Reply All - #141 Adam Pisces and the $2 Coke

Episode Date: April 25, 2019

This week, a flood of mysterious orders plague Domino’s Pizza stores across America. Who is Adam Pisces, and why is he ordering so many cokes? Domino's Responsible Disclosure to report any vulnerabilities on their app Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So before we start the show, tiny announcement, there's actually something that we need your help with. Basically for the past week in the office, we've been talking about this thing, which is just like stuff from our past that is still online that we would like removed from the internet. And it's turned into like a very fun and horrifying thing to discuss. So like Alex Goldman has an incredibly teenage live journal, which we've actually talked about on the show. He tried to delete that. It was archived by me. Emmanuel, one of our producers, has apparently a very embarrassing movie review blog that is still online, despite, his best efforts, we're looking for stuff like that from you. It doesn't just have to be embarrassing.

Like, it can be sad. It can be just like anything that you want taking off the internet. It also doesn't have to be something you've written. It could be like a local news story that you were featured in that you wish you weren't. Just to be clear, we are not going to delete these things for you. We just want to hear the stories. If you have one, send us an email at reply all at gimletmedia.com. Subject line, forget it. Okay. Here's the episode. From Gimlet. This is Reply All. I'm PJ Vote. And I'm Alex Cole. And also in the studio with us is Damiano Marquetti. Hey, guys.

Hey. Hi, Damiano. How are you guys doing? Pretty good. Just ate lunch. Feeling full. Yeah. You know when people ask you how you're doing, they're not just asking whether you're full or not full, right?

I'm also kind of full. Guys, that's not what it's supposed to do. PJ, how's your fullness? Honestly, I'm a little over full. Yeah. I was wrong. This feels good. Okay.

What's going on? So a couple weeks ago, I talked to this woman named Sveti. Sveti? Yeah. Yeah, it's Bulgarian. It's spelled T-Z. E-E-T-Y. T-Z-E-C-V-

Oh, no. Svety, though? Yeah, it's Svati. Oh, you said it perfectly. Nice. She just had this, like, wonderful little mystery, I would call it.

Okay. And I went into it thinking it would be relatively easy to figure out, like this small, simple question must have, like, a small, simple answer. I was so wrong. Okay. So what happened?

So Sveti, she lives in North Carolina, and she doesn't work there anymore, but when she was 18, she got a job at Domino's. My old employer. I used to be at Domino's pizza delivery. Oh, I knew that. Yes. One of the better jobs I had. Okay, so she was working at Domino's. She actually kind of, like, worked her way up.

What were the things that you most liked about working there in that first job? Just this family aspect, because you work through these, like, stressful shifts with all these other people. and like one of them would teach me how to drive like when it was slow or like after a shift. Yeah. And me and the general manager used to like go drink at her apartment. So, you know, it's just a whole big family. So she's working in the back. You probably know this.

But like when an order comes in, like it shows up on a screen. Shows up on the computer. And then there's like a sort of backish room where you make it. And it's super. they've like, one of the things that is cool is they've completely automated it. Yeah. So you like take down a circle of dough that's already done and then you put the toppings on and then you just put it on a conveyor belt and then it comes out the other side and you can go. Also, you can make your own pizzas that are not on the menu and it gets pretty exciting.

Oh, God. So, so, so there's a screen where the, the orders come in and she's working one day and this sort of like strange order comes in. So I remember, like, we got an order, and whenever we get an order that has nothing that needs to be put in the oven at all, then it's going to pop up on the screen and give you a message, like, no items to be made. We got an order like that, and I was like, okay, weird. So I right away walk over to see what it is, and I look at it, and I see it's just a 20-ounce Coke. Just a Coke. Just a Coke. You can make that order?

I guess so. So like the Coke that you're drinking right now. Right. Somebody is like, please drive to my house and bring me one Coke. And it was even weirder than that. It wasn't deliver me a Coke. It was an order for pickup. That's super weird.

Take a Coke out of the freezer, fridge. Fridge. I'll come buy it from you. Yes. But I'm calling ahead first just in case. Say I'm coming. Okay. And the weirdest part of the order was the name.

It was Adam Picey's. Adam Pisces, like the astrology sign? Yeah, exactly. And Adam Pisces never shows up to pick up his Coke. And then, a week later, it happens again. So I don't think the order was like too soon after the first one. Wait, like the exact same order came in again? Like Adam Pisces 20 ounce personal Coke?

Yes. Yeah. Whoa. And what did you, what did you think when you saw it again? At that point, I was like, what is going on? And so Svetti decided she's going to start poking around and try to figure out what is happening with these orders. And so she goes to the one place on the internet.

She knows for sure people are going to want to figure it out too. It's this wonderful place. It's called D-Live. What's D-Live? D-Live is like, it's like the intranet for Domino's employees. Is it like from the corporation? Yeah, so it's like you can only get into this internet for, if you're a Domino's employee,

you get like a Domino's username and login. probably after your time, BJ. Yes. And on it, there's like a message board. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, so she goes on D-Live and types Adam Picey's into the search bar. Immediately, it's just post after post, after post, of people being like, I got this weird order from a guy named Adam Picey's.

It was for personal Coke. Then it just disappeared from all of these different dominoles all over the place, like across the country. Okay. And they would ask, you know, hey, what's up with this weird order I keep getting from under a name Adam Pice? carry out 20 ounce of coke, like the same exact, like, characteristics as the orders I would get. Holy crap.

How does she feel? I was like, what in the world's going on? I was actually drawn in. I was like, I have to figure out what is going on with this. So, Sveti is dying to know what's been going on in. She wants to know what's going on with Adam Pisces. Yes. You've, like, hit on one of the things I truly care about in life, which is Domino's Pizza.

That's kind of how I feel now too. So I wanted to figure out, like, who is Adam Pisces? And what is he up to? And I assumed, like, from the start, Adam Pisces has got to be, like, a pseudonym. But just to make sure, I went online and I started searching for Adam Pisces. That led me nowhere. So I had to take a different approach.

So I ordered a 20 ounce Coke on the Domino's website, and I'm walking to go and pick it up. Also, I'm going to ask them about Adam Pisces. Hopefully I can get some answers. I'm here. I guess I have to do this now. Okay, here we go. Hello?

Hi, how you doing? I ordered just a Coke under the name Damiano. What's her name? Domiano. Oh, thank you. Can I ask you a question? So can I ask you, like, have you ever gotten an order I'm working on a story about a weird thing that seems to be happening at all kinds of different dominoes.

You can't hear me? How do I, how do I, best talk to you? Maybe through this, like, split in the partition. So there's this weird thing that's happening. Have you ever gotten an order like this for just a Coke from a guy named Adam Pisces? I still can't hear you. You can't hear me? Speak up.

Okay, okay. Have you ever gotten an order? So I'm working on a story. It's about this thing that seems to be happening at all these different dominoes where they just get an order for a Coke from a guy named Adam Pisces. Never? So it's this really weird thing where it's like all these dominoes all across the country. It's like they just get this order.

You want it or you don't want it? I do want it. I do want it. Okay, I'll pay for it. 2.22? Okay. So you're saying like nothing like that's ever happened to you before? No.

22nd. Okay. Okay. I'm sorry to disturb you here at work. Do you know about dlive.com? Okay. Okay. All right, thank you very much.

Okay. Uh, not very successful. But then I started to have a little bit more like just calling Domino stores. Thank you for choosing Domino. So we'll speak for delivery or carry-out. It's for neither. Do you have just like one second? I'm actually a journalist, and I just have a quick question. Okay. So I'm doing, I'm working on a story, and I'm trying to, it seems like this sort of strange thing is happening in a bunch of dominoes, which is that this man named Adam Pisces is ordering just like a 20 ounce Coke and then like never showing up to pick it up. Is that happening to you guys?

Yeah. It is. That happens with all of them. So can you like, I? What is it? It's just such a funny thing. Like, when is it happening to you guys? And then you hear him kind of like put the phone to the side and you can hear him in the background talking to his manager. Some journalist. Talk about that Adam Pisces thing. Oh, that happens.

He's on to us. So they didn't want to talk. But pretty quickly, I found other Domino's employees who were totally game to talk. And I learned so much from them, not just about Adam Pisces, but also about like just the completely absurd world that is. is Domino's pizza. So the thing that you have to understand about Domino's is, like, a lot of other fast food chains. Their whole thing is efficiency, right? Like, they want standardized pizzas delivered as quickly as possible. And they have all of these systems in place to make that happen.

But the people who these systems are, like, meant to control, they're like 19-year-olds who want to go to work, make some money, and, like, maybe get stoned. I really enjoyed talking to them, and they, like, all had theories about what was happening with these Adam Pisces orders. one of the first guys I talked to was this guy named Benny. Yeah, hello. Hi, Benny. Yes, this is Domino from Replyle. How are you doing?

Oh, just peachy. How are you? Good, peachy. Wow, that is good. Oh, yeah. Where are you right now? Oh, I just won Mario Party. No, I'm actually currently at work, boxing up in order. Benny worked at Domino's for a long time. He actually works at a different pizza place now. but he had two theories about what was going on with these Adam Pisces orders. And the first theory, it was just kind of wonderful.

What he thought was going on was that the Domino's ordering system was being tested by this special elite squad of Domino's employees called OER pizza testers. OER? Yeah, it stands for Operations Evaluation Report. Did you encounter that in your time of Domino's? I don't think so. So there are these people who work at Domino's Corporate, and they, like, show up out of Domino's randomly unannounced to perform like this weird audit. So basically like they're there and it's like a pop quiz to make sure like everyone at that store is doing everything completely by the book. And they come through and it's like a very stressful time.

Like I remember like the Domino's 15 miles away. We'd be like, oh, we just got hit by OER shit. And we'd be like, oh no. We'd have to like clean up everything really quick. and it was always very odd. And the things that they care about, like they can feel completely like random and arbitrary. It's like, is your shirt tucked in?

Is the like size of the bubble on that pizza to code? To code. That's like a literal thing. Really? Yeah. And I talked to this woman Romana who was working at a store one time when OER showed up like completely unannounced as usual. I was alone in the store with a 17-year-old making the pies.

And, like, I am a wake in baker, so I was probably still toasting. Oh, my God. And the OER guy goes into the kitchen. He called me over and was like, what do you think of this pizza? And I was like, yeah, it looks good. It's like, what do you think of the mushrooms? And I was like, they look good. He's like, do you think there are enough mushrooms on this pizza?

And I was like, I, yeah. He's like, well, there aren't. And I was like, I don't, I'm sorry, I didn't even make the pizza. I don't know why I was being like interrogated about the pizza. He's like, were you going to deliver this pizza? And I was like, yes, I'm the delivery driver. What's going on? He's like, why don't you go call this customer and let them know that their pizza didn't have enough mushrooms on it and we're going to make them another one?

That is such a wild misunderstanding of why anyone orders Domino's pizza. It's so crazy. It was so weird and the guy took it so, so, so seriously. And we remade her pizza. But you know what that means? we ate her old pizza. It was fine. So everyone is really used to OER just like showing up, have these sort of like weird and Byzantine like rules about how everything is supposed to go and been doing all these like tests and checking all of these things.

And it always feels like slightly arbitrary and mysterious to people. And so Benny's like maybe it's OER who's sending these Adam Pisces orders. Like maybe they're checking something. I don't know exactly what they would be checking. But like maybe it's them. Oh, but like the $2.00 Coke pickup is like some obscure test that they're testing them on. Yeah. Like who knows?

like, is the refrigerator cold enough? Like, are you getting the Cokes out fast enough? Right. And it fits perfectly with the weird arbitrariness of the tests that they already perform in the store. Right. Sometimes they will put orders in. They will do test orders. A lot of the time, it's like put a pizza order in.

And then it's a secret shopper putting a pizza order in. And they'll be like, how fast is this is pizza getting out the door? The thing that didn't make sense to me about this theory is that, like, with the OER testers, there's always a point where they're like, they're like, they're like, you did this thing wrong? Right. Nobody's showing up and saying you just failed the sell somebody a Coke test. Right.

Like no one pops out of the closet to be like, you did it wrong. The idea of somebody testing the domino system, somebody like inside of Domino's testing system, that made a lot of sense to me. And Benny, he actually had an idea of a different person who would be testing the system, like a group of people who would actually make a lot more sense. Who's that? So his idea was that it might be franchise owners. people who have to keep tabs on like a bunch of different stores. The guy who owned the one I worked out, he owned over 100 Dominos locations around the U.S.

So it could be something that that certain franchise owner is doing. I'd like to see what the store numbers are, like how much revenue they're making for those days, because if they aren't making enough, it could be Domino's thinking, oh, well, this store isn't making enough. Their online orders must not be pushing through. There must be a problem.

So they might force one to go through. It's like a test email when you think your email's down. Yeah, that's exactly how I was thinking. Do you ever like get one of those days where like no one's texting you back? And you just text yourself text? Yeah, you're just like pathetically. Like maybe my text messages don't work. I've never done that, but I could definitely imagine someone doing that.

So Benny thought like Adam Pisces just has to be the name that some franchise owner somewhere has chosen to test like all of their different locations. And he got really excited. about the idea of trying to figure out if this was true. Ah, I love this. This is crazy. Yeah, I'll reach out to some people and see what they know about the situation and see if they know anyone who knows anything about the situation. That's amazing. Thank you so much, Benny. Oh, no problem, man.

All right, Benny, get us that good news. Yellow. Benny, it's Tom Yano. Hey, how's it going? Good, man. How are you? Oh, just peachy again. So we hung up the phone. What did you do? I immediately messaged some of my friends who still work at Domino's and had them look at live.

And they saw all the stuff about Adam Pisces. And that was this kind of a pandemic. And then that was essentially all they could do. And so I have another friend that I'm fairly close with, and he was able to bring up revenue reports for those stores. Oh, wow. Yeah, and saw no correlation there. So no correlation, which means if it were the franchise owners who were behind the Adam Pisces orders, Benny would have seen that, like, there would be a bunch of Adam Pisces orders at stores who were having, like, really bad sales days.

Right. But that's not what he saw. He saw that the Adam Pisces orders were all over the place. Sometimes they were at the stores that had really good sales a day and really bad days. Like, there was no pattern to it. So that kind of busts a little hole in the theory of, like, that it's a what's going to be. Why are test texts? Yes.

And I mean, the other thing is if they were doing some kind of internal test, why would they use such a conspicuous name over and over and over again? I know. You think they use like Johnny normal name. Yeah. Johnny normal name would be very slick. So Benny's contact could not tell him what was going on with these orders. But Benny did not give up. So I went higher up the fly pole.

I knew one more guy who's in direct contact with everyone in the company, the CEO, the CFO. Oh, wow. I had no idea that you had such high-up Domino's contacts. Yeah. So up until this point, we thought that all these orders were a test from within Domino's. But according to Benny, his contact thought that actually the orders were coming from outside of the company, from this, like, seedy Domino's underworld.

He thought that the Adam Pisces orders were actually somebody testing stolen credit cards. So he said it was a credit. card theft tactic, that people would purchase a small purchase with the card to see if it was an actual card number. And if it went through, they would purchase other expensive items and gift cards online with a credit card. But Domino's was always an easy first purchase because it would be completely anonymous, because you could have that guest account.

Really? Yes. But the thing I didn't understand about this theory was that, like, a lot of these Adam Pisces orders are to be paid in cash. They're not credit card orders. So how could this be about testing credit cards? if the orders are in cash. Yeah.

And Benny was like, here's what's going on at the franchises I know about. When you order through Domino's online, you can order for pickup or delivery. And if your credit card gets declined, Domino's still wants that order.

So they just switch it to cash. And so the card gets declined and it switches to cash. Oh, my God. And that's how he knows that the card isn't going to work. And this theory made a lot of sense to me. Like, when someone steals a credit card, they just want to see if the card works.

And so a lot of the times the first purchase they'll make on that card is something cheap, like a Coke, a Domino's. It's funny, that's happened to me in the past. Like, my card's been stolen. Really? Like, a hamburger, McDonald's, so did CVS, expensive laptop computer. And I was just like, oh, they were hungry. Yeah. And, I mean, it also makes sense because it's like those small purchases are less likely to be flagged.

also by your credit card company. Right. So it's like you can see if the card's working and no one's going to be the wiser. And so it seems completely possible that Adam Pisces was like this front for a group of, like a credit card hacker or a group of credit card hackers who had a bunch of different credit card numbers. And they wanted to sort of like create a program that could test all of them. Got it.

And then I found this other group of thieves. Their entire scam is done using stolen credit cards and one of their main targets is Domino's itself. and it felt super plausible to me that maybe it was them that were behind these Adam Pisces orders. They're called Pizza Plugs. Hey, this is Damiano from Reply All. How you doing, man? Good. Um, did you just wake up?

Yes. Cool. Did you have a late night? Yeah, someone broke into my car. Oh, shit. This is a guy I'm going to call Edgar. Uh-huh. And I found him advertising himself online as a pizza plug. A pizza plug is, like, a person online.

often like on Twitter. And they're advertising that basically if you order from them, you can get radically discounted Domino's Pizza. Sometimes the deals are like for $5, you can get four pizzas. How are they getting four pizzas for five bucks? So basically what they're doing is something called credential stuffing, something we've talked about on the show many times. Probably many Domino's customers are reusing a password that has leaked in some data breach

of some other company. And so the hackers are using those bad passwords to get into their Domino's account. and they're basically like ordering as many pizzas as they can on that account before the account gets flagged for fraud. Okay. And Edgar told me he got into like being a pizza plug a couple years ago. I was playing a Fortnite and I remember that I had some of the news. Some kids got in trouble for ordering pizza plug and I went on Twitter. And at the time, that's what pizza plug really like started to blow up.

And I ordered it in a K. You know, I had another friend that did with me in. And after that, we were just hooked on it. Yeah. But you saw, how did you learn about the method? I think I started accusing people of it, and then I said, you know, show me a picture of your method. So the pizza plug, they have this software called combos. It's a weird, like, a code to crack accounts.

They're stealing people's domino's accounts, and they're using the credit card on the account. They're ordering people's food. The problem with ordering from a pizza plug is that, What the pizza plug is doing is illegal. And so when you buy pizzas from them, they send your address to Domino's and say, like, hey, deliver these illegal pizzas to this person. So now Domino's has your address, which doesn't always work out well. Wait, watch this clip. All new at 5. This is a social media scheme you need to know about.

If you're looking for deals on pizza, you could be set up to take a huge fall. A student at the University of Georgia didn't think twice. when he saw a deal advertised on Twitter to get $52 worth of pizza for $10. Even if he was skeptical, there's plenty of rave reviews from real people

who are satisfied customers across the country. They're mostly young people just like 19-year-old Nick Thomas. I mean, I thought he had employee discounts for a connection. Nick Thomas, the guy runs as almost arrested. But reality hit hard

when undercover police showed up at his door dressed as pizza delivery drivers. And then three police officers came up with tasers pointed at me from those steps to more over there with tasers and guns pointed at me. So, yes, it's very risky for the people ordering from pizza plugs. And even if you don't get arrested, you still have to, like, trust a complete stranger on the internet who's, like, promising that they'll send you a cheap pizza if you send them money. And, like, all you really

have to go on is, like, a Twitter feed of just, like, a bunch of people being like, sweet pizzas, bro, thank you for sending me pizza. Edgar, the guy I found advertising himself on Twitter as a pizza plug. His whole Twitter feed is just like retweets of pictures of people being like legend hashtag pizza plug and then like four pizzas stacked on top of each other with like a 20 ounce squirt or something. And Edgar said that after a while of being a pizza plug, he realized like those reviews that he was retweeting of his like great service, there's no way for anyone to tell if they were real. All right, buddy. So I'm going to tell you, I am not a real pizza plug. I'm a scammer. I take people's money. Oh. So when you retweet all of those, like, those things on your, are those fake?

There are accounts that I make. Oh. Got it. It's better to make your profiles look real. You know they're fake if they don't have any retweets. So now that I knew about, like, the pizza plugs and the credit card hackers, my theory was that one of these groups was behind Adam Pisces. They were ordering Cokes just to make sure that the credit cards that they had gotten access to actually worked. And A Coke was like the cheapest thing they could order. So I took this theory to a Domino's employee that I knew just to run it by him. His name's Blake. So the main theory right now, the one that seems to make the most sense is basically that like someone was using the Domino's ordering portal to test stolen credit cards.

Really? Yeah. Basically, like, if you put a credit card into the order form online and the credit card bounces back, it will automatically turn the order to cash. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I guess I kind of get it. So in my store, if a credit card bounced, we would have a label that would print out and tell us that that credit card bounced. So it would say... Interesting.

Yeah, it would say, hey, confirm this purchase. Oh. Or something to that effect. And when he sees his Adam Picey's orders, he's not seeing that code. He's never seen that code before. So he was like, that theory doesn't make any sense to me. Oh. And I was like, shit.

That sounds like a really good point. After the break, I get some answers from the Magic Johnson of Domino's. Welcome back to this show. Up until this point, I talk to people who basically did like everything. thing that you can do inside of a domino's store. So like delivered pizzas, made pizzas, manage the store. But I wasn't able to talk to anyone who worked like high up in Domino's now. I finally made some headway though when I got in contact with this guy named Aaron Nilsson. Hello, this is Dan. Hey, Aaron. What's up? It's Damiano from a play all.

Yeah, I do, man. Good. How are you? Good, good. Aaron worked on the software team at Domino's corporate for almost seven years. Basically, I just wanted to run by you like the thing we've been looking at. into. Okay. And I was like getting halfway through my spiel that I had done a hundred times about what was going on here, these weird orders from Adam Pisces. It was just for a 20 ounce Coke, like a personal sized Coke. And the name on the order, I feel like the way you just said, uh-huh, it's like you already know what this is about. I already have a sneaking suspicion because I've ordered my fair share of 20-ounce coax during a certain time. Oh. In 2009, Domino's hired

Aaron to help them build their like big, new fancy online ordering system. Domino's had never, ever done anything like this before. And Aaron, he said it was like this very, like, long and arduous process. And then they finally, like, got up and running. And when you, you know, you get those things set up, at the end, you have to test, does it work, right? From the development. By does it work, you mean like...

Does it place an order down to a store? And inevitably, if you're testing all the time, you don't want to test with, like, actual production food that they have to make because then they're just wasting stuff. the very classic pattern was you test with a Coke because it doesn't there's no food costs associated if no one picks it up they just put it back in the cooler there's no that's why that's the hallmark of test order is it's a coke so is that software named adam pisces i don't know who the heck adam pisces is it could be some adam pisces could be totally a made-up name i'll give you an example whenever i tested i always used irvin johnson because i'm a big michigan state and basketball

fan. So I knew my, my fake orders always came in under the name Urban Johnson. Like Magic Johnson? Yes. So Aaron's theory is that whoever the software engineer that came after him was, they picked their own pseudonym, Adam Pisces, and they put it in like the testing software. And whenever they ran it, some Dominoes in the country would get an order from Adam Pisces for a 20 ounce coke. Interesting. And so I was very happy to like finally feel like I had my answer. And then at 10 o'clock last night. I got a text message from Aaron that just said, hey, I got info. I'm really sorry to say I was wrong. Okay. So we get on the phone with him this morning. And he's acting very different from how he had been in the past. He was being very sort of tight-lipped, choosing his words

extremely carefully. And he said he'd talked to people in his network and people who work at Domino's and he'd been able to get information about what was happening with these orders. Well, so here's what I found out. What I can say is I still fully believe, and I talk to some other people, that it is a scripted-in thing. Okay. So, wait, when you say scripted thing, you still think it's like someone testing like the Domino's system with some script. Yep. But I don't know if it's Domino's.

And, um, for obvious reasons, I can't tell anything more. And can I ask, like, do you think it's the credit card thing? I, no one told me anything in that, in that regards. Because because no one told me anything in that regard, I'd guess no. You think that theory is also wrong. I think it's, it's probably, yeah, you're right. But I don't know. I don't know. At this point, it's, it's, to me, it's a mystery.

It's kind of a mystery. It's not really a mystery. Someone is testing something. The thing that they're testing is top secret. Or who's testing? He's not saying it's necessarily an internal test. Like, it's not necessarily Domino's testing their own system. Correct.

And that makes me think it's not Domino's testing its own system. If he's suddenly saying, I can't tell you if it's... Right. Yes. That makes sense to me, too. But if it's not Domino's, like, who else would want to test? test the domino system. That's my question. And so I started to think. The only people who would want to test the domino system besides domino's and who would be using this like weird signature,

Adam Pisces, had to be hackers. But maybe it was hackers doing it for some reason that I just hadn't thought of yet. So I called an expert on hacking. We've had him on the show before. It's, um, the guy who runs the website, have I been poned? His name's Troy Hunt. Hello, Troy. Yeah, hey, how's it going? Good. How are you? Good, man. Very good. So I told Troy the story about the Adam Pisces thing, like I had told many, many people before. And it was really interesting just to see how differently he looked at it. Like he just started kind of inspecting it. And are they ordering it online or by phone?

They're ordering it online, yes, and they're putting the name Adam Pisces in every time. Right, okay. Definitely through their online portal. All right, so they've got anonymity, they could be anywhere in the world. Exactly. So that's super strange. And what sort of rate are they doing this at? Like, how many orders a night?

Well, for each store, it will be, like, once every couple of weeks. But, like, over the totality, it's probably, like, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands all across the country, like, in total. Yes. So it's not someone really trying to, like, mess with the store as well, because the store would just go, oh, we've got one, like, one weird order a night. You know, this is not, like, tying up resources or anything like that. No. And then, Troy, he started to put together, like, all of these clues in a really interesting way. You guys know how recently it feels like there's just been like all of these big hacks.

Like a couple years ago, there was that big target hack with all the credit card information. Around the same time, I think there was another similar one from Home Depot. Yeah, like companies that you're like, oh, I didn't even realize that they had my data. Yeah, so Troy, he started to wonder if one of these big hacks had actually happened to Domino's. So I'm just checking on have I been powned because Domino's, it's a massive global brand. They're online. They're going to be the target of attacks. And turn enough, Troy found that in 2014, Domino's was a lot. also hacked. The hackers got into the servers of a huge Domino's franchisee, got a ton of customers

personal information, and then actually held it ransom. So they were like, Domino's, if you do not pay us money, we will release all this information. Wow. Yeah, Domino's refused to pay them, and then they released it, like six months later. That hack in 2014 had actually been targeting this big franchisee in France and Belgium, which had their own IT systems. What Troy thought was possible was that these Adam Pisces orders, that they could be a prelude to a new, totally different attack that would be targeting Domino's in the U.S. How would this work? So what he said is, and I at the beginning of the story, would never have thought that

something as big as this would be the most likely answer. But what he said is that what the Adam Pisces orders might actually be doing is they might be checking to see if the Domino's website has these like vulnerability. basically like testing the locks. And what he thought that might look like in this case is that they would be checking for something called anti-automation. Okay. The way that a website's supposed to work.

Like when you go on and like fill a form on a website now, most of the time these days, like there's like an anti-robot part where you have to fill in. Right. It says, pick like four pictures of a sign. Right. And how many of these they stop on them. Yeah. Weren't you telling me that you were like, I can never do this because I could never figure out

which parts of this are actually the crosswalk? I fail these tests constant. Really? Constantly. It's like I won't notice an edge of a sign or I won't notice a crosswalk or there'll be like a tiny bus in the background. Like I think a computer would pass more of these tests than I do. I've been locked down my email so many times because I can't convince my computer that I'm not a robot. Also it's like you're a robot. Stop accusing me being a robot. Enough. Enough. Exactly. So looking at Adam Pisces, Troy thought maybe this is a little script that's running to test if on the Domino's website there's any. anti-automation software running. Something like an ordering process really should have anti-automation on there because you could cause such amount of havoc. What do you think about it? Like this is just one Coke at a time and it's a frivolous kind of thing.

But what if it was 10 pizzas and you were doing it 10 times a minute and you're doing it from different IP addresses and you're randomizing the user agent string and you're doing all these sorts of things to make each order legitimate enough in a peer and. that Domino's couldn't manually pick it up, and then they just started making all these pizzas. So it's just like the robot tries to place a bunch of orders. And if they get blocked. If they get blocked, then they know that a human would have to do it.

That's smart. Right. And if it is the case that the hackers behind Adam Pisces are just like going to Domino's to check the locks, like to make sure, like, can we still get in here? Troy said, it's very likely that they'd be doing that in order to attempt a kind of hack called a sequel injection. Okay.

Here's how a sequel injection works. So if you go to the Domino's website, And you're like on the order page. And you just click on like the pepperoni pizza, like a 12 inch pepperoni pizza. When you click on a 12 inch pepperoni pizza, it sends like a little request to Domino's being like, just pull up the 12 inch pepperoni pizza, right? And if you look at the URL, you might see something like product equals pepperoni pizza and it literally has information in the URL.

Right. So someone comes along and they modify that URL such that it changes the query. and instead of pulling back a pepperoni pizza, it pulls back a pepperoni pizza and everyone's passwords. What? Wow. So, try can't say for sure. But with the information he has, he thinks that this is the most likely answer for what is going on here. And actually felt pretty satisfied by that.

But actually what made me feel even more confident about this was that after like weeks of back and forth with Domino's, I finally got a comment from them. And it was really interesting what they said. They told me that they are aware of Adam Pisces, like actually very aware. And they said that Adam Pisces orders have been coming in for two or three years, and the security team has been actively monitoring them. Which makes it sound like it lends credence to Troy's theory that this is serious. Like, it sounds like it matters to them. What I feel confident about at this point is that Adam Pisces is a threat to Domino's.

A threat whose little shark fin has been circling them for years now. And so while I don't know who Adam Pisces is, I do know that this story has like two possible endings. In one, Adam Pisces is completely screwed. Like the security team has them squarely in their sights and it's just like any day now. Or Adam Pisces is completely untouchable. I mean, despite knowing about these tests on their system that have been happening for years, the security team has not been able to stop them.

So, someday we'll find out. either Adam Pisces will be led away in handcuffs or completely disappear off the face of the earth, or Domino's will be cracked wide open. I just keep thinking about Michael Myers from the Halloween series, strangely. It's like every time you think you've stopped him, I imagine the security team being like, all right, we've got him, we've figured out a way to lock him out. And then like every time you think you've stopped him, his head slowly like rises up and appears in the window. And he's like, hey, can I get a Coke for $2? Reply All producer Damiano Marquetti.

Reply All is hosted by PJ Vote and me, Alex Goldman. We're produced by Shruthy Pinnaminani, Fia Bannon, Damiano Marquetti, Anna Foley, Jessica Young, and Emmanuel Jochi. Our editor is Tim Howard. We're mixed by Rick Juan, fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our intern is Christina Ayale de Josa. Special thanks this week to Dan D. Philippi, Francois, Zavier de Marais, Ian Patterson, Paul Price, Armand Rahman, and all the current and former Domino's employees who spoke to Damiano for this story.

Our theme song is by the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder, and our ad music is by Build Buildings. Matt Lieber is drinking coffee on your front steps in the morning. You can listen to this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you in two weeks.