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And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York. It's 8 o'clock on a
Wednesday. That means it's time once again for Off The Hook.
But if they could, they would. Von Diddley Bond, for the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. Von Diddley Bond!
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 Rob T. Firefly. Good evening. Kyle. Hi. Voltaire. Hey. And here we are for
another action-packed hour of hacker talk and various other things. This note,
we will not be taking phone calls, so don't camp out in the phone lines. We
will not be taking phone calls this hour. So there, I said it. That was really
definitive. Well, I don't want to waste people's time. A lot of people tune in
specifically so they can call in. So this way they can go about their
business and go outside, do something else maybe, if that is their goal for
the night, is to get on the radio on the phone. I've just dashed that hope.
Just so quickly. Effortless, really. Well, I got it out of the way. There you go. A couple other
things I want to get out of the way. Things that I don't like. Well, one thing I
really don't like is fake news. I hate fake news. Right? I mean, people hate fake
news. It deceives you. It misleads you. It gives you either false hope or false
sense of doom. And Wikipedia is doing something about it. Yeah, the founder of
Wikipedia says he's on a mission to fight fake news. Jimmy Wales is launching
a news platform that is going to bring journalists together with an army of
volunteer fact-checkers. And he's calling the site, are you ready, WikiTribune. Yeah,
WikiTribune. And basically, the way it's going to work, they're going to publish
news stories written by professional journalists. So that won't change, actual
professional journalists writing stories. But in a page borrowed from Wikipedia,
internet users will be able to propose factual corrections and additions. The
changes will be reviewed by volunteer fact-checkers. You know, I think Wikipedia
works. I was very doubtful of it when I first heard of the concept. But the
number of people that are involved, the number of people that have volunteered
their time to get facts right, yeah, you might get something profoundly wrong
for a short period of time, but it's very quickly corrected. Go ahead and, you
know, say that Manhattan is the biggest city in North Dakota, and you'll see how
quickly that gets taken down. A matter of seconds. I don't know how they do it. I've
never done it myself, but it works. It really does work. So I'm optimistic about
this. What do you think, Rob? I'm interested. I mean, I'm a Wikipedia user
and contributor for a long time, and one thing I deeply respect about
Wikipedia is the way that it does work, and the power of the citation needed tag
when something particularly questionable shows up. And applying that to
a news outlet, I think, I've read and watched and listened to many
news stories at which I've screamed back, citation needed, and now we can do
something like that. And, you know, it's done in a way, at least I hope it'll be
done in a way that's not like comment boards, where everybody seems to think
they can just spout off anything they believe in and make it count equally
towards the article, which was written by somebody who did the research and knows
something about the subject. So it'll be nice to have that going on in the
background, having it approved and whatever, but if something is factually
incorrect, it'll be caught. It'll be fixed. Walter? Wikipedia, an organization
in Wikimedia, already has a news, something like Wikipedia for news, called
Wikinews. Yeah, I was wondering about that. What's the difference? It does a decent job. It
has a decent breadth, but what's interesting here is that they're
admitting that news isn't the type of thing that you can, especially
investigative journalism, that you can just have editors do for free. It's
something that you actually need to pay for. Investigative journalism is
really expensive, and that's what's interesting here. Yeah, and that's what a
lot of people don't seem to get that. Yeah, you do have to pay people to do this
right, and the content needs to be paid for in some way. I have to say,
though, the way it's done now on the web is insane. If you do take out a
subscription to the New York Times, which I'd recommend, it doesn't help you
reading the LA Times or the Washington Post or even Newsday. You know, there's
all kinds of different outlets out there, and if you go to Google News, you'll be
hit with all of them, and they all have their handout. There is no one
particular way to, say, pay a set fee and subscribe to all the ones that are of a
particular class of service. It would be nice if that existed, because, you know, I
want to support these outlets, the ones that actually put time into writing
news stories, but it's annoying when you support one, and it doesn't count for
anything when you go to another story someplace else. Sometimes it's even linked
to from the first one. There's only so many things you can support, so it'd be
nice if there was something kind of that covered the minimal amount, and I
think it would be more successful. Yeah, I've played a little bit with Wiki
News in the past. As you said, it's generated entirely by the community,
which can be interesting, but mostly it ends up sort of a weird, bland-by-consensus
thing, whereas the difference with Wiki Tribune seems to be that they're
going to have a staff of professionals generating the stories, and everyone else
is basically going to be helping them along and fact-checking them and stuff.
It's as if the New York Times or something like that put a news story out
there, but then enabled those who can back up their sources to add to
the article and correct things. Exactly, yes. I'm not sure, though, from this, if
they're going to have people who are Wiki Tribune employees doing this, or if
they're going to be using an existing pool of professional journalists and
putting it on the Wiki Tribune site. I guess that's something we'll find out
when it launches. Do we know when this is going to launch? Is it about a
month, I think? Wow, okay. Well, that's good to know. It's high time we
could use something like this. Also, interesting, like Wikipedia, the
content will be freely licensed, so it's going to be a Creative Commons
attributions license, which means you'll be free to redistribute it. Yeah, well,
you know, the way I look upon it, if it's on the web, you can distribute it. If
it's a news story that is out there, you can read it on the air,
you can print it, you can share it, and that's why it's there. That's why it's
on the web. It's publicly accessible. It's worth noting that, as
Voltaire said, this hasn't gone well, or it's been something that they've tried
in the past, but hasn't taken off quite as much. It was Wikinews. It's sort of
sparsely populated with stuff. It's not as comprehensive as something like
Google News, and it's not a foregone conclusion that this will work. This is
an additional attempt, and in this climate, it could be something that
Wikipedia could bring a lot of value to in their ability to have people
curate it in the way that other parts of Wikipedia is curated. Well, now,
speaking of fake news, it brings me, of course, to Facebook. I was on Facebook
a couple days ago. I don't go on Facebook very often. It's annoying. I don't like
the interface. I don't like the people, honestly. I don't like people on Facebook.
I'm sorry. It's a fact. For some reason, people I get
along with in real life, they annoy me on Facebook. I don't know why that is, so I
avoid it at all costs. Occasionally, though, I just check in to
see what's going on, catch up. I'm bored. The first thing I saw was this news
story that the guy that plays Newman on Seinfeld had died. I was
really sad by this. It turns out it's fake news. This news story right there,
first thing I see when I log into Facebook, is that Wayne Knight has died.
It took me about 10 minutes to realize, hey, that didn't
happen because I was on Wikipedia, of all things, and there wasn't a
date of death listed. Now imagine that. The thing that stays on
Facebook, it's always there. I don't know who puts out these things. I've heard
many people complaining about fake news. I didn't know it was that much in
your face, where something that was blatantly false is just there, seeming to
be real. Maybe you click on it, maybe you don't, but if you don't click
on it, it stays in your head. It runs against the spirit of
everything that we should be doing, spreading fake information. If this is
the kind of thing that has been going on throughout the election, if this is how
people have been getting their facts, their quote-unquote facts,
then, wow, that explains an awful lot. It really does. There was no way for me to
get rid of this. It was just there. I'm sure that there's all kinds of
conversations going on where people believe this, and it gets spread.
Fake news gets spread. That's one problem with Facebook, but, you know, another
problem, like I said, the people who are on Facebook. I just got this story today.
This came in my Google News feed. What to do if your Facebook has been
hacked. And I'm sorry, there's just something so funny about that title in
and of itself. What to do if your Facebook has been hacked. First of all,
that phrase years ago would make people just bust out laughing because who cares
if Facebook got hacked. But here's the story. It comes from an organization
called Newswire.net. There is no way that you would ever think that it would
happen to you. But sadly, it happens every day to hundreds or even thousands of
accounts. And the race for the Pulitzer is on. Finding your Facebook has been
hacked is a scary and confusing event. Really? A scary and confusing event? Wow.
Okay. A mild annoyance is how I would phrase it. But scary and confusing? Okay.
One in which you must act quickly to minimize damage done to your personal
information and possibly to your friends. Finding out that your Facebook has been
hacked means that you potentially have lost sensitive personal and even
financial information to the hackers who have hijacked your account. Who puts
financial information on their Facebook account? I guess there are people who do
this. I just, I can't conceive of why. Me either. Can any of us? Volta, can you conceive of this?
They tried doing micro-purchases before, but the initiative didn't really take off.
And I don't know if they even still offer it. Alright. So, I mean, you wouldn't put
your bank info on there, would you? Or... They don't have like a Facebook currency,
do they? I hope not. But this is a good reason why they shouldn't. They've tried
that, too. Most of us use our accounts over a long amount of time, and it
reflects in this here. And although we are careful in what information is
shared through the social media platform, doesn't sound like you're careful to me,
but okay, fine. At times of hurried communication, we might often share a
little more than is safe for us to. There's so much wrong with this story. So
much wrong. We won't have time to get into it all. Addresses, telephone numbers,
passwords, credit card details, passports, or IDs. So much... This is a sentence.
Or IDs, so much can be available for a hacker to harvest from your hacked account.
I don't even know what that sentence is trying to say, but I'm getting in there
that people post their passports to Facebook and their credit card details.
It makes no sense to me. Without realizing we can give out details and private
information which we consider safe because only our friends can see it.
Friends in quotes. When a hacker enters your world and can see what only you see,
things become a lot more dangerous. Well, listen to this. Anybody who accesses your
Facebook account can see what you can see, obviously, but why in God's name are
you putting things on there that can hurt you? It makes no sense to me at all.
You know, I use Facebook for communication occasionally, but why would you put your
passport on there? Why would you put your credit card on there? Why would you put
other passwords on there? Makes no sense, Rob. Yeah, I don't use Facebook myself,
but if I did, this is still stuff that I wouldn't trust Facebook themselves with,
let alone anybody who had access to my Facebook. Absolutely, and that's who you would be
trusting. You'll be trusting Facebook with it. You're giving all this information.
Yeah, I'm curious. Are they offering something like a cloud storage service where
people would be assuming that their files and data is safe and some kind of thing
like akin to a Google Drive or... You mean here, what I'm reading? Are they
offering? Is that what you're asking? I'm curious if Facebook offers something and
the articles implying that that service is potentially where people keep information
like a scan of a passport or something. Well, let's get back on the ride and see
where this article takes us. In the occurrence that your Facebook has been
hacked... In the occurrence that your... This is... I'm an English major and this is
just hurting. I'm getting internal pain reading this. In the occurrence that your
Facebook has been hacked, there is no time to waste. You should gain back... No,
that's still the same sentence, so that's why I kept going. There is no time to
waste. You should gain back control of your account immediately. That's the
wrong place to put the comma, but whatever. There's no time to waste to gain
your account. Every minute the hacker is in possession of your personal
information means that you might be further... Wait a minute, there's a comma
there? Every time the hacker is in possession of your personal information,
comma, means that you might be further in danger of losing your personal
information. I just want to think maybe somebody hacked this story and inserted
all kinds of commas where they shouldn't be. Anyway, not to ridicule too much
because there's other things to ridicule. Steps you should take if your
Facebook has been hacked. You know, the right way to say this, folks, your
Facebook account, all right? Don't refer to it as your Facebook. I don't know,
there's something about that that just bothers me. Well, because Facebook has
accounts that are a part of the greater whole of Facebook. There aren't
individual Facebooks. Yeah, you don't talk about one Facebook. You don't talk
about your Yahoo, your Hotmail, your Google, your Gmail, rather, you know?
You do say Gmail, but that's a service. No, you don't say someone hacked my Gmail. My
Gmail account. Yeah, you know, actually, I stand corrected. You're right. Yeah, they
would say the account. Anyway, here are the steps. Regain control of your account.
Okay, that's a good step right there. First, a bit of useful information.
Chances are that you will receive an email notification if a new or unusual
log has logged in, rather, has happened to your account if you have this awesome
feature turned on your Facebook account. So please do make sure that you receive
email notifications for your account, unless you're a dumbass and your email
account has also been hacked. Access the damage. Okay, I think what you mean to say
is assess the damage. Oh boy, take a look at what information was available in your
account, then act accordingly. If you have any credit card details, better cancel
the card and order a new one. If you have ID information or Social Security, report
the hack to the police. Yeah, because the police have nothing better to do than to
deal with idiots who use lame-ass Facebook passwords and have their
accounts hijacked. Yeah, call 9-1-1 for that. They'll be thrilled to hear from
you. Number three, inform your friends. They'll love it. It's best to post a
general notice on your wall that your Facebook has been hacked in order for
your friends to not fall victim to any scams or malware that might have been
placed by the hacker. Yeah, because that's what we do. We go into your Facebook and
then we place malware and all kinds of horrible things in there and send it to
your friends so we can victimize them as well. It's a real
good business we got going here. Often they will receive a link and message
from who they think is you, so they trust that it's legitimate. The link may
contain malware or a fake page asking for personal or login information. I
wish this was a fake page, but it's not. It's a real page. And four, report and
then delete. Report all hacking attempts and actual hacks directly to Facebook.
It's your duty, not only for your rights, but for others who might fall victim to
a hacker. Report the incident and then make sure to delete anything posted or
shared during the time that the hacker has control of your account. It's better
to be safe than sorry. You know, if it's better to be safe than sorry, we wouldn't
have to read this whole article in the first place. You know, you would have been
safe from the start and you wouldn't have left the door wide open so
people can take advantage of your naivety. Anyway, let's finish this article
so we can move on. There is so much you can do to protect your account, but
hackers are always fighting for a way to break in. From Facebook gamers to people
who share the information via quizzes. What does that mean? They share the
information via quizzes. And what's a Facebook gamer? Is that that stupid
forum app? Is that a Facebook gamer? They spend their time doing that?
Farmville. Farmville. Okay, you know what? If you're victimized by a Farmville
player, I don't think it gets much lower than that. Yeah, I just I just pissed off
the Farmville gamers. Farmers. Come and get us. We're right here. You're opening
yourself up to to hacking or malware attempts. Make sure that you have a
strong password. We're like eight paragraphs in before that little hint is
given out. That is never stored anywhere that can be assessed online. Then they
use the word assess instead of accessed when they should have used access. Wow.
And never accept friend requests or messages from people you don't know. I
never do. Yeah, don't ever talk to strangers because they're always evil.
So yeah, that's that's good to keep that going. Okay, you know, I'm sorry if I was
overly harsh on this article, but boy it could have used an editor. Could use some
professional oversight here. Comes from a site called newswire.net and apparently
you can subscribe to this site and pay them money so you can write news stories
and get them sent out via Google to people who will then click on them and
believe that they're real. And you know in this case the article itself is real.
It's just very poorly written, but this is how it works now. You pay a company so
that you can send out either a press release or a news story. Then Google will
send it to everybody and you will read that and that's how journalism has
degraded to this point. It's really kind of sad. Either that or they're
writing with anticipation that their work will be dismissed as fake, out
of hand, so why even try? Yeah, and apparently they pay this company to do
this too, which is really kind of unbelievable. Voltaire? I think even worse
than this article's writing style is they didn't even have the actual one
piece of technical advice for how to secure your Facebook, which is to turn on
two-factor authentication. And that means that instead of having just a password
that anybody can't... Do you really think they could understand the concept of
two-factor authentication? No, but I think our listeners should. Just go to your
Facebook settings and next time that you want to log into Facebook you
have to, in addition to submitting your password, it'll text you if you give
them your phone number or enter and have an authentication app on your phone and
it'll provide a one-time code. And of course us hackers will figure out a way
around that too, just to keep that writer in panic of hackers. But yeah,
it's orders of magnitude more secure. Rob? I suspect that this site
purposely posted this article in hopes that maybe someone who's a professional
editor by trade who also has a radio show will critique it and do the
editing work for them for free. So you're playing right into their hands, Emanuel.
No, I'd have to pay. It's not free. It's the thing you have to pay to join this.
Okay, here's what they say. Become a writer. Newswire is a social media site
for writers. By contributing to Newswire, you gain credibility. Try again. Get
published and make some, you can make money too. Okay, now I'm listening. You
have the ability to make a difference without asking permission from
traditional sites. As the largest and fastest growing citizen journalist site
in the world, Newswire allows you to create a portfolio while sharing your
messages with the world. Wow, and this is riddled with all kinds of typos as well.
I can't even begin to get into that. Yes, we need this wiki journal ASAP. We need
Wiki Tribune. I'm sorry. I'll get the name right when it becomes established.
I'm here to help. Yes. All right, fun things coming.
1984 is coming to the Hudson Theatre and Broadway. I've heard about this.
Yeah, starting on, it looks like May 18th. It was originally a London production.
I don't, I can't remember what their theater district's called, but it has-
The West End?
Moved its way. Yeah, the West End. There you go. It is moved from the UK and it is
going to have its debut here in New York City. And so that's going to be taking place
very soon. I believe in the month of May. Yes.
For two to three weeks, two and a half weeks at the Hudson Theatre. I think you already said that.
Yes. So let's look that up online. And 1984, the George Orwell classic.
Yes. It's by George Orwell and it's about a surveillance state.
Uh-huh. It's musical, right? Is it a musical? Oh, no, it's not a musical.
It's a dramatic production. I'm sorry. Dramatic production. Okay.
And here it says it's a chilling, ingenious 101 minutes of theater.
Okay. That's the London Times.
Wait a minute. It's a live production. Do they got a, they have a timer going? Come on.
Come on, Winston, hurry up already. You're lagging.
Right. We got to be out of here by 10.
Why 101 minutes? Because Room 101, that's why. Hey, that's actually genius.
Okay. Okay. I don't know if they thought that, but now they can say they did.
That's probably why. Wow.
I've revealed myself to be ignorant of the story.
Or I revealed myself to be very smart. Either one.
I didn't get that reference at all, but I still have the paper. So I can at least pretend to be
intelligent. Yes. Yes. That's what it's all about here. Okay. And we have some more news to pass
along. Some more interesting items that are either serious or ridiculous. The teenager who created
the titanium stressor program. Do you guys remember this? The titanium stressor program?
What? Yeah. He has been sentenced to two years in jail.
Because between late 2013 and early 2015, there were a number of distributed denial
of service attacks carried out against various game servers and websites. And now the hacker
that created the software responsible for those attacks has been sentenced to two years behind
bars. Hackers carried out over 1.7 million attacks using the titanium stressor program
created by 20 year old Adam Mudd. His name literally is Mudd. Wow. His name. Yeah. The
attacks targeted networks, including Xbox Live, Team Speak and others, as well as God forbid
Minecraft. He was also personally responsible for 594 DDoS attacks against 181 IP addresses
between December 2013 and March 2015. Mudd also sold the program to other hackers,
earning nearly half a million dollars in cash and Bitcoin. Okay. Wow. Well, that's different.
Earning that much money from that kind of a utility. He pled guilty to the charges,
also admitted to breaching the security of West Hertz College. The judge noted that the crimes
in question had repercussions from Greenland to New Zealand. I challenge anybody in Greenland
who was affected by this. There probably is somebody, some gamer there from Russia to Chile
and said that for the sentence he handed down, he said the sentence that he handed down would need
to have a real element of deterrent. According to the Guardian, Mudd showed no emotion at the
verdict. You know, okay, I take exception to making half a million dollars selling this kind
of a tool in the first place, but really jail for disrupting some gamers and doing denial of service
attacks. We have denial of service attacks all the time and no one ever comes to us and says,
hey, you know what? If we catch the guy, we'll put him in jail. All they ever tell us is we can't
figure out where it's coming from. There's nothing you can do, but you can subscribe to our service
and pay us a huge amount of money and we might be able to do something in the future. You know,
kind of like the mob. That's what we're faced with, but apparently the bigger companies,
if you attack them, they get to put somebody in jail. It just doesn't seem like an even playing
field. I'm confused about an element of this story. Did this person actually personally set
off the attacks or did he just make the tool that other people used? Well, they say he wrote the
titanium stressor, but he also personally was responsible for a couple of the DDoS attacks,
594 of them. So yeah, he was busy too. I guess he had to test it, right? Make sure it works.
But we're better off finding ways to mitigate these things, to have them not be so effective.
Sending somebody to jail, okay, you get rid of one person. The tool is still out there
and someone's going to write a better tool and do something else.
It strikes me as a stupid way to deal with the problem. I don't know. I'm thinking now of
pressing charges against my sister. For all the years she used to unplug the controller
to the Nintendo when I was playing. There you go. That's the same thing, right?
It's true that this is absurd in the sense that you'd be judging a gaming network to be
equivalent to something that is critical infrastructure that does have repercussions
like this. You're applying that same idea and perspective to what is ostensibly
something for recreation. I think the jail sentence is a bit harsh,
but I don't think it's something that we should just let go.
No, I think any jail sentence is a bit harsh. Why are we imprisoning people that are intelligent,
that can program, and yeah, okay, got up to a bit of mischief. You know what? You want to
punish him, make him give back the money or something, okay? That's punishment.
Imprisoning somebody? Community service.
Yeah. I mean, are we really safer having this guy in jail? He made half a million dollars.
You know what? Build a bridge or something. There, that's your sentence.
Yeah. Unfortunately, the rationale is that we would be supporting someone who was disrupting
the normal course of these gaming companies' business.
You know, where I come from, disrupting is a good thing, all right? And if you can figure
out how to disrupt, you're onto something. Maybe we should be listening.
It is frustrating, though, if you want to just relax when you get home from work.
Lots of things are frustrating. When the hot water doesn't work, that's frustrating. I don't want to
lock up the people in Con Ed. Actually, I do, but that's a whole other issue.
The companies themselves, ostensibly, benefited from the knowledge of this exploit
and improved their networks, we can only imagine, since then, to be more robust and resilient to
an attack like this. Do you think they've improved? Or
they think they're just threatening people with jail and think that's the improvement?
It seems like they're doing a little of both. All right. Well, I want to move on to this other
story, too. And the only reason I want to move on to this is to give, what's the opposite of a
shout-out? Shout-down? Shout-at? No, that's the same thing.
Shout-out. I think it would be one of the seven deadly words.
I can't say that. Yeah.
All right. Well, this news site is called NewsX.com. And the reason I want to shout at them
is because I made the mistake of trying to print this story about Indian hackers that are crippling
more than 500 Pakistani government websites to avenge this guy's penalty, this guy named Jadhav.
And when you print it out, they print 20 pages of gibberish. The print dialogue comes up,
they have a little icon, I trusted it, didn't get the preview, figured it would just print the story.
Not only does it print text over the story of the part you can read,
it prints a whole bunch of more pages. There were so many sites that do this.
But this site in particular, try it out for yourself if you don't care about trees, NewsX.com.
I have no idea who they are, but another Google News winner here. Digitization in the nation has
now gone up to the next level altogether. Nowadays, apart from just using internet to
be connected to one another, people are now using it as a tool to avenge certain actions.
A few days ago, some digital warriors from India crippled numerous government websites of Pakistan
as a counter against the country's announcement of the death penalty to former Navy officer
Kalbhushan Jadhav, accusing him of espionage, taking out a digital surgical strike. I love
when they use military terms for digital things. Indian hackers got their hands on at least 30
Pakistani government websites. The hacking was taken out against the death penalty,
rewarded to Jadhav. He was accused of spreading sabotage activities in Karachi and Balochistan.
A message on a hacked Pakistani website read, charges against Kalbhushan Jadhav are fictitious,
fake, and farcical. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by him. This is an act of premeditated
murder. Earlier it was Sarabjit, now it's Jadhav. I would tell you who Sarabjit was,
but that part has been typed over by their wonderful printing utility. But yeah, okay,
that was another example of some hacking gone wrong. And finally, this story here about smart
TVs. We all know and love smart TVs, and how they can now be hacked in totally different ways. It's
a new hack, or a new attack rather, that uses terrestrial radio signals to hack a wide range
of smart TVs. And that raises an unsettling prospect, the ability of hackers to take
complete control of a large number of TV sets at once without having physical access to any of
them. In the past we've talked about this, but you've usually had to have physical access.
The proof of concept exploit uses a low-cost transmitter to embed malicious commands into a
rogue TV signal, and that signal is then broadcast to nearby devices. It worked against two fully
updated TV models made by Samsung by exploiting two known security flaws in the web browsers
running in the background, because all TVs have to have web browsers, that the attack was able to
gain highly privileged root access to the TVs. By revising the attack to target similar browser
bugs found in other sets, the technique would likely work on a much wider range of TVs. Now,
once a hacker has control over the TV of an end user, he can harm the user in a variety of ways.
No, not physical harm, but annoyances. Among other things, the TV could be used to further
attack other devices in the home network. If, say, your dishwasher is on the network as well,
yes, they might have access to that.
Well, it's true. I mean, you would have access, a very low-level access, to what is ostensibly
a computer. And I'll only use ostensibly one more time tonight, but you're really...
Well, you just did.
Oh, man.
Yeah, you can't use it anymore. But also, yeah, they can use the TV to spy on the user with the
camera and microphone that's embedded inside the TV set. You know, we really have to take a good
look at what we're putting in our homes and the worst possible outcomes, because those worst
possible outcomes will happen. Voltaire?
I think it's worth pointing out here that consumers don't really have a choice when it
comes to smart TVs. Like, literally, they don't sell non-smart TV models.
They can choose not to get one. They're not so smart, you know? Just like smartphones might
not be so smart.
The only non-smart TVs they sell are very low-end ones. So if you want a high-performing TV,
you have to get them. And the reason why they do this is not because consumers are asking for it
or because they want it. It's because this buying mechanism that we mentioned, they can sell
consumers' data for ad money. So they can make more money off you that way.
Well, you know what? I think a TV company out there can make a lot of money by selling a dumb
TV set that just receives signals and nothing else, and they promise we're not going to spy
on you. Rob?
I was always fascinated with the type of hack known as broadcast signal intrusion,
where somebody would take over the TV signal. And you see this a lot in, like,
fictional movies and stuff. But every so often, someone managed to pull it off. There was the
old Captain Midnight hack on Showtime back in the 80s.
Remember that? Yeah.
The Max Headroom—
Actually, that was HBO, I think.
Oh, HBO. You're right. But there was a Max Headroom incident where somebody broadcasts
their own Max Headroom performance over an episode of Doctor Who. And this kind of stuff
is really fascinating, but usually you would have to overpower a commercial TV station's
signal somehow, which is very, very difficult. But if you could just go out into some area,
broadcast something you want, and do what you want, broadcast what you want on everyone's
television in the area, that's a whole other way to look at this.
Yeah, micro-broadcasting, taken to the extreme.
Okay, it's mailbag time. And we've been getting a lot of mail lately,
so I want to go through as much of it as we possibly can. You can write to us to
oth at 2600.com. That's oth at 2600.com. Oh, yes, and before we delve into this, Voltaire,
we have an update on our social media Twitter account. What is it, Hacker Radio Show?
Yes, at Hacker Radio Show.
At Hacker Radio Show. And we're asking people to ask questions of us on the air tonight.
Is that what we're doing?
We won't be taking calls, but if you have any questions or comments about the story—
No, as I said at the beginning of the show, we will not be taking phone calls.
So, yes, send us a message this way through Twitter, figure it out, just direct message us
or tweet to us or something, and you'll be able to read it, right?
Correct.
Okay, because I'm too busy here with all the paperwork. At Hacker Radio Show. Of course,
the at is assumed. Everybody on Twitter has an at sign. Okay, here's our first letter.
It starts Dear Hacker. I like letters that start Dear Hacker.
I was just wondering if I should have received my premium yet from the latest WBAI fund drive.
I pledged for the 2016 Hope USB stick and I paid through the WBAI website at the time of pledging.
Sorry if I'm mistaken and you are still putting those premiums together. I thought you mentioned
sending them out during a show about a month ago. And this is from Tom. He also says,
thank you for many years of excellent radio. I've been a listener now for going on 20 years.
I am getting old. Well, Tom, no, you are not mistaken. We did mention about a month ago that
we were catching up to our other premiums. We got all those out, including Rob's paintings.
And now I'm happy to say we've caught up to the premiums from the last fund drive,
the winter fund drive of this year, believe it or not. And they are actually being sent
out this week. And that includes the thumb drives, the DVD sets, and the books, the Kevin Mitnick
books. So you might have gotten it already, or if you have not, you should get it within the next
week. And guess what? Next week, the spring fundraiser begins here at WBAI. So we have
that to look forward to. But very happily, we'll be starting it completely caught up on our premiums.
And that hasn't happened literally in years. So we're very happy about this. We've had
increased cooperation with everybody here at the radio station. And I have to say,
we've never been this organized. So hopefully, at last, hopefully we can stay up to date on
everything. But we're very happy to get this done. Okay, next letter. Hey, guys, I was walking
around my college campus and discovered there is a public free landline phone that still has
a dial tone. I'm not really good with payphones as they were being phased out just as I was getting
into technology. Not really good with payphones. Wow. Yeah, that's a thing. But I know you guys
used to do a bit on the statement I know of fracking stuff that's mixing, freaking, and
hacking. So my question is this. Is there anything I can do to get more info about this phone and the
line that it's on? Numbers I can dial and maybe get the number of the phone. It may be a private
network, as it says, for on-campus calls only, but there's no listing of internal numbers to call. So
maybe it can reach external numbers. I'm fascinated by these things, but I have no
idea where to start. Thanks for any help. And that's from Phil. Phil, thank you for your letter
and for the trip down memory lane where these things were common. It's not a payphone, obviously,
if it's for on-campus calls only. It sounds like what you got there is some kind of a free type of
hotline phone. Maybe they forgot about it. They're not telling you what you can call. But I imagine
any on-campus extension, you'd be able to dial from that. And as it's not a payphone, it wouldn't
cost you anything. And these things are actually quite handy. In fact, I think college campuses
still have them, right? They haven't phased these out. The best way to know is to try different
things. Try calling yourself, try calling known extensions on the network. But how would he try
calling himself? I would say dial 9, see if you get another dial tone. I doubt they just left it
there where you can make outgoing calls, but maybe they have. It's quite possible. Try everything.
But if you know of an on-campus extension, it's probably the last four or last five digits of
the actual phone number, try that. Dial 0. See what operator answers. Ask her for dialing
instructions or him. And that's how you learn. Just feel free to stand there in the cold,
in the middle of wherever the phone happens to be, and experiment to your heart's content well
into the early morning hours. That's what we've all done. And nothing beats that. Nothing beats
that at all. Rob? You may not be able to call outside lines just by phone number, but in the
case where you can call toll-free numbers, which might be the case, depending on how this is set
up, there was one that I've been using for decades and it still works. And I most recently tried it
the other day when this phone came in. Giving out phone numbers on the air? Okay, let's do this.
Yeah. I'm going to do this because it's terribly fun to play with. 1-800-444-4444.
That's MCI. That's MCI.
I have a database in my head. So if you tell me a phone number, I can instantly call it.
And we used to use that phone number to get our phone number back. I don't know if that still
works that way. It does still work that way. I've recently tested it. It still says it's at MCI,
and it will read you back the number you're calling from. So if you ever are presented
with a telephone you'd like to know more about, you'd like to know the phone number of it,
dial 1-800 and all fours, at least within America, and it should choke back the number at you.
Excuse me. I thought we weren't having phones tonight. No, I didn't say incoming calls. 800?
1-800, yes. Let's see what happens.
Thank you for calling MCI. Our system indicates you are calling from 3-4-7-3-3-5-0-8-1-8. If this
is the number you are calling about, press 1. If not, please listen to the following.
Okay, enough of that. But wow, that's a good guess. That is our phone number.
Yes, indeed.
Which we are not taking phone calls on tonight.
Yeah, you can't call it. I mean, you can call it, but you're not going to get anywhere.
Thanks for that handy tip, Rob. And maybe we should make this a feature of the show,
one number per week.
I don't know. If we get our own ANI every show, it'll start to get repetitive.
Well, it doesn't have to be that kind of a number. But yeah, going through the old issues of 2600,
as we digitize them, we see people writing in constantly with all kinds of phone numbers
and getting really excited by them. And you should be excited by these things because
they're interesting. They really are.
Okay, here's a letter about Fire Island phones. I asked around. You can still get copper wire
phone service on Fire Island. However, I was told that it's cheaper to get FiOS internet if you get
it packaged with internet phone. Verizon will charge you more to run internet than it will
to run internet with phone service. And I was told the reason behind the push to get rid of
copper had to do with problems with credit card machines being unreliable out there.
Thanks, Rupert, for that bit of information. I'm not sure how true what Verizon says
actually is, but it might very well be.
Okay, what else we have here? I just finished listening to last week's show and would like
to comment about the funny insurance company commercials. I don't think that they truly
understand the impact of what they are trying to portray. For them to think that accidents are an
everyday occurrence and have some comic element about them is disgusting on their part. Couldn't
agree more. Nine years ago, I lost my family to an ignorant driver who wasn't paying attention
to what she was doing. I was the only one of us who walked away without any physical harm. My wife
and three sons were already gone before I could get to that wreck, my God. And for the insurance
companies to call it an accident is just a way for that driver to not claim ownership of what she
had done. The word accident really needs to be replaced with incident because that's what it
truly is. That's my feeling about how insurance companies portray themselves, just disgusting.
Sorry, Christopher. And Christopher, deepest condolences for what you had to go through there
and very good points. Christopher also writes in with a suggestion for a name for our next
conference, which is our 12th conference. Our conferences are known as HOPE, Hackers on Planet
Earth, and we're looking for a good name for the next one. The previous one was called the 11th
HOPE, and we don't want to call the next one the 12th HOPE because that's just not imaginative,
and HOPE 12 is right out as well. Christopher's suggestion is HOPE 001100001000110010.
Much as that rolls off the tongue, I don't know if we'll get many people to
inject that into conversation. And you'd be surprised, actually, you're not the only person
who suggested that. But thank you. Thank you for that. Wow, that is something. Here's another
from Larry who suggests, okay, this is kind of interesting, and it's going to open up a whole
range of conversations here. A name suggestion for the 12th HOPE conference I could catch on.
Actually, there's no suggestion here. It basically refers us to a sublime number. Apparently,
12 is a sublime number. Now, a sublime number is a positive integer which has a perfect number
of positive divisors. Divisors, is that how you say it? Yes. Okay, I wasn't paying attention in
math. And whose positive divisors add up to another perfect number. So the number 12, for example,
is a sublime number. It has a perfect number of positive divisors. And the sum of these
is, again, a perfect number. 1 plus 2 plus 3 plus 4 plus 6 plus 12 equals 28.
There are only, this blew my mind here, there are only two known sublime numbers.
12 and a number I can't say because it's 2 to the 126 multiplied by 2 to the 61st minus 1.
I can't even say that. But it has 76 decimal digits. And apparently, nobody has found a third
one. So, okay, you know what? Larry, 12 really is a unique number based on that. But how in God's
name do we express this? Sublime HOPE, I guess. Yeah. Is that what your suggestion was? Sublime
HOPE? Okay. That's not bad. That's not bad. I like that. It's actually pretty close to some of
the better ones that we've heard. Okay. All right. Well, we'll keep that one in mind for sure.
Here's another one. And we sure got a lot of these. Thank you for broadcasting a little
HOPE into our lives every week with your wonderful radio show. Isn't that nice?
And not just when we play HOPE excerpts. I have a feeling there's a but.
No, there's no but here. There's an as. We'll take that too. As for the 2018 HOPE conference,
I think that it should be named the Abundant HOPE or HOPE Abundant. Because guess what?
12 is the first abundant number. Oh, my God. That's an abundant number too. And by 2018,
we will all be filled with an abundance of hope that we can manage to continue to survive for
two more years. Or we'll never get there, in which case it doesn't really matter.
So, okay. What's an abundant number? Here we go. In number theory, an abundant number or
excessive number, that one I can get behind, is a number for which the sum of its proper divisors
is greater than the number itself. Okay. The integer 12 is the first abundant number.
Its proper divisors are 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 for a total of 16. The amount by which the sum exceeds
the number is the abundance. The number 12 has an abundance of 4, for example. Okay. Bryce,
thank you for this. Thank you for giving our brain something else to chew on. Wow. Okay. Is
any other special attributes about the number 12? Because it's really getting tiresome here.
Actually, I'm not convinced there's an abundance of hackers. You know, I mean...
Is that going to be our theme?
Maybe by then.
These are good suggestions.
They're great suggestions.
I like these.
I'm just saying if we are misleading in that we imply there's an abundance of
hackers on planet Earth, can we... I mean, we need to have everybody out there to really
contribute. We don't want to be made out to mislead or say that there is something that
there isn't. So we need that show of support from hackers if it's going to be in abundance.
Yeah. What's calling it sublime or abundant is that there are people out there who will get it
even though we won't go out of our way to say it. So they'll know how smart we are or how smart the
people who suggested this to us are. We have to erase this show so that they think it was our idea.
Well, regardless of the name, we could still use an abundance of hackers.
Okay. One more. This is from Alan. I suggest... Actually, two more. I'm sorry. I suggest the name
the year of hope as this being the 12th hope and 12 months in a year. 12 months in a year. Okay.
So I like that.
It doesn't really say it that much though. But the 12 months of hope,
but then that implies each conference is a month. The 12 hopes of... I don't know. Something...
The 12 days of Christmas, that thing. And we could latch onto that and do something fun maybe.
Yeah. I like this general direction, the time of hope, because obviously it occurs at a specific
time. All of those things are very good. The relevance of the 12 months in a year.
But it's in that vein of... Another one I had thought of was the age of hope and on and on.
There's different avenues you could go down with that. But these are all very good because they
tie together the length of time, periods of... Well, 12 is a really wacky number.
It's funny. Yeah. It's used in a lot of interesting...
12 months, 12 hours. We already used a clock theme, but still it's... And of course it's
abundant and excessive and sublime and all that. 12 inches in the imperial system.
That's right. 12 inches in a foot. I didn't want to be the one to say it, but...
A foot of hope. Okay.
Oh, there you go. A foot of hope. Oh, that's new. That's good.
I don't know what that means. It sounds really silly.
Yeah. A hope foot.
A hope foot. A foot of... Okay.
Is that like a mythological being, like Bigfoot?
Hey, guess what, folks? I lied. We are taking phone calls tonight. The reason I lied... No,
the reason I lied was because there are people who tune in at the beginning of the show
and they camp on the phone lines and all they want to do is be a caller. And we wanted those
people to go out and have fun. And the people that actually did their time and listened to
the whole show, you guys can call 347-335-0818 and say whatever you want to say on the radio
in the five or so minutes we have left. But here we have one more suggestion from Rick
from Shanghai who suggests Hope 1-2, like Hope 1 also, W-O-N-T-O-O. Hope 1-2.
I did like this one. It implied... Wait a minute.
The election results were a win for hackers. Okay.
So Hope 1-W-O-N-2. Another one I just thought of with the feet reference or foot references,
feet, a feet of hope. That's a good one. F-E-A-T.
Well, yeah, you could use the sound of the word.
Every hope is a feet. The play on words. Yeah, it is.
Okay, but you know what? Going back to Rick's suggestion here, Hope 1-2. It's clever,
you know, the W-O-N and the T-O-O, but what if we did the actual numbers 1-2 because that's 12,
but we're not saying 12. We're saying Hope 1-2.
You're spelling out the number. You spell it out, but it's actually Hope 12.
But phonetically, it's... Rick, I don't know if that's what you meant,
but I like that one. I like the others too, but that one kind of resonates with me.
All right, folks, give us your feedback on that. O-T-H at 2600.com. Our phone number
347-335-0818. If you want to say something on the radio now, we have no phone calls,
which means everybody must have tuned out as soon as we said we weren't taking phone calls.
Go ahead, Rob. I'm loving these ideas that are coming in,
but also I should point out it doesn't necessarily have to deal with the number 12. You know,
if you think of something devilishly clever that just stands on its own as something related to
hope, send it in. We'd love to see it. That's true. These are just guidelines,
and usually there can be a number of different thematic elements to the conference title. So,
please, this is just a guideline, just a general reference based on how many of these events we've
had. Oh, we had a phone call, and now it went away. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Voltaire.
I was going to suggest beyond the next hope. Well, yeah, that's got a couple of attributes.
Beyond the next hope and definitely not the last hope.
It's a conjunction of several past conference names, so that is a good use of previous ones.
Let's take this phone call. Good evening. You're on the radio.
Speak up, please. Go ahead. Hello?
Yes, go ahead. You're on. Is this the show?
Yes. If that's what you're calling, this is the show, and you are on the air right now.
Oh, I just want to say I've listened to the show for a long time. It's always very interesting.
There used to be a guy named Mike on the show. Am I wrong? Was there a guy who used to be named
Mike, and he's not there anymore? No, he still is named Mike, actually,
and yeah, we've had all kinds of people on the show. We used to have Isaac. We used to have Fiber.
Redhack. Redhack, remember? Well, he was a guest,
but we've had people come and go, and they come back, and yeah.
Okay, I got the point. Your memory is not faulty.
Thank you very much. Does that clear things up? All right.
Yep. Thanks. Thanks for that.
Some people, sometimes you need that.
You want to check in and see if someone has been in these studios? Well, not these studios. Those
are old studios, but yeah, we can verify that for you.
Yeah, we'll help with memory.
347-335-0818. You know, you could have checked that also by going into the archives and just
looking at- Yeah, we have show descriptions in our vast,
vast trove of recordings. There are great descriptions of each and every of these shows.
www.2600.com slash OffTheHook is how you find them. And we have another caller. Good evening.
You're on OffTheHook. Hey, my name's Brandon. I'm from Seattle,
so we do 26th Center up here. I have kind of a weird question, but-
Go ahead. A while back, we moved the meeting
away from the convention center. We know what you did. You moved to a coffee
shop that's very confusing to get to. You have to go through an alley and go up three flights
of stairs. We know about this. Yeah, we checked it out.
Okay. Yeah.
Dude, you know about it. We do know about it.
Did you think we wouldn't find out? No, we found out, and it's a good meeting place. We've seen it.
Oh, so you do think that. Yes.
So someone came in the chat room a while back and was like, hey, Emanuel found out,
and he's really bummed out. And we're like, why?
Okay, who said that? Yeah, who's spreading lies like this? Wow.
If I were bummed out, believe me, everybody in Seattle would know if I were bummed out. I was
not. I thought it was great. It was a challenge because it's on a street, right? The address of
the cafe is what's the street called? Oh, I'm blanking on that.
It's on University Way, but it's Union Alleyway. Yes.
But if you go into the address on University Way, you won't find it. You have to go around the back,
but that's also called University Way. Yeah.
But your question was simply if I was upset with the meeting place. Was that your question?
I just wondered if someone was trolling us or not.
Well, I think someone probably is. But even if we are upset with the meeting place,
you have the right to meet wherever you want to meet.
Well, yeah. And the most important thing is, are you happy with the meeting place?
And how is the meeting going there? Yes.
It's going great. It's growing. The thing with the convention center,
they started kicking us out of there, and they locked us out as soon as the meeting started.
That's not right.
No one could, yeah. We had to bail out of there.
No, if you have a good public space, and we're talking about 2,600 meetings or hacker meetings,
they usually take place the first Friday of every month, except in Israel where it's the
first Thursday of the month. And basically, all around the world, at the same time,
hackers get together in a public space and just congregate. It's not really a meeting
with an agenda. Some places have more of an agenda. But it's a way to interface with
the regular community of people that happen to be walking by.
So many times, our meetings have been at Citigroup in upper Manhattan,
and they've moved to the atrium across the street as Citigroup is being reconstructed now.
And we've met so many interesting people that didn't know what hackers were all about,
that stayed to talk with us for a few hours. And that's really the magic of it. And I hope
that's what you guys are experiencing out in Seattle.
Yeah, it's a great place. They're super accommodating. And it's kind of hard to
find. But we try to make it known, like, go upstairs, go on a thing, and the people know
we're working there, that it's up there.
It's a good neighborhood, too. It's very lively.
Yeah, it's great. It's great to hear that it's growing. And yeah, maintain the rapport with
the people there, and you should have many more successful meetings in the future.
Thanks. Thanks for your call.
All right. Thanks a lot.
And again, meetings take place first Friday of the month. Not this Friday coming up,
but the one after that, right?
Two weeks.
Two weeks. We might have time for one more phone call. If you call quickly,
347-335-0818, while I try and find the outro theme. Here's a call.
And good evening. You're on off the hook. Go ahead.
Hi. I'm just going to tell you that I want to thank you, because you were hysterically
funny when you were reading the horribly written article at the beginning of the show.
Well, thank you. I'm glad somebody got something out of that.
I was laughing my behind off. So I don't have any computer questions. I'm actually
off the grid entirely.
Oh, wow.
Yeah. So what business do I have calling a computer show? It's very ironic, because I'm
completely off the grid, and I have my little radio by my bed, and I listen to you all the
time during the show. I think it's very informative and interesting and entertaining.
But I just had to call in to thank you, because I was really laughing. You did a great job
with your comedy show.
Well, that means... Yeah, I was serious, but I know it's funny.
No, I know.
That means a lot, and I'm glad other people appreciate good grammar and good story writing.
And hopefully, we demand that kind of thing in the future. My only possible regret is
that the person who wrote it might have heard it, and I don't mean to be too hard on them,
but if you're going to wind up in my Google News feed, I expect some level of quality,
and I'm not going to back down from that. Yes, Rob?
Just a note, for anyone interested in our old pal, Mike, he's on Twitter as a very
Okay, great. And probably penning a letter saying,
how dare you give out my Twitter ID on the air, but we'll see about that.
All right, that's it for us this week. Write to us again, oth at 2600.com. We'll be back
next week for the spring fundraiser, and hopefully, we'll have all kinds of fun,
exciting things to do then, and in the weeks ahead. We'll see you next time. Good night.
Got out of the red and into the black. I'm looking to the future and I'm not looking back.
I hit the button called sound. You're my virtual boyfriend. You're like a MySpace friend, that's
all. Just a dead star on this call. I never knew when I lost control. But you love your blackberry
I can't touch you.
I've had enough of day. Threw the credit card away.
Got out of the red and into the black. I'm looking to the future and I'm not looking back.
I hit the button called sound. You're my virtual boyfriend. You're like a MySpace friend, that's
all. Just a dead star on this call. Didn't mean what I said at all. But you never ever fall.