Fighting in the Fourth Dimension: The U.S. Army on Cyber-warfare

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Science

4.6 • 963 Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2017

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Are hackers really a constant threat, or is hacking just another tool for media manipulation and fearmongering? To get definitive answers, the Curiosity Podcast sat down with the deputy chief of research at the Army Cyber Institute at West Point, Dr. Natalie Vanatta. She explains what government and corporate entities are doing to keep the average person safe online – and how people can protect themselves. Plus: learn where the international community draws the line between warfare and cyber-warfare.

A lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and instructor of mathematics at the United States Military Academy, Dr. Vanatta's work at the Army Cyber Institute focuses on bringing private industry, academia, and government agencies together to explore and solve cyber challenges facing the U.S. Army in the next 3 to 10 years.

Additional resources discussed:

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Cody Gough, and I have a story about getting hacked.
0:03.8	And I'm Ashley Hamer, and I really want to hear that story.
0:06.6	Yeah, that's pretty crazy.
0:07.6	So Ashley, did you know that I got hacked one time?
0:09.8	You told me that once, but I don't really remember exactly what happened.
0:13.7	Yeah this this happened in 2014 I think I realized that all of the files on my computer
0:19.7	were encrypted and like you couldn't get into them. No I could not open them they were they were in were files or in the folders on my computer and they all had the URL for a website.
0:35.8	So online I could barely go to any websites I just weren't loading except for this one website
0:40.1	and it turned out it went to this website that basically said hey you need to pay us
0:44.2	five hundred dollars in Bitcoin. Whoa if you want us to give you your
0:49.3	decryption key to get your files back.
0:52.6	Oh my gosh.
0:53.6	Yeah, so I played a taxophone in college and like all of my recordings of all my
0:58.3	performances were on there and I had some files backed up but my backup software hadn't been running properly for a while.
1:07.0	So there was a lot of stuff that it was just like there's no way I'm ever getting this back unless I paid the $500.
1:12.0	Right. So I ended I pay the $500. Right.
1:12.8	So I ended up paying the $500 and it comes with a happy ending,
1:16.4	actually two happy endings.
1:17.9	So here's how it worked it out.
1:18.9	I decided, all right, I will take $500 out of my savings account,
1:21.8	I will buy Bitcoin with it, and I would go to the website
1:24.8	and pay off the hackers.
	...

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