WEBVTT

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JACK: [MUSIC] Hey, this has been a weird year, hasn’t it?

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Well, this is gonna be a weird episode.

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Are you ready to go on a musical adventure with me?

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Yeah?

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Okay, let’s do this.

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Here, check this out.

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[MUSIC] Did you just hear what I heard?

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‘Pass the hash’?

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‘Trojan all the firmware’?

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What is this?

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‘Man-in-the-middle’?

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‘My wire-taps are feared’?

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Was this song made just for me?

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Okay, okay, okay, I’m hooked.

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I want to hear more and if you do too, come along with me and let’s dive into the world

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of nerdcore music.

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But two quick warnings; first, this episode has explicit lyrics.

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Swear words and stuff.

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Second, make sure to listen to this one at 1x speed, okay?

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Now turn it up.

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(INTRO): [INTRO MUSIC] These are true stories from the dark side of the internet.

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I’m Jack Rhysider.

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This is Darknet Diaries.

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[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

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JACK: Okay, first on the playlist is YTCracker.

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YTC: This is DJMC YTCracker.

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JACK: That’s spelled with the letter Y, the letter T, and then Cracker.

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Now, to give you a taste of what YTCracker’s music sounds like, here’s an appetizer.

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[MUSIC] You hear all this?

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‘Living like the archetypal internet kingpin’?

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‘Traffic on the scanners been shallow so I’m in a shadow’?

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Then he says ‘Fingers on the keyboard typing, showing my eliteness.’

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I guess that sort of frames my curiosity.

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How elite are nerdcore rappers?

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Who is YTCracker?

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To find that out, we have to stop and rewind the tape to when he was a kid.

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[MUSIC] He grew up in California and in Colorado and was introduced into tech by his father.

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YTC: He worked for Hughes Aircraft and he was working on peacekeeper missiles, just

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all the cold war cool stuff, but absolutely hated California.

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JACK: This is YTCracker talking.

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YTC: Moved back to Colorado and he was working with Martin Marietta, which eventually became

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Lockheed Martin.

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He’s very much hardware oriented and I kinda fell more into the software field, but it

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was lucky to have a computer in my house kinda when they weren’t as ubiquitous as they

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are now.

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I was really advantaged, I think, by just – the first time I ever touched a computer,

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I was just super-fascinated with them.

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Just wanted to figure out everything; how they worked.

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JACK: [MUSIC] We’re talking the 90s here, when YTCracker was in high school.

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He was getting online then and looking to see what was there which by the way, there

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wasn’t much online at the time.

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YTC: I was really into the bulletin board scene, locally.

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I think from there is kinda where I started reading a lot of texts; text files, textzines,

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and sort of the tales of the underground and got real fascinated with tone phreaking and

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hacking and stuff, sorta being a natural extension to the understanding how computers worked.

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JACK: The internet and computers were fascinating to him, so he kept going deeper and deeper

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to learn more about it.

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YTC: [MUSIC] My first real hack, I think – there was a – the public library had a bulletin

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board system.

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I found out how to drop into a shell.

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I turned it into an Eggdrop bot.

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JACK: At that time, most people didn’t have a persistent connection to the internet, but

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his library did.

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He installed an IRC bot on it which could act sort of like an admin of a chatroom, something

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that was always vigilant, watching everything that was going on.

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This was cool as a teenager to have remote control over an always-on computer and to

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actually put it to use.

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YTC: Yeah, I just kind of really got addicted to the real breaking [00:05:00] into stuff.

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I just kinda went on this little bit of a rampage, I guess, after that.

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I hacked pretty much every school district in the state.

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JACK: [MUSIC] Now, before we get too far down his hacking path, at this same time he was

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also learning how to make music on his computer.

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Oh, and just so you know, all the songs you hear while we’re talking with YTCracker

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were made by him.

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In the 90s, there were these programs called trackers which would let you play samples

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at different pitches to make music.

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YTC: Scream Tracker was the first one that I had used.

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Actually, a couple of the computer guys that I had – the other hacker dudes were super

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into electronic music.

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JACK: Here’s one of the songs he made while in high school using Scream Tracker.

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[MUSIC] You know, I wasn’t gonna say anything but that intro brings back memories I totally

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forgot about.

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When I was a teenager around that same time, I found some text-to-speech software.

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Whatever I wrote, the computer would try to say it.

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You could do male voices or female voices, British or American accents.

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When I discovered this as a teenager, I made the voice say sexy things, too.

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Possibly all teenage boys who discover text-to-speech programs for the first time get the computer

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to say something dirty just to giggle.

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At this time in the 90s, the cool place to be part of was the demo scene and YTCracker

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was right in the middle of it.

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The demo scene was its own subculture of the internet.

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It pretty much was just a audio and visual showcase made by independent artists.

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Demos were little programs, executables that when you ran it, it would just display moving

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graphics and play music.

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That’s all it did.

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But in the 90s, it was really cool to scroll through scene.org, download files, and run

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them to see what they did.

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Since YTCracker was making music, he was all about the demo scene, uploading his music

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there and making friends with other electronic musicians.

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YTC: I looked on scene.org and I can’t find a lot of the older stuff that I had.

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It was definitely on bulletin boards but we had this group called the Pu Tang Clan, we

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had one called Multisync, and then there was a group called Category 5.

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JACK: At this point, YTCracker was really into computers, using them to make music with

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other people and to hack stuff, too.

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Being part of the demo scene sometimes blended right into the hacker scene because a lot

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of apps that were used to play pirated games had cool little graphics and music built into

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the app to say this game was cracked by our hacker group which made the hacker group so

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much cooler.

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YTC: I remember WinNuke had come out and it was like, you send out a band packet to port

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139 and it would crash someone’s computer if you – this is prior to consumer firewalls

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and everything like that.

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Basically, if you had somebody’s IP address and they had a Windows machine, you could

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invariably crash them.

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I remember having that and one of the SysOps at the Southern BBS I had gone in is like

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have you ever been on AOL?

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I hadn’t, but I was obviously aware of it.

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He was like, you can just knock people offline there.

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I’ll try it, too.

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I was like oh, that’s so cool.

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JACK: Yeah, so America Online or AOL was a way to get online in the 90s but it was designed

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for dummies to use the internet.

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So, because it was so super-easy to use, it attracted a lot of newbies to the internet.

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In some IRC chatrooms, this meant AOL users were easy targets to try to hack.

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YTCracker was finding ways to hack into AOL servers and look up information on their users.

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YTC: We were working on defacing keywords.

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We had access to the CRIS.

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It was the Consumer Resource Information Service so you could look up – on AOL, you can look

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people up and get their credit card information, their address, phone number, you know, all

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the notes on the account.

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Really, it was crazy ‘cause back then when people were actually anonymous on the internet

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and weren’t trying to put all their real information on Facebook and stuff, it was

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really just funny ‘cause we’d be talking shit to somebody on AOL and then tell them

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where they live.

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You wouldn’t see them sign-on for weeks ‘cause they would just be scared out of

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their minds.

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JACK: Now, all this was going on while YTCracker was still in high school and he’s also hacking

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into the school because why not, right?

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I mean, for a teenager, it’s sometimes just a simple question of let’s see if the school,

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which is trying to teach me about computers, knows anything about how to secure their own

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network.

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He was able to get into the school’s database which allowed him to change grades for any

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student in the school.

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YTC: I just had the perception, basically, that if you changed one grade in a system,

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then it’s obviously easy to find [00:10:00] out who is behind it and stuff.

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There was a method to changing random grades and stuff so there was no way to really associate

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it with anybody.

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JACK: You changed your own grade?

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YTC: [MUSIC] I didn’t change my own grades, no.

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Never changed my own grades.

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JACK: You just screwed with other students?

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YTC: Changed others, yeah.

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That’s the best way to do it.

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I’d basically gotten into all the record systems.

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I defaced all the web pages later.

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JACK: Defacing a website is pretty much just making changes to a website when you’re

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not supposed to be able to.

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YTC: I remember replacing the entire front page.

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It was like, all you’d have to do is go to the domain and you would see it there.

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I would leave links to the original pages and stuff, but yeah, just replacing the entirely

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of the page.

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Sometimes I would mess with the…just take the existing page that’s there and just

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mess with the text to make it funny and edit the pictures.

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Sometimes I’d replace it completely.

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But again, I think it was the competitive atmosphere that – again, amongst ourselves,

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we were just trying to find the biggest fish to farm.

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JACK: He was gaining street cred as a hacker, earning the respect of more people in the

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chatrooms that he was in.

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YTC: I started getting into – I was really into hip-hop and everything so graffiti was

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one of the elements of hip-hop, I guess.

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I kind of really liked web page defacement.

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It seemed to be the most hip-hop of all of the hacks you could do.

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I remember the first series.

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There was a cold fusion bug when it was in default upload, there was – in the examples

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of the cold fusion server – but some people would just leave this directory up there and

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it allowed you to just arbitrarily upload files to web pages.

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I remember just grinding out local car dealerships, web pages I would see on TV.

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Again, this was back in the late 90s and early 2000s, so it wasn’t – most people had

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AOL keywords back then which was how you would visit them on the internet and so many people

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were on AOL.

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Like I said, defacing keywords and defacing web pages just became this sort of funny way

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to use the hacking but not…there was glory in it, I guess.

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You’re not stealing nuclear secrets, though.

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JACK: [MUSIC] This was fun.

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This was a rush for him.

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Making music and defacing websites became his two biggest hobbies.

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YTC: First it was high-value-target-type stuff, corporate.

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Then for whatever reason, it was just like the .mils and the .govs just became sort of

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enticing, shiny Pokemon to me.

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JACK: .mils and .govs?

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Those are top-level domains.

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He’s talking about any website that ends in .mil or .gov.

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He’s targeting military and government websites now.

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Some of the ways he got in were pretty simple, too.

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He just had a handful of techniques and he would try each technique to see if it worked.

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These were sometimes simple tools just to check if the web server was vulnerable.

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If so, he’d exploit it.

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YTC: I did – yeah, the city of Colorado Springs was my local town and I hacked the

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USGS Texas Department of Public Safety.

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It’s like their sheriff department.

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I did AT&T, Acer, the FAA, New York Department of Agriculture, Oregon State Construction

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Contractor’s Board, the Oregon State Board of Education, pretty much every school district

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in Colorado.

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The Goddard Space International Program, the National Training Center for the Bureau of

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Land and Management.

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Yeah, it was a – it was fun but again, my purpose was just making graffiti.

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I wasn’t really trying to disrupt the inner workings of the US government at the time.

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JACK: At this point, are you feeling like you’re gonna get caught?

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YTC: I was fairly certain – ‘cause the handle that I went by, YTCracker, the people

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– they knew me as that anyway ‘cause I had done music under it and stuff.

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It wasn’t like kind of a secret, and that’s part of where – I didn’t delete logs.

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I purposely was – I was just making it so – I didn’t really think about the consequences

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though, at that time.

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I wasn’t eighteen, so I figured anything that happened to me, I could just get adjudicated

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out of, or whatever.

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[00:15:00]

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JACK: [MUSIC] At this point, YTCracker discovered a pretty interesting thing that could potentially

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earn him money.

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He found some websites had referral programs.

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Basically, the website would pay anyone cash for referring a new user to the site.

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YTCracker realized hey, if I had a lot of e-mail addresses, I could send them all an

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e-mail telling them to go sign up at this website and I’d get paid for sending people

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there.

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He entered into the world of spam.

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Step one though is getting the e-mail addresses.

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YTC: Okay, so, on AOL there was a member directory but then there was also a bunch of chatrooms.

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In the chatrooms there was a feature you can click called Who’s Online?

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It would list who was in that room at the time.

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The max room size is about twenty-three, twenty-four people.

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There was just programs it’ll just automatically go through and click.

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To gather the names, pretty much you would just go to all the public rooms and you would

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cycle through.

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Initially, there wasn’t any rate limits so you could just basically get the entirety

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of AOL and just have something that’s constantly running and grabbing names from the member

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directory.

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You could take a dictionary file and then search for certain things that would be in

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people’s profiles.

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You would just scale out that way.

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JACK: You got what, a list of a few hundred, a few thousand?

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YTC: Millions.

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JACK: Okay, step one is done.

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He has millions of e-mail addresses.

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Next is to find the most profitable website that pays for referrals but doesn’t mind

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if people use spam to get those referrals.

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After researching what websites to promote, he found the perfect site.

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YTC: Porn was pretty much the – I wasn’t even old enough really to view it, but a lot

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of these companies, they outwardly had a policy against spamming but realistically under the

00:17:04.709 --> 00:17:10.160
hood, everybody knew it was just kinda known this is how the traffic gets generated.

00:17:10.160 --> 00:17:12.890
There was choices to get paid per click or per sign-up.

00:17:12.890 --> 00:17:25.819
Depending on how your traffic backed out – in spam, obviously, it’s just – you want

00:17:25.819 --> 00:17:40.700
to go with the pay-per-click model.

00:17:40.700 --> 00:17:47.220
JACK: [MUSIC] There he goes, sending millions of e-mails to people urging them to visit

00:17:47.220 --> 00:17:49.210
porn sites and to join as a member.

00:17:49.210 --> 00:17:53.160
The more people he got to click, the more money he’d make.

00:17:53.160 --> 00:17:58.070
You were making $1,000 a week, or?

00:17:58.070 --> 00:18:02.990
YTC: Yeah, just about.

00:18:02.990 --> 00:18:09.580
JACK: That’s pretty good for a seventeen-year-old.

00:18:09.580 --> 00:18:11.740
YTC: Yeah, it was amazing.

00:18:11.740 --> 00:18:16.940
JACK: Do you remember the things you were buying as a seventeen-year-old?

00:18:16.940 --> 00:18:20.570
YTC: I mean, lots of computer equipment.

00:18:20.570 --> 00:18:24.490
My wardrobe was insane.

00:18:24.490 --> 00:18:30.510
I had just the most insane – EKKO was my favorite clothing brand and I pretty much

00:18:30.510 --> 00:18:32.660
had every piece that they owned.

00:18:32.660 --> 00:18:41.039
I was taking my friends out to dinner and everything all the time, bought a car.

00:18:41.039 --> 00:18:42.419
I don’t know, just whatever.

00:18:42.419 --> 00:18:43.450
Again, it was just…

00:18:43.450 --> 00:18:49.220
JACK: What’d your parents think that you had – how’d you get this money?

00:18:49.220 --> 00:18:57.850
YTC: They knew, but my dad was always just really – my parents are really traditional

00:18:57.850 --> 00:19:03.120
and I was kind of, at that point, fucking education and stuff.

00:19:03.120 --> 00:19:11.669
I realized that I make more than my teacher, not doing even – not even really working.

00:19:11.669 --> 00:19:16.851
This whole kind of teenage rebellion thing where every teenager does think that they

00:19:16.851 --> 00:19:21.570
know everything, but at that stage I was really like well, if this is what’s possible, then

00:19:21.570 --> 00:19:26.490
why do I need to continue to do this type of stuff?

00:19:26.490 --> 00:19:34.720
Yeah, I think my parents – my dad was trying to instill work ethic in me; going to work

00:19:34.720 --> 00:19:37.170
and showing up and this type of stuff.

00:19:37.170 --> 00:19:38.690
I was like no, it’s the money that’s important.

00:19:38.690 --> 00:19:39.710
It’s not the job.

00:19:39.710 --> 00:19:52.990
It’s the byproduct – the end result of what you’re working for is the key here.

00:19:52.990 --> 00:20:08.299
We were at odds, I guess, philosophically.

00:20:08.299 --> 00:20:15.510
[MUSIC] [00:20:00]

00:20:15.510 --> 00:20:26.260
JACK: Somewhere around here, YTCracker dropped out of high school, which I understand.

00:20:26.260 --> 00:20:29.870
He’s running circles around the school’s network, so there’s probably not much they

00:20:29.870 --> 00:20:31.130
can teach him about computers.

00:20:31.130 --> 00:20:32.880
He’s making more money than his teachers.

00:20:32.880 --> 00:20:40.230
He’ll feeling like he’s got life figured out.

00:20:40.230 --> 00:20:42.990
[MUSIC]

00:20:42.990 --> 00:20:52.750
HOST: [MUSIC] Cyber-crime seems to be how some people, particularly juveniles, feel

00:20:52.750 --> 00:20:53.750
important.

00:20:53.750 --> 00:21:00.380
For YTCracker, a seventeen-year-old dropout, this meant compromising and defacing multiple

00:21:00.380 --> 00:21:01.380
websites.

00:21:01.380 --> 00:21:05.669
YTC: Kids like us, we go out every day, we have fun, then we come home, rule the world.

00:21:05.669 --> 00:21:10.970
HOST: He came to the attention of DCIS when he illegally accessed a defense contract management

00:21:10.970 --> 00:21:12.549
agency web server.

00:21:12.549 --> 00:21:19.039
Once inside, he replaced DCMA information with text and graphics in which he bragged

00:21:19.039 --> 00:21:21.049
about his exploits.

00:21:21.049 --> 00:21:26.870
The pattern was repeated on over forty websites including servers maintained by NASA.

00:21:26.870 --> 00:21:33.160
Agents from DCIS, NASA, as well as the FBI began to close in on the juvenile.

00:21:33.160 --> 00:21:38.600
Meanwhile, police in Colorado Springs were conducting their own investigation.

00:21:38.600 --> 00:21:43.490
They were tracking down an individual who had hacked into local school records.

00:21:43.490 --> 00:21:48.320
The minor responsible for the defacements was soon identified and agents began to build

00:21:48.320 --> 00:21:49.900
their case.

00:21:49.900 --> 00:21:52.120
YTCracker knew they were onto him.

00:21:52.120 --> 00:21:56.590
YTC: Detective DeHart published a 314-page case report on the whole thing.

00:21:56.590 --> 00:21:58.080
I was just like, that’s huge.

00:21:58.080 --> 00:22:03.169
HOST: The seventeen-year-old suspect eventually confessed to one count of computer crime under

00:22:03.169 --> 00:22:04.880
Colorado law.

00:22:04.880 --> 00:22:19.570
He was placed on two year’s probation and fined $24,000.

00:22:19.570 --> 00:22:49.799
YTC: [MUSIC] I think it was that the ride was over, type thing.

00:22:49.799 --> 00:22:56.510
The one hack that is still kind of – again, this was sort of a gentleman’s agreement

00:22:56.510 --> 00:23:01.300
I would say, but they were just like look, if you didn’t fuck with the government,

00:23:01.300 --> 00:23:04.680
we probably wouldn’t have even come after you.

00:23:04.680 --> 00:23:10.169
I was like, I thought that was pretty interesting.

00:23:10.169 --> 00:23:14.510
I just had this gentleman’s agreement with the government ever since that I just don’t

00:23:14.510 --> 00:23:15.750
hack them.

00:23:15.750 --> 00:23:21.929
Ever since then, I’ve pretty much stayed out of – I haven’t been raided since.

00:23:21.929 --> 00:23:27.810
It’s not like I kept my nose the cleanest but at the same time, I was the – pretty

00:23:27.810 --> 00:23:36.330
much just the biggest takeaway is that the government will really roll over you if – they

00:23:36.330 --> 00:23:41.010
have an infinite budget and infinite time if you humiliate them.

00:23:41.010 --> 00:23:46.080
JACK: But while he had a truce with government websites, he didn’t see any problem with

00:23:46.080 --> 00:23:48.580
continuing with his spamming career.

00:23:48.580 --> 00:23:53.750
YTC: Spamming is life.

00:23:53.750 --> 00:24:07.050
[MUSIC] ‘Cause I realized that hacking is much more rewarding when you are making money

00:24:07.050 --> 00:24:14.120
doing it, so that was the onus for a lot of it and defacing things wasn’t really profitable

00:24:14.120 --> 00:24:19.700
unless you’re obviously defacing something and putting a link to your gas card which

00:24:19.700 --> 00:24:41.210
was…[MUSIC] I think that – and again, people have varying opinions on

00:24:41.210 --> 00:24:42.210
it.

00:24:42.210 --> 00:24:45.559
It’s one of those things that I think everybody wants to do or wishes they could do regardless

00:24:45.559 --> 00:24:46.890
of how annoying it is.

00:24:46.890 --> 00:24:52.070
Well, I won’t say everybody but even in today’s culture, people are just like, look

00:24:52.070 --> 00:24:56.659
into my mixed tape or check out my YouTube channel; like and subscribe-type stuff that

00:24:56.659 --> 00:25:02.240
really – getting into a million, ten million, a hundred million inboxes.

00:25:02.240 --> 00:25:06.730
If you can do that and get that many eyeballs on your [00:25:00] thing, you’re obviously

00:25:06.730 --> 00:25:07.730
doing pretty well.

00:25:07.730 --> 00:25:12.920
JACK: At some point he realized online pharmacies were also paying very well for referrals.

00:25:12.920 --> 00:25:18.660
So, he started sending spam trying to get people to buy medications from certain pharmacies.

00:25:18.660 --> 00:25:22.320
Then he also found sites that you could buy fake diplomas from.

00:25:22.320 --> 00:25:23.840
They were also paying well for referrals.

00:25:23.840 --> 00:25:27.470
M1: [MUSIC] If you send me another fucking text message to my cell phone, we’re gonna

00:25:27.470 --> 00:25:28.470
have a problem.

00:25:28.470 --> 00:25:31.309
Better knock this shit off.

00:25:31.309 --> 00:25:33.600
YTC: We blasted this diploma spam.

00:25:33.600 --> 00:25:38.200
JACK: He actually figured out a way to send a bunch of spam through text messages in some

00:25:38.200 --> 00:25:39.200
campaigns.

00:25:39.200 --> 00:25:44.020
M1: [MUSIC] I will sue you for every fucking thing you’ve got.

00:25:44.020 --> 00:25:47.600
Do not call or text my phone again.

00:25:47.600 --> 00:25:53.360
YTC: A lot of the calls that are on that song are actually people that were spammed and

00:25:53.360 --> 00:26:07.299
didn’t want diplomas.

00:26:07.299 --> 00:26:18.419
F1: [MUSIC] You can kiss my fucking ass and if I ever get another goddamn text message…

00:26:18.419 --> 00:26:19.679
JACK: Now you might be wondering, isn’t this illegal?

00:26:19.679 --> 00:26:21.260
Well ya now it is.

00:26:21.260 --> 00:26:24.330
The CAN SPAM act was inacted in 2003.

00:26:24.330 --> 00:26:26.399
Which was right about this time.

00:26:26.399 --> 00:26:32.510
CANSPAM is an acronym and it stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And

00:26:32.510 --> 00:26:33.510
Marketing.

00:26:33.510 --> 00:26:37.580
Ya after that came out, some spammers took a big hit, going to prison and getting hit

00:26:37.580 --> 00:26:39.700
with millions of dollars in fines.

00:26:39.700 --> 00:26:44.450
Ytcracker had to learn how to keep low and out of trouble while continuing to spam.

00:26:44.450 --> 00:26:49.520
Becaue honestly, major companies spam us all day long, and they do it legally.

00:26:49.520 --> 00:26:53.120
So it was just a matter of making smart business choices.

00:26:53.120 --> 00:26:57.210
And with his years of background in doing this, he was really good at it.

00:26:57.210 --> 00:26:59.510
And he was able to even legitimize this whole business.

00:26:59.510 --> 00:27:02.450
Incorporating it, claiming the income on taxes and stuff.

00:27:02.450 --> 00:27:11.300
YTC: [MUSIC] I guess kinda what broke me out more into quote, unquote ‘serious musicianship’

00:27:11.300 --> 00:27:16.360
or something was when I released NerdRap Entertainment System in 2005.

00:27:16.360 --> 00:27:42.429
It got traction just on the internet at large.

00:27:42.429 --> 00:27:54.059
[MUSIC]

00:27:54.059 --> 00:28:11.200
JACK: While this album is called NerdRap Entertainment Systems, there was another rapper who named

00:28:11.200 --> 00:28:12.200
the whole genre.

00:28:12.200 --> 00:28:21.529
YTC: MC Frontalot, he came out with a song called Nerdcore Rising.

00:28:21.529 --> 00:28:30.020
The genre, right around I would say 2006, 2007, started to really kinda gain steam,

00:28:30.020 --> 00:28:33.850
but Frontalot is credited with naming it.

00:28:33.850 --> 00:28:39.100
Realistically, there’s – even within quote, unquote ‘nerdcore’ there’s all these

00:28:39.100 --> 00:28:47.659
subgenres where Frontalot’s a graphic designer, does web pages and stuff, but obviously highly

00:28:47.659 --> 00:28:48.659
nerdy.

00:28:48.659 --> 00:28:55.370
But his content is different than MC Lars which is – he’s a literature – he has

00:28:55.370 --> 00:29:00.269
a degree from Stanford in 19th Century Literature so a lot of his rhymes are more centered around

00:29:00.269 --> 00:29:04.049
the poetry and prose of that era.

00:29:04.049 --> 00:29:10.179
Me, I had been doing music obviously prior to that but my stuff was – I just – it

00:29:10.179 --> 00:29:16.850
was kind of like this gangster rap for nerds-type thing where I’m talking about hacking, doing

00:29:16.850 --> 00:29:26.010
all this stuff, criminal stuff on the computer, and not outside in the real world, type thing.

00:29:26.010 --> 00:29:32.320
Nerdcore sort of encompasses all of this – what we know we considered nerd culture, but now

00:29:32.320 --> 00:29:38.860
has kinda become fused more into mainstream as technologies popped up a lot more.

00:29:38.860 --> 00:29:39.860
JACK: [MUSIC] Yeah.

00:29:39.860 --> 00:29:44.340
Do you think that it’s unfortunate it’s called nerdcore?

00:29:44.340 --> 00:29:47.210
YTC: Not entirely.

00:29:47.210 --> 00:29:53.370
I found it – have always found it kind of an apt way to describe – I’ve always been

00:29:53.370 --> 00:29:56.840
proud to associate with the genre.

00:29:56.840 --> 00:30:12.309
I’m considered one of the forefathers of it.

00:30:12.309 --> 00:30:16.350
[MUSIC]

00:30:16.350 --> 00:30:26.919
JACK: The nerdcore genre isn’t always about hacking.

00:30:26.919 --> 00:30:32.700
There’s a lot of nerdcore songs about video games, graphic design, programming, DnD, comic

00:30:32.700 --> 00:30:35.039
books, and sci-fi shows.

00:30:35.039 --> 00:30:40.580
Nerds cover a big range of topics which means while I consider myself a nerd, I often run

00:30:40.580 --> 00:30:43.299
into nerds that I have no common interests with.

00:30:43.299 --> 00:30:44.299
[00:30:00]

00:30:44.299 --> 00:30:45.299
YTC: We are not the same.

00:30:45.299 --> 00:30:48.260
Yeah, I – well, so, and this is part of where – I got Nerd Life tattooed across

00:30:48.260 --> 00:30:50.490
my stomach.

00:30:50.490 --> 00:31:04.100
[MUSIC] It was kind of a play on Thug Life that Tupac had, but I got it on the seventh

00:31:04.100 --> 00:31:07.690
anniversary of his death, like when he was supposed to come back.

00:31:07.690 --> 00:31:09.940
It was September 13th, 2003.

00:31:09.940 --> 00:31:16.110
But if you looked at older interviews of Tupac and stuff before he had gone really hard,

00:31:16.110 --> 00:31:25.440
he was super-into drama, he was kind of effeminate and you could sort of see this – that even

00:31:25.440 --> 00:31:28.649
to – people can be nerdy about anything, I guess, is the biggest takeaway.

00:31:28.649 --> 00:31:34.720
Like you said, I think that the – more of a beautiful way to communicate it that again,

00:31:34.720 --> 00:31:38.360
the people aren’t – if this guy’s into comics and you’re into this, some people

00:31:38.360 --> 00:31:39.429
are sports nerds.

00:31:39.429 --> 00:31:44.360
Some people know everything about this baseball player or that basketball player or something.

00:31:44.360 --> 00:31:50.631
It’s just, I think the accumulation of knowledge of more like what I identify with and what

00:31:50.631 --> 00:31:56.750
I say that nerd life is, is it’s just being passionate about something to some crazy,

00:31:56.750 --> 00:31:57.750
large degree.

00:31:57.750 --> 00:32:00.450
Mine just happened to be computers.

00:32:00.450 --> 00:32:02.899
[MUSIC]

00:32:02.899 --> 00:32:09.230
JACK: YTCracker’s music career has been pretty successful.

00:32:09.230 --> 00:32:13.200
He’s been able to do international tours with his music and play tons of live shows

00:32:13.200 --> 00:32:14.200
every year.

00:32:14.200 --> 00:32:21.400
YTC: I get probably five, six fan mails a day that are just – I got into computer

00:32:21.400 --> 00:32:29.490
security ‘cause of you or I listen to your music all the time while I’m coding or whatever.

00:32:29.490 --> 00:32:36.190
That to me is just the – I just – teaching through music or getting people inspired that

00:32:36.190 --> 00:32:43.529
way is a lot – like, that’s where I feel the success comes in, is that my fans, by

00:32:43.529 --> 00:32:49.950
and large, are all relatively smart and again, passionate.

00:32:49.950 --> 00:32:57.669
You kind of have to be to be a fan, whereas once – if you’re a Drake fan, nothing

00:32:57.669 --> 00:33:03.419
against Drake, but you have all – this cross section is way different and people don’t

00:33:03.419 --> 00:33:06.210
– I wouldn’t say that Drake inspired people to code or something.

00:33:06.210 --> 00:33:08.039
It’s a little bit different.

00:33:08.039 --> 00:33:11.799
Do you know who DeadMau5 is?

00:33:11.799 --> 00:33:13.049
JACK: Yeah.

00:33:13.049 --> 00:33:20.149
YTC: Yeah, so, he actually plucked AntiSec out of the weeds.

00:33:20.149 --> 00:33:28.480
He’s been playing it out now but we’re re-releasing it on Mou5trap, his remix.

00:33:28.480 --> 00:33:34.830
[MUSIC] It’s kind of going mainstream in a sense, where DeadMau5 is putting it on his

00:33:34.830 --> 00:33:35.830
album and stuff.

00:33:35.830 --> 00:33:39.830
There’s a little bit of that thing still that’s happening to this day.

00:33:39.830 --> 00:33:44.980
JACK: Okay, so yeah, YTCracker made this song called AntiSec.

00:33:44.980 --> 00:33:49.130
Here, take a listen.

00:33:49.130 --> 00:34:15.540
[MUSIC] This is a

00:34:15.540 --> 00:34:20.190
song about LulzSec which I’ll have to do a future episode on sometime.

00:34:20.190 --> 00:34:25.740
But basically, operation AntiSec was a hacking campaign conducted by a group of anonymous

00:34:25.740 --> 00:34:27.480
hackers called LulzSec.

00:34:27.480 --> 00:34:34.060
They hacked into a ton of websites including Sony, PVS, the US Senate, and a bunch of other

00:34:34.060 --> 00:34:35.060
sites.

00:34:35.060 --> 00:34:38.129
YTC: The LulzSec; kind of anonymous phenomenon.

00:34:38.129 --> 00:34:45.589
I was involved in Project Chanology and some of the other stuff but yeah, the scene right

00:34:45.589 --> 00:34:49.340
around that time was really booming.

00:34:49.340 --> 00:34:51.940
[MUSIC]

00:34:51.940 --> 00:35:02.079
JACK: Huh, it sounds like he was there watching what LulzSec was doing.

00:35:02.079 --> 00:35:05.290
And at least being present for some of the things they did.

00:35:05.290 --> 00:35:09.420
So, since he had a front row seat and was watching it all go down and it was making

00:35:09.420 --> 00:35:21.960
major news, why not write a song about it?

00:35:21.960 --> 00:35:46.490
[MUSIC] [00:35:00] Another thing that YTCracker got involved with along his journey was Bitcoin.

00:35:46.490 --> 00:35:59.860
One of the songs he’s known for is this one called Bitcoin Baron.

00:35:59.860 --> 00:36:26.180
[MUSIC] Bitcoin is currently worth something like $10,000 each right now but when he got

00:36:26.180 --> 00:36:31.980
in, it was only like $50 per coin.

00:36:31.980 --> 00:36:38.060
YTC: When Bitcoin was around $60 or something, people were like what do we do with – what

00:36:38.060 --> 00:36:41.190
can be done with this?

00:36:41.190 --> 00:36:46.230
Jason was like, just, well – I’ll feed homeless people with it.

00:36:46.230 --> 00:37:03.400
JACK: Yeah, YTCracker and Jason have fed over 200,000 people now through their Bitcoin charity.

00:37:03.400 --> 00:37:28.599
[MUSIC] Now, these days, YTCracker holds a day job doing information security work.

00:37:28.599 --> 00:37:30.830
YTC: Currently, I’m working at Ring.

00:37:30.830 --> 00:37:35.750
JACK: Ring is a internet connected camera that Amazon makes that goes on your front

00:37:35.750 --> 00:37:36.750
door.

00:37:36.750 --> 00:37:41.480
YTC: I’m part of Amazon digital security but I work under – more for the Ring subsidiary

00:37:41.480 --> 00:37:48.080
and there’s a lot of considerations like privacy and security there that obviously

00:37:48.080 --> 00:37:55.170
– I want to make – if I started a camera company tomorrow, I wouldn’t have the reach

00:37:55.170 --> 00:37:58.580
and impact that Ring does.

00:37:58.580 --> 00:38:05.780
[MUSIC] As a utility, just being part of that pipeline and being able to affect the products

00:38:05.780 --> 00:38:11.359
the way that I would like to see them distributed is a real – that’s where I see the benefit

00:38:11.359 --> 00:38:16.711
of working with a Google or a Facebook or an Amazon is that again, you can be in the

00:38:16.711 --> 00:38:21.680
trenches and you can affect the change that you want to see in these devices and put your

00:38:21.680 --> 00:38:29.420
mark on them. [MUSIC]

00:38:29.420 --> 00:39:05.920
JACK: What do you want to be known as, Ohm-I?

00:39:05.920 --> 00:39:07.900
OHM-I: Yeah, that’s fine.

00:39:07.900 --> 00:39:12.290
JACK: Ohm-I, I like that ‘cause it’s like the Ohm as in the resistor.

00:39:12.290 --> 00:39:14.000
OHM-I: That’s where it came from.

00:39:14.000 --> 00:39:15.119
JACK: I would be current.

00:39:15.119 --> 00:39:17.500
OHM-I: Yeah, I is current.

00:39:17.500 --> 00:39:23.400
JACK: Alright, we got Ohm-I up next and I actually saw Ohm-I live once at an after-party

00:39:23.400 --> 00:39:24.540
for a security conference.

00:39:24.540 --> 00:39:47.160
Let’s take a listen to his music.

00:39:47.160 --> 00:40:10.540
[MUSIC] So, did you steal WiFi as a kid?

00:40:10.540 --> 00:40:13.290
OHM-I: Yeah, so growing up, we didn’t have WiFi.

00:40:13.290 --> 00:40:19.569
There was a router in the living room but my room was not anywhere close to it.

00:40:19.569 --> 00:40:26.800
The one house around me that had their WiFi open – and I would sit in my room and try

00:40:26.800 --> 00:40:29.202
to play games or I would watch a lot of anime.

00:40:29.202 --> 00:40:35.431
Obviously, I didn’t know the legalities of it at the time ‘cause I was young, but

00:40:35.431 --> 00:40:39.750
it was open and I needed internet.

00:40:39.750 --> 00:40:41.640
[MUSIC] [00:40:00]

00:40:41.640 --> 00:40:46.369
JACK: It’s true, isn’t it?

00:40:46.369 --> 00:40:49.579
At least for me, that’s all I needed growing up.

00:40:49.579 --> 00:40:54.310
Ohm-I grew up in Brooklyn and his passion with computers started in junior high.

00:40:54.310 --> 00:40:57.070
OHM-I: Maybe I’ll explain New York first, alright?

00:40:57.070 --> 00:41:03.020
The way the New York school system works is that once you reach the eighth grade you get

00:41:03.020 --> 00:41:07.609
this big book of schools in New York, and there’s a lot of schools in New York.

00:41:07.609 --> 00:41:10.670
You have to apply for your schools that you want to go to.

00:41:10.670 --> 00:41:17.130
When I was in junior high school, there was one school called Brooklyn Tech.

00:41:17.130 --> 00:41:21.950
I actually failed to get into that school ‘cause I didn’t score high enough.

00:41:21.950 --> 00:41:27.220
But what happened was my music teachers in junior high school, they saw that; they saw

00:41:27.220 --> 00:41:34.089
where I was planning on going and someone put my name on a list of standby people to

00:41:34.089 --> 00:41:35.560
get into Brooklyn Tech.

00:41:35.560 --> 00:41:40.180
Brooklyn Tech is very technical-heavy, right, so they had an Aerospace Engineering Major.

00:41:40.180 --> 00:41:41.750
This high school had majors.

00:41:41.750 --> 00:41:43.420
That’s how serious it was.

00:41:43.420 --> 00:41:47.490
I was like yeah, I got a thing, I got in.

00:41:47.490 --> 00:41:55.690
My major in high school was computer science so I took AP Java, computer architecture,

00:41:55.690 --> 00:42:02.010
a prep for an A+ course, but I – all these technical, really in-depth courses – which

00:42:02.010 --> 00:42:05.510
I failed most of them ‘cause I stopped going to classes like, halfway through.

00:42:05.510 --> 00:42:11.500
That was my initial exposure to most of the tech industry.

00:42:11.500 --> 00:42:14.079
I did pretty well.

00:42:14.079 --> 00:42:15.250
I did the projects and stuff.

00:42:15.250 --> 00:42:17.109
I just didn’t go to class half the time.

00:42:17.109 --> 00:42:18.109
JACK: Yeah.

00:42:18.109 --> 00:42:19.510
Then, how were you into music at the time?

00:42:19.510 --> 00:42:23.339
OHM-I: That was from junior high school when I was in band.

00:42:23.339 --> 00:42:27.390
I picked up alto saxophone and I was playing that for a couple years.

00:42:27.390 --> 00:42:31.670
Then when I got to high school, New York has what’s called the All State Band.

00:42:31.670 --> 00:42:36.090
There was All State Marching Band, All State Jazz Band.

00:42:36.090 --> 00:42:41.710
I joined the All State Marching Band and eventually I picked up baritone saxophone and French

00:42:41.710 --> 00:42:42.740
horn and trombone.

00:42:42.740 --> 00:42:48.171
I was just playing all these instruments and I was like yeah, I wanna go be a video game

00:42:48.171 --> 00:42:51.150
composer when I leave high school.

00:42:51.150 --> 00:42:56.010
That didn’t happen, but that was the goal at the time.

00:42:56.010 --> 00:42:57.010
JACK: Huh.

00:42:57.010 --> 00:43:01.260
That makes me think; are people who make music for video games also nerdcore musicians?

00:43:01.260 --> 00:43:05.490
[MUSIC] I mean, shoot, some of the rappers here are taking video game sounds and putting

00:43:05.490 --> 00:43:08.579
them in their songs, so maybe.

00:43:08.579 --> 00:43:13.630
Well, Ohm-I was really into video games and computers at the time which he says in one

00:43:13.630 --> 00:43:23.070
of his songs sort of made him different.

00:43:23.070 --> 00:43:24.880
[MUSIC]

00:43:24.880 --> 00:43:38.290
OHM-I: So, okay, the first thing I don’t understand is that in a lot of black neighborhoods

00:43:38.290 --> 00:43:44.579
there’s an expectation – at least back in the 90s and maybe still now – you sort

00:43:44.579 --> 00:43:46.740
of fit in a certain way, right?

00:43:46.740 --> 00:43:51.290
If you like certain things or if you talk a certain way, people will say oh, you talk

00:43:51.290 --> 00:43:54.809
like you’re white or you talk all proper, all that kinda stuff.

00:43:54.809 --> 00:44:00.150
It was one of those things that at the time, I was like oh, okay, sure.

00:44:00.150 --> 00:44:04.119
But it was one of those things that kinda stuck with me because it made me feel like

00:44:04.119 --> 00:44:12.069
I didn’t fit in at the time, especially going to a school in Fort Green and Brooklyn

00:44:12.069 --> 00:44:15.950
which now isn’t as black as it used to be.

00:44:15.950 --> 00:44:19.050
But it’s definitely gentrified.

00:44:19.050 --> 00:44:21.930
But it was one of those things just growing up.

00:44:21.930 --> 00:44:25.520
It was what I was told by other people who look like me.

00:44:25.520 --> 00:44:35.710
It was you’re too white or you like white girls or something like that.

00:44:35.710 --> 00:44:47.320
It was kinda like okay, sure.

00:44:47.320 --> 00:44:55.580
[MUSIC] For whatever reason, there’s always been this expectation that because I’m tall,

00:44:55.580 --> 00:44:56.900
right, that I play basketball.

00:44:56.900 --> 00:44:58.809
I never really got into playing sports.

00:44:58.809 --> 00:45:02.130
I never really cared too much to watch it.

00:45:02.130 --> 00:45:05.630
I’d get really annoyed when people had that – put that expectation on me like I’m

00:45:05.630 --> 00:45:08.260
supposed to know something.

00:45:08.260 --> 00:45:12.150
I joined the Navy.

00:45:12.150 --> 00:45:16.700
I left New York and I was doing electronics.

00:45:16.700 --> 00:45:21.910
I had my hands in a lot of deep network and radar electronic stuff.

00:45:21.910 --> 00:45:25.540
JACK: He spent years in the Navy doing this stuff and he was thinking about getting out

00:45:25.540 --> 00:45:28.270
and doing something else, but then he saw a new opportunity.

00:45:28.270 --> 00:45:34.540
OHM-I: The Navy has this role for Cryptologic Technicians for networks who do mostly – it’s

00:45:34.540 --> 00:45:37.490
like the cyber field for the Navy.

00:45:37.490 --> 00:45:38.490
I was like you know what?

00:45:38.490 --> 00:45:39.490
I’m gonna give this a shot.

00:45:39.490 --> 00:45:41.589
I’ll stay in for four more [00:45:00] years and see how it goes.

00:45:41.589 --> 00:45:46.970
JACK: He ended up spending ten years in the Navy and then he got out of there and transitioned

00:45:46.970 --> 00:46:04.010
back to civilian life.

00:46:04.010 --> 00:46:26.480
[MUSIC] When he got out of the Navy, he got a job as a penetration tester.

00:46:26.480 --> 00:46:30.330
[MUSIC]

00:46:30.330 --> 00:47:22.980
OHM-I: I was a web app pen tester and as I was doing this pen test for whatever site

00:47:22.980 --> 00:47:27.359
it was, they had ASP and I was like oh, what can I do with this?

00:47:27.359 --> 00:47:31.540
JACK: He decided to write his own tool to give him command line access to this machine.

00:47:31.540 --> 00:47:37.210
OHM-I: Being able to take over an entire box to me was -super-exciting the first time I

00:47:37.210 --> 00:47:38.210
did it.

00:47:38.210 --> 00:47:44.580
Being able to take over an entire box just through a web shell and writing .NET payloads

00:47:44.580 --> 00:47:47.050
and all these other cool things that people were doing, they all were just kinda like

00:47:47.050 --> 00:47:48.830
oh, you’re doing cool research in .NET?

00:47:48.830 --> 00:47:51.849
Let me go figure out how to write this web shell.

00:47:51.849 --> 00:48:04.560
It was definitely an experience and one of my favorite experiences from that job.

00:48:04.560 --> 00:48:36.020
[MUSIC] I wrote that song specifically for my resume because I knew that getting out

00:48:36.020 --> 00:48:40.990
of the Navy, getting a job was gonna be a little hard.

00:48:40.990 --> 00:48:47.260
I had some experiences with some companies who explicitly mentioned that they had a hard

00:48:47.260 --> 00:48:52.960
time hiring veterans because of personality issues and personality conflicts.

00:48:52.960 --> 00:48:57.461
But I just wanted to do something unique for my resume so I just left a link to the song

00:48:57.461 --> 00:48:59.329
at the bottom of the footer.

00:48:59.329 --> 00:49:03.440
I was like hey, check out this song.

00:49:03.440 --> 00:49:05.950
Hire me, please. Please.

00:49:05.950 --> 00:49:08.470
JACK: Well, how did it work?

00:49:08.470 --> 00:49:09.819
OHM-I: It didn’t.

00:49:09.819 --> 00:49:11.200
JACK: Oh.

00:49:11.200 --> 00:49:16.040
OHM-I: The companies that interviewed me – the song aside – I just didn’t get hired.

00:49:16.040 --> 00:49:18.680
I already knew it was gonna be an uphill battle.

00:49:18.680 --> 00:49:23.089
JACK: Did they comment at all on like, oh, cool song, but no.

00:49:23.089 --> 00:49:27.330
OHM-I: One of the companies, that was one of the first things they brought up on the

00:49:27.330 --> 00:49:28.859
phone interview, the phone screening.

00:49:28.859 --> 00:49:31.530
I was like, I guess it worked.

00:49:31.530 --> 00:49:35.450
I guess I did a good thing there.

00:49:35.450 --> 00:49:38.260
JACK: Ohm-I is really into Python.

00:49:38.260 --> 00:49:41.160
He learned it while in the Navy but he’s been using it ever since.

00:49:41.160 --> 00:49:44.319
His Twitter bio even says Python is life.

00:49:44.319 --> 00:49:49.420
So, I asked him how does being good at Python make you good at doing security work?

00:49:49.420 --> 00:49:52.030
OHM-I: Oh man, Python makes it easy.

00:49:52.030 --> 00:49:56.510
Because Python is super well-supported by so many people and there’s always someone

00:49:56.510 --> 00:50:02.510
writing a new library somewhere, it makes it one of the most versatile languages.

00:50:02.510 --> 00:50:07.970
I would say that no matter what your field is in InfoSec, you can probably use Python

00:50:07.970 --> 00:50:12.140
for something because there’s always something that you can automate, there’s always something

00:50:12.140 --> 00:50:15.170
that you can make easier.

00:50:15.170 --> 00:50:19.740
For sure, Python is one of the most approachable languages to do that in.

00:50:19.740 --> 00:50:20.850
[MUSIC]

00:50:20.850 --> 00:50:27.869
JACK: Like any human, nerdcore rappers suffer from loss and heartbreak, too.

00:50:27.869 --> 00:50:38.430
Here’s how Ohm-I brings his relationship experiences into his music.

00:50:38.430 --> 00:50:51.690
[MUSIC] [00:50:00]

00:50:51.690 --> 00:51:19.900
OHM-I: Oh, yeah, so that song is about my ex-girlfriend.

00:51:19.900 --> 00:51:22.960
I am not a very emotionally available person.

00:51:22.960 --> 00:51:25.579
I’ll say that out loud.

00:51:25.579 --> 00:51:28.530
It was basically that, right?

00:51:28.530 --> 00:51:32.099
I don’t always open up to people.

00:51:32.099 --> 00:51:34.119
Yeah.

00:51:34.119 --> 00:51:37.880
I sent her that song and she didn’t understand any of the references.

00:51:37.880 --> 00:51:45.670
I was like, this is just me expressing my feelings.

00:51:45.670 --> 00:51:47.630
[MUSIC]

00:51:47.630 --> 00:51:55.430
JACK: It does seem comical at the same time as being sad, that in all of this nerdcore

00:51:55.430 --> 00:52:00.920
seems comical; like, oh my gosh, I get that joke but I feel so nerdy getting it.

00:52:00.920 --> 00:52:06.040
OHM-I: Yeah, and then that’s definitely the vibe that I think a lot of – that nerdcore

00:52:06.040 --> 00:52:13.070
has gone for since inception, is like, that I get this particular line ‘cause I can

00:52:13.070 --> 00:52:17.460
relate to it. [MUSIC]

00:52:17.460 --> 00:52:24.290
JACK: Now, Ohm-I is working on the red team at Azure.

00:52:24.290 --> 00:52:27.109
This is the cloud computing service that Microsoft offers.

00:52:27.109 --> 00:52:34.310
OHM-I: Our job is to perform red team assessments against teams working on Azure products and

00:52:34.310 --> 00:52:35.310
services.

00:52:35.310 --> 00:52:37.410
We’re an internal team, right?

00:52:37.410 --> 00:52:40.470
We don’t do customer-facing engagements.

00:52:40.470 --> 00:52:46.890
We basically just hack away and try to find new things either within Azure or against

00:52:46.890 --> 00:52:53.450
specific teams and how they organize their infrastructure or whatever else they have

00:52:53.450 --> 00:52:54.450
to organize.

00:52:54.450 --> 00:52:59.740
JACK: But get this; while yeah, he’s hacking on Azure itself sometimes, his scope goes

00:52:59.740 --> 00:53:01.660
way beyond the product.

00:53:01.660 --> 00:53:02.660
OHM-I: Right.

00:53:02.660 --> 00:53:08.520
If you take Azure Functions, for example, we’re not looking for vulnerabilities in

00:53:08.520 --> 00:53:09.520
Azure Functions.

00:53:09.520 --> 00:53:12.450
That’s for the product engineer teams and security assurance team.

00:53:12.450 --> 00:53:19.290
We’re looking for ways to hack the Azure Functions development team and any vulnerabilities

00:53:19.290 --> 00:53:24.210
that they may have that might lead us to take over this service, for example, which now

00:53:24.210 --> 00:53:26.450
has bigger implications down the line.

00:53:26.450 --> 00:53:27.569
JACK: Wow, that’s crazy, huh?

00:53:27.569 --> 00:53:32.110
He’s trying to hack the people who work at Microsoft in order to help keep Microsoft

00:53:32.110 --> 00:53:34.900
products more secure.

00:53:34.900 --> 00:53:36.400
Wild.

00:53:36.400 --> 00:54:01.410
[MUSIC] The last song I want to leave you with from Ohm-I; it’s called Tabs and I

00:54:01.410 --> 00:54:31.869
absolutely love it.

00:54:31.869 --> 00:54:45.180
[MUSIC] Our last musical act is none other than Dual Core.

00:54:45.180 --> 00:54:46.720
INT80: Yes, I am Int80.

00:54:46.720 --> 00:54:51.230
I’m the rapper in Dual Core and I consent to this recording for the use of Darknet Diaries.

00:54:51.230 --> 00:54:55.010
JACK: Okay, just to clear things up, Int80 is the name of the rapper, the guy we’re

00:54:55.010 --> 00:54:57.880
talking with, and Dual Core is the name of the rap group.

00:54:57.880 --> 00:55:00.730
INT80: I’m beyond excited to be on the podcast.

00:55:00.730 --> 00:55:02.650
Your podcast is literally my favorite one.

00:55:02.650 --> 00:55:04.080
I’ve listened to every single episode.

00:55:04.080 --> 00:55:06.800
I can’t say that about any other podcast.

00:55:06.800 --> 00:55:09.790
As soon as new episodes come out, it’s the first thing that I listen to.

00:55:09.790 --> 00:55:14.240
JACK: Whoa, it’s always a trip for me to meet someone and find out that we have mutual

00:55:14.240 --> 00:55:15.640
respect for each other’s work.

00:55:15.640 --> 00:55:17.650
I really dig Dual Core’s music, too.

00:55:17.650 --> 00:55:22.609
Here, check this out.

00:55:22.609 --> 00:55:44.089
[MUSIC] [00:55:00] So, you ready to start?

00:55:44.089 --> 00:55:46.089
INT80: Sure. Let’s do it.

00:55:46.089 --> 00:55:47.089
JACK: Alright, so what was going on in high school?

00:55:47.089 --> 00:55:48.339
Were you a nerd then?

00:55:48.339 --> 00:55:50.369
INT80: Absolutely, yeah.

00:55:50.369 --> 00:55:51.970
I got in trouble in high school.

00:55:51.970 --> 00:55:58.250
I took a C++ programming class and sent – using Net Send, I sent a message to all the Windows

00:55:58.250 --> 00:56:01.849
computers saying there was a virus in the system and I waited until everybody had logged

00:56:01.849 --> 00:56:03.440
out at the end of the class period.

00:56:03.440 --> 00:56:08.220
The next class period came in and they all logged in and got this message box popping

00:56:08.220 --> 00:56:12.369
up saying there was a virus and I got kicked off the computers for like, a week.

00:56:12.369 --> 00:56:14.950
JACK: It was in high school where he started making music.

00:56:14.950 --> 00:56:17.510
INT80: I listened to hip-hop.

00:56:17.510 --> 00:56:23.140
There was a kid that I used to program and hack with on AOL and he lived in New Jersey.

00:56:23.140 --> 00:56:26.190
We would either be talking about hacking or programming or hip-hop.

00:56:26.190 --> 00:56:30.319
We’d have discussions of who the best rapper was, etc.

00:56:30.319 --> 00:56:33.400
He’s actually the one that got me started rapping.

00:56:33.400 --> 00:56:38.170
He sent me an e-mail with a rap verse that he wrote about how he was a better hacker

00:56:38.170 --> 00:56:39.220
than I was.

00:56:39.220 --> 00:56:44.660
[MUSIC] I paid it no mind ‘cause I knew that I was a better hacker than him.

00:56:44.660 --> 00:56:49.640
He kept bugging me to write a response back so eventually I wrote a response and that

00:56:49.640 --> 00:56:53.130
was my first rap verse that I ever wrote, and it was about how I was a better hacker

00:56:53.130 --> 00:57:03.609
and programmer than he was.

00:57:03.609 --> 00:57:15.150
[MUSIC] I remember making my first website.

00:57:15.150 --> 00:57:20.880
I was just learning HTML but obviously I didn’t know HTML particularly well.

00:57:20.880 --> 00:57:26.960
I went to paste something into an IM to somebody and I thought I had some other content in

00:57:26.960 --> 00:57:31.760
the clipboard but what I had was the markup from the website that I was building.

00:57:31.760 --> 00:57:36.650
It was all messed up and it crashed AOL or it froze it or something bad happened.

00:57:36.650 --> 00:57:40.700
I was curious as to what happened so I looked at what was in my clipboard and it was the

00:57:40.700 --> 00:57:44.180
markup from my website.

00:57:44.180 --> 00:57:48.480
There were some syntax errors, like the tags or the values were wrong or something.

00:57:48.480 --> 00:57:53.579
At that point I realized okay, what if I intentionally put bad values in the markup and then send

00:57:53.579 --> 00:57:54.640
that to somebody?

00:57:54.640 --> 00:58:00.080
Then I just started manually fuzzing; putting in strange values like having a font size

00:58:00.080 --> 00:58:08.020
of a bunch of nines or starting the HTML with an ending HTML tag.

00:58:08.020 --> 00:58:12.059
What would happen is there were all these bugs in the AOL client and you would get kicked

00:58:12.059 --> 00:58:16.450
offline or AOL would freeze up or crash or something bad would happen.

00:58:16.450 --> 00:58:21.410
At the time, it was dial-up, so it took you like ten minutes to get back online.

00:58:21.410 --> 00:58:24.210
You’d be in a chatroom and someone would argue with you.

00:58:24.210 --> 00:58:28.940
You’d turn off your IMs and send them an IM with this awful HTML in it and their client

00:58:28.940 --> 00:58:48.290
would crash and they would go off – go away and get kicked offline.

00:58:48.290 --> 00:58:59.460
[MUSIC] I used to trade these punt strings, this malformed HTML, for stolen accounts so

00:58:59.460 --> 00:59:00.630
that I could keep access.

00:59:00.630 --> 00:59:04.349
My parents would always get upset with me for some reason and then they’d take away

00:59:04.349 --> 00:59:05.349
my AOL access.

00:59:05.349 --> 00:59:10.589
I had all these stolen accounts so that I could continue having access to the internet.

00:59:10.589 --> 00:59:15.250
What really drove me into programming was I had a secret stash of punt strings that

00:59:15.250 --> 00:59:18.100
I refused to share to anybody ‘cause they were so good.

00:59:18.100 --> 00:59:20.420
I needed a way to weaponize those.

00:59:20.420 --> 00:59:25.780
That drove me to learning Visual Basic and the Windows API so that I could write my own

00:59:25.780 --> 00:59:28.170
punters to then kick people offline.

00:59:28.170 --> 00:59:32.040
JACK: Dual Core actually collaborated with YTCracker on this song.

00:59:32.040 --> 00:59:36.809
It’s called I Remember.

00:59:36.809 --> 00:59:40.980
[MUSIC]

00:59:40.980 --> 00:59:49.680
INT80: I actually did not want to do computers as a career.

00:59:49.680 --> 00:59:54.359
I went to school; I have a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and I wanted to be a

00:59:54.359 --> 00:59:55.359
lawyer.

00:59:55.359 --> 00:59:59.460
I really enjoyed classes like Civil Liberties and Criminal Justice.

00:59:59.460 --> 01:00:08.270
I really enjoyed doing case studies, writing about dissenting opinions and concurring opinions.

01:00:08.270 --> 01:00:14.760
I always thought of the movie The Matrix where they show Thomas Anderson in his cubicle after

01:00:14.760 --> 01:00:16.730
he’s just been yelled at by his boss.

01:00:16.730 --> 01:00:21.049
It just looks like such a drab situation to be in.

01:00:21.049 --> 01:00:25.920
That was my stereotypical view when I was younger about what having a career in computers

01:00:25.920 --> 01:00:27.319
would be like.

01:00:27.319 --> 01:00:33.420
But I was approaching graduating from my Political Science degree and I went to a Law Day at

01:00:33.420 --> 01:00:35.329
a law school.

01:00:35.329 --> 01:00:39.059
Learning about how much you had to read and write was unbearable for me.

01:00:39.059 --> 01:00:45.270
[01:00:00] I decided hacking computers is really fun and maybe I can get a job doing

01:00:45.270 --> 01:00:49.960
that or at least programming and building web apps and stuff which is something I had

01:00:49.960 --> 01:00:51.030
been doing at that point.

01:00:51.030 --> 01:00:54.270
JACK: His first computer job was doing website development.

01:00:54.270 --> 01:00:58.320
He then started hanging out at security meetups and from there, he got an internship doing

01:00:58.320 --> 01:00:59.750
security work.

01:00:59.750 --> 01:01:04.490
After that, he went to get a job doing application security which is where he’s paid to find

01:01:04.490 --> 01:01:07.130
bugs in the software that the company makes.

01:01:07.130 --> 01:01:13.119
INT80: Right, except I was a consultant so I would basically be on a five-day engagement.

01:01:13.119 --> 01:01:17.369
We would do white box or black box assessments; white box being where you have exposure to

01:01:17.369 --> 01:01:22.440
the entire source code and black box where you’re just targeting a regular site or

01:01:22.440 --> 01:01:25.700
an application without any knowledge of its source code.

01:01:25.700 --> 01:01:30.299
Then yeah, for the first four days, you’re pretty much hacking and just trying to find

01:01:30.299 --> 01:01:32.299
bugs, unfortunately.

01:01:32.299 --> 01:01:36.890
I think in one of my first assessments, I think I pivoted through the network and got

01:01:36.890 --> 01:01:41.690
domain admin and checked in with the engagement manager and said okay, I’ve got domain admin.

01:01:41.690 --> 01:01:42.690
Now what?

01:01:42.690 --> 01:01:43.720
They were like no, that’s not what you’re supposed to do.

01:01:43.720 --> 01:01:54.510
You’re just supposed to take a screenshot of the alert box and put that in

01:01:54.510 --> 01:01:57.880
the report.

01:01:57.880 --> 01:02:16.010
[MUSIC] Let’s see, at that point I think we had just started Dual Core.

01:02:16.010 --> 01:02:19.030
I know we started Dual Core in 2006.

01:02:19.030 --> 01:02:21.910
That was when we were making our first album Zero One.

01:02:21.910 --> 01:02:30.299
In 2007, that was when I – that was when we released our first album Zero One.

01:02:30.299 --> 01:02:35.240
Also in 2007 is when I got my first application security job.

01:02:35.240 --> 01:02:40.819
I remember when I started at the company, people already knew about Dual Core which

01:02:40.819 --> 01:02:45.730
was mind-blowing to me because I was just some kid recording rap songs in a basement

01:02:45.730 --> 01:02:47.890
in Cincinnati.

01:02:47.890 --> 01:02:52.109
It was a shock to walk into a place and people already knew my music that had only been out

01:02:52.109 --> 01:03:01.349
for a few months.

01:03:01.349 --> 01:03:13.579
[MUSIC]Dual Core is two people; it’s myself, Int80.

01:03:13.579 --> 01:03:18.630
I’m the rapper in the group and then the other half is c64.

01:03:18.630 --> 01:03:24.780
I write and record all the rap songs and I have the moustache, and c64 makes all the

01:03:24.780 --> 01:03:25.780
beats.

01:03:25.780 --> 01:03:26.900
He does all of the mixing.

01:03:26.900 --> 01:03:33.410
He does all of the artwork, does some of our social media stuff, and he’s basically all

01:03:33.410 --> 01:03:34.770
of the talent in the group.

01:03:34.770 --> 01:03:41.109
I’m just kind of the loud person in front.

01:03:41.109 --> 01:03:52.970
[MUSIC] Penny Arcade published a blog post about our album which got our music in front

01:03:52.970 --> 01:03:54.780
of a bunch of listeners.

01:03:54.780 --> 01:03:59.970
I kind of used that as a springboard to start booking shows as rabidly as I could.

01:03:59.970 --> 01:04:02.220
I said Penny Arcade is a big fan of our music.

01:04:02.220 --> 01:04:04.359
Here’s the link to their blog post.

01:04:04.359 --> 01:04:06.670
You should totally book Dual Core.

01:04:06.670 --> 01:04:09.109
We ended up playing at Defcon that year just a few months after that.

01:04:09.109 --> 01:04:12.750
We were the first ever live hip-hop act to play at Defcon.

01:04:12.750 --> 01:04:25.329
I’ve been playing every year since 2007, live in person, except for 2020 with the pandemic.

01:04:25.329 --> 01:04:43.309
[MUSIC] Yeah, I then moved into a position doing reverse-engineering.

01:04:43.309 --> 01:04:47.550
I was essentially cracking copy protection.

01:04:47.550 --> 01:04:51.609
Companies would come in with copy protection that would go on a particular device and they

01:04:51.609 --> 01:04:54.960
would want to know how fast it could be broken.

01:04:54.960 --> 01:04:57.859
We have three objectives, usually.

01:04:57.859 --> 01:05:04.079
[MUSIC] One would be to pirate the intellectual property, one would be to reverse-engineer

01:05:04.079 --> 01:05:09.339
the protection to get a full understanding of the protection, and then the third objective

01:05:09.339 --> 01:05:17.510
would be to tamper the protection without being detected.

01:05:17.510 --> 01:05:51.630
[MUSIC] [01:05:00] I went and worked at a social media platform that we all know and

01:05:51.630 --> 01:05:54.119
have probably used at some point.

01:05:54.119 --> 01:06:01.839
I worked on building threat systems for them.

01:06:01.839 --> 01:06:07.560
Our goal was to be able to find any malware that was spreading or communicating across

01:06:07.560 --> 01:06:13.720
the platform and then sandbox it, pick it apart programatically, figure out what it

01:06:13.720 --> 01:06:20.819
was doing, siphon out indicators and then build new signatures and put it all on our

01:06:20.819 --> 01:06:25.720
compute and fabric storage, and then programatically associate it with any other families.

01:06:25.720 --> 01:06:31.819
Then we could put detections and filtering in place to stop future campaigns and alert

01:06:31.819 --> 01:06:33.809
victims that were on the platform.

01:06:33.809 --> 01:06:40.089
JACK: While there, he discovered some malware on the platform which would mine Litecoin.

01:06:40.089 --> 01:06:41.980
This is a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.

01:06:41.980 --> 01:06:46.940
He’d clean the malware off the infected systems but he realized he could do more than

01:06:46.940 --> 01:06:48.789
just stop it in his network.

01:06:48.789 --> 01:06:55.960
INT80: I reached out to the Litecoin mining pool and asked them if they would stop – basically

01:06:55.960 --> 01:06:59.110
stop all of the progress for this particular account.

01:06:59.110 --> 01:07:03.690
I had evidence of you know, these are the malware samples, here’s in the code where

01:07:03.690 --> 01:07:06.480
it’s using your pool, etc.

01:07:06.480 --> 01:07:13.859
Also, the malware had stages up on Dropbox, so I worked with Dropbox and said hey, this

01:07:13.859 --> 01:07:17.299
is – this malware is staging off of your platform.

01:07:17.299 --> 01:07:19.730
Can we find all of the instances of it?

01:07:19.730 --> 01:07:23.190
Dropbox was able to find them all.

01:07:23.190 --> 01:07:29.750
Then the C2 was at some hosting company, so I reached out to the hosting provider and

01:07:29.750 --> 01:07:35.590
I said hey, this malware has got its C2 on a VPS in your hosting setup.

01:07:35.590 --> 01:07:37.320
Can I get a copy of the VPS?

01:07:37.320 --> 01:07:38.320
They said, sure.

01:07:38.320 --> 01:07:43.920
They gave me a copy of the VPS and that gave me all of the logs and keys that the malware

01:07:43.920 --> 01:07:47.289
authors used to login and check into the C2.

01:07:47.289 --> 01:07:52.809
Then on a particular Friday, I said hey, on this Friday coming up at 9:00 AM Pacific Time,

01:07:52.809 --> 01:07:54.200
let’s kill everything off.

01:07:54.200 --> 01:07:55.200
So, we did.

01:07:55.200 --> 01:08:00.180
We did this coordinated takedown and that Friday at 9:00 AM, the malware ceased to exist

01:08:00.180 --> 01:08:01.180
on the internet.

01:08:01.180 --> 01:08:12.589
It was super fun.

01:08:12.589 --> 01:08:25.580
[MUSIC] After leaving the social media platform, I took a job as a red team operator.

01:08:25.580 --> 01:08:31.400
I worked on the red team at Salesforce and our job was basically to make the bad things

01:08:31.400 --> 01:08:41.009
happen.

01:08:41.009 --> 01:08:55.120
[MUSIC] We would start any red team operation with asking the question what’s the worst

01:08:55.120 --> 01:08:56.390
thing that can happen to this business?

01:08:56.390 --> 01:09:00.580
The Salesforce has a number of acquisitions so there was always fresh attack surface for

01:09:00.580 --> 01:09:03.370
us to look at.

01:09:03.370 --> 01:09:07.100
We basically would try to go after things that were really important or critical to

01:09:07.100 --> 01:09:10.830
the business, things that mattered the most because if you’re handing in a report to

01:09:10.830 --> 01:09:17.270
executives and you just say look, I popped an alert box, no executive understands why

01:09:17.270 --> 01:09:19.739
that’s important, maybe not even what that is.

01:09:19.739 --> 01:09:23.819
But if you’re able to say I have a copy of all of your customer data and I’ve put

01:09:23.819 --> 01:09:27.000
backdoors in the source code that makes your business run, and those are the most important

01:09:27.000 --> 01:09:31.429
things to your business, they’re gonna understand we’re gonna be out of business or the stock’s

01:09:31.429 --> 01:09:35.089
gonna take a hit or bad things are gonna happen.

01:09:35.089 --> 01:09:37.150
We would do that kind of stuff, right?

01:09:37.150 --> 01:09:41.839
We would try to exfil customer data or we would try to backdoor source code or we’d

01:09:41.839 --> 01:09:44.989
break into places sometimes.

01:09:44.989 --> 01:09:52.390
Trying to frame the objectives in a more high-level way and telling a story rather than just handing

01:09:52.390 --> 01:10:03.440
in a report that people might not read.

01:10:03.440 --> 01:10:13.110
[MUSIC]

01:10:13.110 --> 01:10:25.120
JACK: But that job didn’t last long.

01:10:25.120 --> 01:10:31.660
If you Google Defcon Salesforce, you’ll see articles about a mishap that happened.

01:10:31.660 --> 01:10:32.870
He got caught up in all that.

01:10:32.870 --> 01:10:37.730
INT80: I have since pivoted into a cloud engineering kind of role.

01:10:37.730 --> 01:10:41.989
I build [01:10:00] cool stuff but I also break things.

01:10:41.989 --> 01:10:49.140
It’s a nice balance of getting both sides of it, right; being able to construct and

01:10:49.140 --> 01:11:00.660
then also tear down and see how to construct it better in the future.

01:11:00.660 --> 01:11:12.159
[MUSIC] The song All the Things came about by randomly being at Defcon one year.

01:11:12.159 --> 01:11:19.941
A friend of mine, Vyrus from DC949 came up to me and said hey, drink all the booze, hack

01:11:19.941 --> 01:11:20.941
all the things.

01:11:20.941 --> 01:11:22.530
That’s how we’re doing it this year.

01:11:22.530 --> 01:11:24.270
I said oh, that’s cool.

01:11:24.270 --> 01:11:27.040
Sounds like fun.

01:11:27.040 --> 01:11:28.710
My producer was in from the UK.

01:11:28.710 --> 01:11:31.570
He had flown all the way to Vegas.

01:11:31.570 --> 01:11:37.740
Also with me was Dale Chase and we were rolling around playing parties.

01:11:37.740 --> 01:11:44.600
I think it was our fourth party of the night, and we get there and the whole pool place

01:11:44.600 --> 01:11:46.590
is packed.

01:11:46.590 --> 01:11:50.699
The pool area is just filled with people all waiting for a Dual Core show.

01:11:50.699 --> 01:11:53.070
We’re like, alright.

01:11:53.070 --> 01:11:56.250
We show up.

01:11:56.250 --> 01:12:02.699
My producer and I are talking and they’re like, what if we played a set where – just

01:12:02.699 --> 01:12:04.889
kinda make it up as we go?

01:12:04.889 --> 01:12:06.890
My producer was like, sounds good.

01:12:06.890 --> 01:12:09.950
c64 is just throwing on whatever beats that he wants to throw on.

01:12:09.950 --> 01:12:12.230
We’re not sticking to any particular set.

01:12:12.230 --> 01:12:14.180
We’re just going for it.

01:12:14.180 --> 01:12:20.570
Dale and I are just kind of rapping verses, we’re putting in hooks where we can, and

01:12:20.570 --> 01:12:24.120
my producer plays this one beat and I said, let’s do a freestyle.

01:12:24.120 --> 01:12:26.130
I like this beat; sounds good.

01:12:26.130 --> 01:12:27.990
Let’s do a freestyle.

01:12:27.990 --> 01:12:33.720
I’d just say alright, in the chorus I’m gonna say drink all the booze and everybody

01:12:33.720 --> 01:12:36.740
yell ‘hack all the things.’

01:12:36.740 --> 01:12:38.270
It was amazing.

01:12:38.270 --> 01:12:42.620
We started the freestyle and we got to the chorus and I yelled drink all the booze.

01:12:42.620 --> 01:12:48.389
Now it’s four-something in the morning in Vegas and the entire pool area is just people

01:12:48.389 --> 01:12:53.130
screaming ‘hack all the things’.

01:12:53.130 --> 01:13:02.370
[MUSIC] Several years after the song had been out, I got an e-mail and it was a person who

01:13:02.370 --> 01:13:08.989
said hi, I work on the game Watchdogs at Ubisoft and we were making Watchdogs 2 but nobody

01:13:08.989 --> 01:13:11.570
knows yet.

01:13:11.570 --> 01:13:16.630
I saw you play at Defcon and I need your music in the game.

01:13:16.630 --> 01:13:17.630
How do we do that?

01:13:17.630 --> 01:13:21.239
I said, send me an NDA and we’ll get everything set up and we’ll make it happen.

01:13:21.239 --> 01:13:33.889
They ended up including All the Things in Watchdogs 2.

01:13:33.889 --> 01:13:43.340
[MUSIC]

01:13:43.340 --> 01:13:57.330
JACK: Dual Core has continually grown more popular over time, and so much that he’s

01:13:57.330 --> 01:13:59.440
been able to book live shows all over.

01:13:59.440 --> 01:14:05.900
INT80: I’ve played all across the US, Canada, I’ve played in Columbia, I’ve played in

01:14:05.900 --> 01:14:09.900
Brazil, I’ve played in Dubai, and I’ve played all across Europe as well.

01:14:09.900 --> 01:14:17.141
We even did a three-week tour, me and my producer, in the UK.

01:14:17.141 --> 01:14:21.800
[MUSIC] But when I started, I always thought that my ideal week would look like hacking

01:14:21.800 --> 01:14:26.890
stuff Monday through Friday and then playing rap shows on the weekends.

01:14:26.890 --> 01:14:31.540
That is the structure that I kind of derived or composed and have stuck with all these

01:14:31.540 --> 01:14:32.540
years.

01:14:32.540 --> 01:14:33.540
It’s worked out really well.

01:14:33.540 --> 01:14:38.480
I’ve done some tours where we’re on the road for anywhere from three to eight weeks

01:14:38.480 --> 01:14:43.699
but for the most part, a normal week for me is like Monday, I go to work, and then Thursday

01:14:43.699 --> 01:14:47.960
or Friday I’ll fly out and play shows, and then Sunday or Monday I’ll fly back, and

01:14:47.960 --> 01:14:49.699
Monday I’m back at work again.

01:14:49.699 --> 01:14:54.489
JACK: Dual Core has done some collaborations with other nerdcore rappers, but not all nerdcore

01:14:54.489 --> 01:14:56.170
rappers are hackers.

01:14:56.170 --> 01:15:00.340
Like we were saying before, some nerdcore rappers talk about video games and some talk

01:15:00.340 --> 01:15:01.340
about anime.

01:15:01.340 --> 01:15:05.909
But in order for Dual Core to collaborate with others, he created a file-sharing system

01:15:05.909 --> 01:15:07.560
on a server that he set up.

01:15:07.560 --> 01:15:14.639
However, he set it up using SCP which is a secure file-transfer method but it takes a

01:15:14.639 --> 01:15:15.860
couple steps to set up.

01:15:15.860 --> 01:15:20.989
INT80: When I started doing collaborations with folks, I’d say hey, here’s a – send

01:15:20.989 --> 01:15:25.719
me your SSH public key and I’ll set you up with a user account, and then you can SFTP

01:15:25.719 --> 01:15:28.159
or SCP your waves up.

01:15:28.159 --> 01:15:33.690
I thought everybody was a hacker like I was in the nerd rap scene, and I think YTCracker

01:15:33.690 --> 01:15:36.350
was the only person that when I said that, he didn’t blink an eye.

01:15:36.350 --> 01:15:39.240
He said okay, no problem, here’s my SSH key, good to go.

01:15:39.240 --> 01:15:40.830
Meanwhile, everybody else was like what is SSH?

01:15:40.830 --> 01:15:41.870
[01:15:00] What is a key?

01:15:41.870 --> 01:15:43.340
What is SCP?

01:15:43.340 --> 01:15:45.660
How do I get you the files?

01:15:45.660 --> 01:15:51.230
I always thought that was a really funny experience, having the realization that there aren’t

01:15:51.230 --> 01:15:53.150
many hackers that are out making rap music.

01:15:53.150 --> 01:15:57.040
JACK: [MUSIC] See, that’s what I think is interesting about this sliver of music in

01:15:57.040 --> 01:15:58.330
the world.

01:15:58.330 --> 01:16:01.790
The lyrics are about this specific type of computer usage.

01:16:01.790 --> 01:16:07.881
But not only that; it’s made by hackers themselves for other hackers who want to hear

01:16:07.881 --> 01:16:09.080
songs about hacking.

01:16:09.080 --> 01:16:11.469
Hey, I dig it.

01:16:11.469 --> 01:16:15.929
After chatting with these guys, I really am surprised at how much they’re actually doing

01:16:15.929 --> 01:16:16.929
security themselves.

01:16:16.929 --> 01:16:20.290
I don’t know why but I just assumed they were wannabe hackers.

01:16:20.290 --> 01:16:21.820
But no, they aren’t.

01:16:21.820 --> 01:16:24.330
They really are doing this stuff.

01:16:24.330 --> 01:16:34.310
Now, when I listen to nerdcore, I have a newfound respect for the musicians behind it.

01:16:34.310 --> 01:16:51.909
(OUTRO): [OUTRO MUSIC] A big thank you to YTCracker, Ohm-I, and Int80 from Dual Core.

01:16:51.909 --> 01:16:56.130
I never had guests bring their own soundtracks before, but this was a fun ride.

01:16:56.130 --> 01:17:00.020
If you want to just listen to the music from this episode I’ve created a playlist for

01:17:00.020 --> 01:17:01.020
you.

01:17:01.020 --> 01:17:04.550
Go to darknetdiaries.com/episode/78.

01:17:04.550 --> 01:17:08.219
While there you’ll also find more about each of these artists, and dive into their

01:17:08.219 --> 01:17:11.560
music because they have tons more songs to discover.

01:17:11.560 --> 01:17:14.910
Also, I want to give a big thanks to all my Patreon members.

01:17:14.910 --> 01:17:18.230
Those who are donating to this show are a massive help for the show’s success.

01:17:18.230 --> 01:17:20.219
Thank you so much.

01:17:20.219 --> 01:17:24.700
But I did the math and less than 1% of my audience is helping the show through Patreon.

01:17:24.700 --> 01:17:28.620
Look, if you’ve gone through every episode and can’t wait for new episodes, consider

01:17:28.620 --> 01:17:30.280
donating to the show.

01:17:30.280 --> 01:17:33.720
This tells me most of all that you like it and want more of it which motivates me to

01:17:33.720 --> 01:17:35.659
keep going and to make it better.

01:17:35.659 --> 01:17:38.530
If you want to help, please visit patreon.com/darknetdiaries.

01:17:38.530 --> 01:17:41.449
Thank you.

01:17:41.449 --> 01:17:44.909
This show is made by me, sir dollar string, Jack Rhysider.

01:17:44.909 --> 01:17:49.320
Editing help this episode by the funky cherry Damienne and our theme music is by Biggie

01:17:49.320 --> 01:17:52.120
Doom, AKA Breakmaster Cylinder.

01:17:52.120 --> 01:17:58.929
Even though for some weird reason I think 1024 is a perfectly round number, this is

01:17:58.929 --> 01:17:59.870
Darknet Diaries.