One of the World’s Most Wanted Hackers Speaks

CYBER

VICE

Tech News, News & Politics, Technology, News

4 • 645 Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2019

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The last time Phineas Fisher agreed to an interview with Motherboard, they made us recreate the whole thing with a puppet.

This time around, Phineas Fisher—one of the world’s most wanted hackers—wanted to make a statement on CYBER to deny he’s an agent of the Kremlin.

Phineas Fisher is the hacker’s hacker that nobody knows. In fact, nobody even knows if they are just one person, or several people. All we know is Phineas Fisher has hacked, embarrassed, and exposed some of the world’s most powerful spyware companies that have connections to the FBI, the DEA, and dozens of other law enforcement and spy agencies all around the world.

And Phineas Fisher has completely gotten away with it.

Throughout these exploits, Motherboard'sLorenzo Francheschi-Bicchierai has been one of the few reporters to make contact with the hacker several times. Recently, Phineas Fisher got in touch with him again, but this time to deny a recent allegation that he’s Russian intelligence operation made in Joseph Menn’s new book on hacktivism.

On this week’s CYBER, Lorenzo sits down with host Ben Makuch to take you through the murky history of Phineas Fisher’s hacks, then the infamous hacktivist speaks.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Tann, it's got the code it's going to launch.
0:11.0	It's a unit system.
0:13.0	I know this.
0:15.0	It's all the files of the whole park.
0:17.0	It tells her everything.
0:19.0	Sir, he's uploading the virus.
0:21.8	Eagle one. The package is being delivered.
0:24.7	They are the hacker's hacker that nobody knows.
0:28.4	In fact, nobody even knows if they're just one person or several.
0:32.9	All we know is Phineas Fisher has hacked, embarrassed, and exposed some of the world's most powerful
0:38.7	spyware companies that have connections to places like the FBI, the DEA, and dozens of other
0:44.8	law enforcement and spy agencies all around the world. Then they vanish completely without a trace.
0:52.5	Through these exploits,
0:56.8	motherboard reporter Lorenzo Franceschi Bikirai has been one of the premier reporters on the beat.
0:59.8	He's interviewed the infamous hacker several times.
1:02.9	Well, we've made contact with Phineas Fisher again.
1:07.5	I'm Ben Maku, and this is Cyber.
1:12.7	It was the summer of 2014.
1:15.3	I think it was the week of Black Hat and DefCon,
1:17.9	which made it pretty funny, actually, when this happened.
1:21.6	So someone, at that time, someone hacked into the servers of Finn Fisher,
1:28.3	this German-British company that makes spyware for governments all around the world,
	...

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