Malicious Life

Dec 10, 202428m

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, long time critics of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, followed Weev's trial - but did not get involved. For the appeal, however, the organization decided to step it. But althought the

Nov 27, 202429m

Much like Aaron Swartz did, Andrew "weev" Auernheimer fought against the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a law both men belived to be dangerous and unjust. But unlike Swartz, the internet's own boy, weev is an unapologetic

Nov 20, 202430m

APT-10 is a Chinese nation-state threat actor that in recent years has been targeting Japanese IT & Instrastructure organizations using a sophisticated backdoor malware known as LODEINFO. Recently, Jin Ito & Loic Castel,

Nov 13, 202438m

Aaron Barr was en-signals intelligence officer specializing in analytics. As part of HBGary Federal, he came up with a plan to unmask the key leaders of Anonymous, the infamous hacker collective. People who worked with A

Nov 5, 202435m

On 17 and 18 of September 2024, thousands of pagers and hand held radio devices used by Hezbollah, exploded simultaneously across Lebanon and Syria, killing at least 42 terrorists and wounding more than 3,000. Devon Acke

Oct 29, 202429m

Could thousands of people keep a secret? Common sense says no—secrets spread, and people talk. But for over a decade, from 2006 to 2017, a website managed to stay under law enforcement’s radar, despite the fact that its

Oct 15, 202430m

Scientology spies were trained in all covert operations techniques: surveillance, recruiting agents, infiltrating enemy lines, and blackmail. However, a suspicious librarian and a determined FBI agent brought the largest

Oct 1, 202429m

In 1963, the FDA raided the headquaters of a budding new and esoteric religion - The Church of Scientology. In response to this and similar incidents to come, the church's founder - an eccentric science fiction author na

Sep 17, 202426m

On Dec. 5, 2016, two senior Russian Intelligence officers and two civilians were arrested and accused of treason. A few weeks later, when Western journalists were finally able to speak with the men’s lawyers, they learne

Sep 3, 202429m

SNAP - better known as food stamps - goes back to the Great Depression. ,The physical stamps were replaced with EBT cards in the 1990s, but since these cards are without the secure EMV chip techonolgy, enterprising crimi

Aug 20, 202431m

Nicole Kotsianas, an investigator with K2 Intelligence, made it her personal mission to hunt down the Hollywood Con Queen, who crulley tormented her victioms and shattered their dreams. Nicole's efforts bore unexpected f

Aug 7, 202434m

In 2015, two aspiring script writers flew to Indonesia to meet with executives of a large Chinese film corporation. It was a trap: the Hollywood Con Queen not only coned them out of tens of thousands of dollars, she also

Jul 23, 202430m

In the pre-internet era, encryption was a matter of life and death, and the motives behind these ciphers were varied and complex. Discover how George Lasry, a modern codebreaker, uncovered the secrets of Mary, Queen of S

Jul 9, 202427m

Why did people write malware in the pre-internet days? Back then, there was no way to make money by writing malware. So why write them in the first place? The lack of a financial motivation meant that virus authors had a

Jun 25, 202434m

Section 230 is the pivotal law that has enabled the rise of social media -while sparking heated debates over its implications. In this episode, we're charting the history of Section 230, from early landmark legal battles

Jun 11, 202437m

In 2016, Joe Sullivan, former CISO of Facebook, was at the peak of his career. As Uber's new CISO, he and his team had just successfully prevented data from a recent breach from leaking to the internet. But less than a y

May 28, 202428m

In this episode of ML, we're exploring the history of the well-known Nigerian Prince scam, also known as 419 or advanced fee scam, from its roots in a Parisian prison during the French Revolution, to the economic and soc

May 14, 202433m

Dive into the world of open-source intelligence (OSINT) in this episode, where we uncover how ordinary citizens use publicly available data to unravel some of the most complex global mysteries. From tracking conflicts in

Apr 30, 202447m

A few weeks ago we had a listener’s meetup in New York, and as part of that meetup, I gave a talk in which I discussed how Malicious Life came to be - a story that goes back to my days as a ship's captain in the Israeli

Apr 16, 202431m

In the waning years of the 20th century, amid growing anxieties about the turn of the millennium, one man, Robert Bemer, observed the unfolding drama from his remote home on King Possum Lake. A revered figure in computin

Mar 31, 202427m

In the 1950s and 60s - even leading into the 1990s - the cost of storage was so high, that using a 2-digit field for dates in a software instead of 4-digits could save an organization between $1.2-$2 Million dollars per

Mar 19, 202430m

The 2008 Russo-Georgian War marked a turning point: the first time cyberattacks were used alongside traditional warfare. But what happens when the attackers aren't soldiers, but ordinary citizens? This episode delves int

Mar 4, 202449m

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

Feb 19, 202437m

For Kevin Mitnick - perhaps the greatest social engineer who ever lived - hacking was an obsession: even though it ruined his marriage, landed him in scary correction facilities and almost cost him his sanity in solitary

Feb 5, 202431m

Right now, hundreds of thousands of people in the southern African country of Namibia are faced with a choice. At the end of next month, their phone service is going to be shut off permanently: to prevent that from happe