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Off The Hook.
Off The Hook.
Off The Hook.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off The Hook. Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Kyle.
Yeah, I'm over here. Can you hear me all right?
I can hear you. You're about two feet away from me, but I can hear you through the microphone and everything.
That's how it's supposed to work.
And over in Skype-land. Is it Skype-land or Skype-ville? You know, I never get that straight.
We have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
And we have Gila.
Good evening.
And we don't have Alex because last time we didn't have you guys.
And the contract stipulates that if you guys are out, then Alex has to be out.
It's very complicated. We don't have to get into it. Lawyers and all that.
But welcome back. Did anybody make it to the April 1st 2600 meeting last Friday?
Yes, indeed. I was at the April 1st 2600 meeting in person at the Citigroup building at 53rd and Lexington.
And you're not lying because you can do that on April 1st. I know that.
But you can't do that when you're talking about April 1st afterwards. So let's be clear.
Yes, indeed. No, I could have lied on the day. I'm not allowed to lie anymore because April 1st is over.
But it was a good meeting. Nice crowd there.
There was also a drag queen performing magic tricks and running a bingo game as well in the room.
That was unrelated to the meeting, but it was something that was going on.
It's an interesting place now, that Citigroup building.
I have to check it out when I have time to actually go somewhere and look at something.
But a sad side note to all of this, and this is a side note that we keep going back to,
and it's the places that disappear, the places that close.
Of course, the hotel is one thing. Hotel Pennsylvania is actively being torn down.
I don't think they've actually started on the outside yet, but that's only a matter of weeks, I believe.
But those of you who came to the New York City meetings years ago, I don't know if you remember this, Rob,
but we used to afterwards go out to a place called Around the Clock. Do you remember that?
Oh, yes. Most definitely.
It was a place on Stuyvesant downtown in East Village. I believe it was 24 hours.
Everything was 24 hours back then. Now even Veselka isn't 24 hours, but that's a whole other thing.
Okay, so we would go to this place after every meeting.
It was a cheap dining place, really good food, but they closed down many years ago.
I was bummed out about that.
They were affiliated also with a couple of other places called Dojo, where we went after other meetings.
That closed down.
But upstairs was this Japanese-slash-Korean place called Yokocho, owned by the same people.
Also attached to that was the Sunrise Mart, which was a Japanese grocery store.
And there was this really interesting bar that was attached to Yokocho.
Anyway, it's all closed.
It's all gone because landlords are demanding higher rents, and it's just everything seems to be disappearing,
shutting down, just being rent kicked out of the neighborhood.
Nobody can afford to rent a building anymore, to rent a storefront.
And this is really terrible, especially at a time when we need to recover from the last couple of years,
to have those familiar places there.
And it's just so sad to see them all disappearing.
And East Village is just turning into a bunch of vacant storefronts.
There needs to be something that is done to prevent this from just becoming a community of franchises,
where only the very, very rich can afford to operate.
The magic of so many communities in New York City is the independence,
the small town or the small family business that survives in a big city.
That's the magic of it.
And so many people were a part of that in the past.
They came to our meetings, and they experienced that.
They saw all the little shops and places to hang out afterwards.
And to not have that in the future means that so many people won't be inspired.
They won't get to enjoy that.
Yeah, it's interesting.
Over the years, I've been going to the local 2600 meetings since time immemorial.
And one regular occurrence was at the end of the meeting,
when they would kick us out of the food court or the public area in Citigroup,
everyone would basically en masse go somewhere.
And it was usually to one of those places in the village we used to go to all the time.
And there would be a regular place that we would all go get dinner together.
And we would take this walk through the city together.
It was a nice experience, time to chat, hang out, whatever.
Nowadays, it's actually interesting because the area has been made into a fully stocked,
fully functional late-night hours having food court.
So dinner kind of happens at the meeting now.
There are all sorts of different food places there, and you can just go get something,
bring it back to the table, keep hanging out.
And I'm kind of on the fence over whether this is a good thing
or whether something has been lost, I think.
Well, I mean, that's different.
That's something that's – I can see the coolness of that having places that are open,
that are in the very place where the meetings are.
As long as they're not McDonald's and Starbucks and just franchises,
as long as they're unique and independent, that's a good thing,
even if it's a different part of town.
But what I'm bemoaning here is just losing one place after another,
whether it's Around the Clock or Yokocho or St. Mark's Books or St. Mark's Comics
or St. Mark's Records or Gem Spa or Yaffa.
There's just so many places, and it's gotten to the point where the places
that I'm thinking of, every single one of them is closed,
and I can't think of any places that are open that I want to go to.
And that's not what I want New York to become.
Yeah.
Alt Coffee.
You remember Alt Coffee?
Alt Coffee.
Oh, my God.
So many good places that we were just – it was part of the hacker culture.
It was part of the East Village culture.
Bookstores, record stores, coffee shops, restaurants,
all sorts of really amazing places.
You get rid of that, you get rid of the magic.
And, you know, I know everyone's greedy,
and they want to get as much money from their tenants as possible,
but maybe this is a time to invest in a community and say,
you know what, we want you to prosper first.
We'll figure out how to get cash out of you later,
but right now let's get you off the ground so that we have a community
that people want to come to.
But right now it's turning into the opposite, and it's really, really sad.
So I just figured I'd mention that because I only just heard about that.
That just happened at the end of March, actually, the beginning of April,
that we lost Yokocho.
For those who didn't ever go to Yokocho, it was the most incredible place.
You'd go up this big staircase, and then you were in Japan, basically,
just all these different rooms filled with people and just a festive atmosphere.
And the Sunrise Mart, the only way to get there was to take this weird elevator
with no markings whatsoever.
You'd go up a floor, the door would open,
and all of a sudden you're in this bustling supermarket.
Magic like that.
That's what New York has been known for,
and that's what we need to continue to be known for.
And I know the same thing is happening throughout the country,
throughout the world.
It's sadness.
But the only way to get through this is by joining together
and supporting each other, not by taking advantage of each other.
You want a market for spaces that is varied instead of just on the incline
and really nothing affordable below a certain threshold.
That's dangerous.
You lose people building businesses, building experience,
and growing along that way.
You create this barrier for people who want to enter into creating a business
in an area, and then the places that are available,
transitioning places that were formerly available
into places that are at such a high bar,
it really shuts out a lot of people that are still on their way,
like building a business or just who have been there forever
under a certain scheme.
It gives them no time to reconfigure.
All of a sudden they have new competition paying.
It just simply has more resources and more cash.
Well, think about this.
You're walking down a street in New York,
and you see a vacant store with a big realtor sign.
I know that one of them ends in 2600.
Please stop sending us pictures of that one.
We've seen it a million times.
There's a big realtor in New York whose last four digits of their phone number
is 2600.
Great.
But you'll see that every few feet it seems.
You'll ask yourself, why not just rent it cheaper to more people?
You must be losing money by having all these empty storefronts.
That's not how realtors, that's not how landlords think.
Because if you start offering something at a lower price,
then you're obligated to offer that lower price to others as well.
And you can't have that.
You can't have more businesses or people taking advantage of a lower price.
Better that you have a lot of emptiness and a few people paying a lot.
And what you wind up with when that happens is you have rich tenants,
and that's it, and a lot of space.
The fact that there is so much space tells you something is wrong
with that way of thinking.
So we need to, as a city, as citizens in New York and throughout the country,
challenge this, demand that we do something differently,
and that we have as many of these small businesses survive as possible.
All right, getting off the soapbox now, getting right on to another soapbox.
We still have this horrible and brutal war going on in Ukraine.
Here's an interesting story that I think listeners might find a bit fascinating.
The Federal Air Transport Agency, and I'll do my best to pronounce this,
Rosaviatsiya is responsible for overseeing the civil aviation industry in Russia.
Its website is favt.ru.
They went offline a week ago Monday, and I believe they're still unreachable.
The statement signed by the agency's head, Alexander Neredko,
says due to the temporary lack of access to the Internet
and a malfunction in the electronic document management system
of the Federal Air Transport Agency,
the Federal Air Transport Agency is switching to a paper version.
Seems practical.
Yeah, a paper version.
Russian telegram channel Aviator Shina, that's Aviator as Aviator is spelled, S-H-I-N-A,
said that Rosaviatsiya was hit by a severe cyber attack on Saturday,
leading to the collapse of its entire network.
Documents, mail, all kinds of files were allegedly erased.
Approximately 65 terabytes of data has been lost.
65 terabytes of data has been lost.
Now, according to Aviator Shina's source, close to the matter,
the agency lost a one and a half year worth of emails
and has no backups to restore its system.
No backups.
The source also said that the prosecutor's office and the FSB,
that's what the KGB turned into in Russia,
they have been working with Rosaviatsiya since that Saturday.
Now, Russian media outlet Kommersant quotes two independent sources close to the agency.
They confirmed that outages were likely caused by a cyber attack,
which was caused by a brutal war on an innocent country.
They left that part out.
The agency has presumably regained its access to the email service
and expects to fully restore access to its data storage at some point in the future
and hope that the whole thing just doesn't happen again.
Meanwhile, Rosaviatsiya keeps posting updates on its social media channels,
including Telegram and VK, and linking to its website as if nothing happened.
That's how they do things over there.
According to the Is It Down Right Now monitor,
FAVT.ru is not down for everyone.
Experts have sounded mixed security warnings in the wake of the pullout from Russia
by Microsoft and other tech giants,
with some playing down the impact on ordinary citizens
and others predicting a return to pen and paper.
According to Alex Artemonov, the Info Security Officer at Infinitely Virtual,
they will end up going back to pen and paper as computers stop operating
due to lack of updates, expired licenses, and failures.
And don't forget, Alex, attacks as well.
So, a bunch of terabytes lost. Rob?
Well, I can confirm that FAVT.ru is way down right now.
The site doesn't load, it doesn't return a ping, nothing.
And according to downforeveryoneorjustme.com right now, it's down for everyone.
Wow. Well, you know, I can't say I'm surprised.
Can't say I'm surprised.
What else is going on?
Russia's telecommunications regulator has doubled down on its warnings
to Russian-language Wikipedia over an article it says contains
inaccurate information about the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine.
Russ Komnadzor said on Thursday it's fining the nonprofit organization
up to 4 million rubles, which is about $49,000.
for refusing to delete information about the Ukraine war
launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24th.
I don't know if that sentence is what they object to.
In a press release, the agency said it was issuing the fine
due to Wikipedia's failure to delete illegal information.
The Russian-language Wikipedia contains, quote-unquote,
false information on the subject of a special military operation
of the armed forces of the Russian Federation in Ukraine
aimed at misinforming Russian users.
It wasn't clear if that's what the invasion was for
or if that's what the statement was for,
but certainly misinforming Russian users is something
the Russian government specializes in.
The article in question was titled,
The Russian Invasion of Ukraine 2022.
It mentions injuries and fatalities among Ukrainian civilians,
citing UN data, as well as deaths among Russian servicemen.
Russian authorities have prohibited media
from calling Putin's invasion a war or an invasion.
State-run media outlets adopt the term special military operation.
Putin on February 24th said he wants to disarm Ukraine
and eliminate the threat it poses to Russia's national security.
He used the terms demilitarization and denazification.
In some ways, the guy's right.
I mean, Russia has never been in such bad shape
as when it attacked Ukraine.
So I guess in that sense, Ukraine is a big threat to Russia.
You're saying they're getting out in front, like way out in front.
Well, you know, basically, if we invade an innocent country
and slaughter its people and look like real jerks
in front of the entire world, that's going to hurt us.
So yeah, Ukraine, that's your fault.
That is the logic.
That is the logic that I'm seeing right here.
As a justification for the invasion,
Putin stated the need to protect the Donetsk People's Republic,
the Luhansk People's Republic, and Russia itself,
and also used the unsubstantiated claims that Ukraine is a neo-Nazi state,
which is insane and crazy.
There are probably more neo-Nazis in Manhattan than are in Ukraine.
I don't know.
There's nasty people everywhere, but that certainly is not something
that justifies what Russia has done.
It gets worse and worse every week,
and this week we're seeing evidence of war crimes
that Russia continues to insist are fake.
It's just the parallels between what we've been going through in this country,
where basically, whether it's talking about elections
or talking about vaccines or virtually anything else,
it doesn't matter how many facts you have on your side.
It doesn't matter what kind of science you can point to,
what kind of independent investigation you can point to,
because the answer is always, no, it's fake.
It's all a big conspiracy.
And you're seeing the exact same thing in Russia now,
where basically people are calling their relatives,
people in Ukraine are calling their relatives who live in Russia,
telling them what has happened to them,
and they're not being believed because of what the state media
is telling the people in Russia, that this is all fake,
that basically, and try to follow me here,
basically Ukrainians are dressing up as Russians,
bombing their own cities, and then capturing and torturing their own people.
All of this while not getting in the way of the Russian troops
who are there liberating the country,
and making sure that nobody shows any data or any video
or any evidence whatsoever of what is really happening.
And that is their version of the truth.
It's so bizarre and crazy, but are we any less bizarre and crazy over here
for some of the things that have been passed off in the media,
in Congress, in our streets?
We're in a very dangerous place,
and a lot of it is propelled by social media,
where people basically hear like-minded views over and over and over again,
until they believe that's the only reality,
and anything that goes against that has to be fake, has to be fiction.
Yeah, it requires thinking.
It requires stepping outside of that hypnotic feedback loop
of your beliefs being reaffirmed
and really driving your whole rationale.
Yeah, I encourage people to go to Wikipedia
and look up the article,
2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine,
because right now, as of this broadcast, it's looking very good.
There are obviously people in the know taking care of this page.
Everything is well-sourced and cited.
So I guess Putin should really be clicking the footnotes
and suing those people.
But it's amazing.
Wikipedia, in general, is an example of how it's amazing
when a bunch of people from all over the place can get together
and make a thing happen that's useful to everybody,
and this article is a great example of that.
Now, are you seeing the same article they're seeing in Russia?
Probably not.
I don't know, because I cannot read Russian.
There's a link to the Russian version here.
I assume the one they're talking about is the one that is in Russian,
over there, that people are able to see.
And I don't know if we look that up here in the United States,
will we be seeing the same text?
Somebody should find it and translate it.
Yeah, I'd like to know.
Yeah, obviously it's not the exact same text.
It's being built up by the Russian-speaking Wikipedia community
as the English one is built up by the English-speaking Wikipedia community.
So, yeah, it would be interesting to dive into.
Now I'm looking at the Russian article.
Of course, I can't read it,
but it would be interesting to see what this is like.
You can put it into Google Translate and get at least 20% of it right.
I can.
There's probably enough people that are interested that speak the language
and are updating it just as much as I was indicating for the English.
Now, Rob, how did you get to that article?
Can you tell our listeners how you did that?
Just by clicking around and looking at various things on the Wikipedia main page.
I mean, current events are there.
Yeah, but how did you get to the Russian version?
The Russian version?
On any Wikipedia article that there are international versions of,
there is a column on the left side of the page
that links to all the other language Wikipedias of that article.
Okay, in different countries.
It's not just a translation.
It's actually going to where it's being…
Right.
Okay, interesting.
They are the local equivalents to Wikipedia.
I've got to say,
pinpoints who this statement, this declaration, and lawsuit, I guess, is for.
This is not for the consumption outside, I think, of Russia
and countries that sympathize with Russia because who really would take this seriously?
Do you think Wikipedia feels threatened that a nation that is being reported on in this way
is condemning their accuracy?
No, Wikipedia here is not going to feel threatened.
No, not at all.
But the poor person over there who's updating something,
they very much are being threatened.
And really bad things can happen to them.
Well, I'm not sure how…
That's a good point.
I'm not sure how the accounts are managed.
Someone who has moderated a bit more on Wikipedia would be able to tell us
that, yeah, is it obfuscated in any way?
Are there protections for people that are perhaps located there?
I think it's hosted in this country for the most part.
It's probably mirrored around the world in various content delivery systems.
But the point is, I don't think that the headline is necessarily to put Wikipedia on notice
because they're not going to feel like this is something they have to do better on
or police their community over.
This is strictly for them to say, look at how to point to this
and have a domestic audience sympathize with how these big tech organizations
are coming after their truth.
And that's, again, a similarity with politics and the attitudes towards technology
and so forth now.
Do you have more info, Rob?
Yeah, I've been looking at the Google translated version of the Russian Wikipedia article,
which, Kyle, you're right, it is all hosted on the Wikipedia servers,
which I believe are in the United States.
But the Russian article for the 2022 invasion of the Ukraine has a link to another article,
which is war crimes during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
And this is on the Russian Wikipedia.
And it does seem to be well put together as well.
There is info on here that I think the Russian government does not like being there.
And, yeah, this is worth a look for any of you who are interested.
Yeah, run the Russian Wikipedia article through Google Translate.
And, of course, it's not perfect, but it is eye-opening to see what people
who speak the language are saying about this and reading about this.
What I'd like to know is has anyone in our circle used a VPN to actually become
a presence inside Russia to see what they have access to and what they don't have access to
and also to maybe figure out ways to influence that a bit to get more.
See, the key, I think, to all of this is to get the news into Russia
that is being censored and filtered and kept from the people.
I think when the people find out, you know, there was a piece on VICE News tonight
a few weeks ago about the invasion that was just so incredibly moving
and just made you so angry to see.
And, you know, this is real.
You can't just conjure this up, and you certainly can't just dismiss it.
And I think if people saw something like that, plus all the many other pieces
that Al Jazeera English and BBC World News and CNN International are producing,
if that just got to people, if they were able to see it by clicking something on the net,
I don't know.
The question is how much power do people have over there in the first place,
but at least getting the truth out is something that I think is our responsibility.
I know, you know, the truth is never absolute.
I know there's always going to be inaccuracies,
but the truth that is being peddled right now by Putin, that's the biggest lie of all,
and that's the one that needs to be shattered by any means necessary.
And there's a lot of Russian people that are outside of the country right now
that are in various countries around the world that they can travel to
or have stayed in by choice.
They don't want to go back.
I mean, obviously, you know, money and logistics are difficult, travel included.
So that message in the story could also serve people that are outside of the territory,
perhaps secondarily.
Yeah.
Russian people, they're not the enemy.
That's important to realize.
And, you know, if you simply are able to hear what they're saying, to speak to them,
you'll recognize yourself in them.
I'm also thinking about some of these other countries, India and China and all around the world,
countries that have influence that can perhaps grow in their position on this and be more vocal.
They have Russia's ear in many ways.
They're very beneficial.
Yes.
Here's another story that is a result of what's going on over there.
Earlier this week, or actually this was last week since we weren't on the air last week,
the owner of the Club 8-Bit Museum in Mariupol, Ukraine,
I don't have to say any more than that, do I?
We've all heard of what's happened to Mariupol.
They reported the news on their Facebook page.
That's it.
The Mariupol Computer Museum is no longer there.
Dmitry Sherepanov told PCMag,
I only have information that the museum area was bombed.
He had evacuated on March 15th.
We fled from Mariupol taking only documents and some money.
It was not possible to take anything else out.
The city is surrounded by Russian troops.
It was founded in 2003.
The Club 8-Bit Museum contained a collection of over 120 retro computers,
many of them ZX Spectrum systems,
which were popular in Ukraine and Russia during the 1980s.
Gizmodo documented the museum two years ago in a video,
so look that up if you want to see,
because you won't see it in real life anymore.
Sherepanov had spent over 15 years collecting the hardware,
which also included an Apple IIc computer,
Compact Portable 3, an Atari 400,
and many Soviet-era computers from the 1980s and 1990s.
In total, more than 500 exhibits of the IT sphere from the 1950s to the early 2000s
were located at the museum.
That's according to Club 8-Bit's website.
The bombing of the museum area occurred
as Mariupol was facing an intense siege from Russian military forces,
which had been shelling residential buildings across the city.
Unless you read Russian media, they have not been doing that.
In his Facebook post, Sherepanov added,
there is neither my museum nor my house,
and it hurts, but I will definitely survive it and find a new home.
Let's hope so.
I'm feeling choked up reading this,
but when you think of what's happened to the people,
the people who live there,
targeted just as nonchalantly as this museum was.
It makes this seem rather small in comparison,
but it affects us in so many different ways,
and it's just a damn shame.
It shows the collective spirit.
Many places like this exist in Europe,
of course in the United States and Western Hemisphere.
It's heartbreaking.
People really have so many other areas of interest too,
but they poured their lives into something like that.
It's so simple.
It seems like a small thing,
but it's a huge loss for their life.
It's very easy to draw this mental image of warfare,
especially when it's far away from where you are,
and you think of old war movies and the front lines and the trenches
and its soldiers shooting at soldiers.
It's kind of easy to forget sometimes that this is in people's homes.
This is in people's day-to-day lives in their cities and their towns,
and it's at home.
It was in this person's home, and it's very sad.
Okay.
We have a letter from a listener.
Good evening.
Off the hook.
Before your radio show on March 23rd,
I noticed an article on EFF's website,
Warning of the Consequences of Engaging in Certain Forms of Anti-War Hacktivism.
Basically, it discusses the Node IPC package.
We discussed that a couple of weeks ago.
It's a peace-not-war plug-in,
and how the bad behavior described as being engaged
by some versions of the package based on the location indicated by the IP address
could lead to terrible unwanted consequences.
Other forms of action intended for Russian and associated targets
are similarly described as leading to trouble for good people.
Thanks for drawing that to our attention.
You can find the article on EFF.org.
Anti-war hacktivism is leading to digital xenophobia and a more hostile Internet.
I'll read a couple of paragraphs of this.
The horrific Russian military invasion of Ukraine
has understandably led to a backlash against Russia.
The temptation is to label anything Russian,
from state media and students to cats, as bad.
Who's labeled cats?
Russian cats as bad.
And to block it to signal outrage and ostracization.
This type of thinking has infected the open source
and Internet security communities as well.
A terrible idea with potentially harmful consequences.
Recently, the maintainer of a popular open source Node.js package,
Node-IPC, released a new plug-in called peace-not-war.
A Node.js package is publicly available JavaScript code
used by developers to add functionality to applications.
According to the maintainer,
this plug-in would display a message of peace on users' desktops
serving as a non-violent protest against Russia's aggression.
Some versions of the Node-IPC package,
a networking tool that has been downloaded millions of times,
will automatically run this protestware.
Then a post on GitHub claimed that some versions of the Node-IPC package
were deleting and overwriting all files with a heart emoji
if the package was installed on a computer with a Russian or Belarusian IP address.
And if the accusations are true, this is a terrible idea
which could result in all sorts of horrible and unintended outcomes.
What if a Russian human rights or anti-war organization
or a Russian hospital was using this particular software package?
This action, although conceived of as a simple non-violent protest by the package creator,
could result in the loss of important footage of protests or war crimes,
loss of medical records, or even the deaths of innocent people.
It's a really good read, a good article on EFF.org.
And it's basically labeling these kinds of actions as half-baked hectivism.
And I can see why.
Your heart is in the right place,
but the actions don't match what it is that you want to accomplish.
By all means, express yourself, get the word out there,
but when it comes to destruction, don't you know that you can count me out?
Wow, how did I get there?
No, seriously, when it comes to destruction,
it's a different story because you don't know what you're destroying.
And you could be destroying something that's important,
something that is evidence of war crimes that happens to be in Russia or Belarus.
So let's not make assumptions.
By all means, don't tone it down.
Get the word out.
But there are things that need to remain up and in place if we're going to get past this.
Again, the article is called Anti-War Hectivism is Leading to Digital Xenophobia
and a More Hostile Internet can be found on EFF.org.
Speaking of EFF, this is April.
And as is our tradition, in April, when there's a HOPE conference coming up later in the year,
we give 10% of all HOPE ticket sales for the month of April to EFF as a donation.
So we encourage people who have not yet decided to come to HOPE
or who just want to buy a ticket and support the conference and EFF, go to hope.net.
All the details are there.
HOPE, of course, Hackers on Planet Earth, that's our biannual, the one that means every two years.
We have that conference every two years.
And it's an amazing gathering place for people from all over.
I think we're going to have all kinds of interesting presentations,
displays on what's going on in Russia, the whole Ukrainian situation,
and just ways from a hacker perspective that we can address world situations like this,
as well as talks about the coronavirus and just the hacker culture in general.
There's still time to submit talk proposals or workshop proposals or seminars
or all kinds of different things.
And all the details are on hope.net.
It's at St. John's University.
First time we've been there.
As I mentioned, they're tearing down the Hotel Pennsylvania.
But so many things have changed since the last time we got together in 2018.
So I really hope that we see a lot of people this summer
because we're recovering from the last two years of hell.
We're dealing with a world that's tearing itself apart.
And we're trying to build something positive and different.
And we want to hear from you.
So hope.net, support EFF, come to the conference,
and learn what the real hacker world is all about.
Absolutely.
And every couple of years, without fail, after we've locked the schedule for Hope,
someone asks me, oh, I was thinking of getting my proposal in.
Is it too late?
So don't wait until that point.
Get your proposal in.
We want to hear your ideas.
We want to hear from new voices,
people who haven't presented at something like this before.
We want to hear from people who have presented at something like this before.
We generally just want to build the best conference we can
through the work of our community,
through all the diverse and interesting people
who are doing all sorts of diverse and interesting things
that have always been the Hope community.
This is what it's made of.
It's not made of us.
It's made of you out there who throw in on this with us
and get up on a stage and share what it is you have to share.
Go to Hope.net.
All the information is there to submit your talks, your workshops, your ideas.
We want to hear them.
I just wanted to add, instead of doing something half-baked,
maybe share your enthusiasm or get involved with people
who are working on something that is fully formed and thought through.
You can share bad ideas and get feedback from people.
That's what this conference is about.
It's about getting insight, having a bad idea or two,
but coming up with better ones as a result.
That can lead to really positive and fruitful protest wear or hacktivism,
stuff that isn't destructive in essence.
Don't assume your idea is bad.
You might not have much faith in it, but let someone else tell you.
Don't tell someone their idea is bad.
We don't like to shoot things down, but conversation and back and forth
and here's how I think it could be improved and things like that.
I didn't mean to use simple terms.
Gila.
We talk. We share.
I think if you're thinking about it, someone else is going to want to hear about it.
I think the diversity of thought, of experience,
of the opportunity to share all of that I think is really exemplified in HOPE
and at HOPE and the ways that we can share and come together as a community.
There's always somebody who's going to want to hear what you have to say
and to have the opportunity to bump into each other in person again.
Seize that opportunity.
Send in your proposal.
Plan to be here.
Plan to hang out and get to know other people and experience new ideas.
And the beauty of it is there is no prequalification.
You don't have to have a degree.
You don't have to have a doctorate.
I mean you can.
It doesn't hurt.
We have plenty of people that are giving talks that have all sorts of letters after their name,
but you can also be in high school.
You could be in junior high school.
If you have something to say and you're passionate about it
and you've played with technology in one form or another,
we want to hear from you.
Send us your ideas.
And if you have a talk or a presentation that you want to give,
this is the opportunity to do that.
And anyone from anywhere in the world can do this.
And since our new location is so close to the airports, LaGuardia and JFK,
it's minutes away from that, it's so much more convenient.
It really is so much more convenient to get to.
Yeah, I know it's not midtown Manhattan,
but I'll tell you midtown Manhattan gets pretty crowded,
gets pretty expensive, and of course with the hotel being torn down,
it's pretty inaccessible as well.
So that's the reality of the situation.
But I think what we did was,
because we made this decision before they decided to tear down the hotel,
that it would be better for us to go to a more open space that's a more positive environment
where the people of St. John's actually are supporting what the conference is all about.
The hotel, you know, it basically allowed us to do various things,
but I wouldn't say they were supportive.
You know, we were just another business to them.
And that's kind of how it worked.
That's how it works in any hotel.
And it was kind of self-service after a while
because we knew most of how we needed to do things
and we could do it better anyway ourselves.
One thing that we really do need help doing better is publicizing.
We're terrible at publicizing our own things.
Yeah, we're talking about it here,
but we're awful at getting it out into the media, into the streets,
and that's where we could use your help.
So please help us spread the word.
You may have noticed we've been talking about this now for 10 minutes
and we haven't even said the date of when it's going to happen.
So we leave out things like that.
We forget to talk about the important aspects of it.
And then we'll just go the whole hour and, hey, when is it?
You never told us.
I'm going to tell you.
Right now, mark this down.
Wouldn't it be funny if we still forgot to tell them?
This summer, the end of July.
Wait, it's this summer?
Oh, my God.
This summer, yeah.
Okay.
No.
Yeah, no.
Come on, come on.
I'm with you.
Yeah, wake up.
The 22nd to the 24th.
Of what?
July.
I said July.
Oh, I didn't hear that part.
Okay.
Yes, July 22nd through 24th.
That's a Friday through a Sunday.
So, okay.
Hope.net, all the info is there.
Get your talk proposal in.
Yes.
And, by the way, we have overtime coming up at 8 o'clock on YouTube, channel 2600.
You can join us there.
You can call us there.
We'll give you all the information at 8 o'clock on our YouTube channel.
But some more stories.
For the second time in 24 hours, an electronic roadside message board was hacked to display a profane message to motorists driving by.
This was in Phoenix.
The message condemns Russian President Vladimir Putin, who declared war on Ukraine, basically, I guess, six weeks ago or so.
A mystery prankster with unauthorized access to construction traffic signs along Interstate 17 in Phoenix basically hacked the sign and sent this message that I can't read on the air.
But it's the same message that Trump people are saying about Biden.
So, you'll probably see those signs around.
So, this is basically the same type of message.
Within the first 24 hours, more than 100 missiles rained down on troops and civilians in Ukraine.
Well, you know all that.
I don't have to go over the early part of the war there.
But I guess this is another form of hacktivism, very crude hacktivism.
But highway hackers, highway hackers hacking signs.
Well, and these are systems that we kind of don't give a second thought when we're passing them by.
They're so useful for various purposes.
And sometimes, you know, the right people, the right information, you can make them do different things.
They can still inform people.
It's just a sign.
It's a damn sign.
It's not really a hack.
I can tell you this because, you know, back in 1997 when we had the subway hack, do you remember that?
It was basically the autumn 1997 edition of 2600.
After the Beyond Hope conference, on our cover, we have a hack sign in the subway system.
It basically says the hacker quarterly, volume whatever, number whatever.
It was done as the illustration for our front cover.
It was done in advance of that front cover for us as a gift.
And it was kind of like a message to get out to people that, hey, we're still around, you know.
But it was reported in all of the newscast.
Every single TV station in New York City reported this as the subway system being hacked.
And all it was was somebody pointing like the equivalent of a TV remote at one of those signs that scrolls a message.
There was no password.
There was nothing that could prevent somebody from doing this.
That was the hack.
And it was only one sign that was affected.
So this is not that different.
It was one sign on a highway.
So they changed it, you know, with some Putin advice.
Okay, now Russian hackers are accused of targeting U.S. and Ukrainian organizations.
And they have set their sights on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and multiple Eastern European countries.
Google's Threat Analysis Group reported this last Wednesday, reinforcing U.S. officials' warnings about Russian-based cyber attacks on global targets.
A Russian-based hacking group known as Cold Driver, or Callisto, your pick, has targeted one of NATO's Centers of Excellence military training organizations, as well as multiple unnamed Eastern European nations.
Google said this in a tag blog.
All these phrases I'm supposed to know that I don't think I do.
A tag, well, that's the Threat Analysis Group, but they have their own blogs, I guess.
And they say these are the first observed attempts by Cold Driver to target the NATO training center or the Eastern European countries.
The hackers attempted to carry out phishing campaigns, which is a type of cyber attack that tries to steal user data, like usernames, passwords, or credit card information, using email addresses that appear to belong to trusted entities.
Google said it is unsure whether the attacks were successful, as the hackers targeted non-Google email addresses using new Gmail accounts, but it has not spotted any successful phishing attacks on Gmail accounts during these campaigns.
Cold Driver has also attempted phishing attacks against multiple unnamed U.S.-based non-governmental organizations, a Ukrainian defense contractor, and the military of an unnamed Balkan country.
I don't think this could be any more vague than if you just kind of made it up on the fly.
Yeah, there's people out there using Gmail accounts to try and get information and hack other accounts.
Not surprised.
Not surprised at all.
It's so funny to me that the other information that you would need to verify or kind of cross-reference this and place it to give you more insight into it is stuff that might not be public or remains only certain organizations know about it, or there are private security companies that are aware of more details.
So it remains this vagary, this gray area, and we don't really get a good explanation for it.
Because, yeah, it could be, matter of fact, just another day at NATO's training center or specifically these Putin hackers.
I think they should be Putin hackers, right?
They're not Russian.
Putin hackers.
I like the sound of that.
Hey, are you a Putin hacker?
Everybody's so convinced, well, the priorities of this military campaign, they wouldn't be the same if he wasn't there.
So I'm not entirely convinced of that.
But like, okay, let's say that the Russian hackers aren't necessarily at fault here.
These are state hackers, and it's not necessarily the government so much.
It's Putin's regime, so it's Putin's hackers in this case.
I meant it the other way.
I meant somebody who's hacking Putin.
Putin hackers.
That's what I meant by it.
But I guess it probably could work out.
What was the hack on NATO?
Okay, go on.
Anyway, sorry.
Don't want to get on their knees.
That's it.
We're suspecting that there's entities hacking other entities.
Hey, you got to take it all, be skeptical of it all, and realize that there's these kinds of things going back and forth, and they can be all manner of wrong.
Go ahead, Gail.
But are we not saying there's not enough actual news that the news is maybe this sort of thing is maybe happening?
We have hard evidence of a lot of other things that are going on.
Maybe this is not the best place to focus our energies at the moment.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Well, here's a listener letter.
How about that?
From Charlotte.
Good evening.
I heard your show recently when you talked about an email scam involving Bitcoin payoff to stop the scammer from sharing video with porn use to all your contacts, et cetera.
All right.
What?
All right.
Does that ring a bell?
I've recalled this email.
I know a lot about this type of thing.
Can I read the email first?
Yeah, go ahead.
Read it.
My partner received that email this afternoon.
We are not worried about the porn part since it isn't a reality.
We are concerned about them having her email password, which they showed.
She changed her password, but we don't understand how they got it to begin with and how to prevent them getting it again.
Also, should we report this to someone, and if so, who?
We love your show and support WBAI.
Please let us know what we should do.
Thanks, Charlotte, for that nice letter.
As far as what you should do, first of all, support WBAI.
Give to WBAI.org or call 212-209-2950 and pledge your support to keep this radio station going.
That is super important.
But letting us know about this is important because then we can talk about it and let other people know.
I'll let Kyle speak in a second, but basically what I believe is that, and I've seen these emails too, they didn't just hack your password.
What they did was they hacked a service that was insecure where that password was used by that email account.
I'll give you an example.
Let's say that you have your main email account.
Let's call it Gmail since so many people use Gmail.
You have your Gmail account.
You use a password there.
Then you have your supermarket loyalty program, which nobody really cares if they hack into that.
It's just a filler, but you use the same password there.
Okay, Gmail wasn't hacked, but the supermarket was, and they got everybody's password.
You're going to see that password, and you're going to say, oh, my God, how did they get my password?
Because you use the same password for different things.
Now, if you use a different password or a variation, you can tell where the insecurity was and which one was compromised.
They did not get into your machine.
They got into a weak link in the chain where that password was used, so it's an argument for not using the same password.
It's an argument for mixing it up a bit because somewhere along the line, something will be compromised.
Go ahead, Kyle.
Yeah, I was just going to say it could even be that very e-mail organization depending on what address.
Okay, even Gmail.
Maybe there was a breach along the way.
Someone bought or otherwise obtained a huge list of passwords and e-mail addresses that could be targets.
So this campaign is instead of getting in and just pulling all of your e-mail,
which maybe they had time or were or were not interested, they're using this to hustle you,
make you feel the sense of urgency and act to send them a fee because of embarrassing information they allege to have.
You know that's not true, but they're setting you up in this way.
You can easily tell if you use text-based e-mail or otherwise look at where the e-mail is coming from.
Sometimes there's spoofing and other ways that they're trying to trick you into thinking that this is an actual – that's coming from somewhere else and so on and so forth.
Rob, you have to add the last word because we're out of time.
Yeah, check your e-mail address at haveibeenpwned.com.
That's H-A-V-E-I-B-E-N-P-W-E-N-E-D.com.
That's haveibeenpwned because that will check to see if your e-mail address was in any other data breaches that these people could have gotten a hold of, and you'll then know where that data breach was.
Okay, we are out of time, but we're going to continue on overtime, which you can find on YouTube.
Channel 2600 is our channel.
You can click on the link that's on the 2600.com webpage.
We'll be back next week.
Write to us, oth at 2600.com.
Good night.
Good night.
The numbers are different, the crime is still the same.
From the graves of Belsen where the innocent were burned, to the genocide in Beirut, Israel was nothing but.
I can still hear people crying, now who takes their blame?
The numbers are different, the crime is still the same.
From the graves of Belsen where the innocent were burned, to the genocide in Beirut, Israel was nothing but.
I can still hear people crying, now who takes their blame?
The numbers are different, the crime is still the same.
The numbers are different, the crime is still the same.
This is Ralph Poynter.
Join me and others every Wednesday, 8 to 9 p.m. Eastern Time on WBAI 99.5 on your radio dial.