's going to be weird for them growing up. And we didn't really have those documents growing up. So it's kind of, I don't want to really shame them. It's just what's in their world these days. And I don't want to be like, oh, you guys, you know, don't know what you're doing. I wouldn't have known what I was doing if I was growing up in this age either.

And I would have been doing the same thing if that was around. So I really don't like, you know, turning my nose up to whatever the kids are doing these days. I want to be like, yeah, I would have done the same thing. Yeah, 100%. I completely agree. Yeah, I think about, I think MySpace was the first one that caught my generation. And I think about if the content, to use that term loosely, that I was producing on MySpace had had an algorithm pumping it out to people with the velocity that it is happening today. I'm like, that wouldn't have been for the best.

Like I was figuring my stuff out on the internet the exact same as they are today. And that just seems like that's probably never going to change. It's going to get richer and richer media. But that whole ritual is probably here to stay for the long term. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see. Definitely. You brought up a, you were talking about that idea of like how tech shapes us. That's going to shift with AI.

I'm reminded of like the metaphor people always use as the hammer metaphor when they're trying to figure out if a piece of tech bears responsibility for how people use it. The idea that you can take a hammer, you use it to build something or hurt someone. It's not the hammer's fault. Which I get why that's such a common metaphor. I see how in a lot of cases it's true. I also see how maybe it kind of oversimplifies a really complicated thing. Because sometimes tools are poorly designed.

Sometimes tools get recalled for being dangerous in ways that the designer didn't realize. And I guess I'm curious, like where do you draw that line between like a person's responsibility and the responsibility of a designer or an engineer manufacturing the tech. All right, you didn't stump me on this one. The answer is intent. So this is something I've grappled with in my podcast quite a bit, which is the technology that's created, such as a hacking tool, a phone,

some of these times the people who have created these things go to prison, the creator. But there are so many phones out there, and hacking tools out there, where they're not in prison. They're just doing fine. And what is the difference between that? And the difference is,

well, Apple doesn't have the intent to create a phone for criminals. But somebody who has a privacy phone that's specifically designed for criminals and is meeting with criminal customers and making deals with criminals has this intent to make stuff for criminals. And the same thing goes with viruses and stuff.

There are people who are making viruses to test on other companies, right? We've got to test to see if your company is immune to this virus. Well, we've got to make the virus to test against it, right? And so these things get created and we can test. But that's not for, you know, malicious intent. But the people who are making this virus with malicious intent to sell it to criminals, to make money off of it,

I mean, it comes down to intent for me. And this is what always happens in the court of law as well, as did you have intent to do that? And this freaks me out because if you're ever going to stop a person before they do it, because they had the intent, now we're talking about thought crime. It's like, I had the intent to do it, but I didn't do it. And so what crime am I even like committed here? Okay, but you were going to do it. Yeah, you said you were going to do it.

And that is like another whole world of like thwarting crimes before they happen. So it comes down to intent? Well, I don't know if it goes that far, but it's tickling that, right? Sure. I think that... It's kind of walking right up to that edge. I think the idea of intent and the philosophical construct of intent is kind of getting lost these days. You know, in the court of law, I think intent means a lot, but in the court of, you know, the social world, I feel like it's just, it's kind of gone away because I kind of agree.

It's like the hackers that have an intent of... curiosity or a desire of curiosity are very different than the malicious malware, you know, ransomware intent of ruining institutions, stealing information and, and holding things hostage. And it's a great answer. Great answer. Yeah, I mean, just breaking into buildings, right? So if you get into a hospital and you're like, oh, wow, I accidentally got into your hospital, I didn't mean to. I was just poking around. Here is how I did it. I didn't do anything, but you should definitely fix this. I hope that hospital thanks that person, right? But with

somebody putting ransomware in a hospital or doing the same thing, I guess not even putting ransomware, but like with the intent to put ransomware they're like a criminal, get breaking in. I hope the hospital stops them and says, hey, we're going to prosecute you or something. Right? And it's the same thing. It's

the breaking in. It wasn't really the, I don't know, it was the intent. That's where it comes down to me on my show. And I've analyzed this so many times to try to figure it out. Where is the, where the line here. Well, we've covered this situation a number of times and I know it's in one of the episodes

that we're going to chat about here in a bit, but the person who discovers the flaw often gets persecuted for it just by simply questioning and asking whether there is a flaw. They're validating that there is a flaw and boom, all of a sudden they're like being held accountable

for hacking something. And it's like, oh, it's like we see that so many times, and especially in the cybersecurity space, because I just think that the the level of ignorance in the judicial system and the executive branches and things like that just isn't there to properly create laws and govern it. So it's fascinating. When we're helping our parents use their iPhones, those are the same people that are creating the laws that govern things that they really don't understand. I agree. Yeah. I was thinking about,

just while you were talking, maybe it's because we were just talking about in the last episode, but we've talked about like stalkerware a few times on the show. And like the distinction between stalkerware and parental controls on a phone is like the app is basically doing the same thing. The intent is critically, critically important here. And there's some like design choices that really speak to that intent. It's like, well, it's concealed. It's meant to be masquerading as a different type of app. It's doing the same basic thing.

But intent is real important on that one. Really, isn't it? Exactly. Yeah, you nailed it. And exactly. Period. Period. Before we move on to those episodes,

the one of the thing I want to talk to you about is I noticed how often, and it always felt like it came up at the end of an episode. There would be a stray reference to like all of this journalistic work that you kind of realized listening to enough of your content that you're really doing. Like you work with journalists, you interview journalists. But then you're also fact-checking sources. You're also doing like boots on the ground journalism. Could you tell me a little bit about your relationship with journalists and journalism, fact-checking sources?

And I guess that weird point when like content and storytelling turns into journalism for you. Yeah, I don't have any experience with journalism, at least starting with the show, right? And I was trying to like, like when I started the show, I didn't even know how to do storytelling. So I was like, okay, I got to read all this tricks on storytelling. Now I got to read all the tricks on journalism. but I couldn't find like a good resource of like, here's the book you read if you want to be a journalist or here's the podcast for journalists to like learn everything.

And I kind of struggled with it. But I kind of just took it as like, okay, let's say I'm giving a presentation at work. And I went and I researched a big topic and I'm here to present it to everyone. I'm just going to like that I've done many times. So I'm just going to fall back onto that kind of idea of I want my coworkers to be educated on this topic. And yeah, I think that's kind of where it's, all kind of came from. And I, and I, over the time, you know, I talked to a lot of journalists, so I got better at understanding, like, how to fact check and where to look and all this kind of

stuff. And I feel like a journalist now. But yeah, I think fact checking is incredibly important for my show, and I try to make sure that it's sort of bulletproof, I guess, and that nobody can scrutinize it. Even when we're in contested areas of the world where it's like two sides are fighting with each other and there's just no agreement on anything, I still want to be uncontested on both sides where they're like, yeah, you're right. We did screw up again or something, right? So I guess I'm looking for that kind of common denominator that everyone agrees on this. Okay, we're all on the same page here.

Then there must be some truth to that. And that's what I can at least leave my foot with. And then I can, I do good on the show, or at least I try to, you know, say on the show, okay, this is my opinion. Here's my theory on the way. I didn't find any facts about this, but this is what I'm thinking. and I throw these kind of, you know, flavor bits in there to kind of get you thinking in different ways. And so, yeah, I do like to throw my opinion in there.

But, yeah, I like to read a lot of court transcripts and what other newspapers have published. I mean, this is a lot of times people bring me stories and I'm like, what can I, what's out there that I can read up on you already, right? And if there's already, you know, articles in Washington Post or an affidavit or an entitlement or something, that's great. That's that I can sort I can I got some sources I can already start with but then I start asking do you have friends online like oh so I mean I've got quite the network right so I'm like hey if you heard of this guy you know asking some of my other sources and oh yeah and what do you know about him is it have you ever heard that you know this story from him or something and and so I have my

sources but then I also sometimes you know ask their friends or family or mother her sister or a co-worker or somebody to say hey well you know I'm looking to see if if if you're know anything about this story here, I just want to fact check it. So I've been on the phone with some of these people to actually make sure that it's right. And especially if they mentioned someone else in the story that I know, I can reach out to that person and be like, hey, they said that you're involved with this, were you? Yeah, I do whatever I can in all those places. But the other thing is that I've had 10 years experience doing network security. And so I do have this great deep knowledge and wide knowledge of, and I have a degree in computer engineering

that I can like fall back onto that. So I can kind of smell when somebody's like puffing something into my nose. Like, hold on a second. That doesn't add up. That doesn't make sense. There's no way you just push that button and that worked. Back up. Let me hear exactly what happened, right?

And if people tell me like something that I've never heard of, I'm kind of skeptical of like, well, hold on. How have I missed this? And I've had my nose on the street like for two decades now. And you're telling me that this didn't, I never saw. this. Why? What am I missing here? So I kind of rely on my professional history as well. I mean, you bring up an interesting thing is that like you're living in a world of, I mean, people that are good at social engineering, people that are good at navigating like security

and systems of trust. Like, I guess to put it bluntly, like, do you deal with a lot of liars are coming your way? Like, do you have to fact check and filter through people that are just making stuff up? I can, not a lot, but They come. They do come. There are some people who maybe try to tell me a story that just to kind of, you know, I don't know, have a laugh with me. Like, hey, you know, Jack makes such a crappy show. I'm going to prove it by giving him a fake story and we'll show him. And, you know, sometimes people give me a heads up.

They're like, hey, this guy's going to pitch you a fake story. And I'm like, what? How do you know? Because I just saw him chatting it up and Discord or something. Thanks for that. And then I'm here I go. Oh, wow. It happens, but it's not often.

Sorry. No, go ahead. Oh, I was going to say, I find that we get the opposite. We get a few stories that come in that way, people reaching out saying, hey, this happened at me. I think we've had one or two that we've covered. But we get a boatload of people being like, hey, our CEO wants to come on your show. And it's like, we just constantly get these self-promo requests.

And I'm like, oh, man, like, please stop. Yeah. Well, I get a lot of the CEO. I bet you do. Yeah, for sure. I bet. The other one I get a lot of is just kind of wall of text of, here's my story. Like, man, this is a big, you just read a book already.

Yeah, and it's wild. I mean, there's almost this thing where it's, I think the Truman show kind of sparked all this stuff in people's heads, where they feel like they're being spied on, they feel like they're being watched. And they feel like something more malicious is going to. on just under the surface that they can't put their finger on. And so I think a lot of people feel like they're being spied on or they're being hacked. Kind of like you were saying your mother has these kind of feelings sometimes. I get a lot of this where people are just feeling like something is off, something is wrong.

You know, I got these weird phone calls and all this kind of stuff happening. And it's really difficult for me to figure out how much of this is invented in their mind versus actually happening. And it's kind of scary. I mean, it's real to them, either way, whether it's happening in their mind or not. They're feeling like this is a real feeling. It's a real scare. So I sympathize with them, but it's difficult for me to figure out truth or fiction on some of those stories.

Totally. Well, our minds are so good at detecting and identifying patterns. And it's like, you know, if I'm talking about teeth whitening at dinner with some friends, and then all of a sudden I'm getting served teeth whitening ads on the Internet. It's like, oh, my God, there's a correlation there have detected the pattern. Once that happens to you like 20 or 30 times, you're like, oh my God, they're listening to everything I say. But it's like, in reality, they're probably somebody at the table, Google's teeth whitening while you're in the discussion. And then everybody at that IP address gets flagged as somebody that's interested in teeth whitening.

And then you get served an ad for it. It's like, okay, there is a cause and effect to a lot of the stuff that people detect as like security violations or like there's a potential or a risk or a paranoia. And it's, it's, I don't know, it's fascinating every time I have to have this conversation with somebody, especially my mother. Mm-hmm. We should get up. Yeah, I'm, for years we had, so like, we registered the Facebook page for hacked right when we started it, way back when, which meant that when you typed in the word hacked into the Facebook search bar, our logo with like spooky digital typeface was the thing that came up. Which meant that there was this whole big population of people that we were this weird dumping ground of like, I think my Facebook account was hacked. I think my email was hacked.

People were kind of using it as like a almost like a help desk. And that was a fascinating glimpse into, yeah, just a lot of people's experience with technology. I forgot about that. Do you remember that? Yeah. I think we must have turned it off or something. We used to get requests to hack people all the time. Be like, hey, can you please hack this phone?

And I was like, no, what? Who are you? And why are you on our page? You typed hacked into Facebook. I certainly get those requests quite a bit. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I'm just like, I'm not. I do like to play with them.

I'm like, wait, are we hacking into a bank? Are we going to steal some money? No. Are we hacking into some foreign government and take them down? No. What are we hacking into? Are we hacking into a jail? What are we doing?

Someone from prison? No. I want to hack into my girlfriend's. Facebook. I'm like, that's not, I'm not going to help you with that. That's the most boring thing ever. Let's get something funner. Don't you have any creativity? I'm going to press the forward button on your email and send it to your girlfriend now. Thank you. Okay. Before we go to commercial break, that brings up a question. You get, say you get a text scam, like a scam text from someone. Are you the kind of person that'll play around a little bit? Like, do you pull on the thread and see where they're going with it? Oh, yeah, I used to do this. I remember there's the one story where I was getting it, and they were, I don't know what, I was engaging,

and they were trying to scam me. I just turned into this persona of this helpless young woman that was stranded in her car, and she needed help. And I was like, look, I want to help you, buddy, but I'm in a big trouble. My car is broken down. I'm in the middle of nowhere. I need money right now to get out of this.

I cannot talk with you. Sorry. and he's like, well, what's the problem? And I was trying to scam him back and get some money out of him. And he ended up just like getting out of there because he was like, oh, man, this isn't going to work for either. Oh, man, that's good. In our office, there used to be a game.

I don't know if it's still ongoing. I haven't seen any of the tallies, but there used to be, if you got a scammer call, you'd see how long you could keep them on the phone before they'd hang. up on you. Oh, I forgot about that. It was a competition between everybody in the office to see who could do it the longest. I think Nick might have got it at like 20 minutes, if I'm not mistaken. But yeah, it's a constant game of playing with them. It's like, I'm not sure who you're fooling now under the age of 50, but wow. But yeah. Yeah, my spouse will sometimes just like, she's like, why are you doing this? And I was like, well, I've convinced them that I'm a wealthy financier and

I'm currently on a yacht and that I am interested in their crypto project. And I don't know why. It's fun. A little scammer role play. When we come back from the break, let's talk about a couple of the episodes that we were talking about before recording. Think about the last time you heard a breach story on this show. It always starts the same way.

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It's practical, actionable, intelligence from experts in the trenches. Register now at arcticwolf.com slash hacked. So prior to us sitting down, it's Halloween, I asked you to flag a couple episodes that sort of stuck out in your head. Maybe something kind of unsettling about it, something that you kind of remember that stuck with you. The first one that you flagged was an episode called Combs. Awesome episode.

And it's the story of these, it's a story about a few things, but I think at the heart is these almost publicly visible websites, something you'd kind of see and not think too much about, almost like a yoga forum, that are secretly these platforms for communications between spies and sources in other countries. And it tells the story of this huge human cost that was incurred when those sites were compromised. What if you could tell me a little bit more about that story, how you got onto it, and why you flighted it? What unsettled you about it? Yeah, I mean, I think coming into this whole podcast, my goal was to get into kind of nation state actors stories and figure out, like, are there any out there that are like public or that we know about that we can talk about? Because these are the most exciting. This is the most high stakes. This is the most crazy stuff that's happening.

And sure, there was some. But so when, you know, when a CIA story shows up, I'm like, you know, that's where I'm drawn. So this was about the CIA. And yeah, I mean, it was interesting in so many different ways. You know, how does the CIA speak with their agents in the field? Like when they want source information, like, do they have to meet them in person? No, we've got the Internet. But how do you meet them on the Internet?

Well, if they have, you know, you can't just Gmail someone. Say what's up over there in the hostile country because, you know, that might not be so good. Sure. So we need a separate communication system. Okay, put signal on your phone. But if the source gets caught, signal on their phone, and now they've got this stuff, you kind of need like no trace, right?

So if your source gets caught, it's like, what, what, you got nothing on me, right? So, yeah, it sounds like the CIA set up sort of like dummy websites where you click on a certain thing. I mean, it looks like one thing, maybe a sporting goods website, but then you click on a certain link

or down below or something, and it takes you to a chat room with you and the CIA agent. And to me, that was already fascinating. Like, what is, wow, that's brilliant. What other way? And since publishing this story, there's like a million people that are emailed me,

Jack, I think I found the secret CIA website that went to chat and every time I go there, it's like deleted or something. Like, wow, I think you might have. You got it. It's kind of funny. I loved, sorry. Yeah, no, go ahead.

I was going to say I love this story because in calling, A friend and I actually wrote essentially a encoder that encoded messages into images that you could upload online and a decoder. And it was kind of the same thing, except it didn't have like a real chat room. It was all done through like asynchronous image sending

because images are just like grids of pixels. So if you just modify the color values or the alpha layer, just a hair, and you know exactly in the grid of pixels where to pull your messages from, you can like encode a message into one and then decode it. and it's visually, you know, it's almost impossible, if not completely impossible to detect.

So this story, like, totally hit home with me because I was like, oh, like, we used to do this stuff for fun. And it was like, it makes sense that these people are doing this. Right, yeah. And it's like, what are all the other things secret on the Internet that we're just not seeing? So there's this whole aspect there. But, yeah, the enemy got into one of these

and was watching the chats going on and could see all the sources that the CIA agent was, you know, talking with and where the meetings were. Like, okay, well, let's meet so we can exchange these documents. Cool. And then suddenly, when they met, they were no longer seen from again. So all of a sudden, it's like, well, hold on a second. People are disappearing here. And that's where this story is. Jenna McLaughlin and Zach Dorfman covered this, I believe, for Yahoo News. And when I just saw the story, I was like, this is unbelievable. Where did you two hear this? and I want to know more, and they barely knew anything except that people were just disappearing,

and sources were disappearing, and agents were disappearing, it was wild. And I was like, I really want to know more. So me and another producer really trying to fact-check this one, Yale Gruer, and she was amazing at trying to find any information. So we wanted to push the story forward. We just don't want to echo their story. We wanted to re-report it. We wanted to find the sources.

We wanted to see how deep we could go with this, but we had such a hard time with this one. But, yeah, what seems to happen is perhaps some CIA agents died from this, or sources died from this, or put in prison or something like that. And it was just, it was, I don't know, maybe it was a lesson for the CIA of like, we need to be better at hiding our covert communications and not have it easily detectable or whatever.

And, yeah, it's, it's a little. one of those mysterious things where you kind of see this big shadow, you know, float under your boat out at sea and you're like, something is there, but when you look underwater, it's not there. And so it's kind of fun just to kind of play with this kind of shadowy world as well of agents and spies and people getting caught and all this kind of stuff. So that's what kind of excited me about it. And, you know, from a storytelling aspect, they always say if it bleeds, it leads, right?

So if people are dying in the story, that's a big story to me. And it's a big story to everyone. the yeah i was sorry john oh there you go for it's um it was it was unsettling in a couple different directions you brought up the websites and just that idea that as we're kicking it around on the internet there's these things happening under the surface like hiding in plain sight there's obviously that it bleeds it leads element of these people potentially vanishing another thing you brought up in the episode that really stuck with me was the idea that like just this really remarkable story didn't get covered more and it it it makes it

it makes you wonder about all the other things that, you know, if not for like that team of Yahoo News and yourself is happening and there's evidence of it, but we just would never really hear about. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly true, too, is what other stuff is. And it's interesting to me of like, who's supposed to be the one who actually puts this out in the world? Should it be the CIA that says, okay, yeah, we lost some agents and here's the story. or should it be a team of crack team of journalists that are like digging and finding sources and uncovering secret information and be like let's publish this

and it's kind of weird who should be the one who tells this because some of this stuff is you know lives are at stake here and if we publish like oh here's how the CIA communicates with their sources ah well what other countries are listening to this and saying oh let's look for that now

we didn't know that's the technique now thank you we'll look for that. I don't know. It's kind of wild. One of the things that I really liked about this episode was the, or sorry, one of the things that I really wish was there was more detail on was how they unraveled it. Like they found it on one site and then it had a footprint that they could then identify.

I'm assuming it was like a shared JavaScript library or something and they were just able to like do an internet-wide search to see what other sites had it. So I don't know if you know any more information about it, about how they kind of unraveled what all forums and sites they were using or if it just kind of that's unknown. No, I don't know, but I can imagine as well that you have informants, right? So somebody gets caught, okay, well, how are you, you know, talking with the agent? I'm not telling. Okay, we're going to make your family disappear now.

Are you sure you don't want to tell? Okay, fine, I was using this website. Oh, wow, okay, let's go to that website. And so now they know about that website. And then, yeah, maybe from there they're able to fingerprint it in such a way that they can scan for other websites or something or share it with their, you know, ally nations and say, hey, we know about this now. See if there's any in your country.

Yeah. If there's anybody on the Corgi's Web Forum, Corgi Lover's Web Forum, make sure to identify them as a potential spy thread. Yeah. A lot of dodgy shit goes on in that courtroom. Yeah. This is, and I touched on this briefly before the break, the John Rite, the whistleblower, and then how.

he was terminated from his contract, et cetera, and he credits it to being the whistleblower about this. You know, this is just another one of those incidents that I love to report on and hate to hear about people getting personally impacted by being the voice that comes out about things. Yeah, we do seem to give whistleblowers a hard time in weird ways. Yeah, being a messenger is a famously dangerous job as the expression goes. Very old expression, I believe, too. Coms shares a lot in common in some ways with the other episode you flag Jack, Project Raven. It's a story that we also talked about a little bit on hacked and episodes called The Blackfolder.

And it's this story of a network of private companies hiring intelligence officials to do offensive security. abroad basically. A person who was trained by the NSA might end up in a different country with a different set of laws using their skills to do things there. And in this episode, it's the story of this private company, CyberPoint, and a crew of professionals, one of whom you interviewed, hired by CyberPoint, found themselves in the UAE doing work they weren't all okay with. What's stuck with you about that episode? What's funny is the person who came to me came to me with this story and I was like okay cool yeah let's talk about it let's see what you got and I wasn't like understanding you're like okay you're a contractor you're hacking cool cool man and then um

then when I when I got off the phone I realized wait a minute this is a huge story on Reuters this is big all over the world this is making news and I was just talking to this guy freaking out because Reuters didn't source him as one of the people you had they had all these other sources and I was like this is a new source come forward for this story. So I get to like not like, you know, I don't like copying just another story and just being like, let's just play that. I want to, I want to re-report. I want to talk to the sources. I want to hear their story firsthand. And so here I had that source on the phone. It's like, now I have all these extra questions. He's like, okay. So I kind of, and this,

I think this happens quite a bit where I don't really know the story the first time I listen to it. It's only after hearing it two or three times because I've recorded it and I'm listening to tape and I'm editing it. Then I finally get to the good parts of what, oh my gosh, I did not realize you just said that. Like this, it's like two times I've listened to this and I didn't realize how this important part. So, yeah, that was kind of fun. And so once I realized, well, I've got Project Raven on the phone here, this is insane. I was really excited about this story. And yeah, it became one of the most popular episodes as well. Yeah, but hiring NSA agents to hack for you in another country is just, I don't know, it's wild. And then for them to kind of all rebel and quit,

or a big part of their team, I suppose, wow, something has gone wrong there. And so this is kind of the hidden thread in all my episodes is I'm always looking for something that goes terribly wrong. It's not just about, okay, here's the thing that we did and everything went right. That's, sorry, I don't want that story. Throw that one out. I want it where, you know, we were trying to do this, but then everything went wrong. We did the wrong thing. It all fell apart. We had to pick up the pieces and here was the big mess that we had. Okay, I want that story. Even if it's as simple as I was trying to install like windows on my computer or something

and everything went wrong. Like, okay, let's go. I like it when everything goes wrong. So yeah, that's kind of what I'm looking for. And in this one, everything does go wrong. And it's crazy to just see everything unravel. And you get in this direction. I really like putting my listener in a direction.

I'm like, this is what we're trying to accomplish. Here's what we're going for. And it all goes wrong. Wow. Now we don't. What do we do? You asked one of your interview subjects close to the end of the episode. It's an interesting question of like after all of this,

after this sort of like whistleblowing process, would you be comfortable going back to the UAE? And I guess I'm kind of curious, like just for you personally, 137 episodes in set all over the world, is there any corner of the world you maybe wouldn't feel that comfortable going to at this point? Yeah, I mean, I think I'm innocent.

And so for someone to kind of target me or do something to me would probably be illegal. But can I really tap on this line? And be like, hey, you're breaking the law by tracking me down or tapping my phone or something. I don't know if it will work in other countries. So I kind of feel safe from the law standpoint, but I don't feel safe from like the corruption standpoint. I think there might be some places that are like, get this guy to quiet down, please. Yeah, sure. And so, you know, and this is what I think a lot of countries operate under.

They have their official laws, but then they have their unofficial, make that person go quiet. Operating procedures. Uh-huh. And so, yeah, I mean, like Morocco comes to mind. If I criticize the Moroccan government or even their religions, are going on in Morocco, they can get real upset at me and arrest me as a journalist. Just journalists get arrested for criticizing the government or the religion there. And there's not an official law that says, oh, you can't do this.

It's just that the people in power don't like that. And they make up stuff to get people in jail. And so that's kind of the thing that I'd have to grapple with, is the corruption or unfairness of what's happening and not really, well, wait a minute, I just need a lawyer to get out of that. is kind of me. Sure. I mean, that's kind of what that whole episode ended up becoming about was the moral tension of these people being like the values I hold are that journalism is a protected thing and the freedom of speech is really important, but I'm operating in an ecosystem where that

maybe isn't the case. What am I willing to do to realize some of those goals that I don't really stand by? Yeah. It's interesting. I think that I remember chatting about this with Jordan. It's It's like an interesting thing where you get a bunch of white hats who maybe have like a black hat fetish. And then you give them this opportunity. And it'd be interesting to see which ones choose, you know, the moral ethical road and get off the next exit or the ones that are like, no, no, this is actually a ton of fun. And I'm so happy that I have this opportunity. Yeah, it's that quote from Batman. That always comes back to me.

You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain. Exactly. Exactly. That couldn't be a better transition to the last. episode I want to talk to you about. This wasn't one you flagged, but it was the one that popped into my head when I realized we were talking to you around Halloween as a three alarm lamp scooter. And this is the story of a person who in some ways yes and in some ways no, but maybe a lot of people who listened to both of our shows might see a tiny little piece of themselves in, a very

curious, creative person, interest in security and hacking, but who in his case, it led him to do something, in his case building a piece of physical security infrastructure that came at a really huge, huge human cost. And I was struck listening to that one about this idea that like the traits that can lead someone to get into hacking can either be really constructive or really, really destructive. It always fascinates me, fascinates me how delicate that balance is, like that coin can land on either side. Sort of like a there but by the grace of God go a lot of people kind of feeling it.

left me with. I was wondering if you could talk about that episode a little bit, what you remember about it and what stuck with you about that story. Yeah, I mean, this is a guy who was really deep in the hacker community. He was going to DefCon. He was going to Schmukon. He was giving talks. Like, every year he'd come and he'd present and he'd give a talk and he was meeting with the people. And the things that he was interested in were pretty interesting. Like, how can you destroy a hard drive? Like physically, like, physically, like, if we had to blow it up, is that good enough? And so he's like playing around with incendiary things

and was really fascinated with like, you know, chemicals. And like really just, it was wild, all the things that he was getting into. But this is the strange corners of DefCon. Like DefCon has hacking kind of at its core. But then on the sides, it's like, well, what would happen if we tried to use a microwave to send signals to the moon and bounce it off Saturn and bring it back here. Like, people are doing weird things there.

And those fringe things are really interesting sometimes to certain people. And he was, like, attracted to these really strange things. I mean, he would show up on stage in a full hazmat suit sometimes. And I don't know if it was because he wanted his appearance to be hidden or what was happening there. But, like, people are in the back like, speak up, we can't hear what you're saying.

In, like, a hood. So he was a weird. character but yeah he um his curiosity got got to the better of him i i think he went to jail and i think he might be out by now so uh yeah that i don't want to give too much of the episode away but no one was wild the it's a pretty wild story yeah that is the listening like remembering back to the episode listening to his speeches at defcon and stuff it almost sounded like an advanced chemistry lecture like it was just so like thermal dynamic and things like that.

It was just such a fascinating. Like the guy clearly loved knowledge and was like a big consumer of it. Like you ever go to like a party and you run into like a new person and they just like overwhelm you with the detail of something where they're just like, oh, you know that the sun is made up a 42% nitrogen

99% helium and they're just rattling off like insane statistics and numbers and facts that you can't really refute because you don't know that much about what you're talking about. like this is what that guy is he just brings you like okay so if you're going to build a tunnel under your house you're going to have to do it at least four feet high but you have to have the sides structured in such a way that but there are three different ways to structure the sides like he just wouldn't like slow down I don't think in his mind yeah and he just was always just like coming up with creative ways to do things but then diving deep into those things it was and yeah I don't even understand what it's happening with that guy half the time I don't I don't want to ruin any of the

episode, but like the beginning of it, like how he was getting started in university, when he gets caught kind of, like, I guess let's spoil a bit of it, but he like steals a, he puts a key logger on his professor's computer, logs into his email, steals the final exam. And at that point, he tries to share it with everybody, which I thought was just the most insane, insane route to take at the fork in the road that he was at. He's like, I have the final. Instead of just quietly getting an A-plus, I'm going to email. email everybody and tell them that they can buy it off of me and post on Reddit about it and link from his Reddit post to his actual person, which is. Yeah, I think this speaks sometimes to just the vanity of people where I don't know if that's the right word, but it's like they want to show off what they did. Like, man, I hacked into the professor's thing and here's what I've got. And if you do this really big thing, then you're like, all proud of it. And there's no one else that's there to like jump up.

up and down with you, you kind of get this sense of loneliness. And so this is why I think some people even bring stories to me. Because they're like, nobody, I've never shared this with anybody. I've got to tell someone. And yeah, I think people just like talking about themselves as well. So it's kind of hard to keep it under control. And like I said, this guy was just such a chatter of like, let me tell you all about facts, about dirt.

And so, yeah, it's wild. I think if you have that kind of a personality, where like you maybe fixate is the wrong word but I'll just use it anyway if you fixate on a thing like you can use that in a really cool way like you can crush through a challenge or a problem or a thing you want to make if you can fixate on it for a little while it also has a really dark side to it where the light side of that is like yeah you talk to someone at a party and it's like floodgates just opening because they just need to share it with someone or it goes in a much more intense direction. I wanted to start a blog a long time ago called the Cassandra syndrome. And the thing was

is that everyone, like, what I was thinking was that people are doing things that I could see the result to having a catastrophic effect. Like, we should not be having credit cards online. Whose idea was this? Something like that, right? And I was just like, this cannot go well. And so I was writing articles, but I wasn't publishing them. And the idea was, yeah, you look at the world and you see how many people are doing stupid things and you want to shout and scream at them and shake them like stop doing that you're this is not going to end well for you and i feel like this guy had some sort of knowledge like that where he felt like okay we're in a nuclear age this is not going to end well we're going to we're all going to be bombed and i've got to do something about this like right now like

you get you get this like weird sense of oh my god the world's going to end i got i better get into action what am i doing with my life i better go go and and that is really hard to tamp to, I don't know, tamper down and be like, yeah, okay, that's fine. If we all die in it your car well, it's hard to undo some of these doom and gloom ideas that we get in our head. Totally. Sure. I think the, like the, the fixation, you know, being such a powerful force or can easily turn into like a brooding perseveration where you're like just thinking over and over and developing a paranoia. And it's like that becomes, you know, tragic. And I think that's as is this episode's thesis.

And I think that's what Cassandra syndrome is. It's that knowing that this is all going to end in terrible doom and I've got to do something about this. Is that a technical term? Cassandra syndrome or is that just? Oh, really? I never heard that, yeah. Oh, yeah, intrusive thoughts and creative brains can do some pretty wild stuff.

Interesting. I've never seen that one before. I just made a note of it, Cassandra syndrome. I look up later. I mean, I'm not going to diagnose this guy with. Cassandra syndrome. I was in my head when I was going over it. No, let's have a couple

podcasters diagnosing a person over the internet. A bunch of cybersecurity podcasters, the most equipped and well educated in the thing. Okay, so we've taken up a lot of your time. I just want to talk about kind of what's next for you, man. You have a really awesome YouTube channel

that you've been kind of expanding and making new content. I think you have a couple cool projects coming down the pipeline. And like, what's next in the queue for you? The thing that really excites me right now is I'm, I'm, there's like a Venn diagram in my head of like, I really like philosophy, technology, self-discovery. And trying to figure out how to navigate this world of ever-changing technology where things are just getting crazier and crazier using philosophy and what I understand about technology.

Like, it just keeps coming around in a circle, right? So like, what do I, how do I, how do I, like, here's an example. How do I make choices? It's a basic question. Where are my choices coming from? Are they being influenced by the people around me, by the movies I'm seeing, the songs I'm listening to, the websites I'm visiting? And then how do I know that's my choice and not some other person that planted that

choice seed in me, right? And with the way technology is just so involved in our life, I feel like it's a big response it's it's a big reason why i'm making choices i make sure and so i want to kind of back up and say wait do i have an inner true voice that's saying no this is where you should be making your choice or is there something there's i mean there's a lot of voices in our head being like where should i go on vacation or you should go to the beach no you should visit your friend no you should go on this solitude adventure or no on this big on this big hike because you've always wanted to like there's all these voices that are saying something what's what's my true inner voice saying

and how do I get, how do I listen to it? And is it even right? Because maybe there's something else that a computer algorithm could understand me better and say, well, actually, don't listen to yourself. What would be better for you in the long run is, I don't know, do this instead because it's actually, I don't know, better for you. It's cheaper, it's where you want, or you've always wanted to be.

Like there could be like a thousand reasons why the AI can make a better choice than I can. And this is a weird thing to grapple with that I'm just super fascinated with. Can AI make choices for me better than I can make my own choices? And in a lot of cases it does. Doctors have just relied on AI to like do things. I mean, you've got Angelina Jolie got a double mastectomy. Not because the doctor told her to. She was fine. There was no like sign of anything wrong with her breasts. But when she had her DNA examined, the DNA said, you have a high chance of getting breast cancer when you're older. And so it was kind of a computer that figured out, hey, it's probably a good idea if you get double mastectomy right now.

So she did based on a computer's understanding of her, not her or a doctor's understanding of her. So we're putting our choices, we're giving, I could go on and on. So this is where I think I want to spend some time. Maybe it's YouTube content. Maybe it's another podcast. Maybe it's something where it's just like, help me navigate. the future because and it's for myself right because I got to figure out what if I'm losing if I if I'm if I'm going into the future without a plan without an understanding of myself without knowing like

what I'm actually putting trust into I'm going to drown and I'm going to get just flooded and I'm not going to be able to navigate this new world and so to me this is what's like super fascinating with me is to take this technology and self-discovery and self-understanding and philosophy merge it all together and figure out how do we take a step forward from here I think if you can crack a coherent way of thinking about that question, like why am I making choices and what role does tech specifically AI play in that? I think that would be hugely valuable at this point in history. Yeah, that's really fun to think about right now. And so I'm writing about it.

I'm making videos about it. I just haven't published anything yet. So I feel like you're asking what's next. Man, it's just a matter of taking that step and hitting the publish button, I suppose. That's exciting. Some of our, like my favorite episodes that we've made, usually end up resolving down into a philosophical debate or often an economic debate.

And it's like that, you know, those fundamental building blocks of society when we get down to them, through the portal of cybersecurity, that's always where I love to end up because it's such a, like privacy is one of those things where it's like, you know, it doesn't matter where you come in through the cybersecurity doors,

you always end up fundamentally at some point at a privacy, moral and philosophical discussion. I love those. Those are some of my favorite episodes. I don't know about you, Jordan. I completely agree. And ironically, that's kind of where we've ended up. Funny how that works, eh?

Funny how that works. Funny how that works. Man, thank you so much for sitting down and taking the time to talk with us. It was really cool. It's been very fun. Yeah, we super appreciate it. Super appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.