CYBER
Technology
About
Hacking. Hackers. Disinformation campaigns. Encryption. The Cyber. This stuff gets complicated really fast, but Motherboard spends its time embedded in the infosec world so you don't have to. Host Matthew Gault talks every week to Motherboard reporters about the stories they're breaking and to the industry's most famous hackers and researchers about the biggest news in cybersecurity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episodes
- El Salvador's Bitcoin City | Vice Culture Club Preview
VICE
- VICE is back with a new podcast
The podcast "VICE is back with a new podcast" from the show CYBER explores subcultures and cultural trends. Weekly episodes feature interviews with notable internet personalities, including Oscar winners and viral sensations.
- Why Congress's Fears of Russian Space Nukes Is Political Theatre
This episode of CYBER delves into two distinct topics: the recent congressional concerns about Russian nuclear weapons in space, framed as political theatre, and the scandal surrounding WWE boss Vince McMahon, including civil allegations a…
- AI Deepfakes Are Everywhere and Congress is Completely Out of Their Depth
This CYBER episode covers the proliferation of AI deepfakes, including a fabricated Biden robocall and AI-generated nudes of Taylor Swift. It features guests discussing the challenges Congress faces in legislating against AI-generated scam…
- Tech Used to Be Bleeding Edge, Now it’s Just Bleeding
PR provocateur and tech critic Ed Zitron joins Cyber to discuss the decline of Big Tech innovation, citing examples like Meta and Apple, and the issues within tech journalism. Zitron also touches on his new podcast, Better Offline.
- How to Read Leaked Datasets Like a Journalist
We live in a golden age of data. Every day, hacktivists release terabytes of data on sites like DDoSecrets, but sorting through it all requires some technical knowledge. What if you don’t know XML from SQL let alone how to write a simple P…
- What a Novel About an AI Documenting the Last Human Says About Our Real Dystopia
The unreliable narrator of After World, the new novel from author Debbie Urbanski, is an AI tasked with writing a book about Sen, the last human on Earth. In this world, humanity is done. The world is moving on without us and Sen was born…
- The Future of Nukes Involves AI and Nobody Knows What Happens Next
According to the hype, artificial intelligence is changing everything. The truth is more complicated, but that doesn’t mean that companies and governments aren’t rushing to embrace the new technology. It’s even being used to update an old…
- OpenAI’s Make or Break Lawsuit and the Golden Idol of AGI
The New York Times kicked off the holiday season by suing OpenAI and Microsoft. The paper of record believes that ChatGPT is violating various copyrights by using its articles as training data. It’s a landmark case that may end up before t…
- The Great American Train Wreck Isn’t Going Away
On February 3, a train crashed in East Palestine, Ohio releasing toxic chemicals into the air. Almost a month later, another train owned by the same company also derailed in Ohio. That’s not all. Trains in Charlotte are running slower than…
- The Old Internet Is Dying, and Something Worse Is Being Born
As we slide into the winter holidays, Cyber is taking some time to relax with old friends and discuss the things that truly matter: the decline of the internet, creator culture, and the transcendent power of movies. This week on Cybe…
- How Online Fights Affect Real World Battlefields
Your posts matter more than you think. Social media has changed the way wars are fought and the internet has become a new battlefield. Twitter may be dying, but it still matters an awful lot to policy makers. TikTok is ascendent, but…
- You Can’t Automate the Difficult Decisions
The tensions between security and operations and developer teams are the stuff of legend. DevSecOps is trying to change that, and automation is a big part of making it possible. But automation alone can’t overcome entrenched behavior. Joyl…
- Despite OpenAI Chaos, Wall Street Is Still Betting Big on AI
What happens when a for profit company is run by a non-profit board of directors who are ideologically opposed to the company’s product? You get something like what happened to OpenAI over the past week, which saw its board of directors sa…
- What Happens When an Anti-Sex Trafficking Operation Goes Wrong
When “Alison” started working for Operation Underground Railroad, she wanted to make a difference in the lives of kids. She was a former Marine and social worker who’d seen the devastating effects that abuse could have on people. She wante…
- Crypto One Year After the Collapse: All My Apes Blinded
It’s a bad time to be a crypto-person. Some of crypto’s biggest evangelists are facing serious federal jail time. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted on seven counts of wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering after a dis…
- The Landlord Tech Company That Turned Security Deposits Into a Monthly Fee
Rhino sounds like a good deal at first. When people move into a new apartment, they often have to pay a large lump sum security deposit to their landlord. For people who can’t pay, Rhino offers to bill them a little bit every month in lieu…
- The Viral ‘Kia Boys’ Car Theft Trend That’s Going Viral on Instagram
Kias and Hyundais are being stolen in America at an alarming rate. Using a screwdriver and a USB cable, it’s trivially easy to steal one. Kia and Hyundai blame social media, but the problem is so overwhelming that several cities are suing…
- Space Junk, Nuclear Waste, AI Nukes and the Reason We’re All Still Here
There’s a lot of reasons to be worried about the future. Climate change, nuclear weapons, space junk, and World War III are all threats both present and long-term. But, every day, people are trying to make the world a better place. It land…
- Cory Doctorow on Why the Internet Broke and How to Fix It
Have you noticed your internet is …. kinda shitty? Does Spotfiy’s smart shuffle keep playing the same Cure song over and over again? Does a quick google search give you page after page of obvious advertisements? Want to leave Facebook behi…
- The Real History of the Luddites
Luddites! It’s a dirty word, right? One that’s become synonymous with anti-technology crusaders that want to return us to an idyllic past where everyone is free from their phones. But who were the Luddites? Where does the term come from? H…
- Operation Underground Railroad, Psychic Intelligence, and ‘The Sound of Freedom’
This summer, a movie called The Sound of Freedom took America by storm. The hero was Tim Ballard, the founder of an organization called Operation Underground Railroad. The movie depicted Ballard as an avenging hero who rescued trafficked c…
- ‘Extremely Online’ With Taylor Lorenz
It’s time for a new history of the internet, one that focuses on the recent revolutions that define the world we all live in. Social media has changed the way many of us live and work. It’s a world defined by a new economy of creators and…
- Hot Labor Summer
The heat is still here, but the summer will soon be over. Here at the precipice of fall I wanted to take a moment to reflect on one of the big stories that Motherboard covered this season: labor, strikes, and unions. Here to tell us all ab…
- The Jason Koebler Exit Interview, Part Two
It’s part two of our bittersweet episode of Cyber where we bid farewell to Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler. This week we do a deep dive into the Motherboard lore. The stories that broke us, the controversies that made us who we a…
- Rare Motherboard Lore and a Goodbye to Jason Koebler
It’s a bittersweet episode of Cyber as we bid farewell to Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler. It’s a long episode so we’ve split it into two parts. This week you get some discussions about the topics of the day including Planet of B…
- The Viral Science Video That Will Save the World or Do Nothing At All
Room-temperature superconductors are here! Maybe! Look, science is a liar sometimes , especially in the internet age. Motherboard science reporter Becky Ferreira is here to help us parse the truth from fiction of LK-99. It’s either one of…
- The Barbenheimer Special
We’ve got a super sized Cyber for you today that’s all about the two hottest movies in theaters. One is a mythological take on the creation of the modern world and the devastating weapons that ushered it in. The other is about an idol forg…
- Adam Conover On the Hollywood Strike
It’s a brutally hot summer, a great time to cool off in an air conditioned movie theater or to catch up on some of those TV shows you’ve had on your list forever. But did you know the people who make the fine entertainment you know and lov…
- The False Claims Behind an Anti-Trafficking Group’s Hollywood Moment
A movie about a Mormon anti-trafficking activist made headlines when it beat Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny at the box office. But Sound of Freedom’s box office numbers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be and the group behind the mo…
- Celebrating the End of the Usable Internet
It feels like the old internet is breaking apart and no one is sure where to go. The first three pages of search results on Google are dreck. Reddit is shutting down the third party apps that make it usable. AI generated content is floodin…
- The Increasingly Violent Discord Servers Where Kids Flaunt Their Crimes
Discord and Minecraft servers are part of an ecosystem where young people brag about crimes. SIM swapping, cryptocurrency, extortion, and violence-for-hire are all part of an disparate online community where people gather to swap stories a…
- Big Tech Wants You to Think AI Will Kill Us All
Did you know that AI is set to automate as many as a third of your tasks ? In the future we’re all going to be saving a lot of time. That’s as long as no one invents artificial general intelligence that fires all the nukes or turns us all…
- The DHS Is Reading Travelers' Posts at the Border
Customs and Border Protection is scanning people’s social media, the feds have arrested some swatters, and the FTC has ordered Ring to cough up a fine. This week on Cyber, Motherboard’s premier cyber crime reporter Joseph Cox is back to wa…
- AI Can Read Your Dreams and Collect Your Debts. What’s Next?
Is there anything artificial intelligence can’t do?Debt collectors want AI to push people into coughing up what’s owed. An AI created photo of an attack on the Pentagon generated a minor panic. There’s an AI that can read your mind and the…
- CYBER: Crime and Crypto with Cory Doctorow
Crypto and crime, crime and crypto. They go together like spreadsheets and tax evasion. When cryptocurrency hit the scene it was, according to its evangelists, going to usher in a world of decentralized currency and free everyone from the…
- CYBER: Inside the Italian Mafia’s Encrypted Phone of Choice
We talk a lot about encrypted phones on Cyber. Everyone loves a secure communication channel that no one can peer into. But some companies, well, if there’s criminal activity going on they’re gonna sell you out. And the cops have gotten ve…
- Apple II and How the Computer Became Personal
If you’re watching or listening to this show you’re probably doing it on a device that owes its very existence to the Apple II. But these days we remember the iPhone, 90s era Windows, and even the Macintosh as these big benchmark moments i…
- Wondery Presents - Flipping The Bird: Elon vs Twitter
When Elon Musk posted a video of himself arriving at Twitter HQ carrying a white sink along with the message “let that sink in!” it marked the end of a dramatic takeover. Musk had gone from Twitter critic to “Chief Twit” in the space of ju…
- Thieves are Stealing Cars Using Old Nokia Phones
It looks like a bluetooth speaker or an old Nokia cellphone. But that’s a disguise. Inside these small devices is everything car thieves need to break into your vehicle. There are telegram channels now where, for a few thousand dollars, yo…
- Someone Is Selling Computer Generated Swatting Services
Automation is making everyone’s lives easier, including people who call in fake bomb threats on crowded public locations. We live in a world where pranksters and criminals can summon a massive police presence with the click of a few button…
- What We Know about the Pentagon Leaks
Top Secret classified Pentagon documents leaked on a Minecraft Discord server. The pages of documents contain sensitive information about troop placements in Ukraine, rumors about allies, and—weirdly—a character sheet for a tabletop rolepl…
- Uber's April Fools Glitch
A terrible April Fool’s day glitch screws over Uber drivers, tenants in California are striking back against landlords, and private banks: do we need them? Today’s episode of Cyber is a cypher, that infrequent version of the show where we…
- How Russia Uses Facial Recognition to Stop Protestors
Facial recognition systems are here. They’ve been deployed extensively along America’s southern border and in its cities. Authoritarian regimes in Iran and Russia are using the technology to crack down on dissidents and what’s going on in…
- What’s Driving the AI Hype?
Love it or hate it, you can’t escape artificial intelligence. People are using Midjourney to make viral photos of Donald Trump’s arrest and the Pop’s puffy coat. Redditors are creating entire fake historical events and backing it up with A…
- The DEA Is Skipping Warrants and Buying Data from Rogue Employees
In America, no one can protect you from a transportation employee being paid off by the feds. The Drug Enforcement Agency has a single remit: to prosecute America’s long-failed war on drugs. Joseph Cox is on today’s episode of Cyber…
- Why Does Congress Want to Ban TikTok?
America is thinking about banning the most popular social media app in the world. TikTok has exploded in the past few years and whether you love it or hate it, you can’t deny its huge influence. Legislators in America are concerned about t…
- Scalpers Are Selling Whole Ticketmaster Accounts Now
It’s almost impossible to get retail priced tickets to The Cure’s newest live tour. Fans are, once again, turning to the secondary market despite the band’s insistence that Ticketmaster shut it down. This week on Cyber, Joseph Cox an…
- This Is Why America's Trains Keep Crashing
In America the trains never seem to run on time. On February 3, a train crashed in East Palestine, Ohio releasing toxic chemicals into the air. Almost a month later, another train owned by the same company also derailed in Ohio. That’s not…
- WTF Is Up With the Silicon Valley Bank Bailout?
Collapse. It’s the word on everybody’s lips. Silicon Valley Bank and Signature are no more. The banks, folks, they’ve collapsed. But don’t worry, these aren’t your typical banks. SVB and Signature were not the kinds of places working class…