Darkode
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Hey, this is Radiolab. Last year... A cyber attack disrupted the colonial pipeline. ...was a big year for cybercrime. The FBI confirms it's investigating 100 different types of ransomware attacks. According to the FBI, the amount of money taken by ransomware has gone up by more than 1,000% over the past five years. And this has got us thinking about this episode we did on this new kind of crime way back in its relatively quaint early days in 2015...

called Dark Code. Hey, I'm Chad Abumrad. I'm Robert Krolwich. This is Radio Lab, and today... Well, today we're going to tell you a story which we hope does not become your future, but it raises a simple question. We all have computers. We love computers. We depend upon computers. But what if the cost of using your computer becomes more than you're willing to pay? Two stories today which suggest that we might be at the very beginning of a nightmare.

The first comes from journalist Alina Simone and her mother, Ina. I mean, do you want to start with my mom? Because it really happened to her. You know, she only got in touch with me maybe on day six. And it took into me. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, day one.

What was the first thing that happened? On day one, what happened that I called Tufts University IT services because my husband works at Tufts complaining that my computer is unbearably, unbearably slow. She tells IT, I don't know what's going on. Every time I try and open a window, it's like click, boop, click.

What do I do? She went away for the weekend. And like it was doing something.

Covering her screen. She went to bed.

Got up the next day. Called us again, asking for help. They had no idea what was going on. No. But she says at this point, whatever the computer had been doing... It was done. All windows disappeared. Except now, any time she tried to click any of her files... Pictures, videos. I cannot open any of them. Instead, every time, this message would pop up. And the message says...

What happened to your files? All of your files have been protected with a strong encryption using CryptoWall. This means that the structure and data within your files have been irrevocably changed. And in order to get them back to unlock files, you must pay 500 US dollars. If you really value your data, then we suggest that you do not waste valuable time searching for the solutions.

Because they do not exist. You're saying that somebody went into your computer and locked up all of your things? Yeah, they gave me the exact count. 5,726 files encrypted. When you say they, did you have any image in your head of who...

My first thought was Russia or Ukraine, which is even better. Why? Because, you know, everybody talks about excellent, fantastic education there, especially math. I'm from there, I know. You know, she's right. They surpassed the U.S. in educating their kids when it comes to math and science.

And they've got a severe underemployment problem, especially outside of the major cities, which is where these viruses often trace down to. Not Moscow and St. Petersburg, but we're talking about, you know, backwater. I was so positive that it comes from that part of the world that I wrote them in Russian. Apparently, the criminal said provided her a link to a website where she could send them a message.

you know, customer support. I wrote them, I don't know how to translate it in English more accurately. Something like, I wish you all die. Wish you all die? But in Russian language, there is a word to die for humans or another word for animals. Oh, so you used the animal one. Yes, not a curse.

But they got the message. Now, Ina says she thought about just wiping the computer clean so that she wouldn't have to pay. Yes.

But then it occurred to her that her husband had all these files on there. Which he needed. You know, like business receipts that he hadn't filed yet. Which he's lazy to do, so he asked me to help. And she's right that, like, you know, she has this tax information, this reimbursement information, and ultimately it's worth more than $500. My husband did not want to pay. I overruled him.

So, Ina decides... To follow the instructions, basically. One, download and install Tor browser. So she goes and installs this browser called Tor, which apparently... Is not traceable. Two, run the browser and wait for initialization. She does that. Three, type in the address bar, kpi7ycr7jxq... Then she's directed to a site where it basically tells her, look, if you don't trust us... We can decrypt.

one of your files for free. As a sample that when you pay us, you would know that you could really get all your files back. And I was curious. I decided that I will try it. So she clicked the button that said yes and... I got one file back. But as soon as I did...

The clocks start ticking. Literally, she says, a little clock appeared at the top of the browser. They gave me exactly seven days. 167 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds. Oh, so you decrypt the thing and then suddenly it's a countdown? Yes, they say. If you won't pay by this day, then the fine will be doubled. And if you won't pay in one more week,

then you will lose your files forever and you will never get it back. Now, in the message, it had told Ina that she had to pay that $500 fine, not in dollars, but in Bitcoin. You know, this was the first time in my life ever I heard the term Bitcoins. So I found this website called Coin Cafe where you can buy Bitcoins.

And to buy these Bitcoins is a nightmare. It's a torture. What she needed to do was exchange 500 bucks for the requisite amount of Bitcoins. And at the time, 500 bucks equaled 1.37 Bitcoins. But before she could even make that exchange, she had to fill out all these forms, all these questions. What happened? What is the reason to buy Bitcoin? Reasons were listed. One of them was ransomware.

So they knew. That's a category? Yes, it was the first reason to pay a ransom to the criminals. Next, she says after you fill out all the forms. You have to make a picture and send them a photograph through the Internet, okay? Okay.

She says her camera happened to be in the shop.

send them this picture back. But is this the bank or the criminals? No, this is the people who sell you bitcoins in exchange for your money. I told you that it's a torture. It's unbelievable. But eventually she was able to find a neighbor, borrow the camera, take the picture she needed to take. Then she had to get the money she wanted to exchange to Coin Cafe. And it turns out

The preferred way to do it, the most secure way to do it, is not online, but through a money order. This was the day right before the Thanksgiving, Wednesday. She still had about six days before the deadline, so she thought, all right, I'll just pop down to the post office, get a money order. But...

Live from Boston, WB stars... Lexington and the whole Massachusetts had a terrible, terrible snowstorm. For a lot of us, this could be the biggest storm so far this winter. Undriveable road. And significant snow, a wet snow at that point. But I had to go to the post office. So she plows through the snow, almost kills herself, but gets there, gets everything together, sends it off.

And it's like, all right. So finally, I send everything out. The post office assured me that they will get it on Friday, which is the first working day after the Thanksgiving. Okay, so on Friday, they did not get it.

Finally. About 24 hours before the deadline. They got it.

And they sent me Bitcoins in exchange because they got my money. But, she says when she went online to check her Bitcoin account... I'm $13 short. Woo!

Because of the exchange rate. So you get only 400 and... And I start calling them. Basically, the exchange rate had changed on her. She had bought it at 500, now it was worth 487. I asked them, how often do you change the exchange rate? And they said, every minute.

But it's not a joke. Every minute I said, are you crazy? I was a double victim. I was victim square or victim cube. You see what I mean? Because driving was terrible. I have to stay

on my head to get a camera and then I was struggling to send them. That's the problem with this crime. Like the criminals need a better way to get money from the victim. But everything else is traceable. I'm on the edge of my seat here. So you're $13 short. I am calling a day they said there is one more way. One more way.

And what is it? We have an ATM machine. You said, what? Yeah, we have an ATM machine. Only one. And I said, where is it?

It's in Brooklyn. Brooklyn, New York? Yeah. Oh, no. 200 miles away. Wait a second. I don't understand this. There is one ATM that is in the borough of Brooklyn where you do not live. Exactly. But luckily, her daughter Alina lives in Brooklyn. You ask me how my daughter got involved? That's how. So she calls Alina. Yeah, my mom called me the night before the ransom was due. Were you aware of any of this at that point?

this point? No, no. I remember, you know, I was at night, I had the TV on and I have a toddler, you know, always all these things going on. I was probably on my laptop too. I was doing like 12 things and my mom called and she was like upset with a capital U. She started ranting about criminals and ransom and I literally

Her mom told her, Google Cryptowall. I was like, holy s**t.

This is really a thing. Plus, I started Googling, as she suggested I do, and found out that police departments had paid this, that a sheriff's department in Dixon, Tennessee had just paid it to unlock, like, you know, 70 plus thousand case files. And I was like,

I was like, yeah. Oh, so these crooks go after police departments? They've gone after governments, universities, corporations, police departments. And did the question ever come up in your mind? Like, why my mom? No, not at all. Because like a million people in the U.S. have been infected with crypto. With this very thing? Yes.

Anyhow, next day, less than six hours left. Ines says to Alina, please go to this ATM so we can just be done with this whole thing. You can cut it later, but I can tell you that in the morning she said, I have a date for my granddaughter date.

To play. Play date. I won't be able to do it until 12 o'clock. And I call again. I said, are you crazy? I don't have time. So I go out to Greenpoint, this ATM. And, you know, I just want to add that. But you had your play date. Well, I canceled my. No, you didn't. I called you. You shorten it. You make it a little bit. Right. Okay. So I cut my play date short.

Sorry, forget that crucial detail. And I go out to Greenpoint and they have an ATM. I'm just worried that there's going to be 57 people all lined up at this single ATM that you're going. There were totally not 57 people. I mean, most people do take care of this remotely. Like there was no one at this ATM. I mean, what was funny about the ATM is like, I'm expecting like, yeah, I have

been to an ATM like I have a Capital One account I know what an ATM is you know but this is on like the second floor of a work share space in Brooklyn it was like in the hallway there was like a bike hanging from a wall kind of blocking it and there was like a paper sign taped to the wall that just had a printout from a computer that just said Bitcoin ATM all lowercase letters and an arrow to this phone

Phone booths. It looked very Soviet. Like if you've seen photos of those phones with no buttons and there's just a receiver and it's totally scary. Like the red line? Yeah, yeah. Like you just pick it up and like somebody's always on the other line or something. It was like that. It was just this box with a screen and no buttons and a camera eye. Oh my God. And what you do is you hold up your QVC code. Is that what they're called? QVC? What are they called?

QRC? The barcode thingy? Yeah, yeah. It's like a barcode. So there's this QRC code. And my mom had emailed it to me and was like, you need to print this out. And this essentially gives you access to my account to top it off. And so I put this QRC code up to the camera eye and it kind of went bloop. And then it was like, we are accessing your account. And then I got a spinny wheel. You got the wheel of death? Yeah. No. Oh, spinny wheel.

Alina starts frantically dialing her mom, the guys at Coin Cafe. I called, you know, I left like three phone messages. And I left five. So finally they called me back like 20 minutes later. Said, okay, we're sending a technician over to fix the machine, which was very cool. I didn't think that would happen. And so, you know, the technician was there and he fixed the machine and he helped me deposit these $25. And then he was there talking and he was...

He was like, yeah, you know, he knew my mom because, you know, he'd been talking to her on the phone. He's like, I feel so bad for your mom. We've been getting so many of these cases. And I'm like, why are you getting a lot of these cases? Yeah. I was like, why are you guys getting so why is everyone coming to you? And he's like, oh, I know why. Because in the ransom note, they give a list of preferred vendors and we are number one or two. What a shitty.

a shitty introduction. What a bad introduction to Bitcoin. Like, we're going to hold you ransom for all your information until you, you know, use this new currency to pay us off. I mean, that's so terrible. This is Mike Hotz and John Ha. They are the co-owners of Coin Cafe. I had a few weeks back a grandmother who was in tears. She was going to lose all of her family photos because the deadline was coming up, you know, crying on the phone to me. And it

God, it felt horrible. Now, clearly people who sell Bitcoin just believe that there should be a digital currency that is decentralized, that doesn't rely on the banks. But unfortunately, it has become the currency of choice for ransom. And so...

they're in this weird position. So it's a tricky thing because I can't sell Bitcoin to someone who I know is going to do something illegal with it, right? That's Will Wheeler who runs a Bitcoin exchange called ExpressCoin and he says he and the other exchanges are really worried right now.

that if they keep helping the little guys pay the ransom in order to get their files back, they are in effect making themselves accessories to a crime. I finally got a call back from FinCEN, which is the Federal Authority for Financial Crime Enforcement Network. They said that...

We could perceive paying a ransom as unlawful activity. And so they might choose to use that against the company who helps out, right? And likely, until we get a straight answer from FinCEN, we'll take the overly cautious approach and start declining these transactions. Even though in your heart you want to help. Well, yeah. I mean, do I want to risk being indicted for helping you get your travel receipts reimbursed from your company? And I mean, to me, the answer is no.

In any case, after Alina deposits the extra 25 bucks in her mom's Bitcoin account, Ina, the mom, goes online. Then I clicked and it was gone. But then... About an hour later... I went to my computer and there was another message that you are late. Oh my God.

No. It turns out that I was two and a half hours late. You have to pay $1,300, roughly.

I did not have anybody to turn to. So she went to that same website where you can write them a message. I wrote them that I was late, but I mentioned the snowstorm, the Thanksgiving, which they probably were not aware of, and, of course, the wonderful U.S. mail service. I said that I tried, and I was only two minutes

Do you think that they took pity on her? I... maybe. I felt that it's over. Finally, it's really over.

It does make you wonder, like, who these people are. We have a story about that up next. Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad. I'm Robert Krolwich. This is Radiolab. So here's the next obvious question. Who did this to Ina? Like, do we know anything about them? Well, we put that question to Joseph Mann, an investigative reporter for Reuters. He's done a ton of work in this area. And his hunch was that Ina's right. We're talking people...

You read a book called Fatal System Error, which is sort of a deep dive into the Russian hacking scene. And much of it is as you'd expect, you know, young guys. Early 20s. Kind of grubby. By and large, they do not live a lavish lifestyle. There are guys at the top of these criminal organizations that are very flashy. They're like sort of top...

icon some of them in the same way that rap stars are in the U.S. There's a hacker magazine, which, you know, has guys with their sports cars and the supermodels and whatever, you know, buying bottle service at, you know, discos at three in the morning. Those are the guys who hire the 20-year-olds? They hire the 20-year-olds or their franchises. And he says the 20-year-old grunts work at office parks. Yeah, it's like a call center type of atmosphere. So is there like, you know,

That's producer Kelsey Padgett. Ivan in a cubicle at his computer, bored. He has a meeting later with Judy in HR and he's mad about it. Is that the kind of like environment that these people are in? For the most part, I think so, yes. The larger point is that it's not just like your lone wolf pimply faced hacker.

Cybercrime is now super organized. It is often corporate. It is big business. And the whole sort of economy seems to revolve around these secret sites where people come together to buy and sell things like that ransomware from our last story. There are these underground web forums, and there's a variety. Some are available. You can reach on the open Internet.

The more impressive ones are password protected. You know, you have to know somebody to get in. The really, really fancy ones, you have to have a couple of people vouch for you. You actually have to apply with your resume, your hacker's resume. Here are the things I can bring. These are the kinds of hacking exploits that I've had, and therefore I should be part of your exclusive club. That's Dina Temple Raston, NPR's cybercrime correspondent.

She's been tracking the government's attempts to shut down some of these sites, which she describes as... Sort of a hacker's black market bazaar. So let's say someone is looking for a bunch of credit card numbers that have been stolen. You can get it there. There's one price if they're MasterCard gold and another price for, you know, a higher level credit, whatever. Let's say you wanted to know about a boss or an employee or a girlfriend. You can get this piece of software that allows you to turn on their phone at any time. You could basically eavesdrop on them because you're in their pocket.

And for $300 a month, you would actually get customer service. And the prices actually keep coming down. It's a very, very evolved, fluid marketplace. There's feedback and there's escrow. There are feedback forums? Absolutely. That thief was not really, didn't do the robbery right? Absolutely. Particularly for something, you'll see it a lot for freshness of credit cards.

Because, you know, it's easy to say, you know, here are 10,000 credit card numbers. But if they're credit card numbers that have been out for a while and get declined to everybody, you've just wasted your money. And these people are called rippers, as in they're ripping you off, and they will get banned from the forum. Wow. So it's reputational, just like everywhere else. Yeah. And it's as good as eBay. If you feel safe doing business on eBay, there's no reason you shouldn't feel safe doing business with the criminals.

Now, all of this, to me, frankly, felt like just sexy hacker talk until a couple of months ago. Dina started telling us about this one particular site, actually the biggest of these kinds of sites that's out there. It's called Dark Code. Yeah. The way it has been described by law enforcement is sort of an Amazon dot com for hackers. Actually, here's specifically how U.S. Attorney David Hickson described to her in an interview. Dark Code is the largest hacker.

English-speaking criminal cybercrime forum in the world. I think most people know Silk Road and they know, for example, you could get a contract hit from Silk Road and drugs and guns and everything else. So would it be right for me to say that this was sort of a Silk Road for hackers? Yeah, I wouldn't want to draw that direct comparison. I think it's probably accurate. I would say that all measure of cybercrime that you see and watch around the world was in some form or fashion connected to it.

So we got really interested in this world of this site, Dark Code, and the people in it. And so with Dina, we started calling around, trying to find anyone that would talk. And after weeks of searching and calling and lawyering, we found a guy who agreed to go on the record. My name is Daniel Placik, and I am a reformed hacker. As far as we know, Dan has never talked about this publicly. So how did you get involved with Dark Code? Well, I was one of the people who created it a very long time ago.

Daniel's story begins not in Russia, but in Milwaukee. Sure. Well, let me start with a little bit of context. Small, middle-class suburb right outside of Milwaukee. Do you have brothers and sisters? Two younger brothers and two younger sisters. Big family. Did you have to share rooms with them, or were you in your own little kingdom? I shared a room with both my brothers for a lot of years. In fact, that sort of plays into the story because he says what he would do to sort of escape...

is go to the basement and play video games. So yes, the stereotypical hacker in his parents' basement. I know. It's quite hilarious. Dan says his hacking began innocently enough when he would monkey with games like Age of Empires. I'd change the graphics, change the artificial intelligence in the game, the way it plays, rework it, create new maps, that type of thing. It was something I enjoyed. And slowly, throughout my teenage years, that developed into something more. I, uh...

And he says one day he was in a chat room, an internet chat room. Talking with a bunch of other people about video games. He meets this guy.

Oh, yes, botnets, we all cry. Just remind us what's going on there. Botnets are malware, viruses installed on computers, and botnets are the way to centrally control a whole lot of infected computers. Just to put this in context for a second, because I think this is totally fascinating, Joseph Min says that this whole botnet thing

It started with spam. One of the easiest ways to make money on the internet back pre-2000 was spam. Spam as in penis extensions and I'm a Nairobi and... All that stuff. What happened was that in the olden days, most servers, mail servers, acted as open relays. Meaning the mail people wouldn't really pay attention to who was sending what.

So the spammers would spam with abandon. And then spam got to be enough of a problem that the techies of the world decided that's it. They started to block people. Like if they found a guy who they thought was sending too many product emails or whatever, they would block his IP address so that he couldn't send any more mail. So what the spammers and their contractors then needed to do was to have a bunch of clean IP addresses.

And send spam from that. So what they did, which is totally genius, totally evil, is they hired a bunch of programmers to create a bunch of viruses, disseminated those viruses across the Internet. People would accidentally click or open something, get them onto their computer, and then suddenly the spammers could now remote control our computers at a distance, whatever they wanted, for maybe just an hour or two a night.

to send out their spam, because these were clean IP addresses. Of course, what happened is that once the spammers had these botnets, they started thinking, hey, I could do something else with this.

And the next thing that came along was denial of service attacks. You can have all of them try to contact eBay.com at the same time and knock over eBay. This first gentleman that I ran into, he had a botnet of well over a thousand computers, which, you know, at the time was amazing to me. You know, by today's standards, a thousand for a botnet is nothing. Now they can get up into the millions. But, you know, back then it was quite incredible to me. Because he says he was in this chat room, this guy was there, and this guy would get into fights with people. And anytime he did, he'd...

He'd point his 1,000 computer drone army at that enemy and... F you, man. I'm going to knock your internet offline. There's nothing you can do about it. You know, if it was something in a game, he could knock the game server that they were playing on offline, you know, stop their game, things like that. It's like he can take away your ball back in 1935. Yes. That is exactly it, taking away someone else's ball over the internet. So this, for some reason, intrigued you. Yes. It was amazing to me. I'm like, you have control of 1,000 computers? Wow. Wow.

You know, how did you do this? You know, at the time, I had never heard of botnets. I didn't know about any of this stuff. Like, how did you get the software to do this? How did you get it onto all these computers? And he was quite happy to tell you all that. Oh, he certainly was. This particular gentleman had a very large ego. And did you see him as a bad guy? To be honest, I think at that age, I...

He says at the time it was just sheer curiosity.

So he says he asked this Pied Piper guy to send him some of the bot software that made the botnet go. And that really intrigued me, you know, digging through the source code, trying to understand what is this thing doing? How does it work? How does it tick? This guy, was he a good coder? Like, is he good at it? Was he good at it? Yeah. No, no, I would, you know, in hindsight now, no.

He's what I would classify as a script kitty, someone who... Script kitty. I don't know what that is, but it's a whole new curse word. Script kitty. So a script kitty is someone who has just enough technical ability to kind of take some tools and software that other people have created and just use them. Now to fast forward...

As Dan went the opposite direction of the script kiddies and got better and better and started making these botnets that could literally spy on people as they were using their computers. Interesting to see all the porn that people are watching, that type of thing. He says he found himself in another chat room. That was called Bot Talk.

It's the kind of place where hackers swap tips, brag. Like, hey, look what I did. I defaced this website. Take a look. And he says one day he was talking with a coder friend of his, a guy named Izardo. We were talking and why don't we set up a community where we can really filter who gets to join and don't let all these script kiddies and idiots in. I actually chose the name. I came up with that nice lame name.

I actually think it's pretty good. What's the name again? Dark Code. Dark Code. It's like D-A-R-K-O-D-E, I think, right? It seemed cooler with the K. Yeah. So we chose the name and started getting the site set up. The rules were it would be invite only. So you had to have an invite. And each new person would be required to demonstrate their skill. You know, here's a piece of software that I created. Or here's a video of my botnet in action.

And at some point, not too long after it was created, it was decided for one reason or another that, you know, hey, we got all these programmers on here. That's great. But, you know, they also want to be able to sell some of the stuff they're making. So let's invite some people who would be willing to buy some of this stuff. This now begins to sound like a fair. You say, well, I have a burglars tool. Do you have a door you want to burgle? And then I'll rent you my tool. That's a simplification. But yeah, people would post and say,

I am looking to buy X, X, or here's this piece of software I created. Here's all the things it does. Here's some screenshots of it in action. And here's the price. Could be a certain type of botnet software. It could be buying a botnet itself. You know, if you don't want to build one yourself, you want to buy one that somebody else already created and has going. I mean, I can get you onto 200,000 or 20,000 computers just constantly.

Give me a check. Yeah. What they called them were installs. Installs. You know, hey guys, I've got installs and they're $10 per 1,000. Something like that. Now, this is something that's sort of surprising to us when it comes to botnets, that there's this whole rental market that's frighteningly affordable. Yeah, it's bargain basement. In fact, we were talking with one reporter, Kelly Jackson Higgins, who's the executive editor of darkreading.com, which is a cybersecurity news site.

And she told us... You can actually rent a botnet if you really wanted to. You could rent a botnet for one hour for about $38 a month. What? In some cases, as low as $20 a month. I could rent a botnet for $20 a month? You could. It's like renting space. Here, you want to use this to go do damage somewhere, or you want to make a statement, or you have some plan for it, or you want to send some spam. Here you go. You could go online right now and probably find somewhere out there on the net somebody who will sell you access to computers for...

cents apiece. And these are like people's computers, like your computer, my computer. And Dan says as dark code got bigger and bigger, he began to see more of this kind of activity on the site. Like some guy would have a botnet of 5,000 computers. Another guy would have some software like the ransomware. Software guy would then rent the botnet from guy one, install his ransomware, ransom these poor people, then move on. You know, some of the people were doing some pretty unpleasant things, you know, moving more into the kind of

kind of financial crimes territory, which is something that I really never had a desire to be involved in. And it was largely because of that, he says, that in 2009, he decided to get out. But unfortunately, the next year... I got a lovely visit from the FBI. They promptly... Was it a kick down your door type situation?

They knocked. They knocked. So it was... Okay. What was that like? Pretty terrifying. You know, what's going to happen to me? What's going to happen next? What did happen next? I don't know how much of that I can talk about, but I did cooperate with the government and I have cooperated with them for the last five plus years now. It was a kick in the butts. You know, my parents kind of kicked me out. Not kicked me out, but...

assisted me with a rapid move out. And I've been living on my own since then and became gainfully employed, had a few jobs, became a little bit more serious with my then girlfriend who is now my wife. So, you know, it's given me an opportunity over the last five years to really make some serious changes to my life. Meanwhile, over the same five years, Dark Code grew into this massive business

Cyber criminal swap meet, where tens of thousands of stolen social security numbers were bought and sold. Huge databases of personal information and emails were bought and sold. Malware and software of various kinds were bought and sold. And this continued, according to Dina Temple Raston, right up until July 15th of this year, July 15th, 2015. Today marks a milestone in our efforts to bring to justice some of the most significant crimes

cyber criminals in the world. What ended up happening on July 15th is that the FBI had actually gotten into Darko with a number of intelligence services from around the world, and they had an 18-month investigation in which they took down, in the end, 28 people. The FBI has effectively smashed the hornet's nest, and we are in the process of rounding up

And charging the Hornets. But here's what's amazing, right? So they take down more than two dozen people. Two weeks later, dark code is up again. It just popped back up? Just popped back up.

Our deep gratitude to NPR's Dina Tempo-Raston, whose reporting really got us going on this whole project. Props to Kelsey Padgett, who produced our first segment. Andy Mills, who produced our second segment. Thanks also to Andrew Zolli, Michael Shamos, Gunther Ullman, Lynn Levy, Kathy Roeder, also Kathy Tu, don't forget attorney David Vacar, and the whole crew at the Microsoft Cybercrimes Unit. And to you, Robert, thank you to you. Why me? Because you're part of my botnet. Because I'm... I'm Jad Abumrad. I'm Robert Kulwich. Thanks for listening.

Hello, this is Michelle from Kaka'aka, Hawaii. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Mahalo! Science Reporting on Radiolab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science.

Radio Lab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Susie Lechtenberg is our executive producer. And Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design.

Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Cusick, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhonyana Sambandham, Matt Kilty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Khari, Ariane Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. With help from Tanya Chawla and Sarah Sonbach, our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Adam Chabot.

Bye.

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