Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey thereon
Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the tech
Speaker 1: are You? So I thought I would talk about hackers today,
Speaker 1: and the word hacker these days is almost exclusively used
Speaker 1: to describe people who, through one means or some other means,
Speaker 1: find a way of infiltrating computer systems. But the term
Speaker 1: hacker has a more broad definition. It really describes anyone
Speaker 1: who's interested in taking stuff apart to learn how it works,
Speaker 1: and maybe even putting it back together again so that
Speaker 1: it does something it wasn't intended to do when it
Speaker 1: was built originally. Now that thing might be a computer
Speaker 1: or a mobile device, it might be a system. Hacking
Speaker 1: can mean lots of different stuff. I mean, that's where
Speaker 1: we get things like life hacks, which often end up
Speaker 1: not being hacks at all. There's some life hacks out
Speaker 1: there that I think we're just jokes that then were
Speaker 1: spread sincerely by other people, because y'all, it doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense to just to take the top of a
Speaker 1: squirt bottle off and invert it to turn it into
Speaker 1: a funnel that that hole at the bottom is way
Speaker 1: too small for that anyway, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But sometimes people just want to figure out how something
Speaker 1: works and taking it apart is the best way to
Speaker 1: do it. Or maybe they want to figure out how
Speaker 1: to manipulate whatever it is in order to unlock its
Speaker 1: full potential. Like there are computers out there that have
Speaker 1: certain clock speeds that's essentially how fast the processor is
Speaker 1: able to complete operations per second, and often there are
Speaker 1: limiters placed on the clock speed, and if you figure
Speaker 1: out how to remove those limitters, you can make your
Speaker 1: computer operate a lot faster. This has trade offs. It
Speaker 1: usually means more power consumption and more heat generated and
Speaker 1: potentially can actually damage your machine. But that's one example, right,
Speaker 1: you can unlock the full potential of your computer something
Speaker 1: that was intentionally restricted from operating at full capacity. Or
Speaker 1: maybe you just want to figure out how to use
Speaker 1: a paid service for free. The phone freakers of the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies fall into that category. These are folks who
Speaker 1: found ways to manipulate the plain old telephone system or pots,
Speaker 1: so that they could do stuff like make free long
Speaker 1: distance phone calls. They did it with all sorts of
Speaker 1: different ways, mostly by producing specific tones into a telephone
Speaker 1: and then being able to make free phone calls. Good
Speaker 1: old capt'n Crunch used to do that using a whistle
Speaker 1: from a capt'n crunch box. But over time, the world
Speaker 1: at large has started to use the word hacker to
Speaker 1: mean someone attempt to gain a legal access to a
Speaker 1: computer system, either in order to snoop around or create
Speaker 1: a means to infiltrate the system whenever they want by
Speaker 1: putting in a back door, or steal information from someone,
Speaker 1: or inject malware into a system, or some combination of
Speaker 1: all of these things. So today I thought we'd chat
Speaker 1: about three notorious hackers. Actually that's not even true. Two
Speaker 1: notorious hackers and one hacker conglomerate. So I decided to
Speaker 1: raid a list that was created by Kasperski Labs. That's
Speaker 1: a Russian computer security company that's had a pretty rough
Speaker 1: go of it as of late due to being based
Speaker 1: in Russia. Here in the United States, essentially they've been
Speaker 1: banned from being used in various agencies and companies. But
Speaker 1: Kaspersky has a very long history with cybersecurity, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to start with number two on the Kaspersky list,
Speaker 1: because it's not so much as a person as it
Speaker 1: is a collective. This is that conglomeration I was talking
Speaker 1: about now. It is not unusual for hackers to form
Speaker 1: loose collectives. That happens a lot. Some hackers might belong
Speaker 1: to more than one collective, and they might share resources
Speaker 1: and motivations and goals. But one very very loose group,
Speaker 1: and it's not just hackers, but hackers make up a
Speaker 1: good number of them. It's a group that's caused headaches
Speaker 1: for numerous targets for more than twenty years. Now. Is Anonymous,
Speaker 1: as in that's what they're called big A Anonymous. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if the association is as strong as it
Speaker 1: once was, like in the two thousand teens. But when
Speaker 1: I think of Anonymous, the image that always comes to
Speaker 1: my mind is a Guy Fawkes mask. That's really kind
Speaker 1: of emerged in around two thousand and eight. Really, several
Speaker 1: folks claiming to represent Anonymous have worn such masks, particularly
Speaker 1: in the early days, like that became kind of a
Speaker 1: symbol for the group. I don't know that it's as
Speaker 1: strongly associated with them these days, honestly, but they grew
Speaker 1: out of the online image based forum four Chan, which
Speaker 1: has spawned many things terrible and otherwise over the years,
Speaker 1: mostly terrible. If I'm being honest, A lot of terrible
Speaker 1: stuff came out of four Chan. The origins of anonymous
Speaker 1: were humble and juvenile. Some folks on four Chan would
Speaker 1: meet in various virtual spaces in order to coordinate efforts
Speaker 1: to torment various online communities through the age old practice
Speaker 1: of trolling. So they were essentially just creating conflict online
Speaker 1: for the lulls, and that was it, Like, that was
Speaker 1: their goal, get some amusement by making other people really mad,
Speaker 1: and they often like to aim at online communities that
Speaker 1: were catering to kids. You know, some folks just like
Speaker 1: to watch the world burn. Honestly, making people mad is
Speaker 1: not hard to do, right, It's a pretty easy thing.
Speaker 1: I guess the thrill was having, you know, this big
Speaker 1: impact on someone's mentality, and that that was the thrill.
Speaker 1: But I would argue you should just raise the bar
Speaker 1: a little bit, like, yeah, you can make people angry,
Speaker 1: but that's not very hard to do for most folks,
Speaker 1: So why not set yourself a really challenging goal, like
Speaker 1: make people happy. That's a lot harder to do. Anyway,
Speaker 1: from about two thousand and three to two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: Anonymous wasn't really much more than just a bunch of
Speaker 1: folks trying to get their kicks by ticking off other people. However,
Speaker 1: starting in two thousand and seven, the group began to evolve,
Speaker 1: partly due to a misapprehension the media had about the
Speaker 1: very loose association of trolls. So media reports were starting
Speaker 1: to suggest that Anonymous was far more organized than what
Speaker 1: it was, and far more motivated, and most importantly, way
Speaker 1: more capable of causing harm than the group actually was.
Speaker 1: This included footage that would have like stock images of
Speaker 1: cars exploding and stuff, implying that Anonymous was capable of
Speaker 1: real world violence. And this is kind of like if
Speaker 1: a reporter saw a bunch of kids playing cops and
Speaker 1: robbers and then did a feature about how this dangerous
Speaker 1: gang was taking over the city. It was a lot
Speaker 1: of exaggeration. The pranksters at Anonymous found this to be
Speaker 1: pretty darn amusing, and also it was stroking their egos right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you are mostly a low level troublemaker, but you're
Speaker 1: being portrayed as like some sort of mastermind, that's really
Speaker 1: gonna stroke your ego. In another case, the Canadian Security
Speaker 1: Intelligence Service reached out to one member of the group,
Speaker 1: a guy named Aubrey Cottle, and they thought Coddle could
Speaker 1: help disrupt online terrorist organizations, essentially infiltrate and then disrupt
Speaker 1: these terrorist cells online. And Cottle was like, I don't
Speaker 1: know where they got the idea that I could do this.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just stirring up, you know, mess. We'll
Speaker 1: say this is a family friendly show, after all, will
Speaker 1: stir stuff up online. I'm not really here to break
Speaker 1: up terrorist cells. But having folks think you're a much
Speaker 1: bigger deal than you are can be kind of fun.
Speaker 1: And it got some folks thinking about actually using their
Speaker 1: perceived power to do something more than just riling folks
Speaker 1: up on the Internet, so it kind of became a
Speaker 1: bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. This grew into Project Chenology,
Speaker 1: in which the group targeted the Church of Scientology. So
Speaker 1: Church of Scientology, that's a whole topic that is beyond
Speaker 1: the scope of tech stuff, but has a long history
Speaker 1: of some really manipulative and oppressive policies that pull people
Speaker 1: into the church, keep them there, and exploit them extensively.
Speaker 1: So this is the time when the Guy Fawkes masks
Speaker 1: started showing up. If you don't know who Guy Fawkes was,
Speaker 1: he was one of several terrorists really in the seventeenth
Speaker 1: century who planned to blow up Parliament and potentially assassinate
Speaker 1: the King of England. But their plot was uncovered and
Speaker 1: the members of the plot were put to death, including
Speaker 1: Guy Fawx himself, who was not the leader of the group,
Speaker 1: but was a member of it and has largely been
Speaker 1: associated with that and then was appropriated by Alan Moore
Speaker 1: in his v for Vendetta graphic novel, and so he's
Speaker 1: sort of become a symbol of anti authoritarian practices, like
Speaker 1: it's like a vigilante sort of thing. So members would
Speaker 1: be wearing Guy Fawkes masks and show up in videos
Speaker 1: and speak out against the church. Usually they would have
Speaker 1: their voice distorted in the video as well. Members also
Speaker 1: got access to web pages that belonged to the Church
Speaker 1: of Scientology. They were able to get administrator access to
Speaker 1: these pages and then defaced the web pages. They also
Speaker 1: launched d DOS attacks on the organization, and they organized
Speaker 1: in person protests outside of Scientology properties. Now in case
Speaker 1: you're not familiar with the term d DOS, that stands
Speaker 1: for distributed denial of service. Now, essentially a d DOS
Speaker 1: attack is all about overwhelming a target. So typically we're
Speaker 1: talking about a web server, so machines are programmed to
Speaker 1: follow specific routines. The way web servers work is that
Speaker 1: they receive requests from clients. A client is just someone
Speaker 1: else's computer tech technically computer browser, and the server responds
Speaker 1: by sending data to the client. So, if you want
Speaker 1: to visit a web page and you type the URL
Speaker 1: in your browser bar, your browser, which is the client
Speaker 1: in this case, sends a request out over the internet.
Speaker 1: This request eventually routes to the appropriate web server, which
Speaker 1: then responds to the request and sends back a web
Speaker 1: page so that you can view it in your browser. Well,
Speaker 1: in order for this to work, the server can't just
Speaker 1: ignore incoming requests. You know. Imagine you're on your browser
Speaker 1: but you type in a URL for a web page
Speaker 1: and nothing happens, or maybe you get an error message
Speaker 1: because the server has decided to deny your request for
Speaker 1: whatever reason. In most cases, the server is more or
Speaker 1: less compelled to answer every single request. Well, you can
Speaker 1: flip that and turn it into an attack because if
Speaker 1: you send countless waves or requests to a web server,
Speaker 1: then you can overwhelm that web server so it can't
Speaker 1: do anything useful. Like other people who are just legitimately
Speaker 1: trying to access the server get timed out or denied
Speaker 1: because it's too busy responding to all these ridiculous requests
Speaker 1: that are flooding in. That's a denial of service attack. Now,
Speaker 1: what makes a distributed denial service attack is when hackers
Speaker 1: compromise other machines. Some hackers might compromise machines in order
Speaker 1: to access data on the affected devices, but others are
Speaker 1: just happy to siphon away a little bit of computing
Speaker 1: power and some connectivity, and they turned these affected computers
Speaker 1: into bots. And then you get an army of these bots,
Speaker 1: and you direct the army to send countless messages to
Speaker 1: your target web server, and the hacker meanwhile remains shielded
Speaker 1: because they're not the ones sending the messages to the
Speaker 1: target server. Their army of bots is doing it. That
Speaker 1: is a distributed denial of service attack. So Anonymous made
Speaker 1: liberal use of that tactic, particularly in the early days,
Speaker 1: but then throughout its history they've held de dos attacks
Speaker 1: against different targets, and from that point forward, Anonymous became
Speaker 1: more associated with hactivism than with trolling, though a lot
Speaker 1: of the activist activity borrowed liberally from the trolling days,
Speaker 1: and once in a while they would just engage in
Speaker 1: trolling as well. The group has targeted numerous individuals and
Speaker 1: organizations for lots of different reasons. Generally speaking, Anonymous tends
Speaker 1: to follow a slightly leftist approach with very strong libertarian principles. Now,
Speaker 1: not all of their targets have been large organized bastions
Speaker 1: of authoritarianism. For example, McKay hatch wasn't exactly an institution.
Speaker 1: McKay hatch was a kid who was running a website
Speaker 1: called The No Cussing Club, and members of Anonymous doxed
Speaker 1: him and launched a campaign of harassment. So I guess
Speaker 1: their love of cussing was just too damn strong. But
Speaker 1: other targets were definitely more high profile. Anonymous was generally
Speaker 1: speaking on the side of wiki leaks and carried out
Speaker 1: a few attacks on various government servers around the world
Speaker 1: in protest of the persecution of people like whistleblower Chelsea Manning,
Speaker 1: for example. Many members of Anonymous have supported social causes
Speaker 1: like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movement, but
Speaker 1: the group is not formally organized, and generally anyone can
Speaker 1: take action in the name of Anonymous, but the rest
Speaker 1: of the group might distance themselves from those kinds of people.
Speaker 1: For example, in the early days of anonymous activism, a
Speaker 1: group claiming to be anonymous got access to the web
Speaker 1: page for the SOHH or Support Online Hip Hop news website.
Speaker 1: The hackers deface the website, and they included the use
Speaker 1: of stuff like racial slurs and stereotypes, which is pretty
Speaker 1: darn tacky. The attackers claim to be anonymous, though the
Speaker 1: group as a whole, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: made no such claim. And in other cases you might
Speaker 1: have a member who convinces a subset of Anonymous the
Speaker 1: anonymous community to work together towards some goal, and they
Speaker 1: can create a little splinter group or spinoff group. It's
Speaker 1: very loosey goosey. The hacking skills and anonymous also run
Speaker 1: the spectrum. There are undoubtedly some accomplished hackers among the group,
Speaker 1: while others fall more into the realm of script kitties.
Speaker 1: These are folks who have downloaded tools that do most
Speaker 1: of the work for them. But because membership is fluid
Speaker 1: and you know Anonymous, I can't really give more specifics
Speaker 1: than that. I can talk a bit more about Anonymous
Speaker 1: before we move on to our next hacker. But before
Speaker 1: we do that, let's take a quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsors. So we're back. I've got a little bit
Speaker 1: more to say about Anonymous before we move on. Some
Speaker 1: high profile operations that are at least suspected to be
Speaker 1: the work of Anonymous, because again, the loose organization of
Speaker 1: the group means that some operations could be the work
Speaker 1: of a subset or a splinter group of the overall
Speaker 1: group and not reflective of the group as a whole.
Speaker 1: Because of its loose association, it's really hard to attribute
Speaker 1: anything to the overall group, Like even something that might
Speaker 1: have the support of most members of Anonymous might not
Speaker 1: have total support. So the nature of Anonymous itself makes
Speaker 1: it difficult to use any definitive phrases. But Operation Darknet
Speaker 1: was one that Anonymous engaged in. Anonymous went after sites
Speaker 1: that hosted child pornography. They infiltrated some of those sites.
Speaker 1: They skimmed user information and published user information online, essentially
Speaker 1: revealing people who were frequently going to these child pornography sites,
Speaker 1: and they called for law enforcement to take action against
Speaker 1: the pornographers. So that was one of those cases where
Speaker 1: Anonymous said it was taking up action to defend the
Speaker 1: defenseless and to call for justice against people who were
Speaker 1: committing really terrible acts against vulnerable folks, in this case children.
Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, Operation Russia targeted several high profile Russian
Speaker 1: officials and exposed a scheme in which these officials were
Speaker 1: apparently paying bloggers to promote pro Kremlin and more to
Speaker 1: the point, pro putin propaganda. Operation Bahrain was actually not
Speaker 1: targeting Bahrain directly, but Formula one. So why do that? Well,
Speaker 1: at the time, the Arab Spring was in full bloom.
Speaker 1: That was a series of protests and movements throughout the
Speaker 1: Arab world in which citizens were protesting against various authorities,
Speaker 1: government officials and regimes and agencies, and Formula one was
Speaker 1: preparing for the twenty twelve Bahrain Grand Prix in cooperation
Speaker 1: with the government, and Anonymous was siting with the anti
Speaker 1: government protesters and viewed Formula one as participating in sportswashing,
Speaker 1: that is, using a sporting event to spread government propaganda.
Speaker 1: During the operation, Anonymous carried out DIDOS attacks against Formula
Speaker 1: one and leaked information gathered during a data breach on
Speaker 1: Formula one systems. In more recent years, Anonymous members have
Speaker 1: participated in operations against Israel in protests for that country's
Speaker 1: ongoing conflict with Palestinians, as well as an operation targeting
Speaker 1: Russia for its ongoing war against Ukraine. And it's been
Speaker 1: more than twenty years since a group of Internet trolls
Speaker 1: started just causing grief online, and the group is still
Speaker 1: active today, possibly because it is so hard to define.
Speaker 1: I don't know that you could call it the same group.
Speaker 1: In fact, I don't know how many people who were
Speaker 1: part of Anonymous in the earliest days are still active
Speaker 1: in the community today. I do think if we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about Anonymous, one place to start is just
Speaker 1: the group's own slogan. We are Anonymous, we are legion.
Speaker 1: We do not forgive, we do not forget, expect us. Okay,
Speaker 1: with that cheerful message, let's swap on over to a
Speaker 1: different hacker, someone who was very much identified, someone who
Speaker 1: was responsible both for committing several high profile, high impact
Speaker 1: acts of theft and wirefraud as well as a guy
Speaker 1: who helped take down other hackers. His name is Albert Gonzalez,
Speaker 1: and he sometimes went by handles that included soup Nazi
Speaker 1: as a Seinfeld reference or Kumba Johnny So. Gonzalez was
Speaker 1: born in nineteen eighty one in Cuba and brought up
Speaker 1: in the United States, and he was interested in computers
Speaker 1: at a young age. According to a piece written by
Speaker 1: James Verini in The New York Times magazine back in
Speaker 1: twenty ten, an early hint that the young Albert Gonzalez
Speaker 1: was a potential thorn in the side of the law
Speaker 1: came in the nineteen nineties when it was discovered that
Speaker 1: he had penetrated NASA's computer systems when he was just
Speaker 1: fourteen years old. The FBI paid him a little visit
Speaker 1: at school about that. Apparently he had developed a rather
Speaker 1: distinct disdain for authority, and meanwhile, he and some friends
Speaker 1: were fascinated with learning how various systems worked. Now he
Speaker 1: was more interested in systems than in programming. He liked
Speaker 1: learning how networks worked, and not just computer networks, but
Speaker 1: like networks of people. He would probe at these different systems,
Speaker 1: and often it didn't take very long for him to
Speaker 1: find a vulnerability. So back in the early days of
Speaker 1: the Internet, security protocols were very much a work in
Speaker 1: pro and not everyone was on the same page. A
Speaker 1: lot of people and companies had incredibly lacks security practices,
Speaker 1: and you could think of that as just being a
Speaker 1: common feature in the Internet, kind of like how the
Speaker 1: web pages at that time almost all had the obligatory
Speaker 1: under construction graphic posted somewhere on their web page. Now, Gonzales,
Speaker 1: like I said, he wasn't really a coder a programmer.
Speaker 1: He would rely on other hackers for building code instead.
Speaker 1: He was just really good at understanding how systems worked
Speaker 1: and then navigating through those systems and finding the valuable
Speaker 1: information stored within them. He was also really adept at
Speaker 1: social engineering. He was great at manipulating people to get
Speaker 1: what he needed, whether that was a login password or
Speaker 1: information about Wi Fi networks or whatever. He also was
Speaker 1: reportedly a pretty serious drug user. Typically he relied on
Speaker 1: stimulants like cocaine when he was pulling long hours while
Speaker 1: infiltrating systems, and that would become a pretty big issue
Speaker 1: for him. Among his go to activities would be sniffing
Speaker 1: out credit card numbers either by finding a database belonging
Speaker 1: to say, a business like a retailer, and then just
Speaker 1: siphoning off numbers that were stored in there, because not
Speaker 1: everyone stored their numbers and encrypted formats, which meant if
Speaker 1: you had access to the database, you had access to numbers.
Speaker 1: He also made friends with other hackers who specialized in
Speaker 1: building programs specifically to skim credit card numbers, one of
Speaker 1: those being Stephen Watt, who was sometimes known by handles
Speaker 1: like Jim Jones or sometimes the Unix Terrorist. And as
Speaker 1: a young adult, Gonzales joined a group of like minded
Speaker 1: hackers that would call themselves the Shadow Crew, and it
Speaker 1: was kind of like a forum for hackers, but not
Speaker 1: just that, it was also a trading place. At Shadow Crew,
Speaker 1: people could buy and sell information like stolen credit card
Speaker 1: or debit card numbers, and they also could find tutorials
Speaker 1: about how to carry out various criminal activities and how
Speaker 1: to do things like how to get blank cards and
Speaker 1: then emboss them and print magnetic strips on them and
Speaker 1: imprint the stolen card information you had onto card blanks
Speaker 1: so that you could then take those cards to like
Speaker 1: an ATM and potentially withdraw tons of cash in the process.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's actually what Gonzales was doing when he
Speaker 1: first got caught. Shadow crew had built up an enormous
Speaker 1: database of stolen card numbers, and Gonzales had made a
Speaker 1: bunch of fake cards, and he set out to hit
Speaker 1: some ATMs in North Manhattan in New York City. By chance,
Speaker 1: there was this plain clothes NYPD detective who just spotted
Speaker 1: Gonzales and thought Gonzales looked an awful lot shady. Gonzalez
Speaker 1: was wearing a woman's wig at the time and a
Speaker 1: fake nose ring, and the detective was actually on the
Speaker 1: lookout for a totally different kind of criminal because there
Speaker 1: had been some car thieves who had been hitting some
Speaker 1: neighborhoods in Upper Manhattan, and so this detective started following
Speaker 1: Gonzalez thinking that maybe he found one of the people
Speaker 1: who had been boosting cars in the area. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't cars that Gonzalez had boosted. It was card numbers,
Speaker 1: not cars. So the detective follows Gonzalez, sees Gonzalez go
Speaker 1: up to an ATM notices that Gonzalez is very likely
Speaker 1: in disguise, like he's wearing like a hoodie and everything,
Speaker 1: but also, like I said, a wig and a nose ring,
Speaker 1: and Gonzalez starts using cards to access an ATM and
Speaker 1: withdraw cash, and then just switch to a different card
Speaker 1: and withdraw more cash. So the detective figured that Gonzalez
Speaker 1: wasn't stealing automobiles, but he was definitely doing something that
Speaker 1: was questionable. And so Gonzales got picked up by the police,
Speaker 1: not because the cybersecurity team figured out who he was,
Speaker 1: but because someone in the real world spotted him and
Speaker 1: suspected that something was pinky. So Gonzalez ended up turning
Speaker 1: informant on the Shadow Crew. This was largely to protect
Speaker 1: himself so he wouldn't have to go to prison, and
Speaker 1: he thought, well, I can end up helping the law
Speaker 1: enforcement identify and catch other hackers. Now, Gonzales didn't necessarily
Speaker 1: know who everyone was in Shadow Crew. In fact, he
Speaker 1: didn't know who most of them were. The whole point
Speaker 1: of the hacker culture was to create these personas that
Speaker 1: while you know it was connected to you, you couldn't
Speaker 1: trace it back to a person easily. However, Gonzales had
Speaker 1: built up a lot of trust in the community, so
Speaker 1: he ended up helping the Secret Service identify various high
Speaker 1: level members of Shadow crew. But even while he was
Speaker 1: working with the authorities to put away his fellow hackers,
Speaker 1: he also kept up his own criminal activities. In fact,
Speaker 1: he really stepped it up. He targeted large retail organizations
Speaker 1: and so one of the things he started to do
Speaker 1: was tap into these businesses through their own Wi Fi networks.
Speaker 1: He and his colleagues would engage in a practice called
Speaker 1: war driving. So war driving just involves driving around, typically
Speaker 1: with like a laptop, and you're searching for Wi Fi networks,
Speaker 1: and once you find a Wi Fi network, the next
Speaker 1: step is to prod the network and see if there's
Speaker 1: any vulnerabilities you can exploit. Now, that doesn't necessarily involve
Speaker 1: any high tech stuff like it can, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to. Sometimes all it takes is just a working
Speaker 1: knowledge of generic login and password credentials, you know Wi Fi.
Speaker 1: Especially at the time when Gonzalez was doing this in
Speaker 1: the mid two thousands, it was fairly new and not
Speaker 1: everyone actually took the trouble to, you know, do things
Speaker 1: like change the default settings on their Wi Fi networks,
Speaker 1: which meant that it was trivial to infiltrate those systems.
Speaker 1: You might as well not use any security at all.
Speaker 1: If you're not changing things like the default password, right,
Speaker 1: because then all you have to do is know which
Speaker 1: companies use default words, you know which default passwords, and
Speaker 1: just go through and start using those until you get
Speaker 1: into the system. And that was a large part of
Speaker 1: what Gonzales in his group was doing. So even in
Speaker 1: cases where someone did think to make this change, where
Speaker 1: they did go so far as to change the defaults,
Speaker 1: sometimes just a little social engineering could go a long
Speaker 1: way toward getting you what you wanted. You know, you
Speaker 1: trick someone into sharing log in credentials and you're in
Speaker 1: the game. You just tell them, oh, I'm here to
Speaker 1: improve your internet connection, to speed things up or whatever,
Speaker 1: or to fix a problem. And you get login information
Speaker 1: from someone, a lot of people will just hand it
Speaker 1: over because they're like, well, that's outside of my expertise,
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm doing. Sure, this person seems
Speaker 1: like they're on the up and up. Here's my log
Speaker 1: in information. And then you snoop around long enough in
Speaker 1: a system, you might find a way to access higher
Speaker 1: level files. Right, you might be able to get administrator
Speaker 1: level access to a system. That's kind of what Gonzales
Speaker 1: was really good at doing. And that's where the profit is,
Speaker 1: because that's where you're able to access the most sensitive information.
Speaker 1: So Gonzales breached numerous databases that had pretty poor security
Speaker 1: controls but lots of customer data, and so he got
Speaker 1: access to even more credit and debit cards through major
Speaker 1: retailers and consumer facing companies like TJ Max, OfficeMax, Barnes
Speaker 1: and Noble Dave and Busters and lots more. He also
Speaker 1: double crossed a few hackers in his community at this time.
Speaker 1: In that New York Times magazine article, it's revealed that
Speaker 1: while he was working with the Secret Service, Gonzales secretly
Speaker 1: sold a junk database of stolen credentials. Those credentials were
Speaker 1: no longer really active and so they weren't really useful.
Speaker 1: It was just junk. But he sold this database to
Speaker 1: a hacker because he knew that hacker was also under
Speaker 1: the scrutiny of the Secret Service and they were closing
Speaker 1: in on the hacker. So he makes money from this hacker.
Speaker 1: The hacker gets caught and it looks like the hacker
Speaker 1: is the one who actually stole the database of credentials
Speaker 1: in the first place, so Gonzalez is able to offload
Speaker 1: a worthless database of information onto someone who then takes
Speaker 1: the fall for having stolen it in the first place.
Speaker 1: By two thousand and seven, gonzalez Is working relationship with
Speaker 1: the Secret Service was kind of falling apart, but he
Speaker 1: was still really just getting started, and he had graduated
Speaker 1: to SEQL injection attacks SQL. So essentially, a sequel injection
Speaker 1: uses commands written in structured query language and it exploits
Speaker 1: a vulnerability. It doesn't just work on its own. There
Speaker 1: has to be a poorly designed system, and such systems
Speaker 1: will sometimes accept commands that are in SQL without even
Speaker 1: the formal logging in process. It's like you bypassed the
Speaker 1: bit where the bouncer has to ask for your ID,
Speaker 1: like you found a different way in, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: give you full access to the building, but because you
Speaker 1: happen to have like this one, you then can get
Speaker 1: access to other stuff. That's essentially what sequel injection does.
Speaker 1: It gives commands, and if the system is not hardened
Speaker 1: against such attacks, the system's programmed to respond to those commands.
Speaker 1: So this is one way that hackers would create backdoor
Speaker 1: entry points into systems where they could come and go
Speaker 1: as they pleased. So that's what Gonzales and his colleagues
Speaker 1: were doing. Now, ultimately, he began to breach point of
Speaker 1: sale machines like where cards were actually getting swiped. I
Speaker 1: remember when this happened because news about how major retailers,
Speaker 1: the big one being TJ Max as I recall, but
Speaker 1: it was lots of them, not just TJ Max, but
Speaker 1: all these different companies were starting to report these security
Speaker 1: breaches in which someone had somehow managed to access credit
Speaker 1: card numbers, sometimes credit card scanners right at the point
Speaker 1: of sale and just grabbing numbers in real time. That's
Speaker 1: someone was Gonzales and his crew. Okay, I've got more
Speaker 1: to say about gonz and wrapping up his story. Plus
Speaker 1: we have another hacker to talk about, but first let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break. So we're back now. While Gonzalez
Speaker 1: had a history of using stolen credit card and debit
Speaker 1: card numbers personally, the really big money was in selling
Speaker 1: databases filled with just hundreds of thousands of credit card
Speaker 1: numbers to other people. And he had really accumulated tens
Speaker 1: of millions of card numbers over his various exploits, and
Speaker 1: he would sell them to people all over the world.
Speaker 1: But one of his big buyers was a guy located
Speaker 1: in Ukraine, and Gonzales felt comfortable working with this guy
Speaker 1: because the extradition laws in Ukraine at the time weren't
Speaker 1: very scary, so if his contact was picked up, then
Speaker 1: he would probably just kind of get off without too
Speaker 1: much trouble. He certainly wouldn't get extradited to the United States,
Speaker 1: and Gonzalez himself would remain insulated, so he felt that
Speaker 1: there was a lower risk working with criminals in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: But then this contact took a little trip to Turkey
Speaker 1: and got snatched up by authorities and things went south
Speaker 1: in a hurry, so ultimately that did not work out
Speaker 1: so well for Albert Gonzalez. Law enforcement was looking into
Speaker 1: the various data breaches, and through tracking down people on
Speaker 1: the outskirts of this crime, they were slowly circling in
Speaker 1: on Albert Gonzalez himself. That also included some tailtale signs
Speaker 1: at Dave and Busters, which played another part in kind
Speaker 1: of narrowing down the search. See the program that Gonzalez's
Speaker 1: crew was using to skim credit card numbers at the
Speaker 1: daven Buster's locations had a limitation. It would not reset
Speaker 1: if the computer systems had been shut down. And then
Speaker 1: turned back on. So if the computer systems reset, the
Speaker 1: skimming program did not reset with those comput systems that
Speaker 1: needed to be reinitiated. So that meant that the hackers
Speaker 1: would have to revisit Dave and Busters on a fairly
Speaker 1: frequent basis. And then eventually David Busters starts to figure
Speaker 1: out that these frequent customers are also shady customers and
Speaker 1: suspicions raise. The investigation culminated in a May seventh, two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, raid on a hotel room near Miami Beach, Florida.
Speaker 1: So Miami was Gonzales' hometown. He moved there after he
Speaker 1: worked with the Secret Service back in the earlier two
Speaker 1: thousands and was helping them unveil and unmask and capture
Speaker 1: various hackers. He moved to Miami and that's where he
Speaker 1: operated for much of the mid to late two thousands.
Speaker 1: Really and law enforcement arrested Gonzales in this raid, and
Speaker 1: Gonzales eventually led authorities to dig up a barrel containing
Speaker 1: more than a million dollars in cash that was buried
Speaker 1: in his parents' backyard. Whether or not that was the
Speaker 1: majority of his money or all of it, who knows.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was just a bit to throw a bone
Speaker 1: to the authorities and keep the rest secretly locked away.
Speaker 1: But Gonzalez pled guilty to all the charges that were
Speaker 1: filed against him. He was sentenced to two concurrent twenty
Speaker 1: year prison sentences, meaning he was serving out both of
Speaker 1: them at the same time. His buddy, Stephen Watt aka
Speaker 1: Jim Jones, would get two years in prison and a
Speaker 1: quarter of a million dollars in fines for having coded
Speaker 1: the sniffer programs that Gonzalez was relying upon, though Wats
Speaker 1: himself argued that he didn't know what Gonzalez was really
Speaker 1: doing with the stuff he had built. I don't fully
Speaker 1: know if that's believable, but he did say that he
Speaker 1: definitely didn't agree with some of the targets that Gonzales
Speaker 1: wanted to go after that Watt just felt that that
Speaker 1: was not really appropriate. Another hacker named Damon Patrick Towey,
Speaker 1: who did a lot of Gonzales' leg work, got hit
Speaker 1: with a five year prison sentence, now equated to multiple articles.
Speaker 1: Gonzales would be in prison till eligible for parole, which
Speaker 1: wouldn't be until twenty twenty five, but apparently he was
Speaker 1: released last year on September nineteenth according to the Bureau
Speaker 1: of Prisons. If you do a research of him on
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Prisons, it says he is no longer
Speaker 1: in custody. Oddly enough, I couldn't find any articles about
Speaker 1: his release. But if someone is in prison long enough,
Speaker 1: I figure the folks who covered their crimes will have
Speaker 1: moved on. So it's quite possible that no one just
Speaker 1: noticed that he was released from prison. Assuming he's on
Speaker 1: the outside now, the question is will he stay on
Speaker 1: the straight and narrow or return to his system exploiting ways. Now,
Speaker 1: our final hacker that we're covering in this episode is
Speaker 1: a tragic story and it's also connected to Albert Gonzales,
Speaker 1: so this guy has a relation to that story. It's
Speaker 1: the story of Jonathan James. He was born in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three, so he was just a couple of years
Speaker 1: younger than Gonzales. His father was a computer systems analyst,
Speaker 1: and young Jonathan James developed a keen interest in computers
Speaker 1: as well, so keen that years later, when Jonathan James
Speaker 1: would get picked up by authorities for breaching secure systems,
Speaker 1: his father would claim, quote, I've been in computers for
Speaker 1: twenty years, and I can't do what he was doing
Speaker 1: end quote. Now, what he was doing was mainly snooping around.
Speaker 1: He was using computers and the young Internet to explore
Speaker 1: different computer systems, and like Gonzales, that included some systems
Speaker 1: that he absolutely positively was not supposed to be able
Speaker 1: to access. In nineteen ninety nine, Jonathan James allegedly infiltrated
Speaker 1: more than a dozen computers belonging to the National Aeronautics
Speaker 1: and Space Administration good old NASA, again just like Gonzales
Speaker 1: had done when he was fourteen years old. The computers
Speaker 1: were located at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama,
Speaker 1: and the intrusion, once detected, prompted the agency to show
Speaker 1: down some of those computers for the better part of
Speaker 1: a month. James would later be accused of having stolen data,
Speaker 1: including highly sensitive information about the International Space Station, and
Speaker 1: that he had downloaded software from NASA during his unauthorized
Speaker 1: tour of their computer systems, and authorities would later estimate
Speaker 1: that his activities had cost the agency around forty thousand
Speaker 1: bucks in various ways, from having to replace compromise systems
Speaker 1: to paying folks to fix vulnerabilities though one could argue
Speaker 1: that in that case, at least James had kind of
Speaker 1: done NASA a service because James didn't have darker motivations
Speaker 1: against the agency. And one could argue that if someone's
Speaker 1: going to bust into your computer systems and reveal that
Speaker 1: there's a big security vulnerability, you would rather it be
Speaker 1: a sixteen year old kid than an actual terrorist. But
Speaker 1: that's not to say that Jonathan James was a naive, innocent,
Speaker 1: curious boy. He certainly was curious, that was definitely true.
Speaker 1: But he really enjoyed the challenge of hacking into supposedly
Speaker 1: secure systems, and he would claim that his motivation to
Speaker 1: do this was mostly just to see if he could
Speaker 1: do it, and also to brag about this to other
Speaker 1: hackers so that he could get some, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of clout in the hacker community. In the hacker community,
Speaker 1: he took on the handle Comrade, with the O and
Speaker 1: comrade being a zero instead of the letter O. That
Speaker 1: might have been a little brash considering some of his targets,
Speaker 1: Like to use a term that has its connections to Russia,
Speaker 1: might have been a little brash because one of his
Speaker 1: targets was the defense threat Reduction Agency, which itself is
Speaker 1: part of the US Department of Defense. So this is
Speaker 1: still in the summer of nineteen ninety nine, when James
Speaker 1: was just sixteen years old. The agency in this case
Speaker 1: was responsible for monitoring potential threats to the United States,
Speaker 1: including stuff like nuclear or biologic weaponry, so this is
Speaker 1: definitely highly classified information we're talking about. James uncovered a
Speaker 1: ton of information while he was poking around. He intercepted
Speaker 1: thousands of messages between different agency members and gained access
Speaker 1: to nearly twenty different log in credentials. While he was
Speaker 1: doing all this, the agency noticed that someone was snooping around, however,
Speaker 1: and over the course of the next few months, law
Speaker 1: enforcement was able to trace those intrusions back to Jonathan
Speaker 1: James's home. Now, according to his dad, Jonathan's identity was
Speaker 1: discovered largely through the cooperation with ISPs, so Internet service
Speaker 1: providers worked with law enforcement to trace back the traffic
Speaker 1: that was coming from Jonathan James's home and leading into
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense. James was brought up on charges
Speaker 1: as a juvenile, and he pled guilty to those charges.
Speaker 1: If he had been an adult when he carried out
Speaker 1: these hacking activities probably would have faced some pretty serious
Speaker 1: jail time and some fines, but as it stood, he
Speaker 1: was sentenced to six months of detention in a juvenile facility.
Speaker 1: The Justice Department said he was the first juvenile to
Speaker 1: actually serve time for hacking now. Unfortunately for James, the
Speaker 1: consequence of his actions followed him well after his release
Speaker 1: from juvenile detention. He found it difficult to secure employment.
Speaker 1: While some hackers have leveraged their experiences into a job
Speaker 1: in cybersecurity, James found it hard to do the same.
Speaker 1: He also was still in touch with some other hackers,
Speaker 1: and while he was determined to avoid a legal activity,
Speaker 1: his circles included folks that were connected to Gonzalez, and
Speaker 1: Gonzales showed far less concern about the legality of his actions.
Speaker 1: So when Albert Gonzalez's crew started stealing thousands of credit
Speaker 1: card numbers from around a dozen major companies, the Secret
Speaker 1: Service decided to look in on James. They found references
Speaker 1: to a j. J in those in those those hacker communications,
Speaker 1: and Jonathan James couldn't that be JJ. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: JJ may have meant Jim Jones aka Stephen Watt, who
Speaker 1: was one of Gonzalez's colleagues, and the Secret Service was
Speaker 1: looking at James. I mean, James had proven himself to
Speaker 1: be an adept hacker, far capable of gaining access to
Speaker 1: what were supposed to be secure systems. But Jonathan James
Speaker 1: was already battling depression due to his struggles of getting
Speaker 1: a stable life post detention, and the suspicion directed at
Speaker 1: him probably exacerbated things. Not to say that it caused
Speaker 1: what would follow to happen, but that it certainly was
Speaker 1: another element on top of a lot of other stresses
Speaker 1: that were already leading to some serious depression. Because on
Speaker 1: May eighteenth, two thousand and eight, just eleven days after
Speaker 1: authorities had brought Albert Gonzales into custody, Jonathan James committed suicide.
Speaker 1: He left behind a note that claimed he had no
Speaker 1: connection with the recent attacks against TJX and the other
Speaker 1: companies that Gonzales had targeted, but he also had quote
Speaker 1: no faith in the justice system end quote. Further, he
Speaker 1: tragically revealed that he felt he had no control over
Speaker 1: his own life and only by taking his life could
Speaker 1: he regain control, which is an incredibly tragic ending. And
Speaker 1: just a note here because I do think this is important.
Speaker 1: If you are ever in a place where you're having
Speaker 1: suicidal thoughts, please reach out to a crisis hotline. There
Speaker 1: are many such lifelines around the world. Here in the
Speaker 1: United States, the national lifeline is nine to eight eight,
Speaker 1: and talking to someone can be a huge help. But
Speaker 1: that's it for this episode about famous hackers. There are
Speaker 1: lots more, and I'll probably do more episodes where I'll
Speaker 1: talk about some others. You know, I didn't even mention
Speaker 1: Kevin Mitnick in this one, and that's a big one,
Speaker 1: so we'll come back to this topic. Obviously, there's seven
Speaker 1: more on that Kaspersky list I could talk about, but
Speaker 1: I felt that getting some insight into the motivations and
Speaker 1: techniques used by some of these hackers would be kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. I hope everyone out there is doing well.
Speaker 1: Hope you're healthy and happy, and I will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.