TechCrunch Host
speaker
5,755 appearances
109 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2026
last heard 17 Aug
TechCrunch Host’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 109 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 23.
Appearances
Over the last few decades, several mysterious hackers have captured the public's imagination, but none quite like Phineas Fisher.
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A decade after their most famous hack, Phineas remains, by most accounts, the most prolific and public hacker never to have been called.
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As part of TechCrunch's series on the biggest cybersecurity mysteries of all time, they're delving into the enigma of Phineas, the hacktivist who hacked controversial spyware makers Finfisher and Hacking Team.
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The latter, an Italian startup, was among the first to turn government spyware into a viable global business, paving the way for spyware makers such as the Israeli NSO Group.
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Phineas' hack-against-hacking team eventually led to the startup's demise years later.
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Apart from Anonymous, an amorphous amalgam of hacktivists with a mixed track record of mostly stunt hacks designed to gather publicity rather than have real impact, Phineas is perhaps the most well-known hacktivist in history, and their story is made of impressive hacks and endless unanswered questions.
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variously called an anarchist, a cybercriminal, a hacktivist, and a vigilante.
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The hacker has said they use a lot of different names for different hacking escapades.
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The hacks we know about were big enough to turn Phineas into a legend among hackers.
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A well-known security researcher once wrote on Twitter, I would like to meet Phineas Fisher so that I could buy them a seven-course meal, three Michelin star dinners somewhere, and just listen to them explain how they turned hacking team inside out like a gem sock.
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Phineas first emerged in August of 2014 when they announced they had hacked Gamma Group,
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the makers of the Finn Fisher spyware, which is where the nickname comes from.
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They publicized the hack via a Twitter account cheekily called AtGammaGroupPR, leaking stolen data including mobile spyware, product manuals, and a price list.
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The damage was limited, and Finn Fisher carried on.
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Phineas published a post-mortem that doubled as a leftist manifesto, then vanished.
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A year later, they came back with a bang, hacking Hacking Team, another spyware maker.
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They took practically everything, more than 400 gigabytes, including source code, tens of thousands of internal emails, confidential contracts, and customer lists.
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The leak allowed journalists to reveal scandals in Ecuador, Mexico, and Panama.
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Years later, Hacking Team's CEO David Vincenzetti was forced to sell his company for one euro.
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For some former employees, Phineas' hack was the beginning of the end.
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Showing 841–860 of 5,755 · page 43 of 288
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