This transcript was generated automatically, probably contains mistakes, and has not been manually verified.
GRAHAM CLULEY
I'm sorry, what?
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yes, look at it, look at it! Squish! This is what you do as an artist. Squish your eyes, squish your eyes, squish! Doesn't it look an armless woman, maybe, walking towards you?
Nude, nude, headless. I mean, not armless, what am I saying? Headless.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Graham, over to you.
Unknown
Smashing Security, episode 215: Sexy The Chaos Band on Facebook with Carole Theriault and Graham Cluley. Hello, hello, and welcome to Smashing Security episode 215.
My name's Graham Cluley.
CAROLE THERIAULT
And I'm Carole Theriault.
GRAHAM CLULEY
And we're joined this week by returning guest, it's senior BBC tech reporter Zoe Kleinman. Hello, Zoe.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Hello again. Thank you for being here, Zoe. Oh, thanks for having me back.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Oh, it's great when you're on. I love it. What have you been up to, Zoe?
ZOE KLEINMAN
What have I been up to? Oh, I've got engaged! That's my big news. Yay!
GRAHAM CLULEY
Huzzah!
CAROLE THERIAULT
Did you get engaged on Valentine's Day?
ZOE KLEINMAN
No, no, I didn't actually. Two weeks beforehand, which is going to make it impossible to remember, isn't it? We'll look back and say, when did we do it again? I don't know.
I can see why couples pick a memorable date now.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Let's thank this week's sponsors, 1Password and Recorded Future. Their support helps us give you this show for free. So coming up in today's Smashing Security.
Graham, what do you have?
GRAHAM CLULEY
I'm going to be telling you how the FBI have been trying to identify criminals, such as the Bad Hair Bandit.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Okay. And Zoe, what about you?
ZOE KLEINMAN
I'm going to be telling you about some sexy cows.
CAROLE THERIAULT
And my story is all around cryptocurrency. All this and much more coming up on this episode of Smashing Security.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Now, chums, chums, when you think of the FBI what do you think of?
CAROLE THERIAULT
What a weird question. What does that even mean?
GRAHAM CLULEY
Do you think—
CAROLE THERIAULT
You don't have to start every story with some kind of weird, you know.
GRAHAM CLULEY
It's what I do, Carole. This is the format of the show. Do you think of wiki wiki wow wow Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones and Men in Black?
Or do you think of an agile, state-of-the-art crime-fighting machine using the latest technology?
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you do. I don't think about the FBI, so I'm sorry, I can't play this one.
GRAHAM CLULEY
I mean, maybe you do, right?
You're just thinking, there they are in their— oh yeah, they'd be there in their little hideout, you know, spying upon people, gathering information about criminals, pressing buttons to enhance CCTV footage to work out who somebody is.
No, you're mixing it up with CSI instead. But what you may find is actually they're not completely stagnant.
They're not completely sitting on their laurels and not using new technology because if you go to the FBI website right now, you will find that they have revamped it.
Normally when you go to the FBI website, you are faced with thumbnails of the most wanted bad guys.
So you can check out, for instance, the most wanted cyber criminals around the world, many of whom appear to be wearing the uniforms of the Chinese military in their snapshots.
CAROLE THERIAULT
So that lives on their homepage, right? The most wanted bad guys.
GRAHAM CLULEY
That's right, yeah. And you can drill down into different kinds of badness which they may have done.
And ultimately, you end up opening up PDF documents on each one, which they call posters, as though people were gonna print them out and put them on their wall.
CAROLE THERIAULT
It feels so Wild West, doesn't it?
GRAHAM CLULEY
It does, it does.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yeah, yeah.
GRAHAM CLULEY
But what they've realized is that hasn't really been working terribly well.
And it's maybe not the best approach in order to deal with the hundreds, if not thousands of people who are persons of interest to do with the January 6th storming of the US Capitol building.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Right.
GRAHAM CLULEY
So they've recognised that it's going to be a bit complicated rounding all these people up because suddenly you have this huge influx of thousands of people around this building, many of whom weren't based in Washington, DC, many of whom were wearing baseball caps or other items of clothing.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Weren't wearing masks.
GRAHAM CLULEY
No, no.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Weren't wearing masks.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Not that kind of mask, not the kind of mask that you would hope they'd be wearing, no. So there's now a section on the FBI website specifically dealing with it.
They call it the Capital Violence section, where you can see a photo collage of people of interest.
Sometimes many photos of the same person, with an indication of what they're wanted for, whether it's an attack on a federal officer or a member of the media.
And they're asking people for their help, of course. Now, we've spoken before about social media folks getting involved in a manhunt, and how that can go wrong.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yeah, yeah. The Boston Marathon, for example.
GRAHAM CLULEY
The Boston Marathon bombing, yeah, exactly. Where the wrong person was identified. That's something which I think you have to be quite cautious of.
But of course, there's a lot of people who are very, very keen for these people to be identified and dealt with.
And so there have been a number of social media accounts which have been built up specifically now trying to identify people.
Now, when I first heard about this, I thought, well, that doesn't sound like a very good idea because—
CAROLE THERIAULT
If they get it wrong.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yeah, exactly.
CAROLE THERIAULT
And what about the doppelgangers?
GRAHAM CLULEY
Right?
CAROLE THERIAULT
Every— No, but— I worry about them, right?
Little, you know, say Martha, who just runs a little flower shop down in Nantucket, happens to look like one of the people on the page and then gets totally—
GRAHAM CLULEY
Do you think everyone has a doppelganger?
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yeah.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Yeah, I do.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yeah. Do you have a doppelganger, Zoe?
ZOE KLEINMAN
I do. Yeah. And I discovered this a couple of years ago when she was on Bake Off, and my phone blew up with people going, oh my God, have you— are you watching Bake Off?
Because you are on Bake Off. I can't bake for toffee, so it's just as well I was not on— It's not Paul Hollywood, is it?
GRAHAM CLULEY
He looks nothing like you.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Well, thank you. Wow. That's the aspiration.
CAROLE THERIAULT
That's how you get treated as a guest on our show.
ZOE KLEINMAN
I'm ashamed to say I can't remember what her name was, but so many people said it to me, and in the end I tweeted her and said, apparently we are doppelgangers and you need to do tech news and I need to do baking, and we had a little laugh about it.
But yeah, so there you go. I do have one.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Carole, do you have a doppelganger?
CAROLE THERIAULT
Well, I'm sure I do. I don't know. I don't have one that I've already—
GRAHAM CLULEY
I've got a long list for you.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Do you? Good, good. Let's save that, let's save that.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Oh, I've got another one. Can I tell you about my other one?
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yes, yeah, please do.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Nearly got me into trouble at work a few years ago. Apparently there's a lady, I don't know who she is, but she does voiceovers, you know, advertising stuff.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yeah.
ZOE KLEINMAN
One day I got hauled into my boss's office and he shut the door behind me and said, "You know, Zoe, I've got to have a word with you.
I know that you're saving up and you want to do some extra work, you've got to be picky about what you choose." I said, "Sorry, I don't know what you're talking about.
What are you talking about?" And it turned out that this woman who sounds like me was the voice of Sun Bingo, which being a BBC reporter did not go down very well. But it wasn't me.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Oh my God, I think it'd be quite fun to be a voiceover person, wouldn't it, if you could do that?
ZOE KLEINMAN
You'd probably be good at it, actually.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Oh, you're such a charmer, especially after my Paul Hollywood comment.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Well, you're not going to like this, but apparently the people who do best at voiceovers are people who have a very affable, calm, and fairly sort of normal straight voice.
So your big kind of character people who are very distinctive find it harder to get work than your kind of just straight professional friendly voice. So there you go.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yeah, you just blend in the background, Graham.
ZOE KLEINMAN
It wasn't quite the compliment though.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Exactly, good.
GRAHAM CLULEY
The FBI have had different methods of getting people interested in criminals before and identifying criminals.
Quite often, for instance, with bank robberies, they will come up with a nickname to reference the robber's physical appearance, right?
Rather than just saying a man walked in, he was 34 years old, they will call him the Geezer Bandit or the Grandma Bandit or the Plain—
CAROLE THERIAULT
What? Yeah, just to give them a kind of cachet?
GRAHAM CLULEY
Well, no, because then they get people talking about it. It's like we're on the hunt for the Plain Jane Bandit or the Too Tall— there's one called Too Tall Bandit.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yeah, this is what you want antivirus writers to do, right? Get cool with their names.
GRAHAM CLULEY
There's some incredible names the FBI have used for robbers. Others in the past, such as the Undead Bandit. It's like, well, what was that?
Because he looked like a zombie from The Walking Dead.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Bandit?
GRAHAM CLULEY
The Top Heavy Bandit. Well, yes, clearly in the Wild West of America. And the Bad Wig Bandit. And the one I particularly like, the Fake Hair Don't Care Bandit.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Ooh, someone was having a fun day then.
ZOE KLEINMAN
You want to be that bandit, don't you?
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yeah.
GRAHAM CLULEY
And sometimes they would even make fun of people. So there was, for instance, a robber who handed over a cash demand to the bank teller, but he couldn't spell robbery correctly.
And so they called him the Spelling Bee Bandit. So it's almost like they're trying to mock them into saying, "Oh, actually my spelling's great.
Oh, I shouldn't have put my hand up about that."
CAROLE THERIAULT
Okay.
GRAHAM CLULEY
The FBI, they're not choosing nicknames for the Capitol attackers yet, but other groups are.
So we've got the FBI have created and revamped their website to make it easier to hunt for particular people and find out more information about them.
But we've also got groups like Sedition Hunters.
Now, Sedition Hunters, they've got a presence on Twitter or on Instagram and Facebook, as well as a website where they are posting up pictures and they're creating viral little graphics, which they're encouraging people to share of individuals who've been caught up in—
CAROLE THERIAULT
Viral little graphics?
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yes, little graphics which you— Well, no, not viral as in—
CAROLE THERIAULT
It's during a pandemic. I just don't think you've chosen your words properly.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Just graphics which people might want to share. And so they're—
ZOE KLEINMAN
Like a meme. Yeah.
CAROLE THERIAULT
A meme-y.
GRAHAM CLULEY
A meme-y. Lovely meme-y is what's being used. So for instance, they posted one about the tricorn traitor. He looks a bit like a pirate. He's got one of those three-pointed hats on.
There's another young, fresh-faced attacker who's called the Capitol Boy Band, or #CaptainAdolf, or Pee-wee. Well, you see sort of funny moustache.
ZOE KLEINMAN
I'm losing the thread of this slightly. What century are we in again? I feel like I've fallen in— Who's writing these things? Anyone that was born in the last 100 years?
CAROLE THERIAULT
There are millions of people stuck at home, right?
ZOE KLEINMAN
Doing nothing.
GRAHAM CLULEY
I think some of these are quite creative, because when you look at #PeeWeeGreyMan, for instance, who's one of the people wanted, he does look—
ZOE KLEINMAN
I mean, that well-known hashtag that we've all used.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yeah, but he does look quite like Pee-wee Herman. Yeah, and you don't want to look like Pee-wee Herman.
GRAHAM CLULEY
No.
ZOE KLEINMAN
I'm not sure if you look like Pee-wee Herman, you're pretty distinctive.
CAROLE THERIAULT
I mean, do you need to?
ZOE KLEINMAN
That's true.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Hey everybody! As you go into a porn club in the middle of the day.
GRAHAM CLULEY
There's another one called the turtleneck trumper. Oh, you'd like this one, Carole. Luigi 'stache camo. Right, so he's got a great big plumber's moustache.
And another one I don't understand, just called scallops. I don't know why that is.
CAROLE THERIAULT
I wish you'd provided us pictures of these people, and then we could play the game.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Well, all you have to do is go to the Sedition Hunters website, and you will see pictures of all of these chaps, like I have. And you can check them out.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Okay, but how come they're not on the FBI website?
GRAHAM CLULEY
Well, the pictures are, but the FBI aren't yet using these names. I suspect they can't really go around calling someone a traitor before he's been found guilty.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Well, why not?
CAROLE THERIAULT
They called the Fake Hair, Don't Care Bandit.
ZOE KLEINMAN
That's pretty personal.
CAROLE THERIAULT
It's like, A, you're telling everyone I'm wearing a wig, and B, I care.
GRAHAM CLULEY
So it looks like people are having fun.
Now, what I'm impressed with, with the Sedition Hunters, is they are saying on every graphic, don't, goodness gracious, hold your horses, for heaven's sake, don't name this person if you know them.
Don't reply with their name. Contact the FBI directly. Here's the website.
So it doesn't appear that there's too much craziness going on because, of course, it would only require one person to say, Luigi Stashcamo looks rather like that plumber who came round the other day.
One person I want to tell you about is a chap called Jon Schaffer. Now, I'm sure you are both fans of the heavy metal band Iced Earth.
It goes without saying that you know Iced Earth, of course.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Nothing wrong with heavy metal.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yeah, yeah. You remember their albums, Night of the Stormrider?
ZOE KLEINMAN
Remind me.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Crucible of Man, Plagues of Babylon. Well, their founder, of course, is Jon Schaffer, who's been doing it for, oh, probably since the '80s. He was at the Capitol.
He allegedly sprayed police with bear spray while wearing a vest which had a picture of Trump photoshopped onto the Terminator 2 bicycle.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Oh my God.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Wow.
GRAHAM CLULEY
His subsequent arrest has not gone down well with his bandmates. And it looks like they were quite a successful band. You know, they were doing big gigs and they've got a following.
His bandmates have left the band in disgust. So they no longer have a vocalist and a bassist anymore. And they've said it's all because of what John did at the Capitol.
So it's just him and a drummer now. And his Kickstarter's having some problems too. So folks, be very careful. Maybe we could play a little bit of their music.
Oh no, maybe we shouldn't. We shouldn't support them. Should we?
CAROLE THERIAULT
I don't think. No, it's called a copyright infringement.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Oh yes, that's the other reason why we shouldn't do it. Yes, that's a good point. Zoe, what have you got for us this week?
ZOE KLEINMAN
Right, well, I feel like I'm going to lower the tone slightly because we've gone from— Finally. An incredibly worthy story about catching criminals in America.
We're going to go now to sexy cows.
This was a story that I did last week that went a bit viral, which is quite exciting when you're old like me and you don't sort of do viral stuff very often deliberately anymore.
Anyway, this guy called Mike Hall runs a small digital photo gallery, right?
And he takes pictures mainly of landscapes and the beach and the sea and, you know, the odd bit of wildlife.
And he decides that he wants to sort of start advertising on Facebook, so he puts a load of his pictures up on his gallery page, and then he picks takes a few of them and decides to run them as ads.
Yeah. And thinks nothing more of it, you know, is prepared to spend, I don't know, a couple hundred quid, you know, this is not a big, big thing, right?
And then he finds that all of his pictures have been blocked by Facebook, and at one point his entire account was blocked by Facebook, because they said his images contained overtly sexual content.
CAROLE THERIAULT
What were his mountain landscapes looking like, a big pile of boobies?
ZOE KLEINMAN
Well, the offending photo was a picture of two cows in a field, nowhere near each other, looking a little bit pensive, one might say.
But I can't— I mean, I have looked at this story quite a lot now, and I can't see any sort of compromising position between these two cows.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Oh my God, I need to see this.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Apparently I've put it in the show notes, you can have a look at the page. Apparently they are too sexy for Facebook.
Also too sexy for Facebook was a picture of the England cricket team in a huddle.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Oh well, that is very sexy.
ZOE KLEINMAN
A high-rise office building, also too sexy. Ripples on a pond, he had a picture of throwing a stone in a pond and there's ripples coming out.
Apparently that was selling adult products, that was also banned, which I can't quite get.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Ripples for your pleasure.
ZOE KLEINMAN
And also he had a picture of the skyline of Hong Kong, a sort of cityscape, and Facebook wouldn't let him use that because they said there was nothing for sale in the photograph itself.
So because he wasn't actually selling Hong Kong, he couldn't sell a photo of Hong Kong.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Okay, I'm going to bring you guys— go to the cow picture.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yeah, I'm looking at the cow picture. I've got a theory on this.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Well, I—
ZOE KLEINMAN
Okay, have I missed something?
CAROLE THERIAULT
I've named it for— can I go first? Great, because I was, called it, called it. The second cow in the back.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Yeah.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Okay, you see women's legs, you can see a little vag there, and then tits.
GRAHAM CLULEY
I'm sorry, what?
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yes, look at it, look at it. Squint. This is what you do as an artist. Squint your eyes, squint your eyes, squint. Squish.
Okay, doesn't it look like a woman, an armless woman maybe, walking towards you nude? Nude? Headless, I mean, not armless. What am I saying?
GRAHAM CLULEY
Headless?
ZOE KLEINMAN
Graham, over to you.
GRAHAM CLULEY
I'm squishing like mad. No, I thought it was the cow in the front of the image. Okay, it sort of has a bit of a come hither look in its eye. It's sort of—
CAROLE THERIAULT
That's not porny. I think it's sort of winking at me. It's kind of saying, hey, that doesn't get banned on Facebook, darling.
GRAHAM CLULEY
You're just weird, Carole.
CAROLE THERIAULT
No, no, I think I'm right. Listeners, go check it out. Go check out Zoe's story. It's at the top of her story, the headless nude woman at the back. I can see it.
Squint your eyes, people. Squint your eyes.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Well, I'll have to redo this whole story now and say, yeah, Facebook's absolutely right.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Is it armless as well? Is it headless as well?
CAROLE THERIAULT
I think it's wearing a shawl. It's just headless. It's not—it's a lady.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Oh, sorry.
CAROLE THERIAULT
It's not it. It's, you know, it's a lady.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Okay, so the England cricket team, they've been huddling up. So that's a mass orgy sort of picture, albeit very kinkily dressed up in cricketing gear.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Too sexy. High-rise office building, also too sexy. Firework display promoting weapons. Set of tram lines in France goes against Facebook's ticket sales policy.
So the poor guy, absolutely everything he was putting up was just getting knocked back. And then in despair, in the end, he came to me and said, what's going on?
So I sort of took it up, and it was all very swiftly resolved. And Facebook said it was a mistake, and it apologized for any inconvenience.
Now all of his sexy photos are back online where they should be.
CAROLE THERIAULT
There you go. Well, guys, you can go check out the cow.
GRAHAM CLULEY
So the answer to any tech problem is to go to Zoe and she'll sort it out.
ZOE KLEINMAN
This is a slight cautionary tale that once you start doing these sorts of stories, you do tend to hear from anyone who ever has a problem with a particular platform, given that there are, what, 2 billion users of Facebook.
That's quite a few people.
GRAHAM CLULEY
You'll say, put it on a medium heat for 25 minutes, gas mark 7. Watch out for your soggy bottom. But did Facebook give any explanation at all for this?
I mean, other than if they'd maybe employed someone like Carole?
CAROLE THERIAULT
Oh, come on.
GRAHAM CLULEY
To think that this cow was somehow sexual.
CAROLE THERIAULT
An algorithm would think that. Just think that she's a bit bushy, you know. Maybe.
ZOE KLEINMAN
I mean, no, funnily enough, they didn't give any explanation. They just apologized. They said they were investigating it.
It took them a little while to come back, and then eventually they just apologized. I suspect you might be right, Carole, that it was at some point some sort of algorithm fail.
But I guess, you know, this comes back to this thing with these enormous faceless companies that when you hit that wall, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.
You can't phone anyone, you can't talk to anyone.
You just sort of appeal and then you get an auto-reply saying, "Well, no, you've been blocked," and that's the end of the discussion.
And you can see why Facebook does that, but also it must be phenomenally frustrating.
CAROLE THERIAULT
And the poor cow, basically been labeled a slut.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Well, the cow's been slut-shamed, yeah.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Did you go to the cow for comment?
CAROLE THERIAULT
No.
ZOE KLEINMAN
She mooed over.
CAROLE THERIAULT
She didn't want to say anything.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Moved. Very good. The cow didn't want to comment.
GRAHAM CLULEY
An overtly sexual high-rise office building. Yeah.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Yeah.
CAROLE THERIAULT
There was a show on Channel 5 once about people that were Objectophiles. Yeah, Objectophiles.
They were really into buildings in a sexy way and did kind of disgusting things to the Eiffel Tower and such things.
ZOE KLEINMAN
People marry buildings, don't they?
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yeah, they got married, I think.
ZOE KLEINMAN
I think that's what the name of the show.
CAROLE THERIAULT
So I Married the Eiffel Tower or something. Channel 5. You got to love them.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Well, excellent.
CAROLE THERIAULT
We learn a lot on Smashing Security.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yeah, good. Thank you, Zoe.
ZOE KLEINMAN
There you are. You're welcome. You've missed me, haven't you? Yes, 100%.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Love it. God, after Graham's story, we need a bit of a giggle.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Carole, what have you got for us?
CAROLE THERIAULT
Sadly not headless sexy women. So this is the story of Stefan Heakin, okay? An Australian lad with barely a whisper of shadow on his upper lip.
But really, really, really good at maths. So this guy's in uni in Australia and he wants to become a physicist, but he falls in love with the crypto industry, right?
Wants to make it his vocation. So he goes and takes an internship in China with OKCoin, right? Where he builds a platform between two venues. So one in China and one in the US.
And this was to allow the firm to take advantage of price fluctuations between crypto coin exchanges.
Okay, so basically you have different exchanges and the same coin can be sold for different prices at different exchanges.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Oh, I see.
CAROLE THERIAULT
And he realizes, haha, if I pay attention, I can buy from the right places and this could be a really good business unto itself. Are kids smarter now? This guy at this stage is 19.
This is 2017. And at that age, I think I was looking for my pants under someone's bed, you know? I wasn't—
GRAHAM CLULEY
Your teenage years are not something we should get into, I think, but yeah.
CAROLE THERIAULT
19, come on.
Anyway, this guy drops out of university from Australia, moves to New York, right, full of piss and vinegar, and he launches a crypto hedge fund called Virgil Sigma Fund.
And his pared-down pitch is this: he's, look, I can make money, I've got a trading algorithm that I've built, and I look for the price differences between cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and tons of others.
And I'm looking at 40 different exchanges around the world. And this is going to make a shit ton of money for all of us. And the pitch works.
In a mere year or two, he goes from nothing because he just started the company to an estimated $90 million. Okay.
GRAHAM CLULEY
$90 million.
CAROLE THERIAULT
$90 million. Huge moolah. Okay. And this is dozens and dozens of investors are in this. And he was on the ball. He prepped monthly statements for investors.
He provided all the spreadsheets for them. He explained where the exchanges were making money, which weren't, which were the cryptos that he was focusing on.
GRAHAM CLULEY
And all you've got to do is mention the words cryptocurrency, or maybe blockchain-powered, or something that, and people will just open their pockets and open their wallets, won't they?
CAROLE THERIAULT
Well, yeah, I mean, he had 500% returns in 2017. Okay, Wall Street Journal, totally impressed. Profiled him, and he was yakking on CNBC saying, look at this.
And they even tweeted— I saw this tweet from them saying, Virgil Capital is the 21-year-old hedge fund manager who's got a way of making money on Bitcoin whether it goes up, down, or nowhere at all.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Right.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Okay, that's a tweet they did in 2018.
So because he's featured on Wall Street Journal and he's featured on CNBC, new investors come knocking the door, want to get into bed with the crypto king Kinn.
And see, good joke, not queen.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Because his surname is—
CAROLE THERIAULT
Right.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Good.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Okay. Fast forward to 2020. Okay. He's doing so well. He decides to launch another crypto hedge fund called VQR.
And he's the sole owner, but you know, he's not managing the day-to-day operations, but soon because his name's attached to it, it's got $20+ million from investors.
Similar kind of crypto investment hedge fund thing. So this is the Australian dream success story, right?
At this stage, he's 23, 24, and he's got two incredibly successful hedge fund firms, and he's riding the crypto wave at the right time. This is fantastic. So fade to black.
GRAHAM CLULEY
What could possibly go wrong?
CAROLE THERIAULT
Is there a twist in the tale? Is there a twist in the tale?
GRAHAM CLULEY
Tell me, Carole, is there a twist in the tale?
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yes, there's a twist.
GRAHAM CLULEY
There's a twist.
CAROLE THERIAULT
The twist turns out that Ken was just a big, fat, scammy liar, feast face. Unbelievably so, okay?
So he's tap dancing in front of all these investors saying, "Business is booming." But meanwhile, he's stuffing his own pockets with their cash and spending on a rather high roller lifestyle.
For example, he signed a lease for an apartment in 50 West New York. Okay, this was in a 64-story luxury condo building.
Okay, I want you to price what you think this might be, Graham.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Okay.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yes, go ahead. Go ahead.
CAROLE THERIAULT
On 50 West, 64, luxury condo building, Financial District, expansive views of Lower Manhattan. There's a pool, there's a sauna, there's a steam room, there's a hot tub. Club.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Is there a trouser press?
CAROLE THERIAULT
There is probably a trouser press. There's something better than that. There's actually a golf simulator. That's what you should have asked me about. Yes, there is a golf simulator.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Is there a spare room?
CAROLE THERIAULT
No, come on, Zoe, it's New York. $23,000 a month. That's a lot, huh?
Okay, and because he was spending all his money on these type of fripperies, right, and his cars and all this blah blah he could not pay the investors, the original investors.
And he started tap dancing even harder, a Looney Tune cartoon, trying to buy time, you know, saying, oh, the money's tied up, or I'm investing in brand new stuff.
Or at one point, he even blamed loan sharks in China for his troubles because he's getting really scared. And then he goes, he started the second company.
He basically tells the people that were running the second company, close shop, close shop, give me all the money, because he wanted to take that money to pay off the original investors.
Just a week before he was nabbed by a New York district attorney, he did an interview where he was continuing to boast about his company's successes and trying to lure in new investments, obviously driven by the need to pay up, right?
He's lost that $90 million. It's gone. All of it. All of it's gone. So at the ripe old age of 24, Kin is facing 20 years in prison.
Now, a prison cell is probably a little bit smaller than his $23,000 apartment.
GRAHAM CLULEY
No trouser press.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yeah, no trouser press.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Maybe your—
CAROLE THERIAULT
Maybe your cellmate enjoys spitting on it and pulling it or something, just make it— you look really— but pretty dumb for a smart guy. Or just greedy.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Oh, I just think crypto brings out the worst in people, doesn't it?
GRAHAM CLULEY
On both sides, on both the investors and the people who are running the companies, because they sort of go, "Oh, yeah, that gravy train is irresistible."
ZOE KLEINMAN
And people just don't listen or heed the warnings. You know, people like me spend our lives going, "It's really risky, by the way," and into the ether, and nobody listens, do they?
CAROLE THERIAULT
I was trying to do a little research in this, but I didn't really have time.
But as far as I could understand is that in order to be a hedge fund manager or owner or something, you have to be accredited and somehow basically by law, right?
You're kind of an accredited investor or there's a certified investor. There's a word that they use.
And you're thinking, okay, so I don't know if this is the case where this was, there was a lack of legislation in crypto world.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yes.
CAROLE THERIAULT
That would mean that any old cowboy can jump on the wagon if they have a bit of cash and, you know, yeah.
GRAHAM CLULEY
So I wonder if that only applies if it's actual real money as opposed to pretend digital tokens.
CAROLE THERIAULT
He's pled guilty to all this. He's, "Oh yeah, maybe I was a bit of a greedy dumbass." I'm paraphrasing.
But apparently they've agreed to a plea deal that it's suggesting between $100,000 and 150 to 180 months. So that's a long time. And a fine of $350,000.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Which presumably he hasn't got anymore.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yeah, which presumably he doesn't have because he spent $90 million.
GRAHAM CLULEY
I'm sure he could raise the money though fairly quickly. He'll find someone. I mean, on the print— I mean, it sounds quite a clever idea.
He didn't, you know, I'll exploit the fact that the prices are different between different places and move it from this place to that place and sell them here.
"Buy it here." You know, it sounds quite a cunning sort of plan, but obviously, he was more focused on the expensive apartment and other luxuries, maybe.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yeah. And then had to buy time. You know, then he had to— yeah, he had to kind of sit there and start tap dancing quite madly. Anyway, fascinating story.
There's loads of links in the show notes if you want to go read more about it.
I have no real moral of the story other than, you know, stop investing in stuff you don't know anything about and you can't— I don't understand how people would throw millions at something because he's printed out a fucking spreadsheet.
'Cause that's all people rely on. It's, "Oh, the numbers look good."
GRAHAM CLULEY
It's because cryptocurrency and this blockchain stuff, Carole, to us old people who might have money to invest, we don't really understand it all.
So if some young whippersnapper comes up and does a nice PowerPoint presentation, you'll probably say, "Well, I don't really understand all this stuff.
I'd be on your bike." Well, many sensible people would, Carole, but there's also all these investors who are fearful that they're not investing enough in this just in case, you know, it does take off.
They don't want to be the ones who don't do it.
CAROLE THERIAULT
FOMO.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yeah, well, really it is, isn't it? Yeah, in a way.
ZOE KLEINMAN
I did a story about people's Bitcoin experiences actually a few days ago, and one of the people I spoke to, he had helped a man whose wallet had been compromised and he'd lost 83 Bitcoin.
Which he had been holding for years. Oh my gosh. This is going back a couple of years. I think it was 2017. He said at the time it was worth about half a million dollars.
But, you know, the banks aren't going to help you, the financial authorities aren't going to help you, that money's gone.
And it was a phishing attack as well, so he'd clicked a link that looked like his wallet link and wasn't.
And they were able to sort of, you know, on the blockchain they could kind of track where it was going, but they couldn't get it back.
Looking at what's going on with Bitcoin, it's probably worth even more than it was last week, but he said it would be worth £2.8 million today, that Bitcoin.
And he said he just has to try not to think about it. But, you know, I think that's what you forget, isn't it?
If something happens with your bank, as awful as it is, your bank will help you, you know, you'll get support. But there's nothing, there's no safety net there.
And I don't know if this is true, Graham, you might know this story.
Somebody told me that most of the world's Bitcoin is held in a very, very small number of wallets because, you know, you've got your big, big people, haven't you, that have got hold of it all.
And if one of them were to pull out, it would just send the whole thing into turmoil. Is that true?
GRAHAM CLULEY
Have you heard that? Oh, I don't know. I don't know.
I did hear that there's only a couple of hundred Bitcoin wallets who appear to be responsible for most of the laundering which goes on after sort of ransomware attacks and suchlike.
So it's a relatively small number who are doing that. But maybe, and of course, our good friend, friend of the show, Elon Musk.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yeah, he just bought 1.5 billion of them, didn't he? Just to rock and roll the market.
ZOE KLEINMAN
He's moved on now, hasn't he?
CAROLE THERIAULT
Oh, has he?
ZOE KLEINMAN
He's moved on to Dogecoin now, hasn't he?
GRAHAM CLULEY
I think he's just done it for giggles, hasn't he really?
CAROLE THERIAULT
He just wants to get your attention, Graham.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Well, he hasn't got it.
CAROLE THERIAULT
It's your—
GRAHAM CLULEY
Hence he's not— He's actually banned from coming on the show, Elon Musk.
CAROLE THERIAULT
I don't think you can unilaterally decide that.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Well—
ZOE KLEINMAN
Fickle.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Go to break.
GRAHAM CLULEY
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And welcome back, and you join us for our favorite part of the show, the part of the show that we like to call Pick of the Week.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Pick of the Week.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Pick of the Week.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Pick of the Week is the part of the show where everyone chooses something they like.
Could be a funny story, a book that they've read, a TV show, a movie, a record, a podcast, a website, or an app. Whatever they wish.
It doesn't have to be security related necessarily.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Better not be.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Well, my Pick of the Week this week is not security related. I am a big lover of radio. I spent all my formative years listening to radio late at night.
I would fall asleep listening to the radio. These days it's podcasts.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Was that 'cause TVs weren't invented?
GRAHAM CLULEY
No, no, no. It's because I am a sensitive soul, Carole, and—
CAROLE THERIAULT
I've always thought that about you.
GRAHAM CLULEY
I can't fall asleep without someone whispering soft nothings and sweet unmentionables into my ear. Because otherwise I feel alone.
ZOE KLEINMAN
What radio station are you listening to?
CAROLE THERIAULT
Erotica.
GRAHAM CLULEY
I quite like—
ZOE KLEINMAN
92.5.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Don't think I'd fall asleep then.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Well, maybe I would at this age.
GRAHAM CLULEY
But anyway, the—
ZOE KLEINMAN
You don't get that on the World Service. NSFW.
GRAHAM CLULEY
I quite like to, if I'm going to wake up, I like to there be some sort of company, some human voice gently murmuring away. And so I'd often listen to the radio.
And hence I was attracted to a website called Radio Garden. Radio.garden, in fact, is where you can find it. It's also available as an iOS and Android app.
And what it does is it presents to you, rather like Google Earth, the planet Earth, of which we are all inhabiting.
And on it are scattered across the Earth thousands and thousands of green dots. And these are live radio stations.
And you can turn the world around, or you can search for particular places, and you can go and listen to what people are listening to right now, anywhere in the world.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Oh, that sounds wonderful.
GRAHAM CLULEY
You can hear the radio shows, you can hear the plays, you can hear the music, that they're playing. You'll be able to hear the talk-ins, and it's a wonderful interface.
CAROLE THERIAULT
You know that— oh, it's the interface, because you know you can do that even on Apple Music, right? There's radio.
GRAHAM CLULEY
I know you can tune into internet radio and that sort of thing.
Yeah, but isn't it rather more lovely to have an interface where you can actually sort of zoom in on Chile and go and check out what they're beaming to people and scientists and, you know, Antarctica to listen to, or listen to that show.
I think it's— I think it's— don't knock it until you've tried it, all right?
CAROLE THERIAULT
No, I didn't know if you knew internet radio existed.
GRAHAM CLULEY
I'm aware of internet radio.
CAROLE THERIAULT
It's just yours.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yeah, okay.
CAROLE THERIAULT
It's all about the interface. I was just checking.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Well, no, it's—
CAROLE THERIAULT
It is the presentation as well, but you didn't see the headless sexy nude woman. I'm just looking again.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Sorry, no headless nude woman I've ever seen looks like that girl. I can't believe you can't see it, the come hither look in the other cow's eye. That's what I'm surprised by.
Anyway, Radio Garden. Why are we talking about this? Radio Garden is my pick of the week.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Excellent. I'm going to check it out. It sounds awesome.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Thank you. Zoe, what's your pick of the week?
ZOE KLEINMAN
So mine is a sleep aid that— my partner and I tried out, especially for the show last night.
Neither of us sleeps very well, and during lockdown, oh, just not sleeping very well at all, like loads of people are saying. So, yeah, I decided to have a go with this.
Now, I literally spent some time trying to figure out how to pronounce this, and I could not find a video in which they actually say it.
So it's spelt D-O-D-O-W, which I'm going to say is do-dow, but I don't know, it's French.
Anyway, what it is, is a little kind of circle, like a bit sized like an Amazon Echo Dot, you know, the small ones.
And you turn it on and it emits this kind of blue light, like a beam in a circle that projects up onto the ceiling, right?
And the circle gets bigger and smaller and you're supposed to breathe in when the circle is getting bigger and breathe out when the circle gets smaller, right?
And it's all about obviously kind of slowing down your brain. So it's very simple. That is what it does. There's two settings, 8 minutes and 20 minutes.
And we decided to give it a try last night. So we're lying there and we finally sort of managed to get all the batteries in and work out what we're doing.
We're like, we're not going to do 20 minutes. That just feels like an effort. We're going to go for the 8-minute one. Press the thing.
First couple we missed because we were bickering about where was the best place to put the lights.
And then we did a couple of them, and then he goes, oh, I can't remember whether it was supposed to be breathing in or out, and that made me laugh.
So we missed the first couple of minutes of just us messing about, right? And then we're laying there and we managed to sort of sort ourselves out, and we're doing the breathing.
And actually, it did kind of feel quite relaxing. It was good. It's not like a really harsh blue light, you know, like you get off your phone. It's a sort of gentle, gentle light.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Not neon blue.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Yeah, it's not like that. And I mean, I didn't have my glasses on, so to me it was a sort of puffy coffee circle rather than a very clear circle.
I don't know whether that is actually the case, but that was what it looked like to me. And I was laying there thinking, yeah, I quite like this actually, this is interesting.
And I think I've got to tell you guys about it, I can't wait to talk about this.
And then thinking, why am I lying in bed with my partner watching a blue light and thinking about Graham and Carole? This is really weird.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Did we make you fall asleep?
ZOE KLEINMAN
Well, I didn't— it didn't make me fall asleep, but my eyes got heavy and I got to a point where I was like, I just need to close my eyes, I can't look at it anymore, I'm tired.
So I sort of curled up and closed my eyes and I must have drifted off, I think, because when I woke up it wasn't on anymore and I don't know when it stopped.
But yeah, it was good, it was calming, it was relaxing. He fell asleep, and I, well, I said, I must have obviously drifted off or something. It's so simple, isn't it?
I didn't have high expectations. I thought it was worth a shot, but I didn't really have high expectations of it. But yeah, it was pretty good.
CAROLE THERIAULT
I think I have heard that one of the ways to try and fall asleep— I'm a total insomniac too— is to do really slow breathing, to do 10 big slow in and out breathings without losing focus or concentration.
And I find it still impossible to do. It sounds so easy, but super impossible. So maybe an aid that would be really useful.
ZOE KLEINMAN
I think at first your mind is just going, isn't it? I was thinking about telling you about this and I was thinking about stuff I've got to do at work, and my mind was just going.
And one of the things they say is, you know, that's fine, let it go, don't stress about thinking.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yeah.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Which I do, you know, your brain starts going, let's think about that thing that happened earlier that wasn't very good. And you're no, I don't want to do that now.
But actually, they say it's better to just let it happen and then it's gone, and then, you know, you can just sort of get on with it.
GRAHAM CLULEY
I'm not sure I'm completely happy with this gadget.
I remember— do you remember the George Lazenby James Bond movie, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, where basically, what's his name? Oh, you know, who loves ya baby?
Telly Savalas, right? Telly Savalas is the baddie, right? And he's brainwashing all his female assassins to go and kill leaders around the world.
And he's sort of beaming messages into them while they sleep. And I would worry that something might lull you into some sort of space.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Carole is really nice. Don't think bad things about Carole.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Subscribe to Sticky Pickles.
CAROLE THERIAULT
How much does this cost, Zoe, about?
ZOE KLEINMAN
It's about £50. It's not a smart device. It doesn't connect to the internet. It's just battery powered. There's nothing complicated about it.
GRAHAM CLULEY
And yeah, will you do it again tonight?
ZOE KLEINMAN
I think we will. I might try not to think about it.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Will you do that as well?
ZOE KLEINMAN
Well, let's see. We'll see. I'll try not to think about you, okay?
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yeah, yeah, very wise. Carole, what's your pick of the week?
CAROLE THERIAULT
Oh, mine's pretty awesome. However, I'm worried that you've done it before now. I have a panicky feeling.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yeah, well, this is—
CAROLE THERIAULT
Well, different series, different series, different. It's not in the rules, actually. I listened to you carefully this week to see if it was.
Actually, it is Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema. Have you done that before?
GRAHAM CLULEY
No, I haven't done that.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Ah, good. Okay, so good. So good. Okay, it's on iPlayer. The gist is he reveals filmmaking tricks and techniques behind classic movie genres.
So each of the shows is a genre that they focus on, rom-coms or heists or spy movies or superheroes or whatever. And it's just awesome.
It's just what are all the ingredients for this genre that makes audiences keep coming back for more?
GRAHAM CLULEY
Can you give us an example?
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yeah, yeah. So last night, we were watching the horror episode. It starts off describing what a horror movie is, then lists out and explains the key elements used by filmmakers.
What terrifies us, what horrifies us, and what grosses us out, apparently, are the three big pillars. And he talks about techniques the jump scare, right? Or a scary place.
Often these movies happen in a scary place. Someone's entering a scary place, you're thinking, why are you doing that? Don't go there.
Or they have to invite the monster into their house, you know, a vampire. You have an agency in getting into the shit, basically. Or you start losing your mind, right?
So there's all these different techniques to show that. Another one he did was on the heist. We watched that one recently.
Apparently, heist movies play on our sympathies, encouraging us to identify with the characters that in normal life we would never want anything to do with.
One of the cool things in it was talks about that movie Rififi. Do you remember it? Do you ever see that?
GRAHAM CLULEY
No idea.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Rififi, it's a French burglary film. I can't remember. Donkey's old.
ZOE KLEINMAN
Oh no, I think I've seen it.
CAROLE THERIAULT
The famous thing in it is this 20-minute-long burglary scene, right? Where they're trying to steal jewelry from a jewelry shop.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yeah.
CAROLE THERIAULT
And there's no sound at all for this whole thing. No one talks, there's no music, nothing. And apparently they'd commissioned music for it.
And then when they listened to it, all of them together, they went, oh my God, it's way more powerful without the music. Even the composer.
And since then, loads of movies have done that kind of trick, that Thom Cruise dangly from the ceiling one. What was that?
GRAHAM CLULEY
What was that?
ZOE KLEINMAN
Mission Impossible.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yes, Mission Impossible. So apparently he has this big scene where he doesn't actually, there's no sound.
There's no, you know when he dangles down, there's no music or anything to, you know.
GRAHAM CLULEY
So it makes it more tense for the audience because they're sort of thinking, what's gone wrong? Why is there no music here? So it makes you a little bit more anxious.
You would love this Cluley. Really, really, really. You would really love it.
CAROLE THERIAULT
It sounds good. And as long— I mean, I love Kermode. Not everyone does. He's, you know, he's Marmite to a lot of people, but I think he's a bright young thing.
And I just— well, not so young anymore. Sorry if you're listening. But it's a great, great show. So check it out. Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema. It's on the BBC iPlayer.
There's 11 episodes there at the moment when I just checked. So enjoy.
GRAHAM CLULEY
That sounds fantastic.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yeah, it is awesome. It's awesome.
GRAHAM CLULEY
It's awesome. And that just about wraps it up for this week. Zoe, thank you so much for coming back on the show again.
I'm sure lots of our listeners would love to follow you online and hear what you've got to say about things. What's the best way for folks to do that?
ZOE KLEINMAN
You can find me on Twitter @ZSK.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Marvelous. And you can follow us on Twitter @SmashingSecurity, no G, Twitter doesn't allow us to have a G. And we also got a subreddit up on Reddit.
So just look for Smashing Security there.
And don't forget, if you want to ensure that you never miss another episode, subscribe in your favorite podcast apps such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts.
CAROLE THERIAULT
A huge thank you to this week's episode sponsors, 1Password and Recorded Future, and to our wonderful Patreon community. Thanks to them, the show is free for all.
And for episode show notes, sponsorship information, guest list, and the entire back catalog of more than 200-ish episodes, check out smashingsecurity.com.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Until next time, cheerio, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye.
CAROLE THERIAULT
That was a very subdued episode, guys. We were chilling out. Felt like a cocktail hour. I liked it.
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yeah, I felt quite— I feel quite subdued today.
CAROLE THERIAULT
Yeah, you're tired. I think you didn't have your normal jump in your step.
GRAHAM CLULEY
I didn't sleep very well last night.
ZOE KLEINMAN
You didn't sleep well?
CAROLE THERIAULT
You know what you need?
GRAHAM CLULEY
Yeah, I need to— I need Blofeld to plant subliminal messages in my head.
EPISODE DESCRIPTION:
The FBI is hoping that its hunt for Capitol rioters will go viral, a cryptocurrency con lets its perpetrator live the high life... for a while, and just what does Facebook have against cows and a team of cricketers?
All this and much much more is discussed in the latest edition of the "Smashing Security" podcast by computer security veterans Graham Cluley and Carole Theriault, joined this week by BBC technology correspondent Zoe Kleinman.
This transcript was generated automatically, probably contains mistakes, and has not been manually verified.