Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome back to the show. My name is
Speaker 2: nol Our, buddy Matt is on adventure as Ben. You're Ben, and.
Speaker 1: Matt will be returning soon. They do call me Ben.
Speaker 1: We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission
Speaker 1: Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here,
Speaker 1: and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to know. Noel hacking, hacking?
Speaker 2: Can you hack it? Can you hack it?
Speaker 1: What's the uh what's the first thing you think of
Speaker 1: when you think of hacking.
Speaker 2: I guess the term has become dare I say, a
Speaker 2: bit hackneyed over time, just because it's like, yeah, it
Speaker 2: conjures images of like bad nineties movie depictions of the Internet,
Speaker 2: of someone with like a weird, like overly bespoke cased
Speaker 2: laptop having a screen flashing access granted, you know, people
Speaker 2: flying through vectors of like weird transparent buildings like pre matrix.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm mainly thinking of the movie Hackers, but it
Speaker 2: was a trope for a while, right, Ben, does that?
Speaker 2: Does that? Come? Does that? Though? Some of those things
Speaker 2: come to mind for you too, You're right.
Speaker 1: No, I always love it in the nineteen nineties films
Speaker 1: when someone reroutes the encryptions right right, the big that's
Speaker 1: the big move. And and it's true that hacking is
Speaker 1: a misrepresented concept in the world of film, Like, weird
Speaker 1: not hackers, to be completely honest with everyone, right, Like,
Speaker 1: we know a little bit of coding, we have phones,
Speaker 1: we get it. But we're also aware that some hacks
Speaker 1: like stucksnet can alter the course of history, and others
Speaker 1: like WannaCry can sweep across the globe at a moment's notice.
Speaker 1: The world of hackings pretty pretty invisible to most people.
Speaker 1: But it's a dangerous world, and it's a very real
Speaker 1: one with genuine potential for harm. And so tonight we
Speaker 1: decided to explore the story of one hacker, in particular,
Speaker 1: a guy named Marcus Hutchins, who accidentally, per his own account,
Speaker 1: stopped a global conspiracy and saved the world. Here are
Speaker 1: the facts. Who is this guy?
Speaker 2: Dang? Yeah? I mean, well, first of all, when we
Speaker 2: think of hackers, we usually think of like some like
Speaker 2: aim screen name type handle right, It's like, well, they
Speaker 2: don't often even get elevated to the point where we
Speaker 2: even like know their names. That's by design, because a
Speaker 2: lot of these folks want to stay anonymous. But we
Speaker 2: do know a thing or two about Marcus. He was
Speaker 2: born in the nineties. Damn you child, nineteen ninety four
Speaker 2: in the UKs. Sorry, whenever I see someone born in
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties, God forbid even the two thousands, I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm such an old But yes, I know they exist
Speaker 2: there everywhere. Man, They're crawling out the woodwork, and they're
Speaker 2: doing big stuff, no doubt. In the United Kingdom in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four, Marcus already was when he came of age,
Speaker 2: or at least to the point where he could, you know,
Speaker 2: click clock on a computer, was already showing great promise
Speaker 2: with computers and early kinds of programming. There's a story
Speaker 2: apocryphal or no, that talks about how he was able
Speaker 2: to bypass the computers at his school reroute the encryptions.
Speaker 2: Dare we say bypass the school's computer. I guess let's
Speaker 2: say locks, you know, protection systems, maybe something that would
Speaker 2: not allow people to install outside software so that he
Speaker 2: could install game software. You know some kids, what do
Speaker 2: you think it was plaining? I guess in the nineties
Speaker 2: it would have been what what? What was a PC game?
Speaker 2: This is waypost Doom and like the ID software stuff.
Speaker 2: What would maybe Minecraft?
Speaker 1: Maybe you're right, we came up on Oregon Trail. Let's
Speaker 1: be honest, that's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then I just remember, you know, with all
Speaker 2: the ID software games, those were the ones where they
Speaker 2: would send you the freeware discs in the mail, and
Speaker 2: so that was something that everyone would have installed. But
Speaker 2: in the I guess he would have been coming of age,
Speaker 2: like in the early two thousands, so that might have
Speaker 2: been Minecraft. That's my theory.
Speaker 1: Hmm, that's a solid one. I agree with you. We
Speaker 1: we're getting a lot of his initial career and origin
Speaker 1: story somewhat apocryphal, as you as you said from this
Speaker 1: article by Andy Greenberg over Wired, and Marcus teaches himself
Speaker 1: the ins and outs of coding. He starts hanging out
Speaker 1: online right in these forums, in these Prereddit areas, or
Speaker 1: Reddit was already around, or things like Reddit, things like
Speaker 1: the chans, So it.
Speaker 2: Would have been more for these smaller communities. Definitely wouldn't
Speaker 2: have been quite in the mainstream as much as it
Speaker 2: is today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was specifically hanging out with the bad kids
Speaker 1: of the Internet who wanted to flex on malware. Malware
Speaker 1: is like software.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: A genre definition of things, programs that are meant to
Speaker 1: compromise other machines in some way. He's dare I say,
Speaker 1: hacking at an early age, and he's very young at
Speaker 1: this point still, yeah.
Speaker 2: I think he at around fourteen years old he comes
Speaker 2: up with his first kind of little hack. I guess, uh,
Speaker 2: it is funny that how hack has sort of become
Speaker 2: more appropriated by the normies, like the idea of like
Speaker 2: life hacks and stuff, But back in this day, it
Speaker 2: was it was kind of literally figuring out a weakness,
Speaker 2: you know, some sort of vulnerability and a piece of
Speaker 2: software and then exploiting that. This would probably be one
Speaker 2: of the more basic types of hacks. And he did
Speaker 2: that with Internet Explorer, figuring out of that whole what
Speaker 2: is it like autofill stuff where it like saves your info?
Speaker 2: And I think back in those days it wasn't as
Speaker 2: like authentication heavy as it is now, like even to
Speaker 2: get access to certain autofill type things you have to
Speaker 2: enter a password and use your name and maybe even
Speaker 2: a fingerprints, you know, if you're using one of those
Speaker 2: newer Mac laptops.
Speaker 1: But here's the text on your phone.
Speaker 2: That's right exactly, because a lot of times this stuff
Speaker 2: will include credit card information. It couldn't even include you know,
Speaker 2: that would not be the brightest thing in the world
Speaker 2: to always have that stuff, you know, available for autofill
Speaker 2: but it certainly is out there now and a little
Speaker 2: more protective. But back then it would be for stuff
Speaker 2: like addresses, you know, for shipping or whatever it might be.
Speaker 2: And he used it to I guess, send a direct
Speaker 2: line back to him, you know, from the computer with
Speaker 2: the malware installed, to give people's passwords, and.
Speaker 1: He never used it to commit a crime. The forums
Speaker 1: he was hanging out on were all about flexing. It's
Speaker 1: like his version of a skate park, you know, where
Speaker 1: people are doing their halfpipe tricks, right, And he gets
Speaker 1: acceptance and approval online, and he hangs out more and
Speaker 1: more often on these forums, and his teachers and his
Speaker 1: parents notice that he's not doing so great at his
Speaker 1: homework in school, yeah.
Speaker 2: The regular stuff now, because he's spending all his time
Speaker 2: on those computer labs, and much like what happens when
Speaker 2: hackers are convicted, you know, and sent away that a
Speaker 2: lot of times one of the conditions of their release
Speaker 2: are you can never go near a computer ever again,
Speaker 2: which always seems so heartbreaking. But yeah, he was banned
Speaker 2: from using any of the school's computers because the faculty
Speaker 2: thought that he had hacked the entire school network, which
Speaker 2: he did deny again and got some apocryphal tales in here,
Speaker 2: which is always kind of the way it goes with
Speaker 2: figures like this, But in the end, it was just
Speaker 2: just the push over the cliff he needed to even
Speaker 2: more reject kind of the stuff they were trying to
Speaker 2: hopefully get him to do, to go deeper into in
Speaker 2: terms of like normal homework and a career and all
Speaker 2: of that stuff. So he stopped, basically stopped going to school.
Speaker 1: He can't blame him, you know.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, tore a terrible move to really absolutely misguided
Speaker 2: attempt to get someone to not do the thing that
Speaker 2: they love.
Speaker 1: And so he gets pushed away from what we call it,
Speaker 1: we're going to sound very old, his irl society in
Speaker 1: real life society. He gets pushed away, and soon he
Speaker 1: is hanging out full time on these Internet forums. And
Speaker 1: you know these are forbes associated with what we call
Speaker 1: pen testing, if we're being correct, penetration testing.
Speaker 2: Ah yeah, isn't familiar with that one. And it's like
Speaker 2: you said, I mean a lot of it was sort
Speaker 2: of flexes, like here's see what I can do, but
Speaker 2: it wasn't necessarily these folks were colluding, you know, to
Speaker 2: plan large scale Internet heists. But as we know, in
Speaker 2: order to know what the bad guys are doing and
Speaker 2: how to protect against what they're doing, you got to
Speaker 2: kind of have the same bag of tricks. So this
Speaker 2: really is kind of an interesting early, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of entry point into what ultimately led to him being
Speaker 2: as known as he became.
Speaker 1: Just so, and you know, at this point, if you're
Speaker 1: hanging out with those bad kids on that Internet halfpipe,
Speaker 1: the feds are gonna come shut you down. The squares
Speaker 1: are gonna come in, and authorities will clamp down on
Speaker 1: one site. But they're essentially playing whack them hole, which
Speaker 1: means that the users of these forums will transfer to
Speaker 1: another site. So the forum that our young friend Hutchens
Speaker 1: hangs out at gets closed down, gets shut down, so
Speaker 1: he moves to another spot it's cold in a burst
Speaker 1: of creativity hack forums, no one well no, no one
Speaker 1: will ever figure that one out.
Speaker 2: Well, how man, isn't the smarter move instead of like
Speaker 2: cracking down and like tipping your hand just to kind
Speaker 2: of lurk and see what you can see. I guess
Speaker 2: they probably do that for a while and then get
Speaker 2: to a point where they're like, Okay, we've exhausted this one.
Speaker 2: We need to I just wonder it will be the
Speaker 2: impetus for the cops coming in and breaking them up,
Speaker 2: or learning these folks to their presence, or if it's
Speaker 2: more like they overplayed their hand and the kids are like,
Speaker 2: oh no, we've been made. We need to move on right.
Speaker 1: Right right. We've got a great quote from Wired from
Speaker 1: our buddy Andy writing here, and he talks about you
Speaker 1: know what this makes me think of. It makes me
Speaker 1: think of walking into a hotel pool or something like that,
Speaker 1: where you have the steps at first where you dip
Speaker 1: your toes in, and our buddy Hutchins is walking in
Speaker 1: deeper and deeper water. Wired describes hack forums in a
Speaker 1: pretty interesting way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He describes the members as being a shade more
Speaker 2: advanced in their skills and a shade Murkier in their ethics.
Speaker 2: A lord of the flies collection of young hackers seeking
Speaker 2: to impress one another with nihilistic feats of exploitation. They're
Speaker 2: in lies of the flex. We were talking about the minimum
Speaker 2: table stakes to gain respect from the hack forums crowd
Speaker 2: was possession of a botnet, a collection of hundreds of
Speaker 2: thousands of malware infected computers that obey a hacker's commands,
Speaker 2: capable of directing junk traffic at rivals to flood their
Speaker 2: web servers and knock them offline. What's known as a
Speaker 2: distributed denial of service or d DOS attack. Pretty common
Speaker 2: technique we've heard that, you know, make the news plenty,
Speaker 2: Like if I'm not mistaken, we were all just in
Speaker 2: Las Vegas recently, and I think they were a victim
Speaker 2: of a hack that I think involved at least in
Speaker 2: part d DOS attacks. Because all of their servers were overloaded,
Speaker 2: they couldn't talk to each other, the MGM hotels and
Speaker 2: the lights wouldn't work in the room. And when you
Speaker 2: have a system that's so interconnected like that, these things
Speaker 2: can be crippling, right.
Speaker 1: You nailed it, Yeah, absolutely, And it's said that Matt
Speaker 1: is on adventures, because that's one of the things, as
Speaker 1: you will call that he brought up to us before
Speaker 1: you and Paul and I traveled to Las Vegas. Matt
Speaker 1: was I'm not gonna do an impression of Matt because
Speaker 1: we all know.
Speaker 2: It's not possible. He's too singular, that.
Speaker 1: He's such a voice. Yeah, and uh, Matt, just who
Speaker 1: everyone knows. Matt was telling us before we went to
Speaker 1: Vegas about the hack. I think he was the first
Speaker 1: one who clocked it, and he was saying, guys, we
Speaker 1: gotta be careful. He asked us if we would bring
Speaker 1: burner phones, and uh, and be honest with you, I
Speaker 1: did not bring a burner phone. I used my real
Speaker 1: phone in Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: But not your real name. You were assigned one by
Speaker 2: hotel management. Yeah, but it's crazy how effective some of
Speaker 2: these simpler kind of techniques can be. And I guess
Speaker 2: I didn't really understand the idea of this botnet, Like
Speaker 2: it's basically like these are these are these computers who
Speaker 2: don't know they've been had, who don't know they've been infected,
Speaker 2: and are now like under your sway like that you know,
Speaker 2: sorcerer's apprentice in the brooms kind of scenario. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this kid, Marcus Hutchins is a child at
Speaker 1: this point, he's fifteen years old, he's all in. He
Speaker 1: creates a botnet, and what he does is he suckers
Speaker 1: people via fake files or misleading files uploaded to bit
Speaker 1: torrent sites. For those of us in a certain demographic,
Speaker 1: you might think of LimeWire or things like that.
Speaker 2: Oh dude, but I mean bit torrent. You know, you
Speaker 2: would get it through like the Pirate Bay or whatever,
Speaker 2: or like there were other different ones. And the way
Speaker 2: BitTorrent files work is they're like broken up into all
Speaker 2: these little micro pieces that are then kind of reassembled.
Speaker 2: So I imagine this is a very smart way of
Speaker 2: using a technology that is a little bit you know,
Speaker 2: more underground internety. But it's also like, you know, we
Speaker 2: knew tons of people that weren't mega hacker, people that
Speaker 2: were like using bittorn all the time. It was super mainstream.
Speaker 2: So it would make sense that he amassed a pretty
Speaker 2: significant bought army by exploiting these BitTorrent sites for sure.
Speaker 1: And we all remember, let's be honest, whether you are
Speaker 1: a street laced NRO person or whether you have a
Speaker 1: little bit of r Maybe in your college days, you
Speaker 1: remember the old say they said, look, you're never gonna
Speaker 1: get caught if you're downloading the files. You're only in
Speaker 1: trouble if you're the one uploading them or sharing them,
Speaker 1: right and yeah, and so it's true.
Speaker 2: For some of them. But like the bit torrent ones,
Speaker 2: just by participating you were sort of part of It
Speaker 2: was harder to track down individuals, I think because it
Speaker 2: was like by downloading the file, you were also participating
Speaker 2: in the upload. But I got a few of those
Speaker 2: Web Sheriff no no infringement notices back in the day.
Speaker 2: I sure did you know what?
Speaker 1: It was?
Speaker 2: Usually about HBO related content. It was usually about like
Speaker 2: Sopranos episodes or episodes of sixty And you'd get this
Speaker 2: like form letter directed at your ISP, and then they
Speaker 2: would come to you and it was like, hey, fly right, buddy,
Speaker 2: or things are going to go poorly for you. You can
Speaker 2: get banned from your ISP. At the very least, that's
Speaker 2: probably what happened.
Speaker 1: Oh geez, well, this doesn't hit our boy, Hutchins, our
Speaker 1: young fifteen year old Hutchins. He has a bought army.
Speaker 1: It's like eight thousand computers and he starts setting up
Speaker 1: his own business. He has one called ghost Hosting. The
Speaker 1: first O is zero, get it because it's leaked to.
Speaker 2: Speak, Yeah, very aim Internetti as well. This is a
Speaker 2: server kind of like web services deal, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of like we know now is like AWS Amazon web
Speaker 2: services for hosting sites, much smaller and much more niche
Speaker 2: This was specifically for hosting sites for hack forum members
Speaker 2: that allowed them to shield their IP addresses from anyone
Speaker 2: who would try to, you know, find where the root
Speaker 2: of such sites might be. But he had some caveats.
Speaker 2: He would allow people to post anything other than child
Speaker 2: sexual abuse material. It's good on him for that, of course,
Speaker 2: because we know a lot of times these masked you know,
Speaker 2: web sites or servers. That's a big part of it.
Speaker 2: But what he was doing essentially was like sort of
Speaker 2: a smaller scale silk Road dark web thing, but I
Speaker 2: don't think you needed like a tour browser to access.
Speaker 2: Think it wasn't like exactly dark Road silk Web, but
Speaker 2: it was in that vein the idea that you couldn't
Speaker 2: necessarily figure out where it was coming from, and maybe
Speaker 2: there was even a way for users to be encrypted
Speaker 2: so they couldn't be tracked either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was all about anonymity, and he had these
Speaker 1: ethical lines. He kept evolving his skills. He learned how
Speaker 1: to analyze and improve other hackers software, especially their rootkits.
Speaker 1: Rootkits are a thing that will change the operating system
Speaker 1: of a computer such that it can hide itself. And
Speaker 1: people were massively impressed on these forums. And by the way,
Speaker 1: at this point, none of these folks on these forums
Speaker 1: know anything about each other. They're very careful with it.
Speaker 1: And this guy, our guy Mark, he starts taking these
Speaker 1: gigs writing what the authorities will call malware, and he's
Speaker 1: picking up little side joints, you know, He's like, hey,
Speaker 1: I know how to turn a piece of code here,
Speaker 1: and that's where he meets someone calling themselves. Theny things
Speaker 1: turn dark. It eventually leads him to something terrible called
Speaker 1: Wanna Cry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting to kind of get the trajectory of
Speaker 2: this kid and his sort of like upbringing or like
Speaker 2: his rise in this kind of culture, because at this
Speaker 2: point he's like a teenager, you know, he's basically kind
Speaker 2: of like a snotty teenager who just kind of maybe
Speaker 2: wants to creak a little bit of chaos, you know,
Speaker 2: but he does seem to have a moral code, which
Speaker 2: I think is important. And I think what we're gonna
Speaker 2: see is a turn where he's like, Ooh, with great
Speaker 2: power comes great responsibility kind of vibes, you know. And
Speaker 2: it just took him meeting the super villain kind of
Speaker 2: our story to make that realization. But maybe I'm over
Speaker 2: over stating the case. But it's a really interesting story.
Speaker 1: You're one hundred percent correct, Noal, I propose we pause
Speaker 1: for a word from our sponsor, which will hopefully be
Speaker 1: a VPN company.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. So this guy Vinnie contacts Marcus.
Speaker 1: Marcus is about sixteen at this point, and Vinnie is
Speaker 1: a stranger on the Internet. Marcus does not know him
Speaker 1: from a Canna paint. And Vinnie goes to Marcus and says,
Speaker 1: I'll give you a job make a new rootkit for me, kiddo,
Speaker 1: and I'll sell it all over the cool people Internet
Speaker 1: and you will get fifty percent of the profits.
Speaker 2: Dude, sounds like a deal. I'm sixteen on I'm doing
Speaker 2: this for fun largely anyway, and I'm starting to make
Speaker 2: a little extra money, you know, proving the principle and
Speaker 2: mom and dad wrong, you know, why wouldn't I hop
Speaker 2: on this train? So a little more than halfway through
Speaker 2: twenty twelve, they get this whole deal up and running
Speaker 2: something called a upas kit, which I believe is named
Speaker 2: after a poison tree. So maybe it's pronounced upus upus.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, I am also not one hundred percent on
Speaker 1: the pronunciation, but you're right now. It is named after
Speaker 1: a poisonous tree Antiaris toxicaria.
Speaker 2: Yeah that sounds scary mainly just cut has toxic in it,
Speaker 2: but it's part of the mulberry family, which is a
Speaker 2: very pleasant sounding tree. But so, yeah, this is their enterprise.
Speaker 2: They've been working on for a bit now. And at
Speaker 2: this point, Vinnie sends Hutchins like a bunch of drugs
Speaker 2: for his birthday.
Speaker 1: Because he was so Mark was complaining to his internet
Speaker 1: friend Vinnie about how difficult it was to find good
Speaker 1: drugs in the United Kingdom.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this was not completely unsolicited then, like Marcus
Speaker 2: is into these drugs, he wasn't just like because that
Speaker 2: also seems like a flex too, where it's like I
Speaker 2: know where you live and I'm sending you illegal stuff.
Speaker 2: This would have been appreciated by young Marcus. I'm open,
Speaker 2: we're not talking about crank or heroin here. Maybe just
Speaker 2: some weed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it was just saying I can't find
Speaker 1: good weed in the United Kingdom, and Vinny comes through
Speaker 1: with more than just cannabis.
Speaker 2: I see. So there is a little bit of a
Speaker 2: little bit of a flex in there too, I think,
Speaker 2: where it's almost like, you know, yeah, you're in deep
Speaker 2: Because to your point, Ben, he'd always sort of just
Speaker 2: ridden that line between doing stuff that was just a
Speaker 2: little more anarchist and a little more just kind of
Speaker 2: middle finger to the man and like square society, but
Speaker 2: never things that would be considered fully morally reprehensible or
Speaker 2: like felony level illegal, right.
Speaker 1: Right, Just so, the upus Upas sales had allowed Marcus
Speaker 1: the ability to not go to school and to work
Speaker 1: full time. He was supporting himself. He was one of
Speaker 1: those kids who probably looked like, what do you call it,
Speaker 1: hikiko mori, the kids who stay home guys?
Speaker 2: Yeah, in Japan for sure, or like in Spider Man,
Speaker 2: he's like the guy in the chair, you know.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, And he was increasingly living this double life.
Speaker 1: He was a mild mannered young British man by day.
Speaker 1: He was a master hacker by night. And here we
Speaker 1: go back to Marcus's own admissions. He made a serious error,
Speaker 1: just like you said, Noel, he had always stayed a
Speaker 1: step away from actions he considered illegal or unethical or
Speaker 1: morally reprehensible. And he said he knew of criminals, and
Speaker 1: he knew of crimes they had committed, but he did
Speaker 1: not consider himself a criminal. He always thought he was
Speaker 1: just on the side of the law, exactly.
Speaker 2: And now he's starting to get an inkling that he's
Speaker 2: starting to wade into some of those deeper waters, going
Speaker 2: past the kiddie pool and into the you know, the
Speaker 2: scary part of the pool where the monsters are they
Speaker 2: really are you guys, be careful part where you can't
Speaker 2: see the bottom. There's scary stuff down there. You ever
Speaker 2: have that. I pretend there was Jaws was in the pool.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'd just like to freak myself out when I
Speaker 2: was a kid. But I think the metaphor holds true.
Speaker 1: The metaphor does hold true, and you are terrified of
Speaker 1: open water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just a thing that it's a recurring theme
Speaker 2: for me in dreams where I can't see the bottom.
Speaker 2: And it's not usually even things that I think are
Speaker 2: going to murder me. It's just big things that you
Speaker 2: can't see. And sometimes the big things that you can't see,
Speaker 2: you don't really know whether they're good or bad. And
Speaker 2: at this point you made a really good point in
Speaker 2: the outline, Ben, we're not sure whether Marcus is living
Speaker 2: a double life as a superhero or potentially a super
Speaker 2: villain in the making.
Speaker 1: Ah, he's living two lives and he's not sure at
Speaker 1: this point, right which is good or which is bad.
Speaker 1: His buddy Vinnie ask him to write a new version
Speaker 1: of this malware, of this program, and he asked Marcus
Speaker 1: to write in some programming that would be a little
Speaker 1: bit of an escalation, things like key logging, a couple
Speaker 1: other specific bells and whistles. Nol, we know what key
Speaker 1: logging is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's similar to the little hack you
Speaker 2: as talking we were talking about earlier they did with
Speaker 2: Internet Explorer, where it's using that auto fill stuff to
Speaker 2: funnel information out of out of the person's individual computer.
Speaker 2: So when you're typing something, somebody who has root access
Speaker 2: to your machine can then get a copy of that
Speaker 2: and they can access like things that you have input
Speaker 2: manually into your computer, which oftentimes you know all the time,
Speaker 2: really includes personal data and passwords and things that you
Speaker 2: do not want people to have access to.
Speaker 1: And if you are hearing this on a work computer,
Speaker 1: if you use a work laptop, it is completely legal
Speaker 1: for your employer to do key law game programs.
Speaker 2: Just be aware. So anyway, anybody is it to measure
Speaker 2: productivity sometimes like that's a thing, you know, they can
Speaker 2: literally check your work, you know, not to make people
Speaker 2: freak out or be paranoid, but that is important. Don't
Speaker 2: fool yourself if you're using a work machine for things
Speaker 2: that aren't work related. It's not like they're watching you
Speaker 2: twenty four to seven, but that stuff is fair game
Speaker 2: to just be warned, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Be aware. So Marcus is a very smart dude. He's
Speaker 1: a kid at this point still, and he knows these
Speaker 1: functionalities for exactly what they are. He says, look at this.
Speaker 1: This will be a program specifically built to target financial institutions.
Speaker 1: And in his mind, he says, if I do this,
Speaker 1: I am committing crime. There's no way to rationalize it.
Speaker 1: There's no way to call it a gray area. There
Speaker 1: is no liminal space. I will not write this thing,
Speaker 1: he tells his quote unquote pal Vinnie. And then Vinny
Speaker 1: reveals there was a poison pill to that gift.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, could have Could I think that's what I
Speaker 2: was maybe picking up on a little bit, whor it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I've got something on you, a poison pill. Indeed, sending
Speaker 2: that package of drugs meant that he had basically blackmail
Speaker 2: level information on Marcus and could go about exposing, you know,
Speaker 2: his kind of secret activities. So they came to a
Speaker 2: bit of a compromise where Marcus made only a few
Speaker 2: of the chair a handful of the changes and updates
Speaker 2: that were being asked I in the key logging, and
Speaker 2: then he then decided he would farm out the rest
Speaker 2: of the things that Marcus would not willingly do you
Speaker 2: know elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Marcus agreed to make the key logging functionality and
Speaker 1: dragged his feet a bit. By his own admission, you
Speaker 1: can read his blog. Vinnie goes like you said, no,
Speaker 1: he outsources and gets the other functions for this thing.
Speaker 1: And this thing evolves, and by twenty fourteen, Venny quote
Speaker 1: unquote Vinnie is selling a new program. It's called Kronos.
Speaker 1: Marcus continues his regular life. He goes to community college,
Speaker 1: he graduates. People have no idea that he is basically
Speaker 1: neo in the matrix. Yeah, and things start to go
Speaker 1: south in his online world, so we can, I think,
Speaker 1: gloss over some of the the terrible things that happened there. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Marcus takes on the name malware Tech, and nobody knows
Speaker 1: that malware Tech is a guy in the United Kingdom
Speaker 1: named Marcus Hutchins until twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's when the WannaCry ransomware attacks happen, and I
Speaker 2: got my wires a little cross when we were talking
Speaker 2: about the MGM stuff. While there may have been a
Speaker 2: DDAs attack is part of that, Mainly what that whole
Speaker 2: thing was about was ransomware. WannaCry was is a ransomware
Speaker 2: crypto worm, which to.
Speaker 1: Your made up what is that on?
Speaker 2: All these words are great. I love it, Thank you
Speaker 2: William Gibson. And by the way, that cyberpunk cartoon that
Speaker 2: goes along with the game that's on Netflix, it's very good.
Speaker 2: It's really really cool. It's called Cyberpunk some colon something,
Speaker 2: but it's a pretty pretty cool and it does a
Speaker 2: great job of carrying on the legacy of like William
Speaker 2: Gibson and Philip K. Dick and a lot of the
Speaker 2: kind of you know, fourbears of really interesting kind of
Speaker 2: Internet culture and science fiction. But ransomware basically holds this
Speaker 2: information or the information on your computer hostage by encrypting
Speaker 2: the files like not to your benefit, right, like locking
Speaker 2: you out essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, crypto ransomware, or by locking you out
Speaker 1: of your computer entirely, which will be locker ransomware, which
Speaker 1: we know. I have to pause for a moment and
Speaker 1: on MAT's behalf also say thank you so much for
Speaker 1: shouting out William Gibson, neuromancer, the author who saw it
Speaker 1: all coming in ransomware. Ransomware is pretty nasty because it
Speaker 1: will direct the victim to pay some sort of financial
Speaker 1: thing right through a very specific set of instructions, usually
Speaker 1: bitcoin nowadays or some sort of derivative of WannaCry is
Speaker 1: even nastier because WannaCry will automatically propagate itself. It is
Speaker 1: considered a network worm. When it hit the Internet, it
Speaker 1: was May twelfth, twenty seventeen. It continued to May seventeenth.
Speaker 1: During just that small amount of time, just those few days.
Speaker 1: It hit over one hundred and fifty countries. It was nasty,
Speaker 1: went so far because it was based on It was
Speaker 1: based on some demonic stuff that Uncle Sam figured out out.
Speaker 2: And experts and you know, folks kind of watch watching
Speaker 2: the events unfold began to advise to not pay the
Speaker 2: ransom because there had not been any reliable information pointing
Speaker 2: to people actually getting their stuff back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and WannaCry was based on an exploit called Eternal Blue,
Speaker 1: which was discovered Slash created Slash developed by the Essay.
Speaker 1: About a month before WannaCry hit the world, there was
Speaker 1: a group You're gonna love this, man, because I know
Speaker 1: you love cyberpunk. There was a group of hackers named
Speaker 1: the Shadow Brokers. Yeah, that's a real thing. How is
Speaker 1: that a real thing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like cyberpunk, but it also sounds like
Speaker 2: Skyrim or something like much more Lord of the ringsy.
Speaker 1: Right, the I'm sure they love all of these things.
Speaker 1: They might be playing Skyrim now. The Shatto Brokers stole
Speaker 1: the Eternal Blue exploit from the Essay somehow, and they
Speaker 1: leaked it to the world. And the Want to Cry
Speaker 1: attack mainly worked on organizations that had not updated their software,
Speaker 1: they had not applied patches from Microsoft, they were working
Speaker 1: with older, outdated versions of operating systems. And at this
Speaker 1: point we have to be honest, it is very very
Speaker 1: easy to ignore all those things, all those little pop
Speaker 1: ups you get that say update your software now, right, Like,
Speaker 1: how many times have you ignored those today? Folks?
Speaker 2: Yeah? You know, I'm I run a lot of like
Speaker 2: I use my personal computer for work and you know,
Speaker 2: pro personal stuff when I'm at home, and then I
Speaker 2: have my work laptop, but I oftentimes don't have auto
Speaker 2: install on for those I updates from Mac because a
Speaker 2: lot of the third party like audio things that I use,
Speaker 2: they'll quickly get bricked if you do the wrong updates.
Speaker 2: So sometimes you have to like wait like a year
Speaker 2: for a new update to be fully tested. But then
Speaker 2: there are also sort of like sub updates that are
Speaker 2: more like security things. Those are the ones you do
Speaker 2: want to make sure you do, even if you're not
Speaker 2: doing the full updates. Always make sure that the security
Speaker 2: patches are turned on, because that's the kind of stuff
Speaker 2: that is protecting you from these sorts of things.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I think it's very easy to ignore that routine maintenance, right,
Speaker 1: that routine security, and especially if you're like us, if
Speaker 1: you work with any cavalcade of idiosyncratic apps or platforms,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a house of cards, you know,
Speaker 1: if you change one and then it changes everything else.
Speaker 1: And that's what the hackers are counting on, and that
Speaker 1: is why within just a few days a cry infected
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of computers. The estimates of damage ranged
Speaker 1: from hundreds of millions of dollars to literally billions of dollars.
Speaker 1: And like you said, the experts told everyone, one, patch
Speaker 1: your computer, and two, don't give in to the ransom.
Speaker 1: Don't give in to the terrorists because they're not going
Speaker 1: to give you your money back. No one knew what
Speaker 1: to do until one day, our pal, Marcus Hutchins, walked
Speaker 1: home from lunch and found out what was going on.
Speaker 1: We're gonna pause for a word from our sponsor, and
Speaker 1: then Noel maybe we talked about how this guy saved
Speaker 1: the day absolutely, and.
Speaker 2: We're back talking about mild mannered Marcus Hutchins of the
Speaker 2: Internet and also the United Kingdom, who had been through
Speaker 2: kind of an emotional rollercoaster. At this point, I did
Speaker 2: do a little extra reading and the package of drugs
Speaker 2: that were sent to him. It wasn't just weed. It
Speaker 2: was like amphetamines and psychedelics and hallucinogens. And apparently when
Speaker 2: he started doing a lot of these kind of like
Speaker 2: all night coding sessions once he stopped going to school,
Speaker 2: he himself got addicted pretty badly to amphetamines. He used
Speaker 2: to replace them, replace just you know, coffee with it.
Speaker 2: So he was down a pretty dark path in more
Speaker 2: ways than one. You know, he had basically been blackmailed
Speaker 2: himself by this vinny character who threatened to turn the
Speaker 2: information he had on him against him. This package of
Speaker 2: drugs that he sent to him, he perhaps turned him
Speaker 2: into the FBI or whatever, not to mention other stuff
Speaker 2: that he likely had. Can you imagine, Ben, if you
Speaker 2: were doing this and thinking you were like, you know,
Speaker 2: King Shiit of fuc came out and then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, the person that has guided you into this
Speaker 2: world turns on you, and now you feel like you're
Speaker 2: sort of you're there botnet. You know, they've got control
Speaker 2: of you.
Speaker 1: Oh that's good. Yeah, I mean it's evil, but that's
Speaker 1: a great feeling. Yeah, that's the deep water you're talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And this is Hutchins has to struggle through this stuff.
Speaker 1: He is by the time WannaCry hits, he is navigating
Speaker 1: the brighter side of drug addiction, I think, and he
Speaker 1: is working through what we would call white hat hacking,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, we have def con here in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. It's where Yeah, it's where you where. Essentially
Speaker 1: you are no longer paid to do malware programming. You
Speaker 1: are paid by companies like a bounty hunter. You find
Speaker 1: the exploits, the vulnerabilities in their software, and they give
Speaker 1: you a ton of money if it works out. This
Speaker 1: guy is working under the name malware Tech, and you
Speaker 1: can find his blog as Marcus Hutchins. You can also
Speaker 1: find malware Tech. He's not really on Twitter anymore, which
Speaker 1: I know is a bummer for you know, because you
Speaker 1: love Twitter so very much.
Speaker 2: I love it so much. Yeah, yes, gosh.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, pardon me.
Speaker 2: You're You're right on the money, Ben, Even like the
Speaker 2: emails that I get from them still say x formerly Twitter.
Speaker 2: It's like it's not gonna happen elon. But yeah, he
Speaker 2: he gets wind of this, I think, and much the
Speaker 2: same way that the rest of the world does. But
Speaker 2: he has more information that the rest of the world
Speaker 2: doesn't have, so he knows what he's looking at. Hutchins
Speaker 2: learn of want to cry. After he had some lunch
Speaker 2: on May the twelfth, he saw networks across Britain's healthcare
Speaker 2: system had been hit by the ransomware. So that's that's,
Speaker 2: you know, and this is that kind of stuff that
Speaker 2: that is the super dark side. You know, we were
Speaker 2: talking about casinos. That sucks for business. You know, casinos
Speaker 2: make a lot of money losing money, you know, inconvenicing
Speaker 2: guests and all of that, and that sucks. That's no good.
Speaker 2: But healthcare systems, people could die, you know, like like
Speaker 2: not to mention like the if it's if it's interconnected
Speaker 2: in the same way that the power stuff was, you know,
Speaker 2: at at the MGM, A lot of these larger facilities,
Speaker 2: they are going to have that level of interconnectedness. So
Speaker 2: he sees reports of Britain's health system being hit by
Speaker 2: these that's going to be things like records and you know,
Speaker 2: all of that stuff. But he with the information that
Speaker 2: he has, knowing this is likely an extension of the
Speaker 2: thing that he participated in in some way, he starts
Speaker 2: to get a little micro you know, looking into the
Speaker 2: code and seeing what he can see.
Speaker 1: And as he is running in his digital fingers across
Speaker 1: the carapace of this thing, he finds a chink in
Speaker 1: the armor, a gap. He sees that there is a
Speaker 1: part of the code that includes a web address. The
Speaker 1: web address is not registered, so he registers the domain.
Speaker 1: This is very in the weeds, but he registers the domain,
Speaker 1: and and he's on record say this. He says, he
Speaker 1: always says, like, I paid ten dollars and sixty nine
Speaker 1: cents to get the domain address. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: while he's doing this concurrently across the pond, there's another
Speaker 1: guy who also deserves his flowers, a guy named Darien
Speaker 1: huss He's twenty eight years old. He lives in the
Speaker 1: United States, I think in the Michigan area. He is
Speaker 1: a research engineer for a cybersecurity firm called proof Point.
Speaker 1: And this guy's doing his own analysis. And this guy, Darien,
Speaker 1: notices that whomever wrote this hardware left in a feature
Speaker 1: called a kill switch. And so Darien sends a screenshot
Speaker 1: of this to our buddy Hutchins, who is still at
Speaker 1: this point anonymous online.
Speaker 2: So they go back and forth about this and realize
Speaker 2: something really really important that registering the domain name and
Speaker 2: redirecting the attacks to malware tech server had actually activated
Speaker 2: the kill switch, which halted the basically neutralized the ransomware,
Speaker 2: creating something that's known as in the packing parlance as
Speaker 2: a sinkhole.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That means that the attacks with that current variant
Speaker 1: of WannaCry will no longer execute successfully. And it's weird
Speaker 1: how this stuff is like it's like covid. That's why
Speaker 1: they call it a virus, right, because there could be
Speaker 1: a new variant. One of the first things that malware
Speaker 1: Tech does is say, look, you have to get all
Speaker 1: of your operating systems patched immediately. And he has a
Speaker 1: great crisis of faith here because to reveal this, to
Speaker 1: save the Internet, he has to give up his anonymity.
Speaker 1: And that's what he does. That's why we know malware
Speaker 1: tech is cybersecurity consultant. Marcus Hutchints. You can find him today, folks,
Speaker 1: Marcus Hutchins dot com. The guy literally saved the Internet.
Speaker 1: He says he did it accidentally. He says he stumbled
Speaker 1: upon it. And there's so much more to the story.
Speaker 1: But I think we gotta I think we got to
Speaker 1: give the guy the props where it's due Noel, would
Speaker 1: our podcast exist if if wanna cry continued?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, you got you
Speaker 2: do have to kind of wonder, like it was so
Speaker 2: insidious that it could have caused irreparable damage to large systems.
Speaker 2: You know. This is also long enough ago that it's
Speaker 2: almost like the way airports were before nine to eleven,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like, once something massive like
Speaker 2: this happens that is so earth shattering, you know, then
Speaker 2: things but things kind of turn a corner in terms
Speaker 2: of like security, and maybe I'm maybe I'm off base there,
Speaker 2: but it does feel like that's the case. Is like
Speaker 2: he said the beginning of the show, this really was
Speaker 2: something that shifted the course of technological events. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it could have knocked things out. I always
Speaker 2: think of the movie as bad as it is Escape
Speaker 2: from La the sequel to Escape from New York, the
Speaker 2: John Carpenter movie. The School is pretty bad overall, but
Speaker 2: it has a pretty interesting foil or plot, I guess
Speaker 2: device where it's this idea that like all electricity and
Speaker 2: interconnected you know, machinery will will be killed, including batteries,
Speaker 2: and they don't really explain how that makes sense in
Speaker 2: that I.
Speaker 1: Remember that and I remember the soundtracks banging though.
Speaker 2: It's pretty good, but it does make me think of like,
Speaker 2: is this some kind of like would this be a
Speaker 2: fight club event? Like a project may set us back
Speaker 2: to the Stone age type event. We don't know. Because
Speaker 2: Hutchins did jump in, would it have been solved otherwise?
Speaker 2: I don't know that either. What do you think, Ben?
Speaker 2: A lot of this stuff is just based on boneheaded,
Speaker 2: like exploitable flaws in saw where you know, with the
Speaker 2: would the the Microsofts of the world have figured it
Speaker 2: out first and figured out how to do something about it.
Speaker 2: I kind of think, No, I.
Speaker 1: Kind of think you're right on that one, Noel, because
Speaker 1: consider that Eternal Blue, which is the exploit Uncle Sam
Speaker 1: figured out. Eternal Blue, was discovered by the United States government,
Speaker 1: and they could have told Microsoft. They did not tell Microsoft.
Speaker 1: They instead built a monster, right, and the monster got
Speaker 1: out of its gauge and then became another thing. It
Speaker 1: evolved like some sort of sinister evil Pokemon, and.
Speaker 2: In its final form, right.
Speaker 1: And Marcus Hutchins is the one person who said, hang
Speaker 1: on a sec way to tick, you know, and and
Speaker 1: did the right thing. The story continues. Of course, one
Speaker 1: A Cry is largely suspected to be a creation of
Speaker 1: the Deep Rcave the North Korean government. In full fairness,
Speaker 1: the government of North Korea denies that it was them
Speaker 1: in a stunning plot twist.
Speaker 2: So, I guess when when you're in this kind of world,
Speaker 2: you know, and all these types of code, these pieces
Speaker 2: of code, there's an open source ness to it. You know,
Speaker 2: if you're in the community, you share and share like
Speaker 2: and maybe something some group did you know, a small
Speaker 2: close knit group of you know, hackers or coders might
Speaker 2: end up in another attack, right, because this stuff is
Speaker 2: kind of shared. So Hutchins, it's not like he directly
Speaker 2: participated in making this. It was just something that the
Speaker 2: experience that he had with Vinny led him to have
Speaker 2: the know how to recognize what he was looking at.
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 1: You're absolutely right, dude, because if you go to Marcus
Speaker 1: Hutchins dot com right now, what you can see is
Speaker 1: threat intelligence a lot of work. Basically. I guess if
Speaker 1: you're if you're like this guy, you feel like you're
Speaker 1: always telling people the same things. You're always saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: update your browser, Hey, don't you know click on pop
Speaker 1: ups or whatever for us knuckleheads in the crowd. And
Speaker 1: we have a lot to thank this guy for because
Speaker 1: he genuinely did stop a conspiracy. And no, you and
Speaker 1: I talked about this off air. A lot of people
Speaker 1: familiar with the situation are probably gonna say, Hey, Noel, Matt, Paul, Ben,
Speaker 1: Doc Holliday, why are you acting like this guy should
Speaker 1: get a statue in the square? Why are you acting
Speaker 1: like he's a super perfect person. He got in trouble later, right.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, he was eventually kind of roped in
Speaker 2: with the scheme or surrounding the scheme that Vinnie was
Speaker 2: at the center of. And in twenty seventeen, he got
Speaker 2: arrested by the FBI. He was brought up on hacking
Speaker 2: charges or sir six hacking related federal charges in the
Speaker 2: US District Court for Eastern District of Wisconsin related to
Speaker 2: spreading that Chronos package. And he was asked to flip,
Speaker 2: you know, on some of his fellow you know, hackers
Speaker 2: or community members, including Vinnie. He did not have enough
Speaker 2: information on Vinnie to actually give them anything actionable, so
Speaker 2: he wasn't able to And then he refused to flip
Speaker 2: on anybody else in the community. He did plead guilty
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen to two of the ten charges against him,
Speaker 2: including wire fraud, distributing, selling, promoting, and advertising a device
Speaker 2: used to intercept electronic communications. He basically just from sitting
Speaker 2: in jail during a lot of these proceedings ended up
Speaker 2: with time served and some fines, so he was punished,
Speaker 2: you know, for some of this stuff, and then he
Speaker 2: you know, presumably flipped it around into how can I
Speaker 2: be legitimate and like use what I know to help
Speaker 2: stop bad guys, whether or not that's just to benefit
Speaker 2: like companies that can pay him. I don't think we're
Speaker 2: saying necessarily this like White Night, but he did make
Speaker 2: some good decisions along the way and did not turn
Speaker 2: down what could have been a much darker, super villainous path.
Speaker 1: And the judge in his case sentenced him to time
Speaker 1: served and one year of supervised release and said, you
Speaker 1: have turned the corner. You stop using your skills for
Speaker 1: criminal purpose. You made them a benefit to society well
Speaker 1: before you ever went to court. So they said, like,
Speaker 1: you made the right decision before you were forced into
Speaker 1: doing so.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you like.
Speaker 2: To see that. I think that's important because a lot
Speaker 2: of times, I think we think judges they don't look
Speaker 2: at stuff like that or or that. It's it's really
Speaker 2: hard to get to have a sense that there is
Speaker 2: some redemption, you know that. But like, you know, he
Speaker 2: made these choices on his own. We're talking about decisions
Speaker 2: that he made all on the way where he could
Speaker 2: have gone down this fork in the road and instead
Speaker 2: he went down this one, and that all led to
Speaker 2: I think what has ended up being a very thoughtful
Speaker 2: and intelligent person that's using some skills that they have
Speaker 2: for the betterment of of you know whatever, because you
Speaker 2: can't fight fire with you know, jello. Maybe it's kind
Speaker 2: of fun.
Speaker 1: It's like my favorite that's my favorite analogy you've ever done.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm going to go I'm gonna put that on
Speaker 2: on a shirt. But I just mean, like, you know,
Speaker 2: when you're in these circles, these very elite circles, or
Speaker 2: you have to earn your way in, those are the
Speaker 2: people that really know how to stay on top of
Speaker 2: what's going on because these are very fast moving developments
Speaker 2: and technology and in like cybersecurity and threats. So it's
Speaker 2: kind of whether he's a superhero or not. I'm glad
Speaker 2: there are people like him out there hopefully keeping us
Speaker 2: from getting escaped from la back into the stone age.
Speaker 1: So let's end on this. Maybe there's a great quote
Speaker 1: from the judge. The judge says, it's going to take
Speaker 1: individuals like yourself who have the skill set, even at
Speaker 1: the tender age of twenty four or twenty five, to
Speaker 1: come up with solutions. The judge, even in court implied
Speaker 1: or argued that Marcus Hutchins should get a full pardon
Speaker 1: while admitting that the current court did not have the
Speaker 1: power to grant one, and was like, ah, you're good though.
Speaker 1: You turned it around, and it's neat. It's neat to
Speaker 1: hear this. Here's another line, it's neat to hear stuff
Speaker 1: like this. There are just too many positives on the
Speaker 1: other side of the ledger. The final call in the
Speaker 1: case of Marcus Hutchins today is a sentence of time
Speaker 1: served with a one year period of supervised release, which
Speaker 1: is crazy. He's online now you can go.
Speaker 2: That's right. So like again, we talked about this at
Speaker 2: the top of the show too. A lot of these
Speaker 2: folks that maybe don't demonstrate this turning of the corner
Speaker 2: are barred from ever touching a computer again for the
Speaker 2: rest of their lives. And as we know someone who
Speaker 2: that is like this is a passion for folks. They're
Speaker 2: not always it's doing it. The money's part of it,
Speaker 2: but it's like it is how they're rain's work and
Speaker 2: like to be cut off from that would be the
Speaker 2: greatest punishment of all, I think, And so good on
Speaker 2: Marcus Man. Cool story, honestly, kind of a posy vibe story.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm digging it, Ben, It's.
Speaker 1: Kind of cool, right, No, And we like the positive stories,
Speaker 1: especially especially these kind of these empowered underdogs. Right this
Speaker 1: is a David Goliath kind of story. There was one
Speaker 1: guy who, with a little help from his friends, stopped
Speaker 1: a global conspiracy midway. You know, that's pretty amazing. We
Speaker 1: would love to hear more stories like that. What are
Speaker 1: your favorite tales of people who successfully stopped a global catastrophe?
Speaker 1: Please find us online, right, it's a little bit funny
Speaker 1: to say.
Speaker 2: There are other way is if you don't want to
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Speaker 2: new YouTube content popping off every single week. We're a
Speaker 2: conspiracy stuff show, however, on TikTok and Instagram.
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