Darknet Diaries

LOW - Trailer

After 8 years, LOW is finally here. A story about the weight of being and the wreckage of waking up. Five episodes. Five descents. LOW is an audio journey into the unlit corners of human experience. Choices we made in the dark, the silences we carry, and what remains when we stop running from ourselves. LOW a new Limited Series from the Jack Rhysider will be releasing to the public for free soon, but you can hear it now as a Darknet Diaries Plus subscriber. Go to plus.darknetdiaries.com [https://plus.darknetdiaries.com/] and subscribe for access to all five episodes of LOW along with twelve bonus episodes of Darknet Diaries and every episode ad-free.

178: Ubiquiti

Nickolas Sharp worked for Ubiquiti, a company that makes networking equipment. He noticed that there were some security problems at work. He tried to point them out, but didn't feel like he was being listened to enough. What do you do when the company you work for isn't securing their software up to your standards? Well, he thought he needed to teach them a lesson, but in the end, he learned an even bigger lesson. SPONSORS This show is brought to you by Drata [https://drata.com/darknetdiaries]. Drata is the trust management platform that uses AI-driven automation to modernize governance, risk, and compliance, helping thousands of businesses stay audit-ready and scale securely. Learn more at drata.com/darknetdiaries [https://drata.com/darknetdiaries]. This show is sponsored by Material Security [https://material.security]. Your cloud office (think Google Workspace or Microsoft 365) is the core of your business, but it’s often protected by scattered tools and manual fixes. Material is a purpose-built detection and response platform that closes the gaps those point solutions leave behind. From email threats to misconfigurations and account takeovers, Material monitors everything and steps in with real-time fixes to keep your data flowing where it should. Learn more at https://material.security [https://material.security]. Support for this show comes from ThreatLocker [https://threatlocker.com/Darknet]. ThreatLocker is a Zero Trust Platform that gives organizations control over what can run and what users and devices can access. It combines prevention with real time detection and automated response, helping security teams stop unauthorized activity and quickly contain compromised machines. Learn how ThreatLocker can strengthen your defenses at threatlocker.com/Darknet [https://threatlocker.com/Darknet]. View all active sponsors. [https://darknetdiaries.com/sponsors/] SOURCES Full list of sources on the show page: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/178/ [https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/178/]

177: National Public Data

This is the story of the hacker known as "USDoD". When he was young he had a vengeance on the US, and this lead him down a road of continual data breaches, until he hacked into National Public Data, which is when his spree went one step too far. SPONSORS Support for this show comes from ThreatLocker [https://threatlocker.com/Darknet]. ThreatLocker is a Zero Trust Platform that gives organizations control over what can run and what users and devices can access. It combines prevention with real time detection and automated response, helping security teams stop unauthorized activity and quickly contain compromised machines. Learn how ThreatLocker can strengthen your defenses at threatlocker.com/Darknet [https://threatlocker.com/Darknet]. This show is sponsored by Maze [http://mazehq.com/darknet]. Maze uses AI agents to triage and remediate cloud vulnerabilities by figuring out what’s actually exploitable, not just what’s theoretically risky. They remove the noise, prioritize vulns that matter, and manage remediation, so your team stops wasting time on meaningless vulns. Visit MazeHQ.com/darknet [http://mazehq.com/darknet] for more information. This show is sponsored by Sentry.IO [https://sentry.io/]. Sentry wants to help you monitor your environment for problems. They do error tracking, stack tracing, debugging, all so that your developers can diagnose, fix, and optimize the performance of their code. This makes it so developers ship more reliable code faster. Learn more at sentry.io [https://sentry.io/]. View all active sponsors. [https://darknetdiaries.com/sponsors/] SOURCES Full list of sources on the show page: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/177/ [https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/177/]

176: NSL

One day Nick got a visit from the FBI demanding he give them data on one of his customers. They asked for it in the form of a National Security Letter or NSL. Something wasn’t right about this letter. It seemed to violate the constitution. So he set out to change the law. Learn more about Nicks work at calyxinstitute.org [https://calyxinstitute.org/] and phreeli.com [https://www.phreeli.com/]. Check out Cindy’s book Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance [https://amzn.to/4gXuK2J] (https://amzn.to/4gXuK2J). SPONSORS Support for this show comes from ThreatLocker® [https://www.threatlocker.com/]. ThreatLocker® is a Zero Trust Endpoint Protection Platform that strengthens your infrastructure from the ground up. With ThreatLocker® Allowlisting and Ringfencing™, you gain a more secure approach to blocking exploits of known and unknown vulnerabilities. ThreatLocker® provides Zero Trust control at the kernel level that enables you to allow everything you need and block everything else, including ransomware! Learn more at www.threatlocker.com [https://www.threatlocker.com/]. Support for this episode comes from NetSuite [https://www.netsuite.com/darknet]. NetSuite gives you visibility and control of your financials, planning, budgeting, and of course - inventory - so you can manage risk, get reliable forecasts, and improve margins. NetSuite helps you identify rising costs, automate your manual business processes, and see where to save money. KNOW your numbers. KNOW your business. And get to KNOW how NetSuite can be the source of truth for your entire company. Visit www.netsuite.com/darknet [https://www.netsuite.com/darknet] to learn more. This show is sponsored by Maze [http://mazehq.com/darknet]. Maze uses AI agents to triage and remediate cloud vulnerabilities by figuring out what’s actually exploitable, not just what’s theoretically risky. They remove the noise, prioritize vulns that matter, and manage remediation, so your team stops wasting time on meaningless vulns. Visit MazeHQ.com/darknet [http://mazehq.com/darknet] for more information. View all active sponsors. [https://darknetdiaries.com/sponsors/] SOURCES * https://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/11/gagged_for_6_years_nick_merrill [https://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/11/gagged_for_6_years_nick_merrill] * https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/u-s-nicholas-merrill-v-loretta-e-lynch-14-cv-9763-vm/ [https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/u-s-nicholas-merrill-v-loretta-e-lynch-14-cv-9763-vm/] * https://clearinghouse.net/case/12966/ [https://clearinghouse.net/case/12966/] * https://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/dec/06/fbi-national-security-letter-gag-order-nick-merrill [https://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/dec/06/fbi-national-security-letter-gag-order-nick-merrill] * https://www.aclu.org/documents/national-security-letters [https://www.aclu.org/documents/national-security-letters] * https://www.eff.org/cases/re-matter-2011-national-security-letter [https://www.eff.org/cases/re-matter-2011-national-security-letter] * Cindy’s Book: Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance [https://amzn.to/4gXuK2J]

175: Bayrob

It started with a fake car listing on eBay. What looked like a simple online scam quietly grew, over more than a decade, into one of the most sophisticated cybercrime operations the FBI had ever traced. Custom malware. Opsec off the charts. Fleets of infected computers mining cryptocurrency for someone else. Millions of dollars siphoned from victims who had no idea. This is the story of Bayrob and the three men from Romania who were behind it. And the long, strange road that led American investigators to their door. SPONSORS Support for this show comes from ThreatLocker® [https://www.threatlocker.com/]. ThreatLocker® is a Zero Trust Endpoint Protection Platform that strengthens your infrastructure from the ground up. With ThreatLocker® Allowlisting and Ringfencing™, you gain a more secure approach to blocking exploits of known and unknown vulnerabilities. ThreatLocker® provides Zero Trust control at the kernel level that enables you to allow everything you need and block everything else, including ransomware! Learn more at www.threatlocker.com [https://www.threatlocker.com/]. This show is sponsored by Meter [https://www.meter.com/], the company building networks from the ground up. Meter delivers a complete networking stack - wired, wireless, and cellular - in one solution that’s built for performance and scale. Alongside their partners, Meter designs the hardware, writes the firmware, builds the software, manages deployments, and runs support. Learn more at meter.com [https://www.meter.com/]. This show is sponsored by Maze [http://mazehq.com/darknet]. Maze uses AI agents to triage and remediate cloud vulnerabilities by figuring out what’s actually exploitable, not just what’s theoretically risky. They remove the noise, prioritize vulns that matter, and manage remediation, so your team stops wasting time on meaningless vulns. Visit MazeHQ.com/darknet [http://mazehq.com/darknet] for more information. Support for this episode comes from NetSuite [https://www.netsuite.com/darknet]. NetSuite gives you visibility and control of your financials, planning, budgeting, and of course - inventory - so you can manage risk, get reliable forecasts, and improve margins. NetSuite helps you identify rising costs, automate your manual business processes, and see where to save money. KNOW your numbers. KNOW your business. And get to KNOW how NetSuite can be the source of truth for your entire company. Visit www.netsuite.com/darknet [https://www.netsuite.com/darknet] to learn more. This show is sponsored by Chainguard [https://www.chainguard.dev/]. Chainguard provides secure open source artifacts that are built from source so engineers can be confident that what they’re using in production matches the source bit-for-bit. Chainguard’s trusted open source has minimal vulnerabilities, provable provenance, and malware-resistance by design, defending against supply chain attack risk without adding any engineering toil. Head to chainguard.dev [https://www.chainguard.dev/] to see how secure your software supply chain can really be.