TNW 400: How Security Experts Hacked the Hackers - Inside the Darcula Toll Scam Ring
Tech News Weekly (Audio)
Leo Laporte
4.0 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 14 August 2025
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy of The Verge joins Mikah Sargent on this episode of Tech News Weekly! Apple is rumored to launch a series of AI-powered devices, the upcoming Pebble Time 2's design is shown off, a look into a global SMS phishing scam ring, and the blood oxygen feature is returning to Apple Watches?
- Apple is seeking to expand its product offerings into AI-powered robots, home security, and smart displays, according to a report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
- Eric Migicovsky, founder of Pebble smartwatches, unveils the design of the company's Pebble Time 2* watch.
- Harrison Sand, Senior Security Consultant for mnemonic, unveils Darcula. This global SMS phishing-as-a-scam ring sends SMS messages hoping to steal credentials from those who click on the links in the messages.
- And Apple announces that it's bringing back the Blood Oyxgen feature for Apple Watches, which was a clever workaround following a recent U.S. Customs ruling against Masimo.
Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Guest: Harrison Sand
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Coming up on Tech News weekly, Jennifer Patterson, Tooey of The Verge is here, and we talk about the Bloomberg report from Mark German about Apple's expansion into AI robots. |
| 0:11.5 | Then I talk about the new Pebble Time 2 design reveal before Harrison Sand, a senior security consultant from Nemonic, talks about how he and the |
| 0:22.6 | mnemonic team tracked down the person behind those global SMS scams and round things |
| 0:31.1 | out with an update from Apple on blood oxygen sensing via the iPhone instead of the Apple Watch. |
| 0:38.6 | Tune in to this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. |
| 0:43.8 | Podcasts you love. |
| 0:45.6 | From people you trust. |
| 0:48.1 | This is Twitter. |
| 0:51.6 | This is Tech News Weekly, episode 400 with Jennifer Patterson-Tooey and me, Micah Sargent, recorded Thursday, August 14th, 2025, how security experts hacked the hackers. |
| 1:07.1 | Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking that tech news. I am your host, Micah, Sergeant, and I am joined this week by Jennifer Patterson-Tooey of The Verge and The Verge cast. Hello, Jen. |
| 1:24.2 | Hi, Micah. Happy to be here, as always. Nice that there's not such a big gap this time. |
| 1:29.3 | Yeah, exactly. Instead of going, I feel like it's been forever since I've seen you. |
| 1:33.8 | Oh, it's nice to see you again. So for people who are tuning in for the first time or who need a little reminder, this, of course, is the part of the show where we share our stories of the week. These are |
| 1:45.3 | stories that we find interesting or in some cases kind of late breaking, as is the case here. |
| 1:54.2 | And I'm really excited to hear your excitement or lack thereof, you know, you tell me, about |
| 2:00.5 | this story that you've chosen. |
| 2:02.6 | Yeah. |
| 2:03.6 | So it's funny, I was just saying to Micah, happy to come on, but I don't really have much to talk about. |
| 2:09.6 | And then, boom. |
| 2:11.6 | Mark German at Bloomberg, as he's want to do, just spilled all this exciting Apple Home robot series stuff. |
| 2:20.3 | And I was like, oh, look, I want to talk about this. |
| 2:24.3 | This is exciting for me. This is, you know, very much in my space. |
... |
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