Government Hacking Tools Are Now in Criminals' Hands (with Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai)
4/27/202651 min
This week Joseph talks to Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, a journalist at TechCrunch. Lorenzo has possibly the deepest understanding of one of the wildest cybersecurity stories in years: how an employee of Trenchant, a government malware vendor that is supposed to only sell to the ‘good’ guys, secretly sold a bunch of hacking tools to a Russian company. Those tools, it looks like, then ended up with the Russian government and possibly Chinese criminals too. It’s a really insane story about how powerful hacking tech can fall into the wrong hands. Inside the story of the US defense contractor who leaked hacking tools to Russia US military contractor likely built iPhone hacking tools used by Russian spies in Ukraine Youtube Version: https://youtu.be/MWxLqopMo5o Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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First 90 secondsLorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai· Guest0:00
This stuff was probably used for really bad things. And I'm speculating, but I don't think this is a crazy theory. The Russian government maybe wanted to find out the position of some Ukrainian troops. They could have used this, and then they could have killed them.
Joseph Cox· Host0:12
[upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to the 404 Media podcast, where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist-founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to fourohfourmedia.co. As well as bonus content every single week, subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments, and they get early access to our interview series too, like this episode. Gain access to that content at fourohfourmedia.co. This week, we're joined by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai. He is a writer from the technology website TechCrunch. I have known Lorenzo for years and years and years. Actually, all of us have at 404 Media. We all used to work with him at Motherboard, the technology section of Vice, and he really was an inspiration to me. I remember when he published an article about how the Italian government malware company HackingTeam was selling its government spyware to the Drug Enforcement Administration. And I was like, "Wow, you can figure this stuff out by looking