Transcription performed by LeahTranscribes[START OF RECORDING]
JACK: I remember the first time I posted something online. It was a video game guide in the nineties, and there’s an internet adage that I think is true. It goes like this; the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer. I posted a guide on how to beat a video game, and it immediately got downvoted, mocked, ridiculed, and I was told to get good. At first I thought they were joking. Like, I had beaten this game a hundred times with this strategy. What are you talking about, ‘get gud’? But then after some pushback, they started cluing me in, telling me exactly where my advice was wrong and giving me tips on how to properly do those parts of the game. I was blown away. What I thought was impossible to do in the game people were actually doing. Now, dear listener, this experience shaped me for who I am today. If you post something genuinely helpful online and people mock you, that could be the end of you ever posting anything online again. It’s enough to ruin your self-confidence and hate everyone online. But I had the opposite reaction. I loved this game and played it thousands of times, and they were giving me tips and strategies on how to be way better than my best strategy that I had, and I genuinely wanted to be way better. Not only that, I got to make friends with other people who were really passionate about this game. It was an amazing experience. Fast forward to today. We’re 150 episodes into this podcast. That’s 134 hours of me yapping. I’ve got a lot of feedback over the years. Most of it is positive, but today, today I’ve got to correct something I got wrong, really wrong.
(Intro): [Intro music] These are true stories from the dark side of the internet. I’m Jack Rhysider. This is Darknet Diaries. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]
JACK: Over the years, one episode I’ve published has haunted me, Episode 20, called Mobman. Yeah, take a listen to this short clip of it.
GREG: [MUSIC] I made the Sub7. It’s a remote access tool, and it was a Trojan horse virus.
JACK: He built a program that would allow him to take control of another computer.
GREG: You could open and close a CD-ROM. You could flip the screen. You could hide the Start button. You could move the mouse on their screen and click around, you could open up their C drive, change their wallpaper.
JACK: This is an episode where I interviewed a guy named Greg who went by the name Mobman, who claimed to have made the Sub7 malware back in the nineties. [MUSIC] The episode haunts me because I have received numerous comments that listeners don’t believe he’s the guy who created Sub7. For instance, there’s a Reddit post where someone said, I just started listening to Mobman this afternoon and couldn’t finish it. I just don’t believe this guy made Sub7 or could have created a rat at all. It’s not just his attitude or personality; it just seems as if he only has a cursory knowledge of any of the technology used.
Multiple times throughout the interview, something he said just didn’t quite make sense or didn’t match up with what I remember from that time period. Then some other commenter said, I had the same impression, too, and someone else said, he’s fakey-wakey. Then someone else said, I remember the creator was Romanian, and that guy’s not Romanian. I fact-check my guests as best I can, but I do most of the research and writing for this show, and I can only check so much. Before publishing that episode, I spoke to some people who knew Greg personally from Tampa, where he’s from, and they told me he’s legit. On top of that, he was featured in a Rolling Stone magazine article saying he’s the one who created Sub7.
I figured Rolling Stone would do some fact-checking themselves, right? Also, Greg offered to show me the source code for Sub7, and he demonstrated how he has control over the Sub7 domain name. So, I just show this to people who didn’t buy the story. But as I listened to people and read more theories about this, it started to make me think. [MUSIC] Maybe they’re right. Maybe I interviewed the wrong person. See, I interviewed a guy named Greg who goes by Mobman, and on every version of Sub7, it was created by someone calling themselves Mobman. So, I was starting to think, wait, if Greg didn’t make Sub7, then are there two Mobmen out there? If so, where is the second one? Somewhere around 2004, the Sub7 creator, Mobman, disappeared, and Greg just so happened to get arrested at the same time, too.
So, he says that’s why he disappeared. So, did two Mobmen disappear at the same time? If there are two, then Greg is the only one who came back as Mobman. The other Mobman is still out there somewhere. Well, a guy named Ill Will took it upon himself to find the real Mobman, and he spent years hunting through the internet looking for him, and eventually found a clue which led him to a potential e-mail address used by the real Mobman. He e-mailed him and sure enough, he said, yeah, I’m the one who created Sub7. You found me. I got connected with this Mobman to hear the story. Hello, hello.
MOBMAN: Hi. You’re very punctual, right at 12:00 on the dot.
JACK: Yeah. Why not? Now, you call — you have the tag here, Mobman, here on our call.
MOBMAN: I do.
JACK: Is that your nickname?
MOBMAN: Yes.
JACK: When did you start using that?
MOBMAN: Oh, 1999, I want to say.
JACK: What is the meaning of it?
MOBMAN: It comes from a rap band, a Romanian rap band, called B.U.G. Mafia. So, Bucharest Underground Mafia; that’s their name. I’m a big fan of them, and when I was thinking — coming up with a new nickname, it just had a nice ring to it. Mobman, you know?
JACK: Yeah, yeah. I like it.
MOBMAN: Yeah.
JACK: This is — it’s a trip, you know, to get here because…
MOBMAN: Yeah.
JACK: …for the last six years I’ve known Mobman to be a different guy.
MOBMAN: I’m aware.
JACK: Now I feel like I’ve met a new Mobman. So, let’s go back to the nineties. What was your early experience with cyber security?
MOBMAN: It wasn’t really a hacking thing. It was more of a programming thing. I taught myself to program when I was very little. I did a whole bunch of little games. This was back when I was still in Romania. So, in ‘97, I moved to Canada with the whole family, and then I found out about Delphi. I wanted to start learning Delphi, so I just happened to pick rap to work on, basically.
JACK: [Laughing]
MOBMAN: That was it.
JACK: That’s…
MOBMAN: That’s how everything started.
JACK: So, the story goes, Sub7 was born.
MOBMAN: Yeah. Well, it all stemmed from NetBus, right? That was — it preceded Sub7. It was one of the original remote — or one of the originalTrojans. It was called NetBus. So, I played around with that a little bit, and that’s kind of what inspired me to create something similar. So, I was…
JACK: What did NetBus do?
MOBMAN: It was the same thing, a remote-access Trojan rat. It had a little UI and a server you would send somebody and then connect to them. So, that’s kinda what I was trying to emulate when I started. Then after I got a couple of features going, I packaged it up and uploaded it to a hacking site. That started picking up steam. I had my contact details on there and people started sending me e-mails, contacting me; oh, can you add this? Can you add this? Can you add this? So, that’s kinda how it grew from there. I was like, hm, I wonder if I can do this in Delphi. So, I would look into it, do some research, see if I can find it out, and if it was possible, I would just do it.
JACK: If you created this as a coding challege, did you ever feel bad when people used it for malicious purposes?
MOBMAN: It was all fun. At the beginning and for the first many versions, it was all just fun, having fun with people, playing tricks on them; pranks and things like that. That was the whole motivation behind it and everything else. But then I started hearing all these stories about people using it for malicious purposes. Always in the back of my mind was sort of like, well, there’s many of these tools available. They just happened to pick the one I made. They would have just picked a different one if it wasn’t for Sub7. So, it’s part of why I left, I guess, in the end. I wanted to get into something else, some sort of different — throughout the whole thing I always tagged as a hacker, as — but it was just — I was just a programmer, just trying to learn to program.
JACK: The thing is, as this tool began getting popular, it started to be used more and more in criminal activity, using it to take over someone’s computer. You can see exactly what they’re doing on it, or you could steal their files or session cookies or wipe their computer and delete everything. The problem is, creators of malware have sometimes been arrested just for creating it, not even doing anything bad with it, because those creators were knowingly creating tools or weapons for criminals to do crimes with. Sub7’s official reason for existence was to prank people? It was for jokes and stuff?
MOBMAN: Some of the most popular features in it were the ones just for fun, like the Matrix one. It just turned your whole screen black and you would type letters one by one. It was basically a chat, but you couldn’t get out of it. You couldn’t do anything. You would just chat back and forth with whoever was on the other end.
JACK: But as it started being used for more malicious reasons, that’s when Mobman decided to leave the scene and basically not look back. He went on to programming and leaving the name Mobman in the past, too.
MOBMAN: The very first time I heard about somebody impersonating my name and taking credit for all this stuff was — stemmed from your podcast. I had a local friend, Sebastian — we call him Septa — that is a big fan of your podcast and heard that you had an interview with Mobman. Obviously he knew who that was and was looking forward to listening to it, and listened to it. He’s like, what is this? Who is this guy? He sent me a message; he’s like, yo, I listened to the podcast expecting you, and it was this other guy talking about some random stuff. I don’t know what’s going on. That’s how I found out first. Then a couple of months later, Ill Will contacted me.
He’s the one that started the whole process. He sent me a little zip file with a couple of details about me. He had a picture of my car. He was like, the password for the zip file is your full name. So, if it’s really you, then you should be able to open it. He’s like, I’m 99% sure that it’s you, that I’ve traced you down. I replied; I said, well, you’re right. You can be 100% sure now. He was the one that kinda not convinced me, but — ‘cause I was a little bit indifferent, right? This was a long time ago. I don’t know if I really want to get back into any of that. But he made a good point; a lot of people have made their start with this, and it’s not right to have somebody else take the credit. History should be set straight.
JACK: So, let’s set the record straight. This is the real Mobman, the actual creator of Sub7, but even though this real Mobman heard my interview with another Mobman, he still didn’t want to contact me to fix it.
MOBMAN: ‘Cause the whole thing was I didn’t want to publicly say who I was. I didn’t want to publicly admit all this stuff.
JACK: Why was that?
MOBMAN: I don’t know, I don’t know. After a really, really long time, it didn’t really make any sense to still stay hidden.
JACK: Yeah, I mean, it makes sense what you were saying a minute ago, which was like, I was young when I did that. I’m done with that. I don’t want to be part of that. I don’t want to revisit that. I can see there’s a lot of reasons. What I was worried — was like, oh yeah, some people did some awful things with that and the FBI’s looking for me.
MOBMAN: I think people started getting in trouble for making tools like that at that point. Like you said, just for making them, not for actually using them. So, that contributed to like, I need to get outta here.
JACK: Yeah. Did you get any heat from law enforcement?
MOBMAN: No, no, I did not.
JACK: ‘Cause you had your e-mail there, and I could see somebody being like, alright, we gotta put an end to this guy.
MOBMAN: Yeah, no, no. I never got into any actual trouble or heard of anything, but I kept everything private, like every — nobody knew my name, even the people that were closest to me, closest to me in the scene, like part of the crew and things like that. Nobody actually knew me. They knew the city I was in. The very first version said the city I was in. It said, ‘From Windsor, Ontario’.
JACK: Okay, this makes sense. This is a tool that while, yeah, has started a lot of cyber-security careers, has also caused a lot of damage. With people like Marcus Hutchins being arrested three years after creating some malware, it’d make sense for the real Mobman to let someone else take credit since it’ll allow him to stay hidden in real life. He has a bunch of family and stuff and just wants it all behind him. But after looking through Ill Will’s research and speaking with this Mobman for an hour, I’m convinced this is him. Wow, six years after posting the episode we finally discover the truth, and now we can lay it all to rest. But there’s still something that’s bugging me. Why would Greg pose as Mobman all these years? We’re gonna take a quick break, but stay with us because when we come back, I’m calling Greg. Okay, time to call Greg, aka, Mobman. Hey, you there?
GREG: Yeah, I’m here.
JACK: Oh, hey, man. How have you been?
GREG: Pretty good, just busy working and sleeping and doing kid stuff.
JACK: The story of Sub7 has been researched more thoroughly since you’ve appeared on my podcast, and it just wasn’t adding up for some people. I was put in contact with the original author of Sub7, a Romanian fella named Mobman.
GREG: Okay.
JACK: So, I mean, clearly — at this point I’m believing that he’s the one who created it, right, and so now I’m wondering, well, hold on, you’re the one who said you created Sub7. What’s going on here?
GREG: Right. So, you were introduced to him through — I’m assuming — Will, and…
JACK: Yep, Ill Will.
GREG: So, they all like, made a person? Did you check his ID or anything?
JACK: [Laughs] But yeah, he seemed to be able to produce some evidence, right?
GREG: So, I mean, I have a lot of that stuff, too. You just never asked. I showed it to a couple other people that I know in my inner circles.
JACK: So, are you — are we talking about the same Sub7, though? Because there’s — this conflicting story is just not gonna work for me. I’ve gotta have a source of truth here.
GREG: Ill Will’s claims on his website — we could go to. You put in ‘Mobman’, it comes up in the Google searches, and there’s all kinds of claims on that web — it’s like it’s reaching for straws, every little thing, and then after ten years, he finally gets enough straws to put together a whole, big persona or whatever he’s doing for this other Mobman person.
JACK: My god, Greg is doubling down. He’s saying he’s the real Mobman and this other guy is a made-up persona. Ah!
GREG: Alright, and then what about the Gmail account and the domain name?
JACK: Okay, go ahead, tell me.
GREG: Well, does this other person have access to it or run it?
JACK: To the Gmail account and domain name? [Crosstalk]
GREG: [Inaudible] for everything? Yeah, yeah, that’s hardcoded into the source code.
JACK: And you’re saying you do?
GREG: I do.
JACK: Okay.
GREG: Then you could see the registration dates on them and stuff. It outlines — all the times have never been kinda changed.
JACK: Yeah.
GREG: So, maybe we get this other dude and me together?
JACK: Alright, I’ll see if I can. You’d be wanting to talk with him? We’ll get Ill Will on the call, too?
GREG: I’d rather not talk with Ill Will. I think — and quite honestly, I try not to even talk about the Sub — or even anything that I’ve done in the past, but they got all these laws and computer laws and shit nowadays. It’s like, I don’t want them to go retroactively and find some crap to get me in more trouble. I’d like to meet the guy, or whatever, and then we could see. We could get to the bottom of it.
JACK: Alright. Alright, I’ll see what I could do. Thanks for this call. I’ll keep in touch.
GREG: Alright. Bye.
JACK: Bye. [Laughs] We got two Mobmen here now? This is crazy. I need some answers, though. I went back to the other Mobman and I was like, hey, could we do a call with both of you? He’s like, yeah, let’s do it. So, we did the call, and I’ll just play for you the conversation mostly unedited. Hello.
GREG: Hey, what’s up?
MOBMAN: Hello.
JACK: So, I hit Record already because this is such an epic call. I’ve never had two people of the same name on my podcast at the same time.
GREG: There was nobody else named Jack?
JACK: Honestly, as I was chatting with both of you, I was getting confused on who’s who.
GREG: When? Oh.
JACK: Just because you’re both named Mobman.
GREG: Oh. I know. It sucks, ‘cause I’ll be trying to play video games and I’ll sign up and I’ll put my name in there, and then I’ll see it’s taken. I’ll be like, who the hell made that? So…
JACK: Well, today you get to meet the person who made it.
GREG: Yeah, well, I don’t know if he plays games.
MOBMAN: The one with the Romanian accent is the real one, just to set that up.
GREG: So, do you play video games? Call of Duty or something?
MOBMAN: Who are you asking? I’m not here to socialize, dude.
JACK: Okay, so, yeah…
MOBMAN: Let’s get into it.
JACK: What are we here for? We are here to discover — it’s not so much the name, right? People reuse names. There’s a lot of Jacks in the world. I’m not worried about my name being reused. Or, probably ‘Mobman’ has been reused before. But the question at hand here is the creation of Sub7 is being claimed by both of you, and the tricky part here is neither of you really want to claim it because it’s like, hey, man, that’s kind of a sensitive subject. I don’t really want to put my face on front of that thing, ‘cause it has been used for purposes that maybe you don’t want to claim or whatever. So, it is a tricky subject to try to navigate, but here is the situation where I’m trying to explain what this tool is, and I’m getting confused on who actually made it.
GREG: Well, a few people made different versions of it.
MOBMAN: No, they did not. Only one person made all the versions, dude.
GREG: Oh, yeah?
MOBMAN: Go into every single version that was released, into the credits screen, and under Programmer, there’s only one name ever. There’s also multiple Romanian quotes from B.U.G. Mafia. It’s quite obvious that the author is fucking Romanian, not some Greg guy from Florida. Really?
JACK: Why is it — why was there only one programmer of this app?
MOBMAN: ‘Cause it was just me doing everything. The whole source, I was in possession of it the whole time. [Crosstalk] It was released a couple of months ago.
JACK: Why is — today you have GitHub and it wasn’t the same back in the nineties, but with GitHub, people can contribute and help out. You didn’t want other people to help out. You didn’t want to share the source code. Why was that?
MOBMAN: It’s ‘cause it was a mess. I learned Delphi by working on Sub7. It was my very first project. It was spaghetti code. That was the main reason it wasn’t shared, and every single version was dedicated to B.U.G. Mafia. How do you explain that, Greg?
GREG: So, I found these YouTube videos, and people made something called Sub7 SAT. Then I know…
MOBMAN: How is this related to Sub7?
GREG: Read 101 made some — and then John — he made some, too, for SS.
MOBMAN: This was at the very end after I left the scene. There was one version released by Read 101.
GREG: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MOBMAN: That’s what you’re bringing up?
GREG: [Crosstalk] I don’t know if you could see the screen or not…
MOBMAN: How do you explain B.U.G. Mafia in the credits? Can you answer the question?
GREG: The band…? The — ‘cause they’re…
MOBMAN: Yeah, the band, the Romanian hip-hop band that was mentioned in every single release. It’s the band where the nickname Mobman comes from. How do you explain that?
GREG: Let me pull up the videos of — well, we used to listen to them.
MOBMAN: Videos of what? In 1999, the first version that does mention it, B.U.G. Mafia didn’t even have any songs online, man. I brought tapes with me from Romania. They were only on tape. You could not have heard of them on the internet in 1999 when this was put in the About credits.
GREG: Yeah, they were.
MOBMAN: It just doesn’t makes sense, man, like, everything. You mentioned that you made it for some Ultima Online things, like to steal credits or something? What was the story, Jack? ‘Cause he mentioned it on your podcast.
JACK: Yeah, yeah, just to mess with his friends, it sounds like, to me.
MOBMAN: It was all an Ultima Online thing? Like, you would find traces of looking up UltimaOnline.exe or .ini or something. You could open it up, ‘cause the server opens up files and you can find those file names if you open the .exe in a text editor. So, you’d find — it had a method where it would modify win.ini to start up, so you could find that reference in the .exe there. None of the versions have any sort of reference to any Ultima Online things, files or .exes or program names. The stuff that you came up with doesn’t make any goddamn sense, man. I’m surprised that it lasted this long, honestly.
GREG: And…
MOBMAN: I’m surprised you’re able to bullshit for this long.
GREG: And the master passcode?
MOBMAN: The master passcode has my birthday in it. That’s another one. It has my birthday in it. [Crosstalk] Are you born in October 15, 1980?
GREG: How do you know — how do we know that that’s your birthday?
MOBMAN: I’ll send you a picture of my driving license.
GREG: [Laughing] I want to hold up my driver’s license, too, ‘cause it says the same thing.
MOBMAN: I highly doubt that it says that. I doubt that you’re born on October 15, 1980. You show me a picture.
GREG: You could just Google it. It’s in my arrest record and everything, too. But I could put the ID up on the…
MOBMAN: Oh, is that what started the whole thing, the whole stealing the identity ‘cause the birthdays matched?
GREG: Well, then how would I know that that’s your birthday?
MOBMAN: ‘Cause it was mentioned. It’s under Sub7 Wiki, man. It was a known fact.
GREG: Right. The Wikipedia gets changed like, every other month…
MOBMAN: Okay.
GREG: …and I’m mostly the one correcting it.
MOBMAN: So, on the official Sub7 website…
GREG: Uh-huh. Go ahead.
MOBMAN: …there were multiple references to Romania and Craiova, the city where I’m from.
GREG: For October…? For…?
MOBMAN: How do you explain those? No, no…
GREG: I was still on the birthday.
MOBMAN: This isn’t related to the birthday. I’m just going back to the Romanian thing. There’s multiple verses in Romanian in the About screens in a couple of the different versions.
GREG: Yeah, when you hit the About and the Help, yeah.
MOBMAN: Yeah. So, how — what? It’s obviously a Romanian that made it, not some Greg guy from Florida.
GREG: Greg from the Canada?
MOBMAN: And also, yeah, speaking of which, the first five or six versions, the first thing that the About credits said was ‘From Windsor, Ontario’. Were you ever in Windsor, Ontario?
GREG: Do you see these credits on the software?
MOBMAN: Yeah. You can get any of the versions, download any of the old versions. There’s multiple. There’s twelve, fifteen.
GREG: Do you have them all?
MOBMAN: Every single one, you can go to the About screen…
GREG: Yep.
MOBMAN: …and the first five or six say ‘From Windsor, Ontario, dedicated to B.U.G. Mafia’, and some of them have quotes in Romanian.
GREG: Yeah, they all say that, yes, for the Bug…B.U.G.
MOBMAN: Have you ever been to Windsor, Ontario?
GREG: No. I haven’t been to Canada. They don’t…
MOBMAN: Then how do you explain that?
GREG: They don’t want me to go to Canada.
MOBMAN: I know they don’t, ‘cause you have a record. How do you explain that, then, in the credits? You can’t do…
GREG: Let’s see…
MOBMAN: …you can’t come up with bullshit fast enough. I’m missing the Euros for this, you know?
GREG: You’re what? You’re wasting euros for this?
MOBMAN: I’m missing the Euro 2024, the soccer game.
GREG: Oh.
JACK: It’s a long game. You’ll be alright.
MOBMAN: I’m just kidding. Romania played yesterday.
GREG: [Laughing] I didn’t even know there was a soccer game going on.
JACK: Greg, how did you get into Delphi?
GREG: Just learning and programming, right? It’s one of the languages that were just hanging out — it had the [inaudible] instead of just — that you could make menus and stuff like that, so…
MOBMAN: What does — all the Delphi programs, what do they start with? What does a function start and end with? What does a Delphi function start and end with if you’re such a good programmer?
GREG: The functions? Or like, the top where the little — the…?
MOBMAN: Yeah, the function. What’s the first thing you do after the function? What is the beginning and the end of the block of code? How is that denoted in Delphi?
GREG: Program?
MOBMAN: No. How do you define the beginning and the end of a function? You know in C you have the curly brackets? What do you have in Delphi? Like, Jack, this is ridiculous, man. I doubt this guy even touched Delphi.
GREG: Sorry, are you talking about the semi-colon…? [Crosstalk]
MOBMAN: It’s just, there’s nothing that makes sense.
GREG: …all the functions at the end or…
MOBMAN: I’m talking about the words, man.
GREG: …or like the question mark or whatever for PHP or when you start — the — call it?
MOBMAN: So, let’s say you define a function, right? [Crosstalk]
GREG: Right, you type the word ‘function’…
MOBMAN: You say, function test…
GREG: …and then you put the function name, yeah. You declare it.
MOBMAN: Yeah, and then what’s on the next line?
GREG: You began, you end, you do stuff?
MOBMAN: That’s what I was looking for, man, the beginning and the end.
GREG: Okay, I mean, I don’t know, it just sounds…
MOBMAN: I already said it, too.
GREG: …sounds pretty basic. That’s what I mean. People…
MOBMAN: [Inaudible] So, you don’t even know basic stuff, man.
GREG: I didn’t know that you were asking something. I was trying to figure out what exactly you were asking.
MOBMAN: I doubt you even — you actually program, ‘cause…
GREG: Okay, well, how about we…
MOBMAN: …you would know these things.
GREG: We could program something in live time.
JACK: We got the Euro to get back to. We don’t want to be spending our time programming here.
MOBMAN: Exactly. [Crosstalk] [inaudible] …ask for actual proof.
GREG: I’d be happy to share a screen and program.
MOBMAN: …actual proof of something.
JACK: So, Greg, what is your proof that you’re the creator of Sub7?
GREG: I’m not — I don’t have any proof. I’m gonna let it…
MOBMAN: Of course you don’t.
GREG: …let it go.
MOBMAN: I have multiple backup CDs that I burnt with multiple stages of the source. I have a hoodie that I used to sell back then in the store. I took pictures of it. I have the source code. I have multiple proofs, man.
GREG: Right, but I have the source code as well.
MOBMAN: You don’t have anything.
GREG: I have multiple copies of it on backup CDs and stuff that basically I don’t even think — no longer even work. I don’t even have a CD drive anymore.
MOBMAN: I was able to put all of it on…
GREG: Yeah, I was able to pull them out, too, like ten years ago…
MOBMAN: Where is it?
GREG: …and show it to people.
MOBMAN: Did you show it to anyone right now?
GREG: Yeah. Well, not right now ‘cause I’m on a call right now with you guys, and it’s not in person.
MOBMAN: No, but like, come up with the actual proof, man.
GREG: Yeah, and…
MOBMAN: We have the whole source…
GREG: Yes, and the reason I have the — yes, and I posted it…
MOBMAN: You’re claiming that. You’re not showing it.
GREG: It’s been on my GitHub for several years.
MOBMAN: Where?
GREG: On my GitHub.
MOBMAN: At this point you’re just bullshitting, ‘cause there’s no GitHub. There’s no source. Or if there is, it’s definitely not the Sub7 source.
GREG: Okay.
MOBMAN: It’s zero, zero proof. It’s all talk. I have multiple things that I’ve put out there. I gave them all to Ill Will and he posted them on his Twitter. There’s notes. There’s little handwritten notes with ideas, ‘cause I worked on this like, four years. I put a lot of hard work into it. This wasn’t just some script to fucking steal Ultima Online credit. Like, really, dude?
JACK: So, Greg, you were telling me that you have control of the domain Sub7 crew.
GREG: Mm-hm.
MOBMAN: That’s the only actual proof he came forward — and that was never actually owned by the real Mobman, never. It’s not documented anywhere. I never owned any domains back then ‘cause I was trying to stay anonymous. Everybody else was behind it. So, all he did is he bought an expired domain.
GREG: So, in the credits, also there’s…
MOBMAN: This is what — this is the proof he has.
GREG: …there’s a Gmail account, as well.
JACK: Okay, so…
MOBMAN: There’s no Gmail account in the versions that I released.
JACK: So, what did your e-mail come out in, like 2004?
MOBMAN: Something like that.
JACK: So, it didn’t — Sub7 in the nineties would not have — Gmail would — didn’t exist.
MOBMAN: No, no.
JACK: So, we’re talking about later versions at some point.
MOBMAN: It’s a pretty long con. I’ll give you that. It’s, what, a decade now?
GREG: It’s been longer than a decade, right?
MOBMAN: …going to places and stuff?
GREG: How long has it been?
MOBMAN: There you go. It’s hilarious. I feel sorry for you, man. Like, your biggest accomplishment is impersonating somebody else? I feel sorry for you.
GREG: Well, I wouldn’t think of anything — of it as accomplishments, nor even writing a rap back then, right? I don’t even tell pretty much anybody in person or any of that stuff.
MOBMAN: Oh, is that why you go to all the conferences saying you’re Mobman? You don’t even tell anyone?
GREG: I don’t ‘cause a lot of people don’t even know what it is.
MOBMAN: [Laughing] Ill Will has pictures of you at Defcons, multiple Defcons, when you’re going around with Mobman and telling everybody you made Sub7, but now you’re saying you don’t tell people. Come on. Just come out with it. You know you want to. Come on.
JACK: Well, like I said at the beginning, it’s tricky because…
MOBMAN: It’s not tricky, Jack. Come on.
JACK: …who wants to say that they’re the creator of this?
MOBMAN: I’m saying it right now. I’m coming out and saying.
JACK: Alright, you’re the creator.
MOBMAN: Like, this guy’s a unknown…
GREG: Well, be careful around Will, then. When he got arrested and stuff — and a few other people got in trouble — taken down around him.
MOBMAN: [Laughing] How is this related? Don’t change the subject.
GREG: Well, I try not to make any absolute proof that could be used anywhere. So, it’s fine.
MOBMAN: I’m making absolute proofs.
GREG: I’m happy with saying I’m not — because I don’t even care…
MOBMAN: So you’re happy coming out and saying the truth.
GREG: So, I felt…
MOBMAN: Are you going to stop going to places and claiming you’re Mobman? That’s all we want.
GREG: Well, I’ve been saying I’m Mobman for the past — I’m trying to think how many years.
MOBMAN: You can say you’re Mobman, just not the one that made Sub7. Big difference.
GREG: How many years now?
MOBMAN: Huge difference.
GREG: How many…? I’m trying to count.
MOBMAN: History needs to be set straight.
GREG: ‘97, ‘95…
MOBMAN: I appreciate you, Jack, for doing this right now.
GREG: Twenty-four…
JACK: [Laughing] He’s still doing the math. Greg, listen…
GREG: Thirty years.
JACK: …he’s saying you can continue using Mobman. Now, multiple people say — him the same name…
GREG: When I’m on Call of Duty, people keep taking it.
JACK: Yes, other Call of Duty users can use it, too. That’s not a copyrighted name.
GREG: That’s not acceptable.
JACK: But he’s asking you to stop claiming that you’re the creator of Sub7.
MOBMAN: Exactly. Can we agree on that? Come on. You know you want to. You’ve been living a lie.
GREG: Well, I don’t claim it in person anymore to anybody. I don’t even claim it at all. So, that’s easy to do. We could do that.
MOBMAN: If anybody — for the listeners out there, right, if you think you can challenge me or anything like that or if you knew me from back in the day, just send a message. We’ll talk it out. I’m not hiding anything. I can show all the stuff that I talked about, the CDs — I still have the hoodie. I can put in pictures. I can meet you up if you come over here. I’m still in Windsor, still in Windsor, Ontario. If you’re ever around Detroit, it’s right across the road.
JACK: I’m confused if you’re asking to fight someone or if you’re asking to prove that you’re the real Mobman.
MOBMAN: To prove, to see the proof, to see the proof. If anybody wants to challenge me in any way or wants to actually see all this stuff that I’m talking about. I didn’t think you were gonna show up, honestly, ‘cause, really, what could you have said?
GREG: Why? Why wouldn’t I show up?
MOBMAN: Because you’re being outed, ‘cause you’re being outed for how much bullshit you’ve been spewing.
GREG: What does it matter? Why would I care if somebody disputes it or not?
MOBMAN: That’s what this whole thing was about. [Crosstalk]
GREG: They did dispute it for like a decade.
MOBMAN: Because they saw through your bullshit.
GREG: And then, yeah, it took them a decade to get all the bullshit together to call me out of the — from something from thirty years ago that I don’t even care about.
MOBMAN: For something you don’t care about, you sure as hell spent a lot of time and effort. This isn’t just some fad you mentioned once or twice. [Crosstalk]
GREG: How much time and effort do you think?
MOBMAN: This is a decade.
GREG: I mean, do you like, monitor my social medias or something?
JACK: Well, personally, I don’t like you telling me that you did something that you didn’t do. That looks bad for me on my show and my credibility.
MOBMAN: Exactly. You’ve been going around giving interviews as the author of Sub7. How is that not effort put into it? You’ve been going to Defcon conferences. It’s a long-running con, man.
JACK: The reason why I believed it is because of that damn Rolling Stone article saying that you were.
MOBMAN: Yeah, nobody faults you for this.
JACK: Rolling Stone had — must have fact-checked it, so I think this must be legit.
GREG: Well, so that’s when the source code was. So, I had the source code back then on whatever computer I was using.
MOBMAN: You’re really going with this, man? Really? What source code? Why are you — why do you keep going back to it? I thought we agreed on you’re not gonna claim that no more.
GREG: Well, do you want me to explain the story of…
MOBMAN: What are you still trying to prove?
GREG: …what happened and how I was able to prove it back then to the…?
MOBMAN: You said Sub7 source, so I’m not gonna let you bullshit right now, ‘cause that’s not the Sub7 source. That has never left my hands until it was released by Ill Will on GitHub. Never. You’ll not find a copy of it anywhere in the world on any website, on any backup, except the ones I have. So, as soon as you said Sub7 source, like, no, dude, stop. You gotta stop.
JACK: Okay, but I want to hear what — how you got the Rolling Stone article. You were about to say something about how all that started.
GREG: Right. So, we sat down in a room and I had my laptop; opened it up, pulled up the source code of it, compiled it, and showed it around and showed the hash matched the ones that you can download from the website and all that, so…
MOBMAN: …was involved in any way back then…
GREG: Where were you? What happened to you during those years? Were you arrested, too, or did you go to prison, or…?
MOBMAN: …knew right away it was all bullshit if they listened to you in any way.
GREG: Okay.
JACK: Our conversation began getting circular and we started talking over each other at that point. So, I ended the call. But I think we got a half-assed confession out of Greg, didn’t we? He said he’d stop saying he’s the author of Sub7, and we’ll let it go. It was hard to hear that, but he did say that. So, I think that’s the best I’m gonna get from him, and I’ll have to take that. Oh, and I looked up Greg’s birthday on his arrest record, and it shows October 27, not October 15, like he said a moment ago. But honestly, I’m not too upset about this. In fact, I knew this would happen eventually. I grew up in the same culture as these guys, right; on IRC, downloading viruses, pranking people with tools. I remember once that I was in a computer class and the teacher had his computer connected to a projector which was projecting on the front of the class, and I sent a network message to his machine which made a pop-up show for the whole class. It was epic for a teenager.
One thing I know about this culture is just how much hackers like to mess with the press. Cult of the Dead Cow in particular learned that the press will publish just about anything that a hacker says. If you’re in a hacker group and you say, oh, we hacked NASA, the press will just take your word for it and publish it. So, they started creating all these wild claims to see how far the news would spread just to mess with everyone. Later on, 4chan picked up on this, too, trying to get fake news to spread, also. So, this culture is big on simply messing with the media, and it’s partly just to show how crappy the media is for getting it wrong and how gullible people are. I mean, look at the whole Birds Aren’t Real movement, right? I’m sure you’ve heard someone say that, birds aren’t real. That whole thing was just created to prove how conspiracy theories and misinformation is so easily spread.
So, I know the people I talk to, hackers, are known for giving misinformation, which means I have to be allergic to conspiracy theories in order to navigate this effectively and to bring you the most factual podcast I can. To do that, I have to really know my history and understanding of tech and the scene to be ready for anything coming my way. So, I guess I’m saying I’m not surprised that someone at some point pulled one over on me, but man, this was quite a long con, wasn’t it? This is elaborate to have your friends vouch for you and to have all this proof that you were the creator of Sub7. Wow. I’m more impressed than I’m mad at this point. Greg messaged me after that call and wanted another call with me. He wanted to apologize to me if he caused any problems, and I started to record the call.
GREG: It’s no disrespect to you or anybody else that I’ve — if they felt hurt or betrayed or lied to or whatever. It’s nothing personal. It’s none of that. Like I was telling you, I respect your craft and everything, and it’s good that you actually [inaudible]. As I was going through all this stuff with you the other — I’m thinking of all this stuff; I’m like, man, if I actually reflect back and look at it, all the shit that the stupid Sub7 story — that I’d done — I mean, I went to Capital One. I went to Facebook. I went to these businesses to interview, and — on the impression of, oh, this guy wrote Sub7. Let’s interview him. Let’s fly him up here to Virginia at our headquarters, give him a badge, bring him in, interview him and do all this stuff with him. So, in a nutshell, that’s pretty good social fucking engineering to get all the way — to do that. I mean, into one of the biggest financial institutes.
JACK: It’s true.
GREG: [Laughing] So, I think of things like that, right? It’s like, yeah. Then using that noriety [?] where these kids that are coming out or whoever, right — and they listen. They heed my advice. I tell them, don’t screw up your life like I did.
JACK: That’s a great way to end this whole episode.
GREG: [Laughing]
JACK: Don’t be like my man.
GREG: Not my fake [inaudible].
(Outro): [Outro music] A big thanks to Ill Will, the real Mobman, and Greg, for being good sports and taking us on this wild adventure. This episode was created by me, Mr. Packet Loss, Jack Rhysider. Our editor is the infinite loop lover, Tristan Ledger, mixing done by Proximity Sound, and our intro music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Why do server rooms often have raised floors? So that technicians can get under the server rack and get to the root of the problem. This is Darknet Diaries.
[END OF RECORDING]