(November 12, 2024)

A week before the election, we sat down with Ret. General Paul Nakasone and he talked about North Korea, Russian hackers, his life after the NSA and why he hasn’t ruled out taking another government job.

More from our interview: https://therecord.media/nakasone-click-here-interview-north-korea-exploding-pagers-government-job

Recently, a lot of smart people who work on space problems gathered at the Value of Space Summit in Colorado Springs and talked to us about the things that keep them up at night. At the top of their list? Earthlings hacking satellites and speeding bits of space junk.

When Stephanie joined a WhatsApp group to get advice on cryptocurrency investing, it began a wild ride that included the CEO of a large investment firm, cybercriminals half a world away, and a brush with a rag tag team of computer nerds in Alabama chasing a $5 billion problem.

Back in May, a Russian-speaking cyber gang named Clop broke into MOVEit, a little-known file transfer program. They managed to steal data from some 60 million people (and counting). While the scale of the attack was impressive, what really raised eyebrows was how they did it.

Ilya Sachkov co-founded the cybersecurity company Group-IB to make the world safe from Russian-speaking cybercriminals. Then he asked Russian authorities to help round them up, and things went spectacularly wrong.

Wave “goodbye” to those pesky emails from Nigerian princes and say “hello” to the latest generation of AI enabled email scamming. It’s smarter, faster and, by the way, looks like it’s coming from your boss. The only thing that might stop them? AI itself.

We look at an American disinformation campaign that makes clear online abuse directed at women goes far beyond a couple of mean tweets. And, an update on a Syrian activist who was on the receiving end of a misinformation crisis of her own.

Putting your data in the cloud used to be seen as the gold standard of information security. Why have your small IT team protect your data when the experts at Microsoft or Google or AWS can do it instead? And then in May, Chinese hackers broke into the Microsoft cloud, exposing not just a flaw in the code, but a glitch in company’s business model as well.

This week, we share an episode from PRX and Inkstick Media’s “Things that Go Boom” podcast about the thousands of miles of fiber optic cable lying at the bottom of the sea. Some 95 percent of the world’s electronic data is traveling through them and cables are taking centerstage in the high-stakes competition between the U.S. and China.

Since our story on spyware in Mexico aired back in March, researchers have discovered a roster of Pegasus spyware infections on the phones of local journalists, activists, and even officials within the Mexican president’s inner circle. This week, we return to our deep dive on the use of spyware in Mexico and the revelation that the army created a secret military intelligence unit dedicated to its use.

From WBUR's “Endless Thread" podcast, a story on a growing segment of artificial intelligence: immortalizing the dead through predictive AI text and how bots can help us understand grief.

We revisit a sit-down interview we had with NSA contractor Reality Winner shortly after she spent 4 years in prison for passing a single classified document to a reporter. Given all the focus on classified documents and the way they’ve been handled in recent weeks, it seemed a good time to take another look at what happened to Reality.

Two decades after Arab militias first torched villages and killed hundreds of thousands of people in West Darfur, violence has returned to the region. We tell the story of one group of researchers who use open source intelligence, algorithms and satellite imagery in a bid to quell the violence in Sudan.

In the U.S. criminal justice system, a lot of things hinge on the simple police report. As departments begin to use AI and large language model software to help cops write them, American University law professor Andrew Guthrie Ferguson worries people don’t understand the possible downstream effects.

We go behind the scenes of U.S. Cyber Command’s Hunt Forward Operation in Ukraine. We interviewed half a dozen American cyber warriors who were on the ground in Kyiv, and they provide new details about the effort to defend Ukrainian networks against Russian cyber attacks in the weeks before the war.

As Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive begins, we revisit a story we did last winter about some unusual Ukrainian women training to become part of the nation’s Army of Drones.

The Russian private army known as the Wagner Group is trying to persuade young men to join the fight in Ukraine. Their online recruitment efforts don’t just hint at the future of modern warfare: they’re a callback to an earlier time, when a group called ISIS lured young men to fight in Syria.

This month, the FBI added Mikhail Pavlovich Matveev to their Most Wanted hacker list for his alleged role in a number of ransomware attacks against U.S. targets. In a rare interview shortly after the FBI announcement, he talked about the new designation and what he wants to do next.

From “The Underworld” podcast, a conversation about casino towns, gangster owners, and a new twist on scamming operations. Nathan Paul Southern and Lindsey Kennedy took a trip along the Mekong River and revealed new details about southeast Asia’s latest scourge: cyber slaves.

ADDITIONAL READING: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3195932/laos-criminal-casino-empire-chinese-gangsters

When the FBI and Justice Department took down a collective of cybercriminals known as Hive earlier this year, it targeted a group that made a name for itself, in part, by holding hospital and healthcare systems for ransom during the pandemic. What made the group so effective was its own twist on WeWork-style collaboratives… and it led to their demise.

The Department of Justice says last month’s effort to bring down the Genesis Marketplace represents a departure from traditional law enforcement actions. ‘Operation Cookie Monster' wasn’t about nabbing masterminds. It was about making it harder for JV hackers to enter the world of cybercrime.

The Iraqi government has unveiled an app that helps ordinary citizens report “indecent” content online. Since its introduction, the Ballegh app has received some 144,000 reports. And the Iraqi app isn’t the only one: A roster of similar morality apps have popped up across the region, raising new questions about the future of free speech in the Middle East.

What makes a hacker tick? That’s what we wanted to find out when we reached out to Bassterlord, a 27-year-old hacker in Ukraine who joined some of the most infamous hacking crews of our time. Researcher Jon DiMaggio of Analyst1 has released a report about him, and he gave Click Here an exclusive first look. Then, we spoke to Bassterlord ourselves.

We go behind the scenes of the new book by WIRED’s Andy Greenberg, "Tracers in the Dark." It explains how a handful of entrepreneurs and investigators demystified cryptocurrency tracking. Recently, we spoke with Andy and some crypto tracers onstage at the Links 2023 conference in New York City. Plus, North Korea’s ingenious effort to launder its stolen crypto. 

Police departments across the country are testing generative AI and large language model software to see if they can cut down on the time officers spend writing reports. But AI seems to have this way of always surprising us, and the benefits it brings to police may have nothing to do with time.

When cryptocurrency burst on the scene in 2008, it was touted as anonymous — a boon to cyber criminals all over the world. Then a few mathematicians and some federal agents proved otherwise, in a way so big it birthed an industry. With a tip of the hat to Andy Greenberg’s new book “Tracers in the Dark,” we talk to them about how they did it.

Six months after demonstrators took to the streets of Iran hoping to end its draconian hijab laws and push for a change in the leadership, the protests have moved online — into a quiet civil disobedience campaign that leadership is finding hard to control.

Drones of all shapes and sizes are part of the war effort in the skies above Ukraine. Some are helping kill the enemy; others spy on formations and guide bombs to their targets. We take you inside a school meant to boost that effort by training women to fly them. Plus, a leading dark web hacking forum meets its demise.

In a recent conversation on WAMU’s nationally syndicated show 1A, we talked about lessons learned one year into the world’s first truly hybrid war. The conversation happened amid a report from Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center that found new worrying signs on the Russia-Ukraine cyber front. They believe Sandworm, a cyber military unit of Russia’s intelligence service, has been launching new phishing campaigns, cyber espionage operations, and is stepping up coordination with hacktivists groups.

We follow up last week’s episode on spyware and the Mexican military with a look at Guacamaya, the hacktivist collective that helped provide key documents that showed the army purchased Pegasus spyware used on human rights advocates and local journalists. Guacamaya isn’t just targeting Mexico, though. The group has been hacking into military servers all over Latin America, and its efforts have people asking: ¿Quién es Guacamaya? (Who is Guacamaya?)

A new report has published classified documents and internal memos that make clear the Mexican Army bought Pegasus spyware and systematically deployed it against journalists and activists in Mexico. R3D, a Mexican digital rights group, and University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, also found evidence of a formerly unknown military intelligence unit whose sole focus appears to be secret surveillance and deployment of spyware. Some of the sensitive material published in the report came from a massive hack into the Ministry of Defense by the hacktivist group Guacamaya last year. Click Here was part of a small group of journalists given early access to their findings.

Russia has deployed the Iranian-built Shahed drone to wreak havoc on Ukraine’s infrastructure. We speak to a man who is a kind of drone whisperer. After years of taking these Shahed drones apart, he says if you listen, they have amazing stories to tell.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in a case that will consider a 1995 law that shields social media companies from liability. Gonzalez v. Google could allow people to sue tech companies that use algorithms to sort through their content. Plus, we check in with Alexander Martin, The Record's UK editor, about his takeaways from the Munich Security Conference.

In a special Valentine’s Day episode, we look at the evolution of romance scams. They aren’t just about bilking lonely people out of their life savings anymore – scammers have diversified, and they’re making victims accomplices in a roster of cyber crimes from email scams and check fraud to money laundering.

At a time when an errant spy balloon has raised new questions about President Xi Jinping’s absolute control over all things Chinese, we take a look at how his regime quelled last year’s Covid protests and how an arsenal of digital weapons helped tighten his grip on power. Plus, facial recognition’s latest nemesis: knitwear.

Leaders from Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft told the Senate Intelligence Committee that they were doing all they could to combat foreign interference ahead of the November election. The senators weren't convinced.

“Shoot The Messenger” from Exile Content Studio and PRX looks at what happened to the murdered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The first weapon used against him was digital - a sophisticated spyware called Pegasus.

This week, Axon, the company that developed the Taser, is hosting a conference in Las Vegas called TaserCon. The event is billed as an opportunity to talk about law enforcement and public safety. Axon is expected to use the occasion to reintroduce a controversial plan: to put the company’s gun-equipped drones in police departments and schools to prevent mass shootings. And, cybercriminals’ new best friend: ChatGPT.

After spending more than a year undercover with the notorious ransomware gang LockBit, one researcher explains how the group revolutionized the business of ransomware.

Genshin Impact put the Chinese video gaming industry on the map. While the game has delighted players, it begs the question: Can China’s Communist Party and a massively popular video game peacefully co-exist?

We take a deep dive into a corner of the cryptocurrency economy that hasn’t (completely) tanked yet: Bitcoin mining. It is part cryptography, part math, and part luck.

An episode from “Exile” from the Leo Baeck Institute and Antica Productions. At the height of his fame, a shirtless, barefooted Albert Einstein escapes the bustle of Berlin for a simpler life. The best thinkers of the time gather at his beloved summer house in Caputh to laze by the water, swap ideas, and gossip. There, he can escape the pressures of global fame, but his summer haven can’t keep him safe from the growing Nazi threat rising in Germany.

At a time when Vladimir Putin is attempting to redraw the Iron Curtain, we revisit an earlier episode in which we take a trip back to the Soviet Union circa 1985 when four American musicians smuggled messages in and out of the Soviet Union — with music.

Sharing a special episode of another podcast, The Last Archive, a show about the history of truth -- or the lack thereof. Harvard historian Jill Lepore uncovers the secrets of the past the way a detective might. In this episode, Jill chats with Anna Kijas, a co-organizer of SUCHO: Saving Ukrainian Cultural History Online. Lepore and Kijas talk about her effort to preserve online resources that are at risk of disappearing because of the war in Ukraine.

You can hear more episodes of The Last Archive at https://link.chtbl.com/clickherearchive 

We go back to an episode we did earlier this year about a gang of SIM swappers who are behind something called violence-as-a-service. Doxing or defacing websites, they told us, just doesn’t send enough of a message. So, they are throwing molotov cocktails or slashing tires of their rivals instead. Trouble is – it is getting more popular and commonplace and is bound to affect the rest of us.

“Big Brother: North Korea's Forgotten Prince” from School of Humans and iHeartPodcasts introduce you to the person who should have been North Korea’s leader – had he not been on the receiving end of what may be the 21st century’s most bizarre assassination plot.

We sat down with US Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia to talk about election interference, his recent hearing with tech execs on misinformation and disinformation, and the future of cybersecurity.

North Korea has launched an unprecedented number of missiles this month. So we bring you an encore episode about a team of researchers using open-source intelligence to track the hermit kingdom's nuclear ambitions. Plus, the Yanluowang ransomware group finds itself the victim of a leak.

Washington and the tech world have been talking about public private partnerships in cyberspace for decades. The NSA and Cyber Command have intelligence about attacks; cybersecurity companies have the means to block them. It looks like they are finally working together — not in the U.S, but in Ukraine.

Vice Society burst on the ransomware scene in early 2021, attacking a roster of government offices, hospitals and, notoriously, schools. But cybersecurity experts say the group isn't your typical ransomware operation: they're some of cyber crime's biggest posers, using old exploits on easy targets to give the illusion of greatness.