Right now, a man named Aleksandr Zhukov is sitting in jail for one of the most financially ruinous schemes ever invented for the internet. Zhukov is guilty. He was caught and convicted under a mountain of evidence against him. Except the deeper you look into it, the deeper the well goes. In this episode, we’ll learn how Aleksandr Zhukov defrauded some of the biggest American corporations for millions of dollars. And we’ll ask the question that hardly anyone else is willing to acknowledge: Was this clever, successful, guilty cybercriminal merely a fall guy for everybody else playing his twisted game?

The numbers can’t be any clearer: a DDoS attack costs less than a hundred dollars, while the price tag for mitigating it might reach tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. A single well crafted phishing email can easily circumvent cyber defenses which cost millions of dollars to set up. How can we change the extreame cost asymmetry between attackers and defenders in cyberspace?

We’ve all experienced the creepiness of modern data trafficking, but that kind of daily annoyance is the surface of a much bigger issue: Big Tech companies such as Amazon & Microsoft are lobbying policymakers to veto laws that harm their business, and often hide their lobbying behind industry coalitions or organizations with names that are vague and seemingly harmless. Will current and future privacy laws actually protect your information, or will they protect the companies collecting your information?

Disruptions to the world’s internet cables happen more often than you think: Whether it be ship anchors or animals or saboteurs, cut a few wires in the right places and at nearly the speed of light you can disrupt or shut off the internet for broad populations of people at a time. It is an immense power that runs through these lines -- a power that can be sabotaged or, in the right hands, weaponized.

In the midst of 35,000 exhilarated spectators eagerly chanting the time-honored countdown to kick off the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, a sinister malware crept through the games' network, threatening to disrupt the highly-anticipated event. The obvious question in everyone’s minds was - who was responsible for the attack? Who was vile enough to launch such a potentially destructive attack against an event which, more than anything, symbolizes peace and global cooperation?

Oמ May 23rd, 1989, Karl Koch - a 23 years old West German hacker who worked for the KGB - took a drive, from which he would never return: Nine days later his charred remains were found by the police in a remote forest. Was Koch assasinated by the US or the Sovient Union, or is there another, more 'mystical' explanation for his death?

Four decades ago, three quarters would’ve gone a lot further than they do today. With that kind of loose change you could’ve picked up some milk from the grocery store, or over half a gallon of gas, or a bus ticket. But that doesn’t explain why, on one fateful day in 1986, a systems administrator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California made such an issue over 75 missing cents.

You may have heard of the cyber operations performed by Russia. You definitely heard about the missiles being fired by Russia at Ukraine - but how about the propaganda being distributed through the different media platforms? In this B-Side episode, our Senior Producer Nate Nelson interviewed Dr. Bilyana Lilly - CISSP, a leader in cybersecurity and information warfare with over fifteen years of managerial, technical, and research experience, and author of "Russian Information Warfare" - about the Russian use of instant messaging and social media platforms such as Telegram and Twitter in their war efforts. Dr. Lilly discusses who they are targeting and the real-world impact their propaganda has on various populations. In this B-Side episode, our Senior Producer Nate Nelson interviewed Dr. Bilyana Lilly - CISSP, a leader on cybersecurity and information warfare with over fifteen years of managerial, technical and research experience, and author of "Russian Information Warfare" - about the Russian use of instant messaging and social media platforms such as Telegram and Twitter in their war efforts. Dr. Lilly discusses who they are targeting and the real-world impact their propaganda has on various populations. Dr. Bilyana Lilly, CISSP, is a leader on cybersecurity and information warfare with over fifteen years of managerial, technical and research experience. Dr. Lilly helps boards and senior executives to make strategic decisions while accounting for evolving cyber and geopolitical risk. She is a mentor and speaker at DefCon, CyCon, the Executive Women’s Forum and the Warsaw Security Forum. Dr. Lilly previously worked for the United Nations, Deloitte and the RAND Corporation. She has a PhD and three master’s degrees, including a degree from Oxford University (with distinction). Dr. Lilly has published two books and has been cited in the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, RIA Novosti,, and ZDNet. Jason Bailey is the co-founder and CEO of ClubNFT, a company building the next generation of tools to discover, protect, and share NFTs. Jason is an early collector and proponent of CryptoArt, and he spoke with Nate Nelson, our Sr. producer, about the risks facing sellers and buyers who are unfamiliar with this new technology.

In the early 1970's, US intelligance pointed at the possibility that the Russians have laid an underwater communication cable between two important naval bases in the Far East. The dangerous mission of installing a listening device on that cable was given to the navy most secretive and unusual submarine.

What happens when an NFT marketplace goes under, and disappears? You would imagine that the users’ NFTs are perfectly safe: after all, the blockchain itself is still there, right? But that’s not how things work in the real world. Jason Bailey is the co-founder and CEO of ClubNFT, a company building the next generation of tools to discover, protect, and share NFTs. Jason is an early collector and proponent of CryptoArt, and he spoke with Nate Nelson, our Sr. producer, about the risks facing sellers and buyers who are unfamiliar with this new technology.

Physical artworks in museums are usually well-guarded - but digital artworks are something else entirely: in 2021 alone, scammers successfully stole 100 million dollars worth of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. Yet blockchain technology, where most NFTs live - is one of the most secure technologies in history. Why, then, are NFT collectors keep getting hacked?

Today we’re bringing back Haseeb Awan, the founder of Efani Secure Mobile - a bespoke cybersecurity-focused phone service, protecting high-risk individuals against mobile hacks. Haseeb will delve into the technicalities of SIM swapping, explaining the various techniques that hackers use to carry out this fraudulent activity. He will also provide insights into what telecommunication companies can do to prevent SIM swapping and what steps individuals can take to protect themselves from falling victim to this crime. Nate Nelson, our Sr. producer, spoke with Rich Murray, who leads the FBI’s North Texas Cyber unit, about how the Federal Bureau of Investigations dealt with another attack by REvil - this time against the Texas government - and how they managed to figure out who was behind it.

If SIM swap stories ever make the news, almost uniformly, they focus on people who lost a lot of money. But SIM swaps also take a psychological toll. Getting cut off from the grid all of a sudden, not knowing why, not being able to call for help. Even when it’s over, you never know if your attackers -- whoever they are -- will come back again.

A year ago we told you the story of Kaseya: an IT solutions company that was breached on July 2021, and its servers were used to spread ransomware to an estimated 800 to 1500 small to medium-sized businesses. Nate Nelson, our Sr. producer, spoke with Rich Murray, who leads the FBI’s North Texas Cyber unit, about how the Federal Bureau of Investigations dealt with another attack by REvil - this time against the Texas government - and how they managed to figure out who was behind it.

Spamhaus's decision to add Cyberbunker to its list of Spam sources led the Stophaus coalition to initiate a DDoS attack later dubbed “The attack that almost broke the Internet.” The fallout from this attack led to Cyberbunker relocating to a bunker in Germany - but it was the involvement of an Irish drug lord known as 'The Penguin' that led to the bullet-proof hosting company's downfall.

Sven Kamphuis and Herman Johan Xennt are quite dissimilar: one is young, the other is old, one is a Freedom Fighter, the other a businessman. In 1996, their unlikely partnership coalesced around a mutual deep hatred towards authority - and around a very unusual building: a Cold-War era nuclear bunker.

2011 was a pivotal year for Netflix: the now hugely successful company was then in the midst of a formidable transformation, changing from a mail-based DVD rental service to the modern streaming service that it is today. It was at this crucial point in the company’s history that Jason Chan, our guest in this episode, was hired by Netflix to lay the foundations for its cloud security protocols. Nate Nelson, our Sr. Producer, spoke with Jason about the decade he spent at the company, what he learned during his tenure there, and the ideas that took shape at that time, such as Chaos Engineering.Nate Nelson, our Sr. producer, spoke with Dr. Cohen about his early research into computer viruses, his work with the US army, the panicky response from the US government - and the parallels between computer viruses and mental viruses - i.e. memes.

In his 1984 seminal paper - "Computer Viruses: Theory and Experiments" - Dr. Fred Cohen not only introduced the name ‘computer virus’, a term invented by his mentor, Leonard Adelman, but was also the first to analyze computer viruses in a rigorous mathematical way, proving that computer viruses were not only practical - but that they were in fact inevitable. Nate Nelson, our Sr. producer, spoke with Dr. Cohen about his early research into computer viruses, his work with the US army, the panicky response from the US government - and the parallels between computer viruses and mental viruses - i.e. memes.

Thamar Gindin is an Israeli scholar whose research focuses on the Persian language. For the past seven years (at least) Thamar has been a target for an endless stream of spear-phishing attempts by the Iranian regime, trying to take over her email account and lure her away from her country's borders. Her family, friends, and colleagues have also suffered numerous attacks. So, how does it feel to live for years with a virtual target mark on your back?...

Nobody likes cheaters, especially in video games: we play games to have fun, and nothing hurts the joy of playing a good game more than losing to a cheater. That is why EA is not the only publisher to implement kernel-mode anti-cheat software in their games: League of Legends and Valorant, for example, use similar software. Yet some people warn that installing such kernel-level systems is extremely dangerous. So, what's the problem with kernel-mode anti-cheat software?