Hacked

Early Monday, managers at hundreds of French supermarkets opened their freezers to a wave of hot air. Overnight, hackers had taken over the Danfoss software that controls the stores’ refrigeration and told it to heat up. Some units hit 50°C. Ice cream melted. In a few stores, fires broke out. About 400 stores were hit and millions of euros of food went in the bin. The EU’s food commissioner called it “the weaponisation of food.” Two months earlier, researchers at Claroty’s Team82 had published research on Danfoss’s refrigeration controllers. They’d found thousands of them exposed online, plus a hidden “...

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It's a good old chatty chat. We dig into the GTA 6 leak, with a strange crypto angle to it. Harnesses like Open-claw become consumer products with Muse and dots. And other stuff? Lots

Hacked is presented by NordLayer. NordLayer is a network security platform for modern teams. NordLayer gives companies centralized control over who can access their systems, keeps every connection fast and encrypted, and requires no additional hardware or complex infrastructure. nordlayer.com/hackedpodcast  

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We return to Hotline Hacked with a server rack that shuts down a factory, a college library ignoring a keylogger risk, Claude unexpectedly finding its way into a recruitment backend, and a few hacking stories that spiral in very different directions.

Hacked is presented by NordLayer. NordLayer is a network security platform for modern teams. NordLayer gives companies centralized control over who can access their systems, keeps every connection fast and encrypted, and requires no additional hardware or complex infrastructure. nordlayer.com/hackedpodcast  

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Agentic swarms? PR boondoggle or really big deal? When Hugging Face was breached by a mysterious intruder, OpenAI admitted it was one of their own AI agentic systems going rogue to cheat on a benchmark. Tom Bonner joins us to break down the 500+ raw code artifacts the agent left behind—and what it means when an AI compresses weeks of complex cyberattacks into just 8.5 hours.

Hacked is presented by NordLayer. NordLayer is a network security platform for modern teams. NordLayer gives companies centralized control over who can access their systems, keeps every connection fast an...

This was a fun one. We sat down with security icon Bruce Schneier to talk about AI systems that break the rules, cybersecurity beyond computers, the fight over encryption, the Snowden documents, blockchain, digital rights, and what happens when machines learn to exploit the systems humans built.

Hacked is presented by NordLayer. NordLayer is a network security platform for modern teams. NordLayer gives companies centralized control over who can access their systems, keeps every connection fast and encrypted, and requires no additional hardware or complex infrastructure. nordlayer.com/hackedpodcast  

Stop online threats bef...

The first PC virus. The fastest-spreading malware the internet has ever seen. The Manhattan Project moment for cyberweapons. He was there for all of it.

We sat down with Mikko Hyppönen — the man behind Hyppönen's Law: if it's smart, it's vulnerable — to talk through 30 years at the center of cybersecurity's biggest moments, and why he just left it all behind for a new fight.

Watching on video? Here’s our goofy faces. Give it a watch since he brought the real gear with him and bear with us as we navigate a new editing...

We're so back. Another call in episode featuring strange tales of listeners hacking laundry machines, video games, 90's home computers and so much more. Share your strange tale of tech at hotlinehacked.com

Hacked is presented by NordLayer. NordLayer is a network security platform for modern teams. NordLayer gives companies centralized control over who can access their systems, keeps every connection fast and encrypted, and requires no additional hardware or complex infrastructure. nordlayer.com/hackedpodcast  

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Yes I know, I know it's a TLD. Don't worry, we get to it. In September 1990, a Soviet physicist named Alexey Soldatov registered a domain name for a country that would cease to exist fifteen months later. What happened to .su in the 35 years since is a story about cybercrime, Soviet nostalgia, internet governance, and one man who built Russia's internet — and went to prison rather than hand it over.

Hacked is presented by NordLayer. NordLayer is a network security platform for modern teams. NordLayer gives companies centralized control over who can access their sy...

Heads up if there's more cat meows and talking over each other than we normally let fly, this is a summer episode with less editing than you've ever heard! We kick this one off with a story of a fraud ran from a telegram channel and a scheme to use something very mundane to steal millions; refunds. We discuss REKK and the rise of refunding, human-oid objects, Mythos, and several other strange tech tales.

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Or the very good bet, depending on how you think about it. In this episode, we start by discussing the strange, fast-moving world of prediction markets — platforms where you can bet real money on whether a head of state gets removed from power, whether a country gets invaded, whether the Fed raises rates — and where the prices themselves are supposed to be the point, a real-time probability signal generated by the crowd. Then we get to the case that just blew a very large hole in that theory: a Polymarket account called "Burdensome-Mix" that turned $33,000 into $409,881 in about a week...

Investigative journalist Geoff White has spent a lot of time inside the leaked communications of Conti — the Russian ransomware gang that ran like a corporation, hit Ireland's national health service, extorted the Costa Rican government, and pulled in $180 million in a single year. Geoff joins us to break down how Conti operated, the internal moral debate over hitting hospitals, the jewellery heist that spooked them into apologizing to Saudi royals, and how he tracked down rare video of the gang's elusive alleged boss, a man almost nobody had ever seen. It's a preview of his new BBC series Cyber Ha...

We return to one of the more interesting ransomware as a service stories of the last few years; the story of REvil and it's recently (allegedly) named operator. Also the big mythical thing that happened.

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Heads up, the guy in the opening story survives — realized in editing it's kind of stressful if you don't know where that's going. In this chat episode we start with a coin toss on which story to start with, which leads us on an adventure into the world of America's favourite private security camera network, Flock, searchable by law enforcement without a warrant. Cool stuff.

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We start this chatty chat looking at the legacy of EternalBlue, an NSA-developed cyberweapon that leaked in 2017 and powered global disasters like WannaCry, to explain a new mobile threat called "Coruna." Just as EternalBlue likely escaped government chain of custody to become a tool for mass digital carnage, Coruna is a sophisticated iPhone exploit framework leveraging 23 vulnerabilities that has similarly migrated from elite surveillance into the hands of broader cybercriminal groups. This "EternalBlue moment" for mobile marks a shift where nation-state-grade tools, capable of silently hijacking devices via compromised websites, are now circulating freely in the wild.

In this chatty chat episode, we kick things off with a primer on one of the oldest methods of stealing money—made new again in the age of crypto: the $5 wrench attack. It’s a simple tactic, but it has enabled some surprisingly significant damage.

We also cover recent incidents, including the DJI robot vacuum hack, and wrap up with an in-depth discussion on AI harnesses.

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A lot of modern AI models have a kind of security guard layer that sits in front of them. Its job? A binary choice as to whether the prompt heading into the model is safe or not. Kasimir Schulz, a lead security researcher at HiddenLayer, has been researching how to trick these models. Their solution, a technique called "Echogram" involves words with such positive statistical sentiment — such overwhelming good vibes — that it flips that verdict.

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Two FBI agents. One room. One of them is the most damaging spy in U.S. history.

Robert Hanssen told a lot of lies — including a really weird one about booking the Beach Boys for the FBI. That lie didn’t matter all that much, but the others did. For 22 years, Hanssen sold America’s deepest secrets while hunting moles inside the Bureau.

With retirement looming, the FBI set a trap: a fake department, a fake job, and a young agent named Eric O’Neill placed three feet from the suspected spy.

This episode...

Pokémon cards became a billion-dollar market—and then a massive fraud target. This episode follows the rise of ultra-rare Pokémon prototypes, the grading systems meant to protect collectors, and the amateur investigator who used codebreaking and printer forensics to expose a modern forgery ring hiding in plain sight. All that plus a nice chatty chat after the break to kick off the year.

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It’s the 2025 Chatty Chat year in review friends! We’re diving into a big old pile of stories from the past year and speculating on what’s to come in 2026. If you’re wondering where this sits on the "in-depth interview vs. casual chatting" spectrum, just know we spend a considerable amount of time talking about how rad the Switch 2 is. This is not a deep dive, just a good time.

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A deep dive into Lighthouse, a phishing-as-a-service platform linked to millions of scam texts worldwide, and the sprawling “smishing triad” ecosystem built around it. With security researcher Ford Merrill, we unpack how modern scam operations work at industrial scale — from fake e-commerce sites and mass SMS campaigns to the wallet-provisioning techniques that let criminals turn stolen credit cards into tap-to-pay phones. 

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For the last few years, Grindr has branded itself as the global gayborhood—a digital safe space for queer communities. But a series of European investigations raised serious questions about how the app handled user data. In this episode, we talk with Chaya Hanoomanjee of the law firm Austin Hayes, who is leading a major UK claim alleging that Grindr shared sensitive user information, including in some cases health data, without proper consent. We trace the story from Norway’s multimillion-euro fine to the 12,000-person UK action and unpack what “special category data” actually means, why these cases matter, and what...

It’s a chatty chat. I repeat, this one's a chatty chat. Today we’re digging into the big weird questions on our desk: what percentage of Meta’s revenue allegedly comes from knowingly running scam ads, what exactly recently pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao did and why he walked free, and what happens when AWS—the concrete pad foundation of the modern internet—goes down. If long-form nerd talk isn’t your vibe, totally fine—we’ll catch you next time. For everyone else, here’s some good good chattin’ for your dishes, your commute, or whatever you’re up to right this sec...

Hh hey maybe don't buy that $14 projector off amazon. In this episode, we dive into the sequel nobody asked for: BADBOX 2.0 — the return of last year’s botnet built out of bargain-bin Android gadgets. Google just filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that millions of sketchy streaming boxes, projectors, and mystery electronics were shipped pre-infected from factories overseas. The moment someone plugs one in, it joins a global botnet used for ad fraud, click fraud, and even to rent out your home internet connection to criminals. We talk to the team at HUMAN Security, the researchers credited in Google’s...

The story of a massive swatting hoax campaign across the US that helped take down a piece of cybercrime infrastructure in the heart of New York. That and a big rambling chatty chat about Tilly Norwood, AI bubbles, and somehow, very briefly, Goku.

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The question: can one host of a podcast that was planning to do a chatty chat episode proceed at the last minute while the other host is unfortunately out sick? Wish our dear pal Scott a speedy recovery and wish ya boy luck as he threads this needle. We discuss — I discuss? — the heist of Mexico’s financial system, the European airport hack, and a slew of other tech tales. 

As I say in the ep — if one guy talking into a mic telling weird tech stories alone isn’t your jam, I will not blame you for rejoini...

The story of a hoax within a hoax within a hoax within an AI soft rock band. That and a bunch of other stories about technology.

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Reboundergame.com ( if you wanna wishlist our work in progress game on Steam

We discuss the rise of China’s early patriotic hacking scene, and a new report that unravels how some of its most skilled members eventually found their way into more formal, state-aligned cyber operations.

This episode is brought to you by Push Security. Check them out at Pushsecurity.com

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We unpack how a Swedish entrepreneur used Pablo Escobar’s name to sell fake phones, flamethrowers, and crypto — and how a viral scam built on influencer hype finally came crashing down. That and other stories.

Hacked is brought to you by Push Security, check them out at PushSecurity.com

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We start with the AI hiring chatbot used by McDonald’s, and the vulnerability hiding beneath the conversation. What looked like some janky job application exchanges led two security researchers, Ian Carroll and Sam Curry, to uncover a serious flaw. That and a bunch of Grok madness.

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Just for fun: an actual no script, no plan, hot mic blather-athon. If you crave a nice structured story with lots of research, give the ep we dropped a few days ago about the Texas Lottery Courier App scandal a listen. This is to wash some dishes to. Links to some stuff we discuss below:

CBC On Design First Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh4OLQxXEZ0&t=36s

Input free generative AI by Terrence Broad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_LLD8ffgVc

Reverse Turring: https://www...

A London syndicate used a phone app to buy nearly every combination in the Texas Lottery—and walked away with a $95 million jackpot. In this episode, we dig into how that happened, what it reveals about the modern lottery system, and a handful of other stories.

Hacked is brought to you by PushSecurity.com. Check them out!

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In this episode: the inside story of Danabot, the malware-as-a-service platform that thrived in the shadows for nearly a decade—until a critical mistake exposed its creators. Just last week, U.S. prosecutors unsealed charges against sixteen alleged operators, using evidence pulled not from a takedown, but from Danabot’s own infection logs.

Plus: a roundup of other top stories.

Last week was a rerun—life got a little hectic—so we kept the mic hot and recorded a 90-minute marathon episode to make up for it. Let u...

Today malware is all nation state actors and organized crime, but in the beginning it was more about making a statement. Dan is a malware historian. He finds old hardware and viruses, runs them, and sees what happens. So we sat down to discuss the history of malware, where it's come from, and where he thinks it's going next.

Check out his amazing YouTube channel at ⁠https://www.youtube.com/user/danooct1

Hacked is brought to you by PushSecurity.com.

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Schools out for summer. Another collection of computer confessions and strange tales of technology.

Hacked is brought to you by Push Security. Check them out at Pushsecurity.com

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Content warning: This episode contains descriptions of exploitation, self-harm, and abuse. Listener discretion is advised.

A network called 764 has turned abuse into currency. It spread through Discord, Telegram, and gaming platforms—built around “lorebooks,” collections of coerced violence traded for status. In a strange twist, this harm group has connections to cybercrime groups we've covered on this show before.

Note: I was recording in an office, which between that and the subject matter, explains why my tone is pretty hushed in this one.

Hacked is brought to you by Push Security—helping companies stop ide...

We discuss a schism years in the making — the infamous imageboard 4chan gets hacked by its own offshoot, Soyjak.party, in a breach that exposed moderator identities, source code, and shattered the myth of online anonymity. Then, we look at Cluely — an AI tool built by a suspended student to help users “cheat” on job interviews — and the viral campaign pitching it as a revolution. Is it a tech breakthrough, a social bluff, or both?

Hacked is brought to you by Push Security—helping companies stop identity attacks before they happen. Phishing, credential stuffing, session hija...

A tech worker stumbles upon mass fraud and brings receipts, a flag football prank goes very right, a teenager uses Net Send and gets in trouble — but not as much as the person they're in trouble with, and a guy almost sends his pal on a "Taken" style revenge mission to Kosovo.

Got a strange tale of technology, security, or hacking? Share it at HotlineHacked.com.

Hacked is brought to you by Push Security. Check them out at PushSecurity.com

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In 2009, a Pennsylvania high school accused sophomore Blake Robbins of dealing drugs—based on a photo secretly taken through his school-issued laptop. The image, captured without his knowledge in his own bedroom, turned out to show candy. But the real story wasn’t about what was in his hand—it was about how the school got the photo in the first place. In this episode, we speak with filmmaker Jody McVeigh-Schultz, creator of SPY HIGH, and Blake himself, about surveillance, bias, and what happens when institutions cross the line between protecting kids and controlling them.

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