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Fraudsters: 'We Know Where You Live'
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Hello, and welcome to the 404 Media Podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404media.c0, as well as bonus content every single week. Subscribers also get also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content at 404media dot c o.
Joseph:I'm clearly out of practice with that intro script. I am your host, Joseph. And with me are 4 zero four Media cofounders, Sam Cole
Sam:Hello.
Joseph:And Jason Kebler.
Jason:Hello. Hello. This is, this is the most number of cofounders we've had on a podcast in several weeks.
Sam:It's true.
Joseph:We've had bad luck. Yeah.
Jason:Yeah. I didn't get a chance to to talk about it yet, but I've been so sick. So, so, so sick, with COVID and still don't feel great, but, I wanted to be on the pod. So, take COVID seriously, I guess, is what I would say. It's just like, I've never been this sick in my life.
Joseph:Yeah.
Jason:Be careful out there is what I'm saying.
Joseph:Yeah. It's derailed our production a little bit, but, hopefully, next week or the week after, we will all be back here and back to, normal. Alright. And we will jump straight into our first story, sextortion scammers trying to scare people by sending photos of their homes. Sam, you wrote this one.
Joseph:Just a basic question. First of all, can you describe these emails? I actually imagine that a few people listening have probably received these. From the top, what do they actually look like? What are these emails saying and showing?
Sam:Yeah. I was with a friend who got one of these emails when he got it, and he was like, well, that's horrifying. Someone just sent me a picture of my own street and my address. So when you open the email like, there's not a subject line, first of all. Or if there is, I think it might be your address, but the ones that I've seen haven't had a subject line.
Sam:But the body of the email, I believe, just had the address, and it was the correct address. And then there's a PDF attachment. And, like, you can see, you know, like, in Gmail or I don't know how other email clients work with. Like, usually, you can see, like, the preview of what's in the PDF. Like, you can see, like, the first quarter of the page or whatever.
Sam:You could see that, and that was a picture of his street. Like, the correct address and also a photo of his street. And, like, you you could kinda see, like, words that were on it, but I couldn't I couldn't read it. And I was like, don't click it because it might like, you could you can, like, inject malicious stuff in the PDF. So it's like, don't click anything.
Sam:Don't open an attachment because you don't know what it is. And, yeah, I ended up sending it to Jason, and Jason opened it on, like I don't know. Did you open it, like, an old machine or something?
Jason:Or I opened it. I opened it on an old yeah. I opened up on my old computer Yeah. That I then lit on fire.
Sam:Yeah. Is it the computer that we tried to find the malware on the vibrator? Probably, it's the
Jason:It's the computer we plugged the vibrator USB into. It's the sacrificial lamb computer.
Sam:We're thankful for a service.
Joseph:The the most fucked up MacBook in existence just with malware upon malware.
Jason:It's actually so it's actually not a MacBook. It's an Imac, which is important because I then unplug it. Oh, yes. So I'm like yeah.
Joseph:As as soon as the screen locks down and goes red, you pull out the power cable. Yeah. So it's that stops that.
Jason:Keeping, this throwaway device.
Joseph:Yeah.
Sam:Yeah. So, like, instantly, it's like the fur like, the preview of it is scary enough before you even get to, like, what's in the body of the message or the threats or any of that.
Joseph:Well well, what does it say in the body? I mean, I'm not asking you to to read it out. But, like, they send a photo of the the person's address, then what are they claiming and what are they asking? Like, what do they want?
Sam:Yeah. So the ones that I've seen, it's like they list, your your name, your address, your phone number, and then there's, like, a letter underneath of the photo of your street that says, I suggest you read this message carefully. Take a moment to chill, breathe, and analyze it thoroughly. Just like I don't know. It's, like, such a crazy thing.
Sam:And then it goes on to say, you know, I don't play games. I'm paraphrasing, but it's long. It's real it's a long like, a full page letter.
Joseph:Yeah. It would it was big, Kanye Reeves, I'm happy for you or sorry that Yeah.
Sam:It's like, okay. Yeah.
Joseph:You just get to the point. You know?
Sam:Yeah. I was, like, skimming to the bottom. It basically claims to have installed the the wording they use is I installed a spyware called Pegasus on an app you frequently use, which doesn't make any sense. Right? Like, that doesn't make any technical sense.
Sam:But Pegasus sounds scary, but it it's a real thing. It's a it's a spyware product that, governments use to spy on journalists and political dissidents. But, it's not something you install on an app, and it's also not something that, like, the average dipshit hacker has access.
Joseph:Right.
Sam:So yeah. So, anyway, so it sounds scary. And then it goes on to say that it's through Pegasus, quote, unquote Pegasus, it has been used like, remotely controlling your system to watch everything that you've launched from your screen and then switch your camera on and off and your mic, and you never knew that it was happening and then also got all your contacts' emails. So, basically, it's a sex extortion c scheme. It's saying, your filthy secrets will remain private.
Sam:I will destroy all the data and evidence once you send payment. And they're asking for a Bitcoin ransom. So it's claiming to have watched you, basically, watch porn or something and has this, like, secret footage of you. I think the wording I used was it was like you've been in the dark corners of cyberspace or something.
Joseph:And it's like, yeah. That's my job. Like Yeah. You're like, were you trying you're trying to scam me with that? I do that all day every day.
Joseph:Get Yeah.
Sam:Like, I've definitely been in some dark corners. Yeah. But, yeah, that's the and then it's it it contains, like, a Bitcoin like a like a wallet, a crypto wallet address and the amount of Bitcoin that they wanna send, which is, like, a crazy high amount. And then, it says, you know, if you send this, we'll we'll delete everything that we have. And if you don't, we're gonna make your life hell, basically.
Joseph:Yeah. So what is new here is basically the inclusion of the physical address and especially the photo. Right? Like, while I was away, I I I saw you covered this, and and then I read up on it. And I was like, that's funny.
Joseph:I remember being in, like, a short b b well, not even a documentary. It was, like, just a news item or something for, I think, their tech channel. And it was when there were all these sextortion emails going around, and it was when people would send the email saying, hey. Look. This is your password.
Joseph:And it really grabbed your attention because right at the start, it's like, That's something that should not be, publicly available. At least that's what's people's, you know, understanding is. And it did everything the the email you read, basically asked for as well. Like, I've been watching you, view porn, basically. I have videos of you.
Joseph:I hacked into your webcam. Now you need to send Bitcoin to this address. And we covered it, motherboard, like, a little bit, I guess. I I I think I looked to, like, how much money maybe some of these, scammers were getting, and, you know, and then the BBC did it a few months later, or or or whatever. And that really grabbed people's attention.
Joseph:I don't just mean from the people who opened the email, but sort of the media's attention as well, where, oh my god. They're they're extorting people with their own passwords. Felt a bit silly at the time because, of course, we know how readily available passwords are with serve services like have I been pwned or well, you don't get the password like that, but it shows the exposure rate and just the amount of, data breaches all over the place. Gotta admit, having your address there is something else. You know?
Joseph:And that's scary. Right?
Sam:Yeah. It's like the the address combined with the photo, which I assume, is from, like, Google Maps or something that gets screenshot. And it also has the person's name later in the letter. Like, it's it's like blah blah blah, and then it says there it, like, addresses you by name. So it's, like, it's pretty customized.
Sam:I don't know. It's pretty personalized. I would say it's pretty advanced. Like, someone put a lot of effort into this. The word like, the the conversational wording is very true to how someone would write a letter.
Sam:It's not like someone used AI or something to write this. It's, like, very, like, realistic. So when I first got it, I was like, oh my god. Like or when I first looked at it, it was like, oh my god. Like, this is like like, you've definitely got your shit exposed, which as I sort of remember
Jason:to say. Though, Sam, is like you say it that AI wasn't used to to do this, but very often, the types of people who are scamming us are often in other countries and often English isn't their first language. And so that's kind of how you identify it. It's like, oh, this is, like, fully broken English. Like, it just doesn't seem real.
Jason:And I wonder if they are using, like, AI to make something that reads a little bit more real.
Sam:Yeah. Maybe. It could be. If you told
Jason:it to be like something way. Yeah. But I I just because I I think personally that, like, AI is going to lead to better spam and better scams like this, even if an average person would be able to be like, okay, this is like or even if we would be able to tell, like, hey, this is AI. Like, someone who's scanning for, oh, is this, like, in the English language? Is it was it written by someone who, like, plausibly has command of it?
Jason:I feel like this passes that test as you said. And I wonder if they're using some sort of, like, AI prompt to do so. Yeah.
Joseph:I mean, when it comes to how it's being made, obviously, have to speculate a little bit. But my guess is that they they just have some sort of database which has person's name, person's email address, and person's physical address. And, unfortunately, that is actually not that difficult either from a data broker or a data breach, or you go to these underground services which combine that already for you. Like, you can go to Telegram, you can search through a service, and, it will basically aggregate all of these breaches, all these sources at once, and you can dox people very, very easily with that. We've done that before.
Joseph:I think someone has access to a debate database like that. They have the script, which is basically what Sam read out or paraphrased. Right? And then you're just saying, well, substitute the name here, put the address here, and then presumably, like, a Google Maps API call to well, here's the here's the address. Please type that into Google via the API and return the street view photo for me.
Joseph:I agree, Sam. Like, looking at the photos, it looks like it's grabbed from street view or or something like that. Right? And if that's the case, which just seems like Occam Occam's razor, like, the most likely one, you can do that very, very quickly and at scale. And we definitely don't have numbers for how many emails have been sent out, but I feel like people are talking about this.
Joseph:Like, you got one, somebody else sent one to me. I saw a little bit stuff on Mastodon. Now have you heard of anybody else getting it as well, or is that just the one you saw then I've seen mine? Or
Sam:I, like, I as I usually do when I'm trying to figure out how prevalent something is, I looked I read it, and I, like, searched some of the phrasing from the, from the email. And lots of people were talking about it, like, within, like, less than 24 hours of the one that I saw. It was, like, lots of people on Reddit were talking about it and talking about how they fell for it or, like, it really scared them or they still weren't sure if it was, like, real or not. Maybe they were, like, holding on to, like, maybe this is actually someone targeting me. Yeah.
Sam:And, like, it's definitely I mean, just in the last, like, week, I would say more people have been talking about it. So, yeah, it's like they've definitely they found a new trick, and scammers have.
Jason:Well, yeah. Like, I know 2 people personally who have gotten this, like, extended universe, but people who I've met in real life who have gotten this and have asked me about it. This was, like, after Sam wrote her story, so I could just point to the story. But then a reader also sent us some or a reader also got it. So I I get it's a it's a new wave for sure.
Joseph:Yeah. And Brian Krebs, I think, reported on it as well. And I should say that just while we were talking at the start, I actually brought up one of the examples that someone sent me. I then searched for the relevant Bitcoin address, just on blockchain.com, you know, very easy tool for exploring the blockchain. And the address has received 0 Bitcoins.
Joseph:And, like, you may not be super you may not be surprised by that, but that kinda shows me that, potentially, this scammer is using a different Bitcoin address for each victim. Like, I feel like somebody has probably fallen for this somewhere over the past week, 10 days, or or whatever. Right? So the fact that there's absolutely nothing has ever hit this Bitcoin account makes me think that they're generating, addresses, if not per victim, at least for, like, a large group of victims or something like that, and nobody's bitten yet, which is gonna make it a little bit harder to figure out the actual impact of this. Like, I'm sure, like, a firm like Chainalysis or whoever, which have way more visibility to into the blockchain than me just searching on blockchain dotinfo could, figure it out.
Joseph:But, like, I'd be interested if if anybody listening does know anybody who received it and who did send them, cryptocurrency. You know? Yeah. Let us know.
Jason:I think more broadly, just we haven't talked that much about, the problem of sextortion on this podcast before, and we don't need to get deep into it, but it definitely does work and it's really terrifying. I know people who have done it, who have liked to send the money, and often that's not where it ends. It it just becomes like a nightmare situation. They very often, like, prey on teenage boys as well, like, specifically, and there have been cases of, like, teenage boys getting this thinking like, oh, the fact that I watch porn is gonna be outed to my mom or something. And there have been cases of, like, teenagers killing themselves over this.
Jason:And there have been a couple high profile FBI extraditions of people who run these rings. So it's like a very bad crime and it's a very, I think it's a pretty effective one, unfortunately, because it does prey on, you know, people's, insecurities.
Joseph:Well, yeah. I mean, especially with the teenage, boys example, and sometimes in those cases, they actually the extortionist actually does get compromising material because they will pretend to be, like, a young girl or someone of the same age or whatever, and they will engage them, and they will tell the victim to put themselves in a compromising position and film it. And then they actually do have compromising material, they add the family and friends on Facebook, and they start distributing it or threaten to do so. I mean, that's terrifying, and you can see why people, would pay. But to be clear, that's not happening here.
Joseph:If you get this email, you're okay. You know? But it's definitely part, as you say, of a broader trend, and it does work because, I mean, what's gonna be more sensitive than that? It's terrifying. Alright.
Joseph:We will leave that there. When we come back, we're gonna talk about one of Jason's stories about the right to repair your own body. That's an amazing quote in this one. I'll say that. We'll be right back after this.
Joseph:Alright. And we are back. Jason, you wrote this one. Right to repair for your body, the rise of DIY pirated medicine. So, there there's a lot to dive into here.
Joseph:Let's try and keep it concrete and easy to start. Who is doctor Laufer, and what is he well known for, Jason?
Jason:He yeah. So doctor Michael Laufer is the communications head of 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective. For all intents and purposes, he's the only public facing figure of this collective. It's an anarchist, like, DIY open source everything collective made up of chemists and doctors and this guy, Michael. And, basically, their goal is to open source already available pharmaceuticals and teach people how to make them themselves.
Jason:This sounds insane. Like, it sounds really it sounds really dangerous, first of all. It sounds really difficult, second of all. It sounds like impossible, third of all, but it's not necessarily any of those things. I mean, to be very clear, this group doesn't tell people to go and make their own medicine, but they're they're looking at it through, like, a medical freedom lens where it's like medication is incredibly hard to get sometimes, sometimes it's very expensive, and a lot of it is under patent and a lot of it is, like, really hard to get.
Jason:So some people are desperate in the United States, unfortunately.
Joseph:And you can end up spending 1,000 upon 1,000 of dollars where where this collective is like, we're going to find ways to make that medication, way cheaper. Like, sometimes, like, a pill costs, like, cents rather than dollars.
Jason:Yeah. So the the big one that they just announced at DEFCON was cifosbuvir, which is a hepatitis c pill that an entire treatment of costs $84,000 and it's a cure for hepatitis c, which is a very bad disease. And normally with the virus, you can only treat it, but this, like, actually cures it. And they were able to make it for $300 or $70, sorry. He initially told me he thought it'd be $300 for the full course, but after they made it, it was $70.
Jason:So $83 a pill instead of $1,000 a pill. We're talking like orders and orders of magnitude less. And I've done some reporting on big pharma in the past. I did a big story at VICE many years ago about cystic fibrosis and cystic fibrosis medication. And the line like, the popular line is that the first pill cost $1,000,000,000 to make and the second pill cost 5¢ to make.
Jason:It's like all of the money is spent on that basic initial research, but then these medications stand are patent for a very long time. And so once a new medication is, like, made and approved and pushed through the process, you know, a drug company might spend 1,000,000 or in some cases, like, 1,000,000,000 of dollars depending on what it is. I don't know if they ever spend 1,000,000,000, but it's it's very often, like, high 1,000,000. And then they have a patent for x number of years, and then they have essentially the ability to charge whatever they want for it. Right.
Jason:They're
Joseph:the only ones making it, basically.
Jason:They're the ones making it. They charge whatever they want for it. They're trying to make that money back, and then they're basically trying to make their money back until it can go generic after the patent expires. And so if you have a medication that's under patent, it's like, you know, if you don't have insurance, if you're underinsured, like, you may have a really bad medical condition, but you and there might be a medication that can help you, but you just don't have the ability to get it, and that is the problem that they're trying to solve. I think that, first of all, like, they are trying to show that this is possible.
Jason:I think it's like, is the average person going to be making pills in their garage? Like, no. But is a trained chemist who is able to buy the precursors and understands this stuff, like, able to prove that they can make it for 2¢ a pill? Like, maybe. And then I think that in of itself is valuable, and some of the, like, public shame that comes with that can help in getting these things, decreased in price.
Joseph:Yeah. There's a couple of really interesting quotes. This first one, I think it it sort of encapsulates what they're doing. Doctor Laffer says, we don't invent anything really. We take things that are on the shelf and hijack them.
Joseph:We like to take something established and be like, this works, but you can't get it. Well, here's a way to get it. Yeah. Pirating the medicine, cloning it, making it more available. And then, I think my favorite quote, from one of the slides, his Defcon talk reads, isn't this illegal?
Joseph:Yeah. Grow up. I need to have more of that energy, in my work. But so how exactly do they do this? Because they have to figure out how to clone, what to clone, what to pirate in the first place, and it seems like they've actually copied or forked in a way some of the technology to do that as well.
Joseph:Like, is that fair?
Jason:Yeah. So, basically, there's a database. I believe it's called the smile database of, like, molecular structures, so to show you, like, here's the elements. Here's, like, what you need to make. And as part of the patent filing process and part of, like, getting through the FDA approval and all that, drug companies need to make that public.
Jason:So they're like, this is made out of this hydrogen bonded to this oxygen, blah blah blah. They have to show the chemical structure in this database. From that chemical structure, they can plug it into a tool that they created called ChemHaptica, and ChemHactica will basically, like, reverse engineer different reactions that will create that molecule, if that makes sense. And I will explain how ChemHactica works. ChemHactica is a fork of a an MIT DARPA project called ASCOS.
Jason:So, basically, it's like an open source project that MIT and DARPA made that was like, here's how you make different chemical compounds. It uses machine learning, it uses AI, like, you know, good uses of AI, good uses of machine learning. And this is how, like, a lot of drug discovery is actually done these days. It's like a chemist will have an idea for a compound that they can make and then they will, you know, use a simulation to be like, oh, will these materials doing this reaction, will that work? And that's what ASCOS does.
Jason:Chem hectica makes it, like, a little more user friendly, and it it also is, like, designed for a home lab versus, you know, like a university or pharmaceutical research lab. So that's the first part of it. The second part of it is they have something called a micro lab, which is the DIY chemistry set, for lack of a better term, that you can then use to make these things. And so the they basically, like, open source how to build one of these. Like, they have a parts list.
Jason:They have instructions for building it. They have, like, here's how to make sure, you know, it's working. Here's some, like, basic recipes that you can use to ensure that it's working. And so, like, let's say you wanted to make, like, a pirated version of a pharmaceutical, you would use ChemHactica to figure out the, like, base materials that you need, many of which you can buy legally online, the type of reaction that you need to do to do that, and then you can build, essentially, like, a recipe using what Forthes has created and use the micro lab to not automate all of it, but it automates, like, a lot of it. And, like, right now, they're only doing a few different specific medications.
Jason:It's like Sovaldi, as I mentioned, which is a compound called cifosbuvir, the hepatitis c one. They also do miso, which is, me what is miso? It's it's one of the abortion drugs, but I don't I forget the full name of it.
Joseph:Which they spoke about previously. Yeah. And, they they distributes it potentially.
Jason:And they've been distributing that, it's like a chemical abortion pill, and they've been putting those on business cards, like little, droplets of it and putting them in states where it's very hard to get these or where abortion has become criminalized to some extent. They've also done with Daraprim, which is Martin Shkreli, pharma bros, like, HIV medication. So they've made that much cheaper, and they've also done it with EpiPen. So they have chosen these drugs that have been in the news for having, like, astronomical prices and, like, big pharma CEOs who have been, like, accused of price gouging and stuff like that.
Joseph:Didn't they show you how easy it is to sort of figure out the the makeup of a particular drug? I think you had a phone call. Right? But, like, what just briefly sort of what happened there.
Jason:Yeah. So I viz video chatted with Michael Laufer, and I was telling him I'm interested in this because I my best friend died of cystic fibrosis when she was 25 and I was 25 also. And cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease that affects the pancreas, the lungs, a lot of other things, and there's, like, many, many, many treatments for it. But a lot of the treatments are maintenance treatments and a lot of them are very difficult to get, and they're very expensive if you don't have good insurance. And my friend didn't have great insurance always.
Jason:This was, like, pre Obamacare for much of it, and it's like she once she fell off her parents' insurance, it was hard for her to work. It was hard for her to get health insurance, and so she was, like, fucked at different times. And during this period, there was, like, a miracle drug called KALYDECO that was introduced by Big Pharma. That was, like, one of the best treatments for cystic fibrosis. It actually didn't it wouldn't have worked on my friend, which has made this, like, a little bit easier for me to handle because it was, like, it only treats a specific type of cystic fibrosis that she didn't have.
Jason:But this drug costs $300,000 per patient per year to take. $300,000 And I was so that's the big story that I wrote at Vice. Like, I explained how this drug costs so much money. It was funded, mostly by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, which is a charity, that she was actually very involved with and it was, like, this drug company, like, got funding from a quasi public, like, charity and people still can't get it. And so I was like, have you ever heard of this drug?
Jason:Like, I I asked Michael if he'd ever heard of the drug and he was like, no, I've never heard of it. I I don't know about it. And he he was like, let's take a look at it. So he pulled up the chemical structure, he put it into, this system, Kympactica, and I watched in, like, 30 seconds. It had 2 different methods for how you would make this compound and the cost of the underlying materials and the yield and all that sort of thing.
Jason:And he was like, I'm not an expert in this as in he has chemists on his team that would need to verify all of this stuff, but he was basically, like, you could make this in an afternoon and it would cost you nothing to make. It would cost you, like, less than $100 to make. So, I mean, that's just like one very specific example, but there's so many, what are called orphan diseases where there's not a lot of research, into making new drugs. And when there is research, like, when these diseases have new drugs made for them, the prices are usually astronomical because the, potential patient base is very small. It's if for these, like, rare diseases, basically.
Jason:So I know that's a very long answer. I know I'm rambling, I promise mostly because of the COVID. But, But,
Joseph:I mean, that's a startling example of, like, in 30 seconds or whatever, he's able to go, oh, this is how you would make it. And then potentially, could go on to, as you say, verify with the chemist and the collective, another context, about how to go about that. I guess it kinda just leads on to a last question, which I actually saw as a comment, I think, on the article, when I was just scrolling through to get ready for the podcast. Some people are asking, like, well, how do you know it's safe? And I guess I would say, well, we don't know as journalists.
Joseph:You know, like, we're not medical professionals. And, of course, it would hopefully be verified, as you said, with, you know, chemists in the collective and other experts. But what did he do on stage, at DEF CON to prove that it was safe, Jason?
Jason:Yeah. So I wanna preface again. It's like, I have no idea if any given pill that people are making in their garage is safe. It's like, this is something that people need to be very confident in themselves. And even 4th thieves doesn't, like, recommend that people do this.
Jason:As in, they don't say, like, this is the future. They say, like, if you are a desperate person and you know what you're doing, here's the information. Do do with it what you will. And I think that that is the only way that you can really talk about this, because, you know, you need to think about things like lab conditions, you need to think about purity, that sort of thing. But anyways, like, at DEFCON, Laufer took a pill of Sofosbuvir that he had made, but he also they had it essentially chemically analyzed after the fact and they compared it to a real pill of Sovaldi.
Jason:So there was Sovaldi, the, you know, real pill and then the counterfeit pirated Sofosbuvir pill that they made and they were identical. Like the I don't even know what you call it because I'm not a chemist, but, the, like I'm gonna say the word, it's wrong, but, like, the crystallography or whatever of it, the the chart that he showed, they lined up exactly. And he said that the pill that they made is actually more pure. Like, it was more of that molecule than the Sovaldi actually was. And so I didn't go into deep detail about this in my piece for the reason that we're talking about making your own medicine in, you know, your house, I think that it's obvious that there are risks here.
Jason:Like, there's certainly clearly, clearly, clearly risks, and it's like people are only gonna do this if they are incredibly confident in what they're doing or if they're desperate? And there's a lot of both, in this country. And we're not recommending it, please, like, massive disclaimer, like, we're not recommending that you do this, but I think that what they're doing is very, very interesting in getting this information out there and people can then sort of, like, do what they want. And the last thing I'll say is, like, this is not ivermectin, like, for COVID. This is not, like, take weird supplements for whatever.
Jason:Like, we already mentioned this, but, like, they're not anti big pharma. They're, like, anti big pharma price gouging people and anti access. But to be clear, they're like, pharmaceutical science is amazing. We wanna open, like, tested known drugs and take them from behind the shelf and make them more accessible to people. That's sort of, like, what they're doing.
Jason:They're not like, we're inventing new things and also, like, take horse medicine for COVID.
Joseph:Yeah. If you want to hear more about the collective, do go listen to the DEFCON podcast I did, where there's a brief interview, with doctor Laufer in there, where I think he sums it up, pretty nicely about what they're all doing. And he sort of compared it to when you have an audience of hackers who are all about, fully understanding how technology works and getting what they can out of it. That mentality is not necessarily crossed over into the medical or the biological sphere. And even if you don't need to take these pills or you don't know anybody who does, hey, you know, maybe there will be more appetite and or interest in, I mean, biological hacking, basically, and medical hacking, and piracy as well.
Joseph:So I think it's fascinating, and we'll definitely keep an eye on it. If you are listening to the free version of the podcast, I will now play us out. But if you're a paying 4 zero four media subscriber, we're going to talk about how a long running Reddit mystery has finally been solved with facial recognition. You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404media.c0. We'll be right back after this.
Joseph:Alright. And we are back in the subscribers only section. Jason, time to make you talk again for 15 minutes. No. All good.
Joseph:This is a fun one. I mean, it and and you stress this in the piece, like, it sounds frizz, frivolous and sounds stupid, but there's actually a lot to take away from here. And, those are my favorite source of pieces, really. So it's called celebrity number 6, inter Internet mystery is solved. Let's try and do it chronologically.
Joseph:Just what is the celebrity number 6 mystery exactly? It involves Were
Jason:either of you familiar with this one?
Joseph:Very briefly. Very briefly. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason:I was I wasn't aware of this one, and it's a bizarre one. Basically, there is a Redditor 4 or 5 years ago who had a piece of fabric with celebrity silhouettes on it.
Joseph:Like curtains or drapes
Jason:or something. Curtain. Yes. Not a shower curtain. A lot of people thought it was a shower curtain, but it's not.
Jason:It's like curtains for your windows and it's, like, has the silhouettes of celebrities and this guy was very interested in finding out who the celebrities were on this curtain. And so he made, like, 11 different posts on Reddit, saying
Joseph:Across all these subreddits, like, all these different ones. Yeah.
Jason:Yeah. And he says, like, who are these celebrities and movie stars? Like, please help. And within, like, 5 minutes, almost all of them were identified. The celebrities who were on it were, like, Adriana Lima, Jessica Alba, Orlando Bloom.
Jason:Like, it was very of the, like, 2008 Yeah. Era.
Joseph:Pirate Pirates of the Caribbean vibe. Is that it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason:And then some, like, lesser celebrities of that era too who I do I didn't even ever heard of, still haven't heard of them. But they were all identified very quickly, except for one who is celebrity number 6. I mean, I guess he just had an imager album and he was like, here's celebrity 1, 2, 3, here's 6, and no one could figure it out.
Joseph:Yeah. So that person has posted that request to all of these different subreddits. But what happens is that they sort of all coalesce around celebrity number 6, and doesn't that own subreddit start? And, I mean, it gets crazy. But, but any idea sort of what they were doing maybe at first, you know?
Jason:Yeah. So it becomes a group project, a Reddit group project, which, has been used for good sometimes and for ill others, most notably when Reddit misidentified the bomber of the Boston marathon. But it it became that sort of mystery where people started just, like, researching and guessing who this could possibly be. And I wanna be clear, like, they had no idea who this person was. Like, they couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman.
Jason:Like, they were guessing everything from, like, Brad Pitt to, to Allison Mack who was part of the, how how do you say this? NXIVM called the weird celebrity sex cult. She's, like, in prison now. Yes.
Joseph:And it's yeah. I don't know how you say it.
Jason:But anyways, they were guessing, like, wide varieties of of people. And the way that they were mostly doing it was they were going through Getty Images and they were just looking for this image. They were just
Joseph:Just manually.
Jason:Manually. Just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. People were making spreadsheets. I mean, they had a lot of really interesting ideas. Like, they were looking for, they were looking for, like, eBay listings of the curtain.
Jason:So they were finding, like, vintage shops that were selling this specific curtain, and they were asking the sellers if they knew as if they would, and they didn't, of course, they asked on, like, esoteric celebrity forums. Like, they would leave Reddit and they would go to other, like, fan forums and be like, please help. Then they also I'm looking at a list of what they did that doesn't involve new technologies. They have on here, searched all photos taken by other photographers on Getty Images between 1,902,008.
Joseph:That's that's, that's a big span of time.
Jason:Yeah. They also asked famous YouTubers to make videos about this, hoping that it would, like, spread, to, you know, their millions of followers and someone would know. So this is what they do for, like, years, couple years. But in recent months, they have really, like, stepped up their efforts, and used new technologies. So we can talk about what they've done.
Joseph:Yeah. I guess before that, did anybody think they had solved it? You know? Because there there are, like, some photos that look a bit like celebrity number 6, and there's, like, a side by side. Is it just that people got close, and ultimately they were wrong?
Joseph:Or did people think, like, oh, no. We've solved it and there's this. Like, there's almost like a splintering in the group or something. Is there any sign of that?
Jason:So I didn't know about this until 5 days ago. So I haven't been following it for a long time, but I'm good. I read, like, many posts, and I went deep in the archives. There's been a lot of close calls, but I think that what people are doing is they're taking the real image and they're putting it on top of the silhouette. And if it's not an exact match, they're saying this is not right.
Jason:But the person looks like a pretty generic celebrity once you, like, silhouette them, from 2,008. So there were many, many, many close calls where they're like, oh, this is almost right, but the hair in this photo is slightly different. And they knew that it had come from a real image because all of the other ones had come from a real image. Like Mhmm. They were able to find the original source image and then match it directly.
Jason:So I think,
Joseph:It would be strange if this if the last image was just completely fabricated. Like, it could be, but it'd be pretty strange.
Jason:Yeah. Or if it was like a real image, but then they, like, airbrush the hair so that it looked different or something like that. It's like every they they aligned perfectly, with the source image. So that's what people were looking for. So I don't think that anyone thought that it had been solved prior to this last weekend.
Joseph:Yeah. Before we get to the solving, what's some of the technology, that people did start to use? Because technology is involved in the ultimate solution as well, but was there anything else? Or Yeah.
Jason:So they obviously, like, reverse image search. They did some, like, way back machining, things like that. The interesting things are they tried to recreate it from scratch. So they were like, can we find some way of, like, making this image ourselves and, like, will that yield some sort of clue? They tried to do that in reverse as well.
Jason:So they would take this silhouette, undo, like, whatever Photoshop had been done and then be like, well, I colorized this, so here's what that looks like. They asked AI, like, they took the image and they asked Chad GPT. They asked Bard, Gemini, etcetera, like, all of them.
Joseph:Unsurprisingly, not helpful at all.
Jason:Unsurprisingly did not get the correct answer.
Joseph:That's crazy.
Jason:That's crazy. And then there were like, there was a lot of this going on. There were like people who were, again, I don't know the specific terms, but they were, like, doing this and then they were checking the different, like, levels in Photoshop and so on and so forth and being like, oh, maybe this is how it works. Maybe this is how it was made and this will somehow lead us to the correct answer. But, anyways, sometime last week, a Redditor posited that it was this Spanish model, Leticia Assarda, who is a very minor model.
Jason:Like, she's not if you Google her prior to this happening, she doesn't really come up, but she was, like, in Spanish magazines at the time. And this Redditor was like, yeah, I think it's her. And then a few days later, a different Redditor was like, it's definitely her and here's the image. And he had gotten the image by taking that suggestion of Leticia Sarta, looking up who took other images of her, emailing the photographer and being like, do you know what this is? And the photographer who took the original picture was like, yes, I took that picture, here's the picture, and it winds up perfectly.
Jason:So it seemed initially like some random gas of Leticia Sarta, had led this other Redditor to, like, do some reporting more or less, like, emailing a bunch of people and and finding the correct answer. But then it turns out that the initial person who, suggested that it was Leticia Asserta had taken the silhouette, had, like, done what I had mentioned earlier where they where they colorized it and turned it into something that looked like a plausible version of the photo.
Joseph:Like reversing the silhouetting?
Jason:Reversing the silhouetting. Yes. And then they ran that reverse silhouette through Pimeyes, which is a facial recognition software that is really scary and that, cops use sometimes, but is available to anyone.
Joseph:Yeah. Any anybody can go you can go and upload a photo now. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy.
Jason:So they use that and, he's the Redditor said, I was able to find, like, like, Pam has returned, like, 17 other images of Leticia Assarda based on the image that I made from the reverse silhouetting, and it returned some other people as well, but she was the one who turned up the most often. So, essentially, from that reverse silhouette, Pim eyes was able to pull up other images of this person.
Joseph:Yes. And then from that, they posted on Reddit saying, it's this person. And then the second register, as you said, went and did the reporting. And then they come and and and explain, that they managed to get the image for from the photographer. What what's been the reaction of people on the subreddit?
Joseph:Have people accepted that this mystery has been solved?
Jason:Yeah. So initially, one of the moderators was like, I think that this is an AI image and that this is all fake, and I don't believe it at all.
Joseph:But there was only one That that that image being the one that was provided by the photographer.
Jason:Yes. Yeah. And, like, they were basically, like, this is an elaborate hoax. But that was only one moderator, and everyone else was like, this is real. Like, there's no way that this isn't real.
Jason:And then it came out that the moderator had recently, like, one day before, posited that it was someone else. And so they were like, no, like, I wanna be correct. But the overall tone in the subreddit is like jubilation. People are so happy. They're like, we did it.
Jason:This is amazing. Reddit's so powerful, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Then Leticia Sarta herself held up a picture of her, took a new picture. So she she knows that she is celebrity number 6, that the mystery has been solved. So it's been, like, nice on that front.
Jason:And actually the photographer, themselves actually responded to me, like, an hour ago.
Joseph:Oh, wow.
Jason:He didn't say anything that interesting. He's like, I here's what he said For subscribers only. Hi, Jason. Good afternoon, and I hope you're well. I didn't know anything about the search because so many people, were looking for it until I received an email from a user of Reddit.
Jason:It really surprised me. The photograph was taken on behalf of a fashion editorial of for Spanish women's magazine. He definitely used Google translate here, so that's why it's broken. And then he said, the permissions and publication rights belong to the magazine, and the model image rights may only be used for publication in the magazine. I hope I was able to help you.
Joseph:So we're publishing it. Right? We publish it.
Jason:Everyone has published it. Okay. We're we're commenting on it. It's fair use.
Joseph:Yeah. That's fair. So that's all hilarious and amazing. How did the image get onto the curtains?
Jason:That I think that is unknown. Like, why the curtain exists, how it exists, etcetera.
Joseph:No. There's Orlando Bloom and stuff, and then this relatively, I don't mean to be rude, relatively obscure model, at least in relation to some of the other people on there. I I wanna know that now. You know? Maybe They're
Sam:really ugly too. They're really ugly set of curtains.
Joseph:Yeah. And, like, someone made that. You know? Like, they they designed that.
Sam:I thought when I first saw this image for the first time, literally, this weekend when Jason sent it to me, I thought it was Kate from Lost because the other guy from Lost is on there. Do You guys watch Lost?
Jason:So I don't watch Lost, but I saw that, like, half of them are from Lost.
Sam:Yeah. So, like, Kate from Lost looks a lot like, this person. So I was wondering if anybody suggested her. Her name is Kate Austin, which is funny.
Jason:The the action got suggested at some point. They had entire spreadsheets of, like, hundreds of different people that they were, like, looking through, and she's definitely Oh, man.
Sam:Well, if Evangeline Lilly is secretly the twin of this other model, I would not be surprised.
Joseph:I think that should I think that should be your new bit, Sam. You go into the sub Reddit, and you're like, no.
Sam:No. It's Kate.
Joseph:It's Kate it's Kate from us.
Jason:Yeah. To to answer your question, though, I think she ended up on this probably be I bet the company that made the curtains was Spanish. Like Right. Right? Like, it has to be
Joseph:would make my sense.
Jason:To be, but I I don't know. I don't know.
Joseph:Yeah. Well, what do you think we can learn from this fun little mystery? Because there's ideas of lost media, preservation, all these other sorts of things. I mean, why do you think that this is important?
Jason:I think it's interesting because the tactics used, are very novel, and these are some of the types of things that we do as reporters, but also that, like, open source investigators use all the time. I think that in this case, this is, like, pretty frivolous and also, like, not that invasive as far as these things go. There are, like, many communities on Reddit that are using similar techniques to, like, investigate murders and things like that, and that is a little more ethically dubious. But I think that it's, like, quite an interesting, like, quite interesting tactics were used that will definitely be used in future Internet mysteries, but also in, like, real reporting. And so I like looking at it so that I can be like, oh, maybe I could do something like this, like, recreate an image that isn't reverse image searching properly and try it.
Jason:I don't I'm not gonna do that every day, but I could imagine possibly doing something like that at some point. And then the other thing is, like, the whole conversation around, like, was this AI generated? Was this not AI generated? Just suggests to me that, I don't know, like, this what is real, what is fake convo is is not gonna go away, and it's gonna be very annoying forever.
Joseph:We already we already live in an epistemological hellscape where people, as you say, even the moderator of the subreddit comes out, it's like, no, it's AI. It's like
Jason:Yeah. It's funny if you go there now, there's now a bunch of threads that are like justice for, you know, the people who found it. Like, I can't believe they were treated so poorly, blah blah blah. It's interesting.
Joseph:We got we gotta cover that drama. That's good.
Jason:Yeah. And, there's a there is an interview with her in Spanish, and she said that she's already been stopped on the street since this happened and identified as, like, celebrity number 6. So this has had some sort of
Joseph:Well, yeah. I mean, she's being stopped now on the street and being called celebrity number 6. But, surely, if people on the street recognized her, they could have gone, hey, wait. You're celebrity number 6. You're you're the worst.
Jason:I think it's because of how the the silhouette it it's really not clear.
Joseph:They could have helped is what I'm trying to say.
Jason:Yeah. They could have helped. They could have helped.
Joseph:Apparently, they see her every day, and they're not on Reddit helping. Yeah. Are they? Yeah. Alright.
Joseph:That's great. And please continue to follow it. We will leave that there. And I will now play us out. As a reminder, 404 Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers.
Joseph:If you wish to subscribe to 404 Media and directly support our work, please go to 404media.c0. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope. Another way to support us is by leaving a 5 star rating and a review for the podcast.
Joseph:That stuff really helps us out. This has been 4 of 4 Media. We will see you again next week.