Shows / Hacker And The Fed
Hacker And The Fed
Former FBI Special Agent, Chris Tarbell, and ex-Anonymous/LulzSec blackhat hacker turned network penetration tester, Hector Monsegur (aka Sabu), once faced off as adversaries in cyberspace before becoming close friends and now podcast co-hosts. Whether you are a legal professional, cybersecurity practitioner, or forensic investigator, Chris and Hector will bring you their unique perspectives on the latest developments in cybersecurity.
Episodes
- Hacker And The Fed
Google Is Taking Control of Your Android Phone
Chris and Hector discuss whether AI-powered vulnerability discovery is creating a new normal for cybersecurity, and why even familiar exploits are becoming…
- Hacker And The Fed
AI Solved a 26-Year-Old NSA Mystery in 30 Minutes
Chris and Hector discuss how an internal Anthropic AI model reportedly solved a 26-year-old NSA cryptography mystery in under 30 minutes, a Meta source code…
- Hacker And The Fed
Your Coffee Maker Might Be Spying on You
Chris and Hector discuss a smart coffee maker that generated nearly a terabyte of network traffic in just ten days, a lone hacker who reportedly used AI tools…
- Hacker And The Fed
Claude Reported Her to the Police
Chris and Hector discuss the reported arrest of a Shiny Hunters figure in Jordan and an investigator who says he infiltrated a Chinese organized crime…
- Hacker And The Fed
700 AI Agents Broke Through Their Guardrails
Chris and Hector break down a $350 million crypto theft suspected to involve North Korean hackers, a massive map exposing hundreds of thousands of surveillance…
- Hacker And The Fed
Gemini Escaped Its Test and Started Hacking Real Companies
Chris and Hector break down Google's undercover infiltration of hacker group Team PCP, a bug bounty researcher gaining command execution while testing OpenAI…
- Hacker And The Fed
AI Can Clone Your Wife's Voice in Real Time
Chris and Hector break down a real-time AI voice scam that impersonated a victim's wife, the Microsoft vulnerability researcher publicly releasing exploits…
- Hacker And The Fed
153 Million Driver's Licenses Are for Sale
Chris and Hector discuss a service claiming to sell more than 153 million driver's licenses, malware hijacking authenticated Claude sessions to drain AI usage…
- Hacker And The Fed
Your Router Might Come With a Backdoor Already Installed
Chris and Hector break down routers shipping with built-in backdoors, new details about AI agents escaping their sandboxes and attacking real infrastructure…
- Hacker And The Fed
AI Is Getting Access to Your Private Messages
Chris and Hector debate whether paper password books are actually safer, break down a “zombie card” attack on expired credit cards, discuss millions of…
- Hacker And The Fed
Someone Tried to Hack the Court With an AI Prompt
Chris and Hector break down a $34 million bank heist that looks suspiciously like an inside job, hidden AI prompts in court filings, a new government-backed…
- Hacker And The Fed
The Cybersecurity Industry Can’t Keep Up With AI
Chris and Hector break down why ransomware gangs are shifting their focus from executives to mid-level employees, another AI model escaping its cybersecurity…
- Hacker And The Fed
The $90 Million Crypto Wallet Disaster Nobody Saw Coming
Chris and Hector break down the massive Bitcoin wallet compromise tied to flawed hardware wallets, Android TV boxes secretly acting as residential proxies…
- Hacker And The Fed
The Snapchat Phishing Scam That Stole Hundreds of Private Photos
Chris and Hector discuss the ransomware attack that disrupted Coca-Cola's Fairlife dairy operations, a phishing campaign that stole hundreds of private…
- Hacker And The Fed
The Steam Malware That Stole Crypto From Thousands
Chris and Hector break down a critical WordPress vulnerability discovered with AI, the Steam malware campaign that stole cryptocurrency from gamers, Madison…
- Hacker And The Fed
Japan's First ChatGPT-Powered Hacker Arrest
Chris and Hector cover the FBI's takedown of the NetNut residential proxy network, Microsoft's role in identifying a Scattered Spider suspect, a ransomware…
- Hacker And The Fed
Canada Just Hacked the Drug Cartels
Chris and Hector break down Canada's offensive cyber campaign against fentanyl traffickers, the arrest of an alleged Scattered Spider member, a new wave of AI…
- Hacker And The Fed
They Mocked the Hackers... Then Lost $3 Million
Chris and Hector break down Polymarket's $3 million supply chain attack, a wave of physical intrusions targeting U.S. law firms, a major breach at the National…
- Hacker And The Fed
FIFA Left the Front Door Wide Open
Chris and Hector break down a defense contractor caught faking cybersecurity compliance, Germany's growing push away from U.S. cloud providers, the ongoing…
- Hacker And The Fed
Hackers Are Using Fake LinkedIn Jobs to Break Into Companies
Chris and Hector break down a fake LinkedIn recruiting campaign used to deploy malware, AI-generated evidence appearing in criminal investigations, Meta’s…
- Hacker And The Fed
Your Smart TV Might Be Part of a Botnet
Chris and Hector break down a shocking discovery involving smart TVs being used as residential proxy nodes, a major Meta AI support failure that enabled…
- Hacker And The Fed
A Single Email Took Down a Major Food Supplier
Chris and Hector break down a phishing attack that exposed employee data at a major food supplier, Microsoft's escalating fight with a security researcher…
- Hacker And The Fed
Texas Just Declared War on WhatsApp
Chris and Hector break down Texas suing WhatsApp over encryption claims, a law enforcement operation targeting a ransomware linked VPN provider, and a bizarre…
- Hacker And The Fed
Microsoft Has a Bigger Security Problem Than Anyone Admits
Chris and Hector break down a major ransomware attack on Foxconn, the growing strain AI data centers are putting on power grids, and new allegations…
- Hacker And The Fed
The Student Hack That Crashed Bitcoin
Chris and Hector break down a massive cyberattack affecting thousands of schools during finals week, Russia’s reported hacker training pipeline through…
- Hacker And The Fed
AI Deleted the Entire Database in 9 Seconds
Chris and Hector break down a series of AI and cybersecurity failures, including an autonomous coding agent that deleted an entire production database, a…
- Hacker And The Fed
The Crypto Hacks Funding North Korea
Chris and Hector break down a wild mix of cyber stories, including a U.S. soldier charged for betting on a classified military operation, ongoing North Korean…
- Hacker And The Fed
Europe Is Quietly Preparing for a Tech War
Chris and Hector break down a week of cybersecurity stories, from Europe’s push to move away from U.S. tech to supply chain attacks, insider threats, and SaaS…
- Hacker And The Fed
The Origin Story
In this episode, Chris and Hector revisit their origin story, from the investigation that led to Sabu’s identity to the night the FBI showed up at his door…
- Hacker And The Fed
How One Developer Took Down the Supply Chain
Chris and Hector break down a highly effective North Korean supply chain attack that started with a fake Microsoft Teams update and escalated into full…
- Hacker And The Fed
What CISOs Actually Worry About
Chris and Hector are joined again by an anonymous CISO for a candid follow up conversation on the realities of modern cybersecurity. They explore why…
- Hacker And The Fed
The Biggest Cybersecurity Grift in Years
Chris and Hector break down a major compliance scandal where a startup allegedly sold fake SOC 2 certifications using templated reports and questionable…
- Hacker And The Fed
A Petabyte of Data Stolen and Nobody Noticed
Chris and Hector break down a massive breach involving claims of a petabyte of stolen data and question how something that large could go unnoticed. They also…
- Hacker And The Fed
iPhone Zero Days Are Now Fueling Crypto Crime
Chris and Hector break down a new US cyber strategy calling for a more aggressive posture against hackers, then dive into a bizarre case where a sophisticated…
- Hacker And The Fed
When AI Makes Hacking Easier Than Ever
Chris and Hector discuss an AI assisted hacking campaign that compromised more than 600 Fortinet firewalls and what it reveals about persistent security…
- Hacker And The Fed
The FBI Drug Market Rumor, Blue Checkmarks, and Government Backdoors
Chris and Hector break down a headline that made it sound like the FBI was running a dark web drug market and separate rumor from reality. They revisit how…
- Hacker And The Fed
What CISOs Won’t Say in Public
Chris and Hector sit down with an anonymous CISO who pulls back the curtain on how cybersecurity actually works inside large organizations. From security…
- Hacker And The Fed
One Stolen Password Can Take Down a Nation
Chris and Hector break down how familiar security failures continue to fuel major cyber incidents. They explore a large scale cloud worm campaign, a ransomware…
- Hacker And The Fed
The Moment AI Stopped Waiting for Humans
Chris and Hector dive into the sudden rise of AI-only social networks where autonomous agents communicate, collaborate, and sometimes spiral into unexpected…
- Hacker And The Fed
From Doorbell Cameras to Seized Crypto
Chris and Hector take on the uneasy space where privacy, technology, and law enforcement overlap. They break down how encrypted data was accessed through…
- Hacker And The Fed
Inside China’s Leaking Cyber Machine
Chris and Hector unpack new signs of internal strain inside China’s cyber ecosystem. From leaked intelligence and exposed tools to China cutting off Western…
- Hacker And The Fed
Cyber Attacks Without a Declaration of War
In this episode, Chris and Hector dig into how cyber operations are no longer a background activity but a core part of modern conflict. They break down…
- Hacker And The Fed
Everyone Has Your Data and Nobody Is Accountable
In the first days of 2026, the line between reality and fiction is already collapsing. From massive data thefts and cloud misconfigurations to deepfakes, AI…
- Hacker And The Fed
We Gave AI the Keys and It Learned to Steal
Chris and Hector look back at a year where AI quietly reshaped the threat landscape and look ahead to what 2026 may bring. From zero click AI browser attacks…
- Hacker And The Fed
The Supply Chain Attack Nobody Checked For
Chris and Hector break down a string of stories that show how fragile modern cyber defenses really are. From a malicious open source package quietly stealing…
- Hacker And The Fed
Copy Pasting Commands Is the New Phishing
Chris and Hector break down how trust itself has become the attack vector. From AI powered SEO poisoning that tricks users into infecting their own machines…
- Hacker And The Fed
When Your Smart Fridge Joins a Botnet
Chris and Hector break down North Korea’s covert push to infiltrate Western companies through fake IT recruiting, the leaked Predator spyware network targeting…
- Hacker And The Fed
China’s Leaked Cyber Warfare Playbook
This week on Hacker and the Fed, Chris and Hector break down a violent $11 million crypto heist tied to a fake delivery, dissect leaked documents exposing…
- Hacker And The Fed
Microsoft Admits Everything’s Broken, What Now?
Chris and Hector cover the surge in insider-driven cyber incidents, the escalating aggression of Scattered Spiders, a CrowdStrike employee caught leaking…
- Hacker And The Fed
The First Bitcoin Cold War
Chris and Hector break down Operation Endgame’s newest takedown of ransomware infrastructure, the surge of splinter ransomware groups, and why victim payments…
- Hacker And The Fed
The Typo That Destroyed a Cybercrime Empire
Chris and Hector dive into the latest cybersecurity chaos, from China’s questionable routers and remotely accessible buses to ransomware groups falling apart…
- Hacker And The Fed
How Residential Proxies Became the Dark Web’s Secret Weapon
Chris and Hector dive into one of the most shocking cybersecurity stories of the year, two U.S. security professionals charged with running ransomware attacks…
- Hacker And The Fed
YouTube Tutorials or Malware Traps? Don’t Click That Link”
This week, Chris and Hector dive into a wild mix of cyber chaos — from 3,000 malware-laced YouTube videos to a former L3 Harris exec accused of selling U.S…
- Hacker And The Fed
The Night the Internet Broke: AWS, China, and the Quantum Hack
Chris and Hector break down the massive AWS outage that took half the internet offline, dive into China’s claim that the NSA hacked its national time servers…
- Hacker And The Fed
Insiders for Sale: The Hackers Recruiting Your Employees
A $4.6 million fine, a whistleblower payday, and a fake water plant hacked by mistake — this week, Chris and Hector dive into the DOJ’s first major cyber…
- Hacker And The Fed
Click, Jack, and Roll: The Rise of AI-Powered Cybercrime
Chris and Hector kick off Cybersecurity Awareness Month with stories of phishing gone wrong, data privacy disasters, and a new wave of AI-powered attacks. From…
- Hacker And The Fed
The Phantom Extension: Backdooring Your Browser
Chris and Hector kick off Cybersecurity Awareness Month with big news—Hector announces the launch of his new company, SafeHill. The guys dig into continuous…
- Hacker And The Fed
Bitcoin, Vegas, and the Feds
Chris and Hector break down the coming CMMC crackdown and what it means for 220,000+ contractors, 60 days to comply or lose your government work. They debate…
- Hacker And The Fed
Microsoft’s $20B Cybersecurity Scam
Chris and Hector call out Microsoft for “gross cybersecurity negligence,” explain Kerberoasting in plain English, and discuss CISA’s CVE overhaul. Plus…
- Hacker And The Fed
Your WhatsApp Data Wasn’t Private After All
Chris and Hector break down the WhatsApp whistleblower lawsuit claiming 1,500 engineers had unchecked access to user data. They also cover hackers extorting…