Jack Rhysider Knows Everything They're Hiding | DSH #2042

Summary

Digital Social Hour with Jack Rhysider (Darknet Diaries) | DSH #2042 – Summary

Episode Theme:
Host Sean Kelly sits down with Jack Rhysider—creator and host of Darknet Diaries—at the Bitcoin Conference, for Jack’s first-ever video podcast appearance. Their conversation explores the world of hackers, government surveillance, digital privacy, data security, crypto, and the realities of living (and protecting oneself) in the age of AI and constant digital threats.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction to Jack and Darknet Diaries

• Jack introduces his work:
  • 180+ episodes interviewing hackers, victims, federal agents, and sometimes state-sponsored threat actors (APTs).
  • “APT is like a government sponsored hacker, right? So...NSA is an APT, the Cozy Bear and China is an APT.” (03:51, Jack)
• Jack's focus is long-form, in-depth storytelling, often waiting years to get the full narrative arc from hack to conviction/interview.

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2. Hacking – Then and Now

• Are hackers solo operatives or groups?
  • State-sponsored (“APT”) hackers are the most sophisticated due to resources, but even simple attacks remain effective.
  • “Once you get to, like, 10,000 computers or 10,000 employees...you've got to go around and secure every window and every door.” (05:54, Jack)
• AI’s impact on hacking:
  • ChatGPT and smart contracts: AI tools finding and exploiting vulnerabilities.
  • “There were all these people finding bugs specifically in smart contracts, and they were able to exploit it.” (05:10, Jack)

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3. Major Hacks & Security Challenges

• Company size and vulnerability:
  • Impossible to be unhackable at scale; segmentation (separate networks/products) is best practice.
• Approach to news coverage:
  • Jack waits years to cover high-profile hacks (e.g., MGM hack) until enough information is available, often after arrests.

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4. Notable Interviews & Hacker Philosophy

• Pirate Bay Founder:
  • “He’s just like, well, I don’t necessarily want to go to prison… it’s kind of optional. Like, why would you want to go against your will?” (07:03, Jack)
  • Pirate Bay: resilience of site, concept of digital ownership vs. renting a “dot com”.
  • Value of Tor and onion addresses for true self-ownership.

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5. Dark Web Realities

• Silk Road and Marketplace turnover:
  • Marketplaces arise and fall, but the Dark Web stays active.
• Hitmen services myth:
  • “I interviewed one guy who tried to expose all the hitmen on the dark web...he's convinced there are no actual hitmen. They're all scammers.” (10:09, Jack)
• **“Hitmen” are usually FBI honeypots or scams, not real contracts.

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6. Personal Security & Data Leaks

• Sean’s regular hacks:
  • “I get an email at least once a week saying something got hacked.” (11:09, Host)
• Data leaks are inevitable:
  • All Americans’ data, including SSNs, have likely been leaked.
• Jack's approach:
  • Wears disguises at events; “Privacy is like important to me.” (11:47, Jack)

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7. Security Tools: VPNs, Super Boxes, Messaging Apps

• VPNs’ real-world effectiveness:
  • VPNs are essential for protecting against malicious devices on networks, even at home.
  • Jack’s home: segmented networks, minimal device trust. “I use a VPN quite a lot because I don’t trust any of the devices that are in these networks, even my home network.” (17:04, Jack)
• Danger of hacked streaming boxes:
  • “The moment you see it, you should throw it.” (17:03, Jack)
• Messaging App Security:
  • “Just Signal right now.”
  • Telegram is NOT secure by default, especially for groups; only one-on-one “secret chats” are encrypted and most users don’t use them.
  • “To me, it’s not a secure messaging app. It’s a social network.” (21:39, Jack)
• Tucker Carlson’s “Signal hack” theory:
  • Most likely due to user error, not Signal itself; could be notifications leak via Apple or careless forwarding.
  • “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” (22:16, Jack)

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8. Crypto, SIM Swapping, and Modern Scams

• Belief in Bitcoin and privacy coins:
  • “Crypto is a great way to have digital money.” (28:09, Jack)
  • Monero & Zcash preferred for privacy; Bitcoin is traceable.
• The “Comm” and targeting at conferences:
  • Social engineering and violence (e.g., kidnappings, SIM swaps) to steal crypto.
  • “You've got people who are kidnapped and, like, we'll cut your finger off unless you open up your wallet.” (30:16, Jack)
• Common scams:
  • Amazon, Chipotle, Hilton rewards, Roblox, Domino’s “pizza plug” via account takeover.
• Law enforcement involvement:
  • Secret Service for money fraud (over $1M), FBI otherwise.

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9. Real-World Impact & Jail Time

• Hackers caught:
  • Ross Ulbricht (Silk Road) = life in prison.
  • Other major cases: 20-30 years is not uncommon.
• Recent example:
  • Sean had stolen money from his checking account the morning of the interview.
• Money mules:
  • Most money laundering involves mules (often unaware), making prosecution hard.

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10. AI Agents: Risks of All-Seeing Digital Helpers

• AI agents (e.g., OpenClaw):
  • Security lagging far behind features.
  • Anything installed on a device could “see all of your private messages, all of your passwords...” (36:56, Jack)
  • “Separate computer for your AI agent...features come first, security comes much later.” (37:08, Jack)

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11. Device and Browser Security

• iPhone Lockdown Mode:
  • “Very difficult, if I hate to say impossible, but I haven’t heard a good exploit from the FBI or even Pegasus...” (38:43, Jack)
• Incognito Mode is NOT privacy:
  • Lawsuit showed Google still aggregates data.
  • Chrome/Safari/Edge leak data; Brave and Firefox with plugins preferred.

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12. The Hacker and Security Community

• Anonymous now replaced by “the comm” (modern young hackers focused on money).
• Kids are both attackers and defenders:
  • Online games (Steam, Fortnite) are lucrative targets, but also learning grounds for future security experts.
• Ethical hacking:
  • Jack is a certified ethical hacker, formerly on defense (network security), never offense.

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13. “Smartest” Hack Jack Has Encountered

• Bayrob malware group:
  • Multi-layered hops through infected machines, encryption, radio noise to thwart bugs, neighbor’s wifi, etc.—yet still caught after years via rare unencrypted transmissions and attachment leak.
  • “They sent an attachment and the attachment was not encrypted because OTR does not encrypt attachments.” (42:29, Jack)
  • Sentences: Two got 20 years, one got 10 years.

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14. Data Ownership and Privacy Best Practices

• Jack’s evolved thinking:
  • Use burner emails, fake information wherever possible, VOIP numbers for sites.
  • “There's just data breach after data breach... I'm the knucklehead that gave them my data.” (47:08, Jack)
• Exceptions:
  • Doctors, banks, and airlines require real identity.

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15. International Hacking Landscape & Government Surveillance

• Top hacker nations:
  • US, China, Russia, North Korea, Israel, UK.
• UK data snooping:
  • Undersea cables in Bude captured by mass surveillance centers.
• Fourth Amendment loopholes:
  • Government has “lots of blue poles” (loopholes) for surveillance without warrant (27:32/27:49).
• Quantum computing threat:
  • Not an immediate concern; still science experiment stage.

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16. Podcasting vs. YouTube

• Jack’s stats:
  • 500,000-700,000 audio downloads per episode on Darknet Diaries, “full time job for five years.” (56:38, Jack)
• Video is new for Jack and this was his test run.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “If you just let [an AI agent] loose on your personal computer or your work computer, it can see all of your private messages, all of your passwords, all the things that you're typing in.” — Jack (36:56)
• “Once you get to, like, 10,000 computers or 10,000 employees…you've got to secure every window and every door.” — Jack (05:54)
• “Every website I register with, I use a different email address and a different password and often even a different phone number.” — Jack (48:04)
• “To me, Telegram is not a secure messaging app. It’s a social network.” — Jack (21:39)
• “When you go online…you see everybody stealing bitcoin and then they just gamble it…creates such a stir…and they’re all on Telegram.” — Jack (30:24)
• “There's just data breach after data breach... I'm the knucklehead that gave them my data.” — Jack (47:08)
• “What I realized is, like, there’s just data breach after data breach…so now, every website I register, I use a different email/password/phone number.” — Jack (48:04)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:58] Dangers of AI agents and government surveillance
• [03:51] Jack explains his podcast and the hacker landscape
• [05:10] AI and ChatGPT in hacking
• [07:03] Pirate Bay founder and the nature of digital ownership
• [09:27] State of the Dark Web and hitman scams
• [11:47] Jack on personal privacy and wearing disguises
• [16:07] Super Boxes and dangers of home IoT devices
• [20:53] Signal vs. Telegram and secure messaging
• [22:16] Debunking “hacked Signal” stories (Tucker Carlson)
• [28:09] Jack on crypto, privacy coins
• [30:16] Violence and SIM-swapping in crypto hacks
• [38:43] iPhone lockdown mode and device security
• [42:29] Attachment leak in encrypted chat—Bayrob case
• [47:08] Jack’s personal data protection strategies
• [51:09] UK’s mass data interception at Bude
• [54:33] Browser recommendations: Brave & Firefox
• [56:11] Jack on podcasting success & audio audience

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Closing Thoughts

The episode is a fast-paced, candid look into the present and future of hacking, surveillance, and privacy management. Jack balances fear with practical advice, advocating for continual improvements in personal security—not perfection, but progress. The bottom line: Stay vigilant, use privacy tools, be skeptical of “security” by default, and be smart about your digital footprint.

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[Note: This summary skips commercial breaks and unrelated content, focusing on key discussions between Jack Rhysider and Sean Kelly.]

Transcript

[Sean Kelly]

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[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

the thing about AI agents, right? Like OpenClaw, if you just let it loose on your personal computer or your work computer, it can see all of your private messages, all of your passwords, all the things that you're typing in. Our US government doesn't need to get a warrant in order to spy on people. That's a problem worth fixing.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, that's not cool.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

As much traffic as they could see coming in and out of these guys and for like 10 years they monitored it and it was all encrypted, all encrypted. And it was like absolutely nothing. But every now and then, like once every three years or something, there would be something that came through unencrypted. And if they could catch that, then they would have this little piece and this little piece. And so eventually they got enough breadcrumbs.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Let's do it. All right, guys, special guest today here at the Bitcoin conference, we got Jack from the Darknet Diaries, his first podcast ever. Thanks for choosing my platform.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Thanks for letting me have here be here.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah. For those that don't know what you do, could you explain?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, it's, it's about 180 episodes in now. And I make a podcast about hackers. I'll interview hackers or victims or federal agents, or sometimes I even get an APT on and be like, tell me all your apt. An APT is like a government sponsored hacker, right? So NSA is apt, the Cozy Bear and China is an apt. These guys are. Or I guess Cozy Bear would be Russia, but that's a Russia paid hacker group to get into places and stuff like that. I mean, I think that's kind of like my best guess. If I could ever find one is be Russian hackers or Chinese hackers or North Korean hackers that are from the government. Right. But I can't quite get that far. But I've had a few from the US And Israel.

[Sean Kelly]

Come on.

[Host (Interviewer)]

So are the best hackers from your experience, usually solo? Do they usually form a group? Are they usually working with other government?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

I think the APT has the most amount of funding. Right. So they. They can have all the time in the world, all the technology at their fingertips, all the money to get into where their target is. So I think they're the most sophisticated. But some of the stuff is.

[Sean Kelly]

Is.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Is easy to get into. So you don't really need a lot of sophistication to get into things.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah. Especially these days with AI and everything, I feel like it's probably easier to hack than it used to be. Right.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Comcast Business Announcer]

The.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

I. I think that was kind of the first time I saw chatgpt come on. My radar is in my circle. There were all these people finding bugs specifically in smart, smart contracts, and they were able to exploit it.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I saw some wild chatgpt bugs.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Talk toward it in a certain way, and then the answers would be different, right?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. Yeah. You convince it that you're on one of the good guys and give you the answer.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Right. Is that still a thing or did they patch that?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

I mean, look at Mythos. Right. Mythos is just finding tons of bugs on. On companies that. I think it's going to be bigger than ever that Mythos seems to. It's going to. It possibly could find a ton of bugs.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I kind of, like believe now that with big companies, it. I don't think you could be unhackable when you're a certain size. I think there's just so many ways to get hacked or infiltrated.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

I have the same thing as you. Once you get to, like, 10,000 computers or 10,000 employees. Right. You've got to go around and secure every window in every door.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Exactly.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

All the time, every day. And I feel like it does get too big to manage it. And so if I were running things, I'd try to keep each network separate. Like, let's just have this product be on this network and not have, like, the whole company have to share all the resources for all the network.

[Host (Interviewer)]

That MGM hack was nuts. Did you cover that one?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, I didn't cover that one, but I'm looking. See, one of the things that I do is I'll wait. This is a. This is the big thing for me is if it's. If it's like cutting edge news, we usually have too many questions and answers and you start talking about it and you're like, I have all these questions and they're just not there. But then I'll wait. I'll wait four years, five years before then they'll catch the guy and arrest him and put him in prison, and maybe he'll even come out of prison and then come and talk with me on the show. I'm like, tell me the whole story. So I love that soup to nuts story of hacking, where all our questions are answered.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Which one? You've done a lot of interviews, but is there a specific one that really impacted you?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, I think the Pirate Bay one was something that just kind of.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I used to love that site.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. So this is a pirating site, but the guy who. Who started it, I interviewed him and his. His just philosophy of life is unlike anything I've ever heard of. Right. So. So they got arrested and he's like, well, I don't necessarily want to go to prison. And he's. And they're. And I'm like, wait, don't you have to go to prison if you get arrested? He's like, yeah, it's kind of optional. Like, why would you want to go against your will? They're gonna have to come and force me to go. And I'm not necessarily want to do that. Was this in the U.S. no, this was in Sweden.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Okay. And different over there?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, it is very different. He's telling me all these things. And so one of the things he tried to do right before going to prison was like, start his own political party so that he could seek asylum and be like, you're arresting a political person. This is something totally different now. And so he used the system to get out of going to prison so many different times. And throughout the entire time that he did go to prison and all the people went to prison, the site stayed up. And it's never. I mean, it's gone down for periods of time, but it keeps coming up again and again. So it's like, it's an incredibly resilient thing. And it made me think about what kind of ownership we have about stuff online. If somebody can come and seize your domain or shut down your dot com address, you really rent your dot com address. You don't really own it. And every year you have to pay for it again and again, so it doesn't feel like ownership. And so this is what kind of draws me to Tor and the dark Web as well is because those Onion addresses are stuff that you generate, you create on your own, and you don't have to go through a registrar, which means nobody can take it. It's very similar to a Bitcoin wallet, where your private key is. Or you generate the wallet and you have the private key, and you don't have to go through somewhere to get a Bitcoin wallet. You generate it yourself on your computer as the same thing on the Onion, on the Tor, on the Dark Web, you generate these addresses yourself, and then. Then that's yours. Like nobody could come and take it from you. I'm not saying that Pirate Bay use the. The pirate. The Onion, router, Tor and Dark Web to host their stuff, but they really battled with this. Who owns your website? And then governments tried to seize it, and I.

[Host (Interviewer)]

And they were ahead of their time, man. Yeah, I remember using that site when I was super young, like, getting video games off there, saving a ton of money. I think they were good on movies and music too.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, they had a lot of stuff,

[Host (Interviewer)]

a lot shout out to them, man. They set the tone. Is the Dark Web still pretty active these days? I haven't heard much about it.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, Dark Web's active. I mean, you've got the. The classic stuff that out there still, which is, you know, Silk Road's gone. Yeah, Silk Road's gone. Silk Road 2 is gone. Silk Road 3 is gone. But more and more Dark Web marketplaces come up where you can buy and sell things that are legal in your country and maybe some things that are just legal but hard to find.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I remember browsing it in college, and I was just like, I'm baffled.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

What did you see on there?

[Host (Interviewer)]

Dude, I saw Hitman. I saw drugs, obviously, but the hitman one kept me up at night because I was like 20 grand. Like, some of them were like 10 grand. Yeah, I was like, damn.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

And. And I. Honestly, I. So I interviewed one guy who tried to expose all the hitmen on the Dark Web, and he. He's convinced there are no actual hitmen. They're all scammers.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Oh, they're all. Yeah, I heard there's government, like, traps.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Oh, yeah, that's. Yeah, exactly. You're. You're either hiring a fed and then you're in trouble, or you're hiring a scammer.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Oh, so he. He doesn't think any of those were.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

No, he's 100 convinced there's no hitman on the Internet.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Oh, wow.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

I mean, now I. I know that there are people who will do Things like drive by and throw a brick through someone's window for, I don't know, a thousand dollars or something. Throw a Molotov cocktail at someone. A friend of mine just called up and said is he got a Molotov cocktail thrown at his house. And it wasn't by the people who are mad at him. They were by, you know, they hired someone to come and do it in his town.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Thousand.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

I don't know how much they. I don't know how much it charged, but I mean, I don't know how

[Host (Interviewer)]

I really hate someone. That seems like a good deal.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

It was really scary. Yeah. I saw the footage.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I'm like, whoa, you need security cameras. But even with that, dude, my security camera just got hacked.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Well yours did.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah. Yeah. Not like just me, it was the whole company.

[Livy Dunn (Vuori Athlete)]

Yeah.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

So I was going to ask you about that. I mean you, you kind of are a figure that has a lot of controversy. Do people come at you and try to hack you in different ways?

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, I don't know if it's directly at me, but I get an email at least once a week saying something got hacked.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah.

[Host (Interviewer)]

You know, whether it's a password leak or company I had an account on.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

And do you think it's, do you think it's something that you could do better at or do you think it's just a barrage of people that you're just like, man, I don't know if I'll ever be able to get ahead.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I could do better, but at the same time, I use so many programs, so many apps. Yeah. I have old accounts. Your password gets leaked. It's probably being sold on the darknet. I'm pretty sure my SSN got leaked. And how. Yeah, everyone's did. But like people have tried to apply for cars and credit cards on your, your name.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host (Interviewer)]

You know, if you live in America and you have an iPhone, it's just so hard not to get hacked. Right?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, but I mean, I'm taking as many steps as I can. I mean I'm wearing a disguise here because privacy is like important to me. And staying on top of that, security is an important factor to me, especially making a podcast by.

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[Host (Interviewer)]

And they do it for free.

[SelectQuote Announcer]

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[Host (Interviewer)]

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[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car. I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana.

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You what?

[Livy Dunn (Vuori Athlete)]

Yeah.

[Thumbtack Announcer]

Great price.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

I even have seven days to love it or return it. There's no, no, no buyer's remorse. More like buyers rejoice. I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations.

[Comcast Business Announcer]

I mean it.

[Livy Dunn (Vuori Athlete)]

Buyers rejoice.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Buy your car today. On Carvana. Limitations and exclusions May apply. See our 7 day return policy at Carvana.com hackers There's a lot of people who would like to put a feather in their cap and be like, I hacked Jack.

[Host (Interviewer)]

But that must make it even extra difficult for you.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. So I, I wear a disguise when I go to events like this. And, and people just know me as this. Like, this is Jack's look.

[SelectQuote Announcer]

Right.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

And. And when I take it off and I go out throughout my day, nobody knows that I'm Jack. So it's. It's really nice to like blend in. And I'm sure you probably wanted that where the. You wanted less attention in certain situations where this is not the time. I wish I had somebody who knew what I, what I.

[Host (Interviewer)]

When I'm six six and have a unique look. But yeah, I try to blend in as much as I can.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

I. You know, there's steps you could do to be like, improve, like percentages. Like you can. You can use a VPN or a certain.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yes, actually work. Because I've seen mixed reviews on VPNs.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, well, I mean, one of the things I covered lately is something called a super box. And a super box is this. It's a, like a TV channel. All the channels. Like, it's a hacked box. So you plug it in. Now you have 2000 channels and all the movies and stuff like that super box. Yeah, it's great, right? 300 bucks. You got everything. But the problem is, is that it's riddled with all kinds of really nasty malware. It's got stuff that's trying to get in to all the devices on your home network. So if you plug it in at home, it's like, okay, well where's all the computers? All right, there's always all the routers. Okay, what if I knock that router off and become the Router. What stuff can I see here? Do they have a server? Oh, this person's connecting to the work. Oh, I want to see. I want to see if I can connect to their work. So I'll act that computer and I'll try to connect to their work. And so now they're getting into businesses and stuff from somebody's home box.

[Livy Dunn (Vuori Athlete)]

Right.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

So it's extremely dangerous box to have at home. Like just. Absolutely. The moment you see it, you should throw it.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, I'm not getting that.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

And get rid of it. And so if you had a vpn, then suddenly all the traffic coming from your computer out the. The. The box wouldn't be able to see what's happening there, because it's all encrypted and stuff. So it would be a really hard time. So, you know, nothing on your home network be able to see what you're doing. Nothing at the coffee shop would be able to see what you're doing or wherever you're connecting to the Internet. So I use a VPN quite a lot because I don't trust any of the devices that are in these networks, even my home network. Like, I keep things on big silos.

[Sean Kelly]

We.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Like. There's certain networks that have no Internet connection, and then there's some are only for guests and all this kind of stuff.

[Host (Interviewer)]

It's. Well, yeah, because I learned from Ryan Montgomery that you could hack into WI FI networks pretty easily with a certain device.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. Yeah. He's pretty slick on all the stuff he can get into.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, I'll definitely look into that. I got rid of my Alexa. I got rid of my ring cameras. I'm just trying to minimize as much like, areas to get hacked as I can.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. When all of it going to the cloud, it's not just being hacked, but also the privacy aspect of it as well, where, you know, there's. There's stories about people monitoring people in their house that are employees of these companies and just watching it. And, I mean, you even have cops that are using their database to look up their lovers and see what their lovers are up to. Right. So it.

[Sean Kelly]

It's.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

I try to stay back as far away from all my, you know, keep my data as secure as possible. Because, I mean, like I said, there's percentages. Right. So if I improve my security by 10%, oh, that's worth it. If I can prove it by 40%, it's worth it. As opposed to, like, somebody being like, well, you know, I got, you know, these things out here. I might as well just Let it all go. No, I think there's, there's, there's something worth improving percentages. I mean, it's like going to the gym and, and you don't feel like I, I made all the muscles I needed in this one day. No, it's, it's a, it's a process. Okay, that's. That felt good. But now I gotta eat healthy, now I gotta sleep well, now I gotta do all these extra things in order to make it all happen. And as you, as you progress in your health, you can, you, you get better and better. You start optimizing and you start perfecting certain things. And it's the same thing with being private or secure. You start out with like big strokes and then you start optimizing and perfecting and you're trying to get to that level right off the bat. Is not, is not something obtainable, but you could do some big movements at the beginning.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, people get overwhelmed. Okay. You've definitely inspired me to get a, get a vpr.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Well, if you're getting hacked, you need to do something there. Well, I'll help you. Call me up, we'll walk through.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Dude, if you log into your credit card or whatever, it tells you all your password leaks and stuff.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yes.

[Host (Interviewer)]

So many, it's crazy.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. One time I think it was google.com passwords. I don't know. I didn't know that they had so many of my passwords and they just saved it there. I never thought that they stored anything. And yet there it was all in clear text.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Some of them. I wonder, because I give my AI a lot of data, you know.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, you got to be careful with that.

[Host (Interviewer)]

So if they get hacked, I might be screwed.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

So I know some people who have, you know, used ChatGPT and some of these others, and we're saying certain things and got a knock on the door.

[Host (Interviewer)]

No way.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Because the police or feds or someone were like, hey, you know, some of this stuff you're saying has got us concerned.

[Thumbtack Announcer]

Wow.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

So what I do is use AI that doesn't necessarily connect to me. Right. So Brave browser is an alternative to Chrome or Firefox, but they have their own built in AI and it's completely anonymous. You don't need to log in, they don't save who. What session was asking these things. And it's not as great as maybe ChatGPT, but then there's other things like Venice AI, which has a ton of different models that you can use. And again, they don't connect your account to like, it's kind of like a proxy. So you send your questions to Venice, and then Venice sends it to ChatGPT, and then ChatGPT just thinks, oh, Venice asked a question, not Jack asked a question. Right. So it's this nice buffer between who's asking the questions to it. And as long as you don't say, hey, my name's Jack and I'm asking this particular thing about my life, then unless you dox yourself, then. Then that's a much safer bet.

[Host (Interviewer)]

That's legit. What messaging apps do you trust? Signal, Telegram? Do you use any of those?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Just Signal right now. I mean, there's a few out there, but Signal is the main one. Like, Telegram builds itself as, like, a secure messaging app, but it's not. It's really like such. It's such a bold face after he got arrested.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Or was that before this?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Before even now? And so, like, one of the things is all of the group chats and Telegram are not end to end encrypted. You cannot. You can't enable it to be an end to end encrypted. So if there's secure messaging app, you would think group chats should be end encrypted, but they're not. And so that's just like the biggest thing right there. But even when you want to be end encrypted with somebody, one on one, it's an extra step. It's not by default. You got to then say, hey, I want this encrypted connection. And then usually they're like, whoa, is there something secret you want to talk about? And it's like, oh, yeah, you got

[Host (Interviewer)]

to make the secret chat, right?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, it's a secret chat.

[Host (Interviewer)]

No one does that, though.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

They don't even know it. They don't use it. And every time I do turn it on, people are like, oh, yeah. I'm like, so, yeah, I can't stand Telegram. To me, it's not a secure messaging app. It's a social network.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

And it's a totally different thing than Signal because Signal doesn't really have that social network aspect to it.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Did you see when Tucker's signal got hacked or something, he said they were spying on him there. What happened with that?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Well, I got some theories, but I haven't. I haven't investigated the situation.

[Host (Interviewer)]

What's your theory on that?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

So he claims that somebody read a signal message and that. God, he. That he might. He. He says it must have been that someone hacked my signal, and he's even blaming the US Government.

[SelectQuote Announcer]

Right.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Because I Think this was when he was taking a trip to Russia. They were concerned about what he was going to talk about. Yeah. So, number one, I there. I think there's a lot of people who have big guesses as to what thing, what's going on. I used to work in a noc, a network operations center, where we would troubleshoot problems. And, you know, if the network goes down, there's always this new kid who's like, oh, my God, the Russians are hacking us or something. And, you know, you call up the site and you're like, what's going down? And they're like, yeah, lawnmower guy came and hit our box and knocked out the whole Internet. And it's like, okay, see, it's not like. It's not nefarious. Right. And so I'm always trying to keep that mindset of like, this was probably not something nefarious. So who else has access to this chat? Maybe the person he sent it to forwarded on. Maybe that person had something. Maybe one of his assistants or something else someone else in his circle saw the chat and told someone else. Right. That's probably the most likely thing. But I mean, the thing is, if it's extraordinary to claim that that can be hacked, it's very difficult. There are some ways to do it, such as the notifications you get on your phone. When you get a message, those notifications are logged in something else, like maybe Apple's logging system. Right. And so if somebody has access to those logs, then they can see what notifications came up on your phone. And so it's not necessarily signal being hacked. It's a problem with Apple logging. Too many notifications, Right?

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

So he's not savvy enough to know exactly what the technology stack is there to. To put his finger on what got hacked. And he. He raises the flag on Signal is the problem. Signal problem, which I don't think it is. I think Signal is a very secure platform. And then the last thing is like, I think if somebody did hack his phone and it was the US Government, you would think that Tucker would be like, all right, gloves off. You guys just broke the law. Clearly on my turf. Like, you should not be spying on me. I am a journalist. I'm protected under so many different situations. And you, like, that should have been a lawsuit. And I think he knows that, like, this isn't.

[Livy Dunn (Vuori Athlete)]

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[Host (Interviewer)]

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[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

because if it did then he should have like he would have had standing to make such a big stink. And I think he would have taken that all the way and seen how it went. But he didn't.

[Thumbtack Announcer]

He just.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

He got hacked and it must have been the U.S. government. And I know that's it.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Believe with him because. Yeah, that happened. It blew over. And then the whole CIA thing, investigation from last month, that blew over when he went to that one country. I forget. Was that in Israel?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

I didn't catch that one.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Oh, yeah, it was in Israel. They said the CIA was hacking into his phone or something.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Oh, my gosh.

[Host (Interviewer)]

And then his dad was CIA, so I never know what to believe. But there's just a lot going on.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah.

[Host (Interviewer)]

You know, but it wouldn't surprise me if the government was somehow spying on certain political people or. Yeah.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

And so there's a few problems there. Like, you would want. The world the way the Fourth Amendment is is that you have to have a warrant in order to do a search on someone. And if there is probable cause, if someone's got something going on and there's a. There's a judge that signed off, okay, there's a warrant. You should get a warrant.

[Comcast Business Announcer]

You have a.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Here's your warrant to spy on this person.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Oh, so they have to tell you if they're doing it.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Not necessarily. The judge doesn't need to. There's a lot of warrants that are happening in the shadows. But, I mean, that's. That's what I want to happen. But unfortunately, what happens is there's a lot of blue poles where governments don't need to. Or our US Government doesn't need to get a warrant in order to spy on people. And that's. That's a problem worth fixing.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, that's not cool. Yeah, I know. Your friend that's coming on next is working on that, so shout out to her. Right? Naomi.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, yeah, well, that.

[Comcast Business Announcer]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I didn't know if you wanted me to say that. Your friends are there.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

This is cool. Whatever.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Okay. All right. Crypto. Are you big into crypto? Are you a believer in Bitcoin?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, sure. I mean, I think it's a revolutionary thing. So, I mean, I. I think a lot of people are just like, hey, you know, this is all made up crap. Like, don't get into it. And I'm like, what is a credit card? It's just a. It's just a piece of plastic that goes in the. Like, when one number goes from one database to another database, it's not. That's just digital money. Like, let's just keep. We're on the Internet all the time. We need digital money in order to work the world. So, to me, crypto is a great way to have digital money.

[Host (Interviewer)]

And it's like, hey, on the dark web, right?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

What's that?

[Host (Interviewer)]

That's how you pay for stuff on the Dark Web.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. I mean, there's a little bit more like Bitcoin is trackable in the sense that you can see the transactions and who you're dealt with. And then you can keep watching that until they cash out at an exchange or somewhere. And then if you are, you know, a criminal. Yeah. Then the feds can ask, who is this guy? So there's two coins that are more private than, than Bitcoin that I like, which are Monero and zcash. And this won't let you see who you transacted with, and it hides how much and who's. Who's sending it. And very difficult to trace the funds. So if you're, if you're just watching a coin, like, where is all this wallet? Interacting with those two are much easier. So a lot of Darknet marketplaces are accepting that for privacy reasons.

[Host (Interviewer)]

What's the craziest thing you've seen on the dark web that you still think about?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, I mean, I, I go into it as a skeptic. Right. I. I don't believe a lot of what I'm seeing. I think, I think the comms is an interesting space.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Comms?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. Have you talked with anybody from the comm?

[Host (Interviewer)]

No.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

You should find some kids from the comm and talk with them both hackers, or this is a short for the community. And what they're doing is they're. I mean, they're targeting people here at the bitcoin conference, basically. Right. So they're looking for people with Bitcoin and then trying to steal their bitcoin.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Oh, sim hacking.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Sim. Sim swapping is one thing, but just social engineering and calling them and trying to hack into their stuff, and sometimes it gets really dark.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Like, you've got people who are kidnapped and, and like, we'll cut your finger off unless you open up your. Your treasure wallet or whatever like that.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Holy crap.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

And so to me, that's the, that's the scary part because a lot of times these are American or European teenagers, and they just don't have this. When you, when you go online and you see that everyone's doing a specific thing, you just, you feel like you're not in it. You're missing out. Like. Like if you want a kid and you go online and you see everybody with their kids and having babies, suddenly you're like, I just want this, or getting married, everyone's getting married but you, or something. Right. And if you go online and you see everybody stealing bitcoin and then they just take the bitcoin and then they just gamble it on a site to flex, to say, hey, look at, I've got 100k that I can blow on this, because I don't really care. And it creates such a stir. And strangely enough, they're all on Telegram.

[Host (Interviewer)]

There's been a few big crypto hackers. There was one in Miami a couple of years ago that spent like tens of millions at the club. Yeah, I think. I'm sure you've seen that one.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, they go through his name. They fly high real fast and burn out.

[Comcast Business Announcer]

Yeah.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

And so that there's a whole spectrum of things. There's people who are doing, like, refund scams on Amazon. They'll buy a laptop and then put a brick in it and send it back and somehow they're able to, I don't know, convince Amazon to take it back and then get a refund and keep a free laptop. Or they'll cheat the points at Chipotle or Hilton or something. They'll. They'll steal Honors Club member points and get free nights to stay in Hilton. And, and, and then some. What are some of the others? There's so many different ways. Oh, like just we're scamming people on Roblox. Right. Like here, get some free Robux if you come and sign up for our site. And then they hack into this kid's stuff and steal all their Robux accounts and all this stuff.

[Host (Interviewer)]

There was one came across a few years ago. He was giving flights for half off. I was like, how is he doing this? Yeah, he just stole credit cards.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

So there's pizza plugs too, which is another thing. And this is where somebody has maybe got control over someone's online Domino's account or Pizza Hut account or whatever the situation is. And so if you're logged in as them, you can buy pizzas and then just gets charged to that guy that you stole their account. Right. So they'll get on and they'll be like, all right, half off pizzas, who needs them? I'll send them to you. Right. And so people are spending like 3, $5 on a pizza, and then this guy is just sending them free pizzas because he's not paying for it. And then he's taking the five bucks for every pizza. So if there's half off flights in a shady place, it might be because someone logged into someone else's Delta account

[Host (Interviewer)]

or something like that, too. Yeah. Or he was. I think he was specifically buying credit card numbers because that's Accessible on the dark web too, right?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, yeah, that's a big thing.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah. But I feel like if you get caught doing that, I'd imagine you get locked up pretty fast.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. The Secret Service will come at you for, for credit card. Any sort of money fraud that you're doing.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Is there a certain dollar amount or just in general?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

I, I want to believe it's a million dollars.

[SelectQuote Announcer]

A million.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

If you do a million dollars in theft, then service.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Wow.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Well, it's not just the Secret Service, but the FBI, the CIA, whoever's coming after you. If it's a few thousand, it's like a police matter, it's not a federal matter. Right. So it has to really ramp up before the, the bigger, bigger boys get in there.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Which agency usually goes after hackers?

[Livy Dunn (Vuori Athlete)]

Is it?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Well, Secret Service handles money fraud. Right. So you think that they're just protecting the President, but no, they, they have a whole system of, of looking for credit card theft and any sort of money fraud. And then FBI will go after maybe non money stuff, but still, but still they'll handle money things. Because if you've got like a ransomware gang, that's not necessarily money laundering and money fraud so much. And I think the FBI will handle that one.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Right. What's the most amount of time you've seen a hacker get in, in prison? How many years?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

I think 30 years are going to be the high numbers there. I mean you had Ross Ulbricht here who's, who is in prison for life. Yeah, I say here because he was at Bitcoin last year.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

But Yeah, I think 30 years for, for some of these guys. And, and it's, it's surprising because it's a non violent crime. Typically it's just ransomware or stealing millions of dollars from somehow and I, it's devastating to the victim obviously. And I interview these victims to hear how bad it's impacted them. And sometimes even the littlest things can impact someone in a big way. So if someone's credit card gets stolen and then it gets canceled, well that could be like every day they use it and they don't have any other credit card.

[Host (Interviewer)]

This morning actually, I should have started off the show with this.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

What happened?

[Host (Interviewer)]

I logged into my bank and someone somehow sent money off my business checking account.

[Livy Dunn (Vuori Athlete)]

Whoa.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

So you saw an unauthorized transaction?

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, two of them. It was two different names. One went to a Discover bank, paid off her credit card and then another went to. It must have been her boyfriend or something, I don't know. But went to his bank I was like, how the heck did they do that?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

So do you call and get it? It was canceled.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I was in a rush, so I did the live chat. Yeah, yeah, MX live chat. But I shouldn't even say the bank name. But yeah, I got a ticket number, so we'll see what happens. Crazy, though, right?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, that's crazy.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Bank account.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

I think that that's a level of sophistication that's a bit higher than what the typical person is because it's difficult to do bank transfers without it being easily traceable. And so there could be, like a money mule situation there. There might be some malware on your computer, which caught your password logging into it and then was able to get into your computer. So you need to look at your computer to make sure that you're clean there. But, yeah, I mean, you might.

[Comcast Business Announcer]

What.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

What I've seen a lot is money mules, right? So they'll.

[Capella University Announcer]

They'll.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

They'll take the money and they'll send it to a person who, who just responded to, like, a Craigslist job, like, hey, I need. I need someone to help us with the managing the finances of this company. Will pay you X amount or whatever, and, okay, I'll try it. And then just get this money in their account and they're like, okay, we need you to pay these people because they're on the payroll.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Oh, so they don't even know.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

They don't even know their money. And the funny thing is, is that they're. It's illegal to be a money mule, so they don't even know that they're doing something illegal. They just think that they're working for this company.

[Host (Interviewer)]

That sucks.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

And so that will then go to the next person and then they'll forward it and forward it all the way back to the origin of where the criminal is.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, that. That was weird to me because credit cards, I've seen, I think those are easier to have because you could just walk by someone and he has the scanner or whatever.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah.

[Host (Interviewer)]

A bank account. That was a new one for me.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah.

[Comcast Business Announcer]

Yeah.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

The most likely is that you're. They had your username and password.

[Host (Interviewer)]

They had to.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

But there's a 2fa on your bank,

[Host (Interviewer)]

so that's the weird part. Yeah. How'd they get past device 2 of A? I don't know.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

There. There might be a way that when you logged in, they grabbed that session token.

[Host (Interviewer)]

They might.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

And then jumped in at the same moment you were in.

[Host (Interviewer)]

They might have. Because I do have a man, an AI agent, running and it probably some malware on my.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Okay, so this is the thing about AI agents, right? Like OpenClaw, if you just let it loose on your personal computer or your work computer, it can see all of your private messages, all of your passwords, all the things that you're typing in and you're giving it quite a lot.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I didn't get a separate computer.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Separate computer for openclair, if that's what you're doing or whatever, because you give it tasks like you silo it off. And I know this is the thing. I want the world where I have this agent that just can look at everything, reply to people, take care of all my stuff. That sounds like a great world, but it's just not there yet. As far as the security and privacy goes, they didn't start with that to make it. They're starting with the feature and then they're going to try to. There's kind of a trailing thing where a year, a year and a half later, the privacy and security kind of catches up with the latest tech.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, yeah. It's just a free for all right now, right?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. It's such fast moving world AI.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I'll get a separate computer for it. I probably should do that from the start.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. And so it's. It's not so much openclaw itself that's the problem, but all the plugins that come with it and it's like, hey, can you learn this thing? Well, it's got to go grab this information and learn it and stuff. And so when it's grabbing plugins and, and grabbing stuff from the Internet to open and extract in order to do what its tasks are, that's the stuff that might be malicious or compromised. And it's kind of like, kind of like, you know, downloading apps. I mean, how many times when you were using Pirate Bay did you get an app that was infected?

[Host (Interviewer)]

Sketchy downloads?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

So many.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Right.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

And so this is a situation where you don't even know what's getting downloaded half the time. And yeah, LimeWire was definitely half the music. Wasn't even the right music.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I was Virus City back in the day and the antiviruses weren't that good back then too.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

No. Yeah, you had to learn quick on how to solve your own problems because. Because you're on the family computer and you're like, oh no, I broke it and I got to fix it before mom finds out.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Is it true? The iPhone's pretty hard to hack though?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

The iPhone is better one. I think I heard something like The. The lockdown mode on iPhone. There's, There's. It's very difficult, if I hate to say impossible, but I haven't heard a good exploit from the FBI or, or even Pegasus and such like that to be able to get into it.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Oh, you didn't.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Pegasus, yeah, the. The Pegasus malware from NSO Group there. There hasn't been a known variant that's got into an iPhone using lockdown mode.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Wow. I need to get on that mode. My friend's on that mode. But I remember you can't, like, download stuff, you can't send photos or something there.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

I don't. I haven't tried it, but yeah, it might limit some of your capabilities. And the thing is, I mean, you started on the Internet when things weren't easy to do. It wasn't easy to get all these apps installed and then fix it on the malware involved. But we kind of got used to just things being easy. It's like, ah, it's just so easy to just open this app and do this thing. But we're not. We're not too scared of doing hard things. So do the hard thing and make yourself secure.

[SelectQuote Announcer]

Yeah.

[Host (Interviewer)]

What was the smartest hack you've seen? You've interviewed a lot of people.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Like, a clever one?

[Host (Interviewer)]

Like a really clever one that you were impressed by?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, there was a. I haven't released this one yet, but it's coming out in a few months.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Oh, God.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

It's the Bayrob malware. And these guys used, like, so many. So they had this malware that they infected, like, thousands of computers with. And then to do all of their hacking, they would jump into a infected computer and then jump into another infected computer. And they would do like six hops through all these infected computers before hitting the Internet to do any of their hacking. So that totally obfuscated where they're coming from.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Interesting.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

And the investigators did not know for the longest time where these guys were coming from. But not only that, they were just incredibly persistent at being secure and, and private with all of their stuff. Like, any time they were in the room together, they had a radio blaring in the background in case there was like, a listening device.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Oh, wow.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

And they would always, like, use the neighbor's WI fi to get anywhere.

[Host (Interviewer)]

First flame the neighbor.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

They never did it on themselves, but then they had like five layers of encryption on their computer. So just when you boot it up, there's like an integrity check which is like, okay, no hardware has changed since the last boot. Okay, cool. So there's no devices planted in here. And then like five passwords just to unlock the computer, just to get Linux, you know, operating system open.

[Host (Interviewer)]

That's the old school one, right?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Well, Linux is still. Still around.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Okay.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

But that's what they were using because they could secure it better. Linux is, is more secure. You don't have everything getting sent to Apple or Microsoft. And then they had virtual machines and stuff like that. And yeah, it was just incredibly sophisticated with how they did everything right every step of the way. But the FBI still caught them.

[Livy Dunn (Vuori Athlete)]

How?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Well, FBI, first of all, they had a huge warrant on a wiretap kind of situation, on as much traffic as they could see coming in and out of these guys. And for like 10 years they monitored it. And it was all encrypted. All encrypted. And it was like absolutely nothing. But every now and then, like once every three years or something, there would be something that came through unencrypted. And if they could catch that, then they would have this little piece and this little piece. And so eventually they got enough breadcrumbs. But the thing that surprised me was Jabber, which is another messaging app, is not encrypted, but you can get some encrypted plugins. So, like, OTR was the one that they were using off the record, and that's one that allowed them to do end to end encrypted chats between the two gang members. And then the thing is that they sent an attachment and the attachment was not encrypted because OTR does not encrypt attachments. And so they thought, oh, I have this encrypted chat, but the attachments.

[Host (Interviewer)]

That's good to know.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

The video and. Yeah, so it's not very easy to encrypt attachments in Jabber. And a lot of people still use it thinking that they can add some privacy into it. But it's. It's still something that I would be hesitant on.

[Host (Interviewer)]

What about attachments on signal? Are those encrypted?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yes.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Okay.

[Sean Kelly]

Wow.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Man. So how much time did they get?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

That was the. There were three of them that got arrested. Two got 20 years and one got 10 years. Damn. Yeah.

[Host (Interviewer)]

And you interviewed them before?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

No, I interviewed the FBI agent.

[Host (Interviewer)]

On the agent, yeah.

[SelectQuote Announcer]

Wow.

[Host (Interviewer)]

He agreed to. Come on, huh? That's surprising.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

It took me from like five years to convince him.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Is he still an active agent or.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

No, he's retired now.

[Host (Interviewer)]

That's why.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Probably. Yeah.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah. Because when they're active, they can't really

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

talk about no that was what took a long time. And I don't mind waiting. That's the fun thing about it because I know when it comes around, it'll be a good story.

[Host (Interviewer)]

What about that hacking group? Everyone knows Anonymous? Are they still around?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

I don't think so. I think comms kind of replaced them. Right. So let's go back down memory lane. When we were kids, we had pirating, right? Pirating the wares groups, the where scenes. Like that's what the teenagers were doing, that's what the kids were doing. If you were online, that's like the subversive. Where's the, where's the extra cool kids going? And you find these little spots and you're like, oh, cool, I can trade stuff here. And, and it's fun, right? And that's what we were doing in the 90s. And then in the 2000s, that's when Anonymous started coming up. And they were activists and they were trying to make a. Make a difference in the world. And so they would do things like hack into places that they thought were doing injustices and trying to make things right and making a. Making, trying to be menacing online. Like, you better, you better be right, be careful, do the right thing, or else Anonymous will come at you. And I think it scared some people, but that was like the height of it was like 2008 or so. And so those people have all grown older and they, they have jobs and they got families and stuff.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Oh, so they never got caught?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Well, no, a lot of them did. The people got caught a lot. But there was, it was a huge movement. Right. And so the kind of movement just kind of died out. And the newer kids, I think is, is the comms, like I was saying earlier, these, these kids who are just like, how can we steal money today? How can we. How can we grab someone's account? And I mean that. Look at just like Steam. If you take someone's Steam account, it might be worth a ton of money

[Host (Interviewer)]

because all the games, all the games

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

and then all the loot that they have. Like there's Steam marketplaces you could sell like Counter Strike knives skins.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, right. My friend's Fortnite got hacked.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I was like, why would someone want that? But then I realized he had a lot of skins. Yeah, they sold it.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

If they can sell that, that's money, right?

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah. The kid, he'd play online. I still was his friend, so I could see. And it was just a normal kid.

[Comcast Business Announcer]

Yeah.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

And what's fascinating about that is that it's often kids Attacking kids. And so you got these kids who are on Fortnite getting hacked, and they're like, oh, there's this whole world of hackers. And then they've got to learn how to protect themselves and. And secure themselves. And maybe that gets them into cybersecurity and learn how to attack as well. And. Because there's a whole. It's really weird here in Vegas. There's a defcon that happens every summer, and it's full of hackers, but it's also full of people who are defending against hackers. And it's a weird. It's a weird world where we're friends.

[Host (Interviewer)]

We're like cops and robbers. Yeah, but.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

But we're all good. We all get along. It's a really strange thing because, like, I'm trying to keep you out, so tell me all your secrets. And they're like, okay, well, I'm trying to get around, so tell me what your setup is.

[Host (Interviewer)]

And there's a lot of ethical hackers. I think some of. Yeah, definitely con. A lot of those guys are on the good side.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. Yeah, a lot of.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I mean, I'm guessing I haven't been. But.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

No, it's. It's true. The ethical hacker is actually. I have a cert in ethical hacking, if. Yeah. But it's. Typically, businesses will pay you to come and hack into them to see if they're secure.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Right.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

And so they need to hire an ethical hacker in order to do that.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Have you ever been able to hack into a business?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

No, I never. I never went on the offense. My job before podcasting was defending the network and configuring firewalls and looking at logs and trying to catch the hackers in the network.

[Host (Interviewer)]

You ever catch someone, confront them?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

There was a. There was a guy. My favorite was, like, when there was a. Another employee of the company downloading all kinds of stuff that they shouldn't be. And I'm like, okay, that's a violation. You go over and honk him on the head.

[Host (Interviewer)]

No, you're being like. That's when, like, with the Epstein emails, I'm like, how do you know? How do you not know they're being monitored? Yeah, they're going to be seen. You know, emails.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Oh, yeah, it's going through. Google is email.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, it's. It's quite.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Email stays forever.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

It's quite jarring. Yeah, that's. That's the thing is the data is forever. And.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, even text. Like, apparently. Because if you're on Instagram and you unsend the Message. Apparently they still have it. Yeah. So when a subpoena happens, they could still see all the deleted messages. Same with Snapchat, I heard.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Oh, wow.

[Host (Interviewer)]

So just because you delete it doesn't mean it got deleted.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. Yeah. You gotta be real careful. Data's leaking everywhere.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah. I mean, every company has a data leak. I feel like.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

I think so. Yeah. And this is another reason why I want to be private, is because after, like, here's what I thought my character arc was going to be, right? I'm, like, learning how these hackers work. I'm learning all the tricks and techniques, and I'm like, man, maybe I could start a ransomware, a campaign and make $20 million. Like, I think I could do. I'm smarter than these guys who all got caught. I know all the ways that they got caught. I could. But instead of going in that direction, what I realized. Because I don't want to do the life of crime, but what I realized is, like, there's just data breach after data breach after data breach. And I'm like, who? Why? How do I protect against this? Like, there's nothing I could have done to your network to keep my stuff secure. And then I realized, no, wait, I'm the knucklehead that gave him my data. I should give them a fake name, a fake phone number, a fake email address. And so every. Every website I register with, I use a different email address and a different. Different password and often even a different phone number. I've got different apps to just generate voip numbers whenever I need it.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I'm going to start doing that because even at the doctor's office, they ask for your address.

[Livy Dunn (Vuori Athlete)]

Okay.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

So there's like, two or three places that you cannot do it with. And this drives me nuts. Right? And I hate this. Right. Doctors is one. They will not take you unless you have a valid id. It's part of the. Part of the law. Federal law, even.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Private doctor.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Now, private doctor is different. They'll handle different things. And so there's. There's a resurgence of that because people want their privacy, but doctors will not accept any. I mean, I can't even just get a blood draw at a lab.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Because unless I show my id. No, not even insurance. I'm paying. I'm paying cash.

[SelectQuote Announcer]

Oh, really?

[Host (Interviewer)]

And they still do it.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

And they still. Because they want to connect this. It's. In order to provide health care, they have to have a real person, so they have to show id. So doctors want banks is another. They won't let you open that bank account unless you prove it's you.

[Host (Interviewer)]

That kind of makes sense, because money laundering and. Yeah, doctors, though I don't agree that one.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

And flying, I think, is the third, where it's really hard to get on a plane unless you show your id. So those are, like, the three places that I haven't quite cracked. But everything else, I'm like, you're not getting my name. You're not getting anything.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Make some more money. So you can fly private. Yeah. You got to install some malware on computers, man. Fly private. Private doctors and banks. Maybe there's some private banks. I don't know.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

I mean, we're here at the bitcoin conference, and I know a bunch of people were unbanked entirely because there's crypto.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah. So maybe you could just live in crypto.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, it's possible. It's really hard, though. I don't even know all the steps. But there are ways to get, like, a credit card that you fill up with crypto, and then it's got cash that you can pay with and stuff. So there's ways to do it.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Done. Everything else, just those three. So maybe you'll figure it out.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. And those three is really frustrate me when there is a medical data breach. Right. And the hospital got the data breach. I'm like, darren, oh, this is why I didn't want to give you my stuff. And there's nothing I could have done here. Now, I don't know. That's the part where I get really frustrated. So maybe I'll have to do some medical tourism and go to another country where I can give them a picnic.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I've been offered that, actually. In, like, Turkey, I think. Yeah, Turkey.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, there's lots of places.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Colombia has a lot. And it's way cheaper, too.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, definitely. You go fly there, fly back, and pay in cash. And it's cheaper than whatever you would have gotten here.

[Host (Interviewer)]

They charge an arm and a leg out here, dude. Which country has the best hackers?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

The U.S. no. Yeah, I think so. If I were to list, like, the top five, I think it would be us, China, Russia, North Korea, Israel.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Okay.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

I don't know. I don't know if that's the right order, but those guys seem to. Okay. The UK probably has some good stuff, too.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I've heard Israel. I've heard North Korea, China. I haven't heard, actually, but that makes sense. They're big.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. MI5 and the. The intelligence agencies of UK. I mean, if you look at Bude in. In the uk, this is a town. It has just, I think, you know, there's these underwater data cables that go from the US to UK and they come right up at Bude and then they go into this huge data center that is all being captured and saved.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Table. You said underwater?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Well, yeah, the underwater cables to go from continent to continent.

[Comcast Business Announcer]

Wow.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

They go through the ocean. Yeah, sometimes they go through the satellite. But historically there have been underwater cables that have connected us to the world and so they go right into view and then they just capture it all and then that goes on to wherever its destination is. But, you know, the record is held.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Jeez, that's nuts.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

They've got quite the sophistication there.

[Host (Interviewer)]

What about quantum computing? Is that going to change the hacking world?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Sure, sure. But I'm not too. I think there's probably, a good, it's probably a good time to prepare like quantum proof cryptology. Cryptography for when that comes. But I think that's about all we should really focus on there. I'm not a quantum expert, but just reading up on what I found is that most of it is still just science experiments. All of it's still just the science. We don't even know if this is possible yet. It's theoretical still even some of the most advanced stuff. And so we haven't really had. I don't think that we've had any sort of quantum computer that's been able to do anything thing faster than a typical x86 or whatever a classic computer can do. Right. So the classic computer is still faster than a quantum computer. And there's claims that, oh, we made a quantum computer do things that are a million times faster than a classic computer. And I'm like, okay, what is it? Because I want to see this race. Oh, we can't tell you. Well, then I don't believe you until it's actually there. So I think that what we're working on in quantum computing is simply can this exciting science experiment succeed? And then once it succeeds, then, okay, what can we do with it? Maybe cracking keys is one option, but I don't know.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I know they worry about that with crypto, with the keys and the seed phrase and all that. That would suck if that happened.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, yeah. It would be really wild if suddenly all the keys are easily crackable.

[Thumbtack Announcer]

Yeah.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I mean they'd have to move Satoshi's wallet. He's got a lot of bitcoin. Yeah, someone got in and sold it all. Jeez. Good game.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. So there's some. There's some research being done there in order to improve the cryptocurrencies, to try to make it quantum proof as well.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Oh, I did want to ask this because Incognito mode, does that even do anything?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

There was a lawsuit where people were using it and Google wasn't really doing anything. And then they found out that Google was still doing.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, that's why I'm asking.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. And they settled the lawsuit. So Google was found guilty of it, I suppose. Not so much guilty, but us concern.

[Comcast Business Announcer]

They.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

They were definitely paying up for that.

[Host (Interviewer)]

So Safari too, you think or.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Oh yeah, I think Chrome and Safari are probably. Chrome, Safari and Edge are the worst offenders of just collecting your data. Like when you're. When you're in Chrome and you start typing anything into the address bar, it'll start finishing words for you. And what it's doing is it's going to Google Server and being like, hey, this is what this guy typed. And can you give us some hints what he might be trying to type? And then Google's like, oh yeah, he might be typing this. And so that stuff saved at Google. So I don't like how this stuff is saved. So I use a Brave browser because this is like their whole aspect is like, hey, we're going to have privacy preserving. And so they're not sending, they're not collecting user data.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Okay. So VPN and Brave, that is on my bucket list.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, there you go. Get those incognito. I think, I think there's some uses to it. I. You could. Honestly, I've gone like months in just incognito just to be like, let's just always be incognito. In fact, I think I set Firefox to always be incognito. And, and it's like, why anything else? Just give me the most private mode all the time.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I used to like Firefox actually, when I was a kid. Is that one still around?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, it's still around.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Okay.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

And what I do is add some extra plugins and stuff in order to get it to the privacy level that I want. But yeah, it still works.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Good. So there's plugins on the. The web store.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah.

[Host (Interviewer)]

For Firefox.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. Just like ad block and stuff like that.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, ad block on YouTube. Right?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

On YouTube. Well, so brave actually blocks the ads. Oh, it does, by default. So you don't even get any ads on YouTube.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Wow, that must be nice.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

It is nice. I forgot how bad it was.

[Host (Interviewer)]

It's kind of ironic because we make a living off YouTube ads for our channels. But I guess it is what it is.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Well, do, do you have in. In episode sponsors ever?

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

So I can't block those.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, they can't block those. But I think majority of people rely on the YouTube payouts too.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, well I don't think you're relying on the one or two people who, who are locking your ads. I think you're, you like the mass.

[Host (Interviewer)]

It's not the majority. Yeah, but you're at like 450k now. Something like that.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah. 430000 followers. But that's just YouTube and honestly I only, I make an audio only podcast and so I'll get. It's really wild. Like in YouTube it's hit or miss on whether a video is going to go or not. But on the podcast it's always like I'm going to get 500,000 listeners every single episode and maybe it goes up to like 700,000. That's impressive. It's like that's kind of the floor.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I thought audio only was dead, but you're proving me wrong.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Well, 500,000 doesn't sound like a lot when you look at some of the bigger channels out there and YouTube and that's kind of depressing. Like where's my number and there's your number. But it is, it is big for audio because people are, I don't know,

[Host (Interviewer)]

they listen and for audio it's like top 1%. I think there's sites that show you what amount of download shows are getting. Yeah, yeah. 500,000 is really good.

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Yeah, it's really good. And it's been my full time job for like the last five years because it's going really well.

[Host (Interviewer)]

You think you'll do video with the disguise down the road?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

This is the first time ever doing videos. So I, I do have plans on other shows that I'm going to go on and so this is testing it out.

[Host (Interviewer)]

I love it, man. Well, anything else you want to close off with here, man?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

This has been a lot of fun.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, that was great. We'll link your YouTube, your audio, anything else you want to promote?

[Jack (Darknet Diaries Host)]

Nothing else. Cool. It's fun hanging out with you.

[Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, we'll check them out. Guys, that was great. See you next time. If you learned anything from this episode or got any value at all, please share this episode with a friend. It helps us grow the channel, it helps us grow the podcast and it means a lot to us. Thank you so much.