Government Hacking Tools Are Now in Criminals' Hands (with Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai)
April 27, 2026
6,380
326
50
5.89%
Search the Record
IndexedEvery word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
404 Media Episodes Around April 27, 2026
See what was published immediately before and after this episode.
50:19Now PlayingGovernment Hacking Tools Are Now in Criminals' Hands (with Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai)
Chapters
YouTube Description
as posted by the channelThis week Joseph talks to Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, a journalist at TechCrunch. Lorenzo has possibly the deepest understanding of one of the wildest cybersecurity stories in years: how an employee of Trenchant, a government malware vendor that is supposed to only sell to the ‘good’ guys, secretly sold a bunch of hacking tools to a Russian company. Those tools, it looks like, then ended up with the Russian government and possibly Chinese criminals too. It’s a really insane story about how powerful hacking tech can fall into the wrong hands.
Inside the story of the US defense contractor who leaked hacking tools to Russia
US military contractor likely built iPhone hacking tools used by Russian spies in Ukraine
This is a production of 404 Media, a journalist-owned tech website. Learn more and subscribe at: htttps://404media.co
Listen to our weekly podcasts:
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Become a paid subscriber for access to bonus content
Guests & Subjects Covered
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.