Darknet Diaries

Episodes

EP 83: NSA Cryptologists

In this episode we interview two NSA Cryptologists, Marcus J. Carey and Jeff Man. We hear their story of how they got into the NSA and what they did while there.

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EP 82: Master of Pwn

The Zero Day Initiative runs a contest called Pwn2Own. The contest calls the best hackers in the world to demonstrate they can hack into software that should be secure. Like browsers, phones, even cars. Whoever can demonstrate the most vulnerabili...

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EP 81: The Vendor

This is the story of a darknet marketplace vendor we'll name V. He tells his story of how he first became a buyer, then transitioned into seller.

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EP 80: The Whistleblower

In this episode we hear a story from a social engineer who's job it is to get people to do things they don't want to do. Why? For profit.

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EP 79: Dark Basin

What do you do when you find yourself the target of a massive hacking campaign, and you are getting thousands of phishing emails and someone following you in your car. You might turn to Citizen Lab who has the ability to research who is behind thi...

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EP 78: Nerdcore

Nerdcore music is music for nerds. In this episode we hear from some of the musicians who make Nerdcore music.

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EP 77: Olympic Destroyer

In February 2018, during the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang South Korea, a cyber attack struck, wiping out a lot of the Olympic's digital infrastructure. Teams rushed to get things back up, but it was bad. Malware had repeatedly wiped the domain c...

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EP 76: Knaves Out

This is the story about how someone hacked into JP Morgan Chase, one of the biggest financial institutions in the world. It's obvious why someone would want to break into a bank right? Well the people who hacked into this bank, did not do it for o...

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EP 75: Compromised Comms

From 2009 to 2013 the communication channels the CIA uses to contact assets in foreign countries was compromised. This had terrifying consequences.

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EP 74: Mikko

Poker is a competitive game. Unlike other casino games, poker is player vs player. Criminal hackers have understood this for a while and sometimes hack the other players to get an edge. And that small edge can result in millions of dollars in winn...

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EP 73: WannaCry

In May 2017 the world fell victim to a major ransomware attack known as WannaCry. One of the victims was UK's national health service. Security researchers scrambled to try to figure out how to stop it and who was behind it.

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EP 72: Bangladesh Bank Heist

This story is about a bank robbery with the objective to steal 1 billion dollars. Which makes this the largest bank robbery in history. And it was all done over a computer.

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EP 71: Information Monopoly

In this episode, we're going into the depths of North Korea to conduct one of the greatest hacks of all time. To find a way to inject information into a country run by totalitarian regime.

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EP 70: Ghost Exodus

Ghost Exodus is a hacker. He conducted various illegal activities online. Some of which he documents on YouTube. He's also a great musician. He got into some trouble from his hacking. This is his story.

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EP 69: Human Hacker

We all know that computers and networks are vulnerable to hacking and malicious actors, but what about us, the humans who interface with these devices? Con games, scams, and strategic deception are far older than computers, and in the modern era, ...

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EP 68: Triton

A mysterious mechanical failure one fateful night in a Saudi Arabian chemical plant leads a cast of operational technology researchers down a strange path towards an uncommon, but grave, threat. In this episode, we hear how these researchers disco...

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EP 67: The Big House

John Strand is a penetration tester. He's paid to break into computer networks and buildings to test their security. In this episode we listen to stories he has from doing this type of work.

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EP 66: Freakyclown

Freakyclown is a physical penetration tester. His job is to break into buildings to test the security of the building. In this episode we hear stories of some of these missions he's been on.

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EP 65: PSYOP

PSYOP, or Psychological Operations, is something the US military has been doing to foreign audiences for decades. But what exactly is it? And what's the difference between white, gray, and black PSYOP missions? We talk to PSYOP specialists to lear...

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EP 64: The Athens Shadow Games

Vodafone Greece is the largest telecom provider in Greece. But in 2004 a scandal within the company would pin them to be top of the news cycle in Greece for weeks. Hackers got in the network. And what they were after took everyone by surprise.

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EP 63: w0rmer

The hacker named w0rmer was active within AnonOps. These are Anonymous Operations which often organize and wage attacks on websites or people often with the purpose of social justice. Eventually w0rmer joined in on some of these hacking escapades ...

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EP 62: Cam

Cam's story is both a cautionary tale and inspirational at the same time. He's been both an attacker and defender. And not the legal kind of attacker. He has caused half a million dollars in damages with his attacks. Attacks that arose from a feel...

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EP 61: Samy

Samy Kamkar is a hacker. And while he's done a lot of stuff, he's best known for creating the Samy Worm. Which spread its way through a popular social media site and had crazy results.

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EP 60: dawgyg

This is a story about the hacker named dawgyg and how he made over $100,000 in a single day, from hacking.

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EP 59: The Courthouse

In this episode we hear from Gary and Justin. Two seasoned penetration testers who tell us a story about the time when they tried to break into a courthouse but it went all wrong.

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EP 58: OxyMonster

OxyMonster sold drugs on the dark web marketplace Dream Market. Something happened though, and it all came crashing down.

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EP 57: MS08-067

Hear what goes on internally when Microsoft discovers a major vulnerability within Windows.

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EP 56: Jordan

This is the story of Jordan Harbinger. A bit of a misfit teenager, who was always on the edge of trouble. In this story we hear what happened that lead to a visit from the FBI.

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EP 55: NoirNet

A holiday special episode. A private pen tester takes on a job that involves him with another eccentric pen tester, a mischievious smile, and his quest to gain access to the network.

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EP 54: NotPetya

This is the story of NotPetya. Which seems to be the first time we've seen what a cyber war looks like. In the summer of 2017 Ukraine suffered a serious and catastrophic cyber attack on their whole country. Hear how it went down, what got hit, and...

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