Rachel Tobac is a social engineer. In this episode we hear how she got started doing this and a few stories of how she hacked people and places using her voice and charm.

Learn more about Rachel by following her on Twitter https://twitter.com/RachelTobac or by visiting https://www.socialproofsecurity.com/

Daniel Miessler also chimes in to talk about AI. Find out more about him at https://danielmiessler.com/.

Sponsors

Support for this show comes from Varonis. Do you wonder what your company’s ransomware blast radius is? Varonis does a free cyber resilience assessment that tells you how many important files a compromised user could steal, whether anything would beep if they did, and a whole lot more. They actually do all the work – show you where your data is too open, if anyone is using it, and what you can lock down before attackers get inside. They also can detect behavior that looks like ransomware and stop it automatically. To learn more visit www.varonis.com/darknet.

Support for this show comes from Axonius. The Axonius solution correlates asset data from your existing IT and security solutions to provide an always up-to-date inventory of all devices, users, cloud instances, and SaaS apps, so you can easily identify coverage gaps and automate response actions. Axonius gives IT and security teams the confidence to control complexity by mitigating threats, navigating risk, decreasing incidents, and informing business-level strategy — all while eliminating manual, repetitive tasks. Visit axonius.com/darknet to learn more and try it free.

Support for this show comes from ThreatLocker®. ThreatLocker® is a Zero Trust Endpoint Protection Platform that strengthens your infrastructure from the ground up. With ThreatLocker® Allowlisting and Ringfencing™, you gain a more secure approach to blocking exploits of known and unknown vulnerabilities. ThreatLocker® provides Zero Trust control at the kernel level that enables you to allow everything you need and block everything else, including ransomware! Learn more at www.threatlocker.com.

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Jim Browning has dedicated himself to combatting scammers, taking a proactive stance by infiltrating their computer systems. Through his efforts, he not only disrupts these fraudulent operations but also shares his findings publicly on YouTube, shedding light on the intricacies of scam networks. His work uncovers a myriad of intriguing insights into the digital underworld, which he articulately discusses, offering viewers a behind-the-scenes look at his methods for fighting back against scammers.

Jim’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/JimBrowning

Sponsors

Support for this episode comes from NetSuite. NetSuite gives you visibility and control of your financials, planning, budgeting, and of course - inventory - so you can manage risk, get reliable forecasts, and improve margins. NetSuite helps you identify rising costs, automate your manual business processes, and see where to save money. KNOW your numbers. KNOW your business. And get to KNOW how NetSuite can be the source of truth for your entire company. Visit www.netsuite.com/darknet to learn more.

This episode is sponsored by Intruder. Growing attack surfaces, dynamic cloud environments, and the constant stream of new vulnerabilities stressing you out? Intruder is here to help you cut through the chaos of vulnerability management with ease. Join the thousands of companies who are using Intruder to find and fix what matters most. Sign up to Intruder today and get 20% off your first 3 months. Visit intruder.io/darknet.

This show is sponsored by Shopify. Shopify is the best place to go to start or grow your online retail business. And running a growing business means getting the insights you need wherever you are. With Shopify’s single dashboard, you can manage orders, shipping, and payments from anywhere. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/darknet.

CLAIM=a6e199f5f9fd5954e532117c829c8f0a8f0f1282=CLAIM

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Axact sells fake diplomas and degrees. What could go wrong with this business plan?

Sponsors

Support for this episode comes from NetSuite. NetSuite gives you visibility and control of your financials, planning, budgeting, and of course - inventory - so you can manage risk, get reliable forecasts, and improve margins. NetSuite helps you identify rising costs, automate your manual business processes, and see where to save money. KNOW your numbers. KNOW your business. And get to KNOW how NetSuite can be the source of truth for your entire company. Visit www.netsuite.com/darknet to learn more.

Support for this show comes from ThreatLocker®. ThreatLocker® is a Zero Trust Endpoint Protection Platform that strengthens your infrastructure from the ground up. With ThreatLocker® Allowlisting and Ringfencing™, you gain a more secure approach to blocking exploits of known and unknown vulnerabilities. ThreatLocker® provides Zero Trust control at the kernel level that enables you to allow everything you need and block everything else, including ransomware! Learn more at www.threatlocker.com.

This show is sponsored by Shopify. Shopify is the best place to go to start or grow your online retail business. And running a growing business means getting the insights you need wherever you are. With Shopify’s single dashboard, you can manage orders, shipping, and payments from anywhere. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/darknet.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The #1 crime which results in the biggest financial loss is BEC fraud. The #2 crime is pig butchering. Ronnie Tokazowski https://twitter.com/iHeartMalware walks us through this wild world.

Sponsors

Support for this episode comes from NetSuite. NetSuite gives you visibility and control of your financials, planning, budgeting, and of course - inventory - so you can manage risk, get reliable forecasts, and improve margins. NetSuite helps you identify rising costs, automate your manual business processes, and see where to save money. KNOW your numbers. KNOW your business. And get to KNOW how NetSuite can be the source of truth for your entire company. Visit www.netsuite.com/darknet to learn more.

Support for this show comes from Drata. Drata streamlines your SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR & many other compliance frameworks, and provides 24-hour continuous control monitoring so you focus on scaling securely. Listeners of Darknet Diaries can get 10% off Drata and waived implementation fees at drata.com/darknetdiaries.

This show is sponsored by Shopify. Shopify is the best place to go to start or grow your online retail business. And running a growing business means getting the insights you need wherever you are. With Shopify’s single dashboard, you can manage orders, shipping, and payments from anywhere. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/darknet.

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Madison's nude photos were posted online. Her twin sister Christine came to help. This begins a bizarre and uneasy story.

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This is the story of D3f4ult (twitter.com/_d3f4ult) from CWA. He was a hacktivist, upset with the state of the way things were, and wanted to make some changes. Changes were made.

Sponsors

Support for this show comes from Axonius. The Axonius solution correlates asset data from your existing IT and security solutions to provide an always up-to-date inventory of all devices, users, cloud instances, and SaaS apps, so you can easily identify coverage gaps and automate response actions. Axonius gives IT and security teams the confidence to control complexity by mitigating threats, navigating risk, decreasing incidents, and informing business-level strategy — all while eliminating manual, repetitive tasks. Visit axonius.com/darknet to learn more and try it free.

Support for this show comes from Thinkst Canary. Their canaries attract malicious actors in your network and then send you an alert if someone tries to access them. Great early warning system for knowing when someone is snooping around where they shouldn’t be. Check them out at https://canary.tools.

Support for this show comes from Quorum Cyber. Their mantra is: “We help good people win.” If you’re looking for a partner to help you reduce risk and defend against the threats that are targeting your business — and especially if you are interested in Microsoft Security — reach out to Quorum Cyber at www.quorumcyber.com/darknet-diaries.

Sources

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3ekk5/kane-gamble-cracka-back-online-after-a-two-year-internet-ban

https://www.wired.com/2015/10/hacker-who-broke-into-cia-director-john-brennan-email-tells-how-he-did-it/

https://www.hackread.com/fbi-server-hacked-miami-police-data-leaked/

https://archive.ph/Si79V#selection-66795.5-66795.6

https://wikileaks.org/cia-emails/John-Brennan-Draft-SF86/page-7.html

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This episode is about scammers in the Punjab region. Tarun (twitter.com/taruns21) comes on the show to tell us a story of what happened to him. Naomi Brockwell (twitter.com/naomibrockwell) makes an appearance to speak about digital privacy.

To learn more about protecting your digital privacy, watch Naomi’s YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@NaomiBrockwellTV. And check out the books Extreme Privacy (https://amzn.to/3L3ffp9) and Beginner’s Introduction to Privacy (https://amzn.to/3EjuSoY).

Sponsors

Support for this show comes from Axonius. The Axonius solution correlates asset data from your existing IT and security solutions to provide an always up-to-date inventory of all devices, users, cloud instances, and SaaS apps, so you can easily identify coverage gaps and automate response actions. Axonius gives IT and security teams the confidence to control complexity by mitigating threats, navigating risk, decreasing incidents, and informing business-level strategy — all while eliminating manual, repetitive tasks. Visit axonius.com/darknet to learn more and try it free.

Support for this show comes from SpyCloud. It’s good practice to see what data is getting passed around out there regarding you, your employees, your customers, and your business. The dark web is a place where this data is traded and shared. SpyCloud will help you find what out there about you and give you a report so you can be aware. Then they’ll continuously monitor the dark web for any new exposures you should be aware of. To learn more visit spycloud.com/darknetdiaries.

Support for this show comes from ThreatLocker. ThreatLocker has built-in endpoint security solutions that strengthen your infrastructure from the ground up with a zero trust posture. ThreatLocker’s Allowlisting gives you a more secure approach to blocking exploits of known and unknown vulnerabilities. ThreatLocker provides zero trust control at the kernel level. Learn more at www.threatlocker.com.

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A new type of mercenary spyware came on the radar called Predator. It’ll infect a mobile phone, and then suck up all the data from it. Contacts, text messages, location, and more. This malware is being sold to intelligence agencies around the world.

In this episode we hear from Crofton Black at Lighthouse Reports who spent 6 months with a team of journalists researching this story which was published here: https://www.lighthousereports.com/investigation/flight-of-the-predator/.

We also hear from Bill Marczak and John Scott-Railton from Citizen Lab.

If you want to hear about other mercenary spyware, check out episodes 99 and 100, about NSO group and Pegasus. To hear another episode about Greece check out episode 64 called Athens Shadow Games.

Sponsors

Support for this show comes from Axonius. The Axonius solution correlates asset data from your existing IT and security solutions to provide an always up-to-date inventory of all devices, users, cloud instances, and SaaS apps, so you can easily identify coverage gaps and automate response actions. Axonius gives IT and security teams the confidence to control complexity by mitigating threats, navigating risk, decreasing incidents, and informing business-level strategy — all while eliminating manual, repetitive tasks. Visit axonius.com/darknet to learn more and try it free.

Support for this show comes from Varonis. Do you wonder what your company’s ransomware blast radius is? Varonis does a free cyber resilience assessment that tells you how many important files a compromised user could steal, whether anything would beep if they did, and a whole lot more. They actually do all the work – show you where your data is too open, if anyone is using it, and what you can lock down before attackers get inside. They also can detect behavior that looks like ransomware and stop it automatically. To learn more visit www.varonis.com/darknet.

Support for this show comes from Akamai Connected Cloud (formerly Linode). Akamai Connected Cloud supplies you with virtual servers. Visit linode.com/darknet and get a special offer.

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Team Xecuter was a group involved with making and selling modchips for video game systems. They often made mods that allowed the video game system to rip games or play pirated games. It was a crowd favorite in the modding scene. Until it all fell apart. The story of what happened to Team Xecuter must be heard to believe.

This episode features Gary Bowser. You can find more about Gary here:

https://twitter.com/Bowser_GaryOPA

https://garyopa.com/

https://www.gofundme.com/f/garyopa-restarting-his-life?utm_location=darknetdiaries

Sponsors

Support for this show comes from Axonius. The Axonius solution correlates asset data from your existing IT and security solutions to provide an always up-to-date inventory of all devices, users, cloud instances, and SaaS apps, so you can easily identify coverage gaps and automate response actions. Axonius gives IT and security teams the confidence to control complexity by mitigating threats, navigating risk, decreasing incidents, and informing business-level strategy — all while eliminating manual, repetitive tasks. Visit axonius.com/darknet to learn more and try it free.

Support for this show comes from Thinkst Canary. Their canaries attract malicious actors in your network and then send you an alert if someone tries to access them. Great early warning system for knowing when someone is snooping around where they shouldn’t be. Check them out at https://canary.tools.

Support for this show comes from ThreatLocker. ThreatLocker has built-in endpoint security solutions that strengthen your infrastructure from the ground up with a zero trust posture. ThreatLocker’s Allowlisting gives you a more secure approach to blocking exploits of known and unknown vulnerabilities. ThreatLocker provides zero trust control at the kernel level. Learn more at www.threatlocker.com.

Sources

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/10/27/ringleader-pleads-guilty-in-phone-fraud/56e551bb-a727-43e8-a3ca-1c1f4cf6ef82/

https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao/legacy/2010/10/12/usab4304.pdf

https://www.eurogamer.net/nintendo-to-appeal-not-guilty-judgement-of-flash-cart-sellers-7

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/nintendo-pounces-on-global-piracy-outfit

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-members-notorious-videogame-piracy-group-team-xecuter-custody

https://medium.com/swlh/watch-paint-dry-how-i-got-a-game-on-the-steam-store-without-anyone-from-valve-ever-looking-at-it-2e476858c753#.z05q2nykc

https://www.lemonde.fr/police-justice/article/2022/05/27/voler-des-societes-qui-font-des-milliards-qu-est-ce-que-j-en-ai-a-faire-max-louarn-c-ur-de-hackeur_6127821_1653578.html

https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/20/21579392/nintendo-big-house-super-smash-bros-melee-tournament-slippi-cease-desist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sNIE5anpik

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Omar Avilez worked in the CSIRT of the Dominican Republic when a major cyber security incident erupted. Omar walks us through what happened and the incident response procedures that he went through.

Breakmaster Cylinder’s new album: https://breakmastercylinder.bandcamp.com/album/the-moon-all-that.

Sponsors

Support for this show comes from Varonis. Do you wonder what your company’s ransomware blast radius is? Varonis does a free cyber resilience assessment that tells you how many important files a compromised user could steal, whether anything would beep if they did, and a whole lot more. They actually do all the work – show you where your data is too open, if anyone is using it, and what you can lock down before attackers get inside. They also can detect behavior that looks like ransomware and stop it automatically. To learn more visit www.varonis.com/darknet.

Support for this show comes from Axonius. The Axonius solution correlates asset data from your existing IT and security solutions to provide an always up-to-date inventory of all devices, users, cloud instances, and SaaS apps, so you can easily identify coverage gaps and automate response actions. Axonius gives IT and security teams the confidence to control complexity by mitigating threats, navigating risk, decreasing incidents, and informing business-level strategy — all while eliminating manual, repetitive tasks. Visit axonius.com/darknet to learn more and try it free.

Support for this show comes from Flare. Flare automates monitoring across the dark & clear web to detect high-risk exposure, before threat actors have a chance to leverage it. Their unified solution makes it easy to rapidly identify risks across thousands of sources, including developers leaking secrets on public GitHub Repositories, threat actors selling infected devices on dark web markets, and targeted attacks being planned on illicit Telegram Channels. Visit https://flare.io to learn more.

Sources

https://www.wired.com/story/costa-rica-ransomware-conti/

https://malpedia.caad.fkie.fraunhofer.de/details/win.bandook

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHYH0U66K5Q

https://www.youtube.com/live/prCr7Z94078

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/02/uncle-sow-dark-caracal-latin-america

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/quantum-ransomware-attack-disrupts-govt-agency-in-dominican-republic/

https://www.welivesecurity.com/2021/07/07/bandidos-at-large-spying-campaign-latin-america/

Attribution

Darknet Diaries is created by Jack Rhysider.

Assembled by Tristan Ledger.

Episode artwork by odibagas.

Mixing by Proximity Sound.

Theme music created by Breakmaster Cylinder. Theme song available for listen and download at bandcamp. Or listen to it on Spotify.

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Deviant Ollam is a physical penetration specialist. That means he’s paid to break into buildings to see if the building is secure or not. He has done this for a long time and has a lot of tricks up his sleeve to get into buildings. In this episode we hear 3 stories of him breaking into buildings for a living.

You can find more about Deviant on the following sites:

https://twitter.com/deviantollam

https://www.instagram.com/deviantollam

https://youtube.com/deviantollam

https://defcon.social/@deviantollam

https://deviating.net/

Sponsors

Support for this show comes from ThreatLocker. ThreatLocker has built-in endpoint security solutions that strengthen your infrastructure from the ground up with a zero trust posture. ThreatLocker’s Allowlisting gives you a more secure approach to blocking exploits of known and unknown vulnerabilities. ThreatLocker provides zero trust control at the kernel level. Learn more at www.threatlocker.com.

This show is sponsored by Packetlabs. They’ve created the Penetration Testing Buyer’s guide - a comprehensive resource that will help you plan, scope, and execute your Penetration Testing projects. Inside, you’ll find valuable information on frameworks, standards, methodologies, cost factors, reporting options, and what to look for in a provider. https://guide.packetlabs.net/.

Support for this show comes from Drata. Drata streamlines your SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR & many other compliance frameworks, and provides 24-hour continuous control monitoring so you focus on scaling securely. Listeners of Darknet Diaries can get 10% off Drata and waived implementation fees at drata.com/darknetdiaries.

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