Erika Beras

For Jags, the fragment he found wasn't even a piece of code.

It was just six words.

It came from a leaked list of malware from the NSA.

Jags, with great excitement, got a hold of this list and started scouring it for something he should start digging into.

And one item screamed, look here.

There's one, just one line.

At this point, Jags just had the name of this malware, Fast 16.

Just a tibia.

But he was able to use that to dig up the rest of the bones.

Basically, he rummaged around this public library of suspected malware until he found it.

And eventually, he was able to put together the pieces of the skeleton that is Fast 16.

But still, when he tried to reverse engineer it to understand what its secret mission was, he couldn't.

And I'm Erika Barris.

Today on the show, nothing to see here.

Jags, said researcher, was pretty blocked.

But he knew he had to keep at it.

Because he had a hunch that Fast 16 might reveal important details about that invisible side of the conflicts we read about every day.

Like back when security researchers discovered a cyber sabotage operation that blew everyone's mind.

It was called Stuxnet.

What had been happening was that Israel and the U.S., allegedly, had used cyber weapons to destroy real-world physical objects.