Original subtitles

This week on "Vice,"

a deep dive into Russian hacking.

Is there any personal information of mine

that you couldn't have gotten access to?

If someone wants to hack you, they're gonna be able to.

And then, the race to stop

the next global pandemic.

We are walking into the Zika Forest.

There are mosquitoes flying all around me right now.

Doesn't fill me with warm and fuzzies.

Outbreaks are inevitable,

pandemics are optional.

Go, go, go!

We are not animals!

Russia's been in the news a lot lately

for allegedly hacking the 2016 US election.

The Russian government pursued

a multi-faceted influence campaign

in the run-up to the election,

including aggressive use of cyber-capabilities.

Russian cyber-criminals

have been accused of everything from digital bank robberies

to tampering with critical infrastructure.

So we sent Gianna Toboni to investigate

the severity of this growing threat.

We're about an hour outside of Portland, Maine.

It's a pretty rural part of the state,

and we're heading into this Sheriff's Department,

because they've been hacked,

along with every other police department in the county.

This is the office where we received the virus.

Um, it was downloaded from an e-mail,

um, right here at this terminal.

We didn't know anything had happened until, again,

the system started to slow down.

Files weren't accessible, we started getting error messages.

This is a copy

of the ransom information.

Now, right on the top here it has "Cryptowall 3.0."

It was a readme-type file.

Um... don't ask me to explain that.

Um, "What does this mean?

This means that the structure and data within your files

have been irrevocably changed,

um, and you won't be able to work with them,

read them, or see them."

What did you end up doing after you read this?

We ended up clicking on the...

the IT folks went to the, um...

the http address,

and were able to locate

the request for ransom

that they were asking for in bitcoin.

I'd never heard of a bitcoin...

... at that point, myself. You know what I mean?

You know, we're a law enforcement agency, right?

And my first reaction was,

"I'll be damned if I pay ransom."

It's the cardinal rule, right? Never negotiate.

We're the police, you can't ransom us.

Which, uh, obviously I had a rude awakening there,

and actually, I was really surprised

when our IT folks recommended that...

that we pay the ransom.

We've made several changes since then,

and we were not successful.

Another e-mail came through, and low and behold,

we started to experience the problem again.

You guys paid twice.

What makes you think these hackers won't come back again?

We've been fortunate not to have encountered the virus again,

but I'm not kidding myself.

I don't believe we're a hundred percent immune.

A cyber-attack has spread to every corner of the world.

Lincoln County, Maine, is not alone.

Across the country, thousands of police stations,

hospitals, and businesses,

have been hit by ransomware attacks.

In 2016 alone,

Americans paid close to a billion dollars

in digital ransom.

This massive uptick in attacks

has the Department of Homeland Security on high alert.

We went to their National Cybersecurity

& Communications Integration Center

to see just how dire the situation is.

Thank you.

So, in order to get into this control room here,

yeah, we've got to leave our phones behind.

Ultra secure in here.

Wow.

So, this is our main watch-floor

for the National Cybersecurity

& Communications Integration Center.

And this is where we have our 24/7 watch operations

looking for threats and incidents

across the federal government

and in our critical infrastructures domestically.

- We're hearing a lot about ransomware. - Mm-hmm.

- Are you concerned about that? - Yes.

Ransomware has expanded significantly.

Existing organizations are now taking advantage of the Internet.

What is the nature of the type of hacking

that we see in the US

that originates in Russian-speaking countries?

Everything from cyber-criminals,

um, to more organized capabilities,

and the Russian influence in our election process.

We put out, um,

what we call a joint-analysis report back in December.

This report was the first time government officials

published evidence of the 2016 Russian election hack,

which showed Russia's ability to penetrate

major American networks.

To understand why Russia has become such a hub for hacking,

we traveled to Moscow.

Andrei Soldatov is an investigative journalist

who recently wrote a definitive account

of Russia's cyber-espionage.

Of course, it was huge news in the US

when the DNC and Clinton campaign e-mails were hacked,

but is there really any evidence to show that direct link?

And how do we know that?

So you can say with certainty that those hackers

were working with the Russian government?

To actually see Russian hacking at work,

we went to one of the country's

biggest gatherings of hackers.

Welcome to Russia's biggest cyber-security conference.

You have guys who are hacking into ATM machines right here,

into BMWs, Teslas.

The average age here is probably 25, 26.

You have teenagers. Everyone seems to be under 30.

Cyber-security expert and even organizer,

Andrew Bershadsky, showed us around.

All right, so what are you excited about here?

Can you show me some things?

So, what's their angle? If they attack this,

what do they want to happen?

We wanted to see hacking in real-time,

so we asked former NSA hacker, Patrick Wardle,

and his associate, Mikhail Sosonkin,

to put my personal cyber-security to the test.

Well, you know, this was your first hacker conference,

and we really wanted to make the experience very authentic,

so we decided to just

hack you in as many ways as possible.

While I thought our crew was filming background footage,

they were in fact capturing me getting hacked.

Generally, there's two main ways to hack people:

Remotely and with physical access.

Um, so we designed some attacks to do both of these.

Basically, we set up wireless access points

and we made it look like it was a hotel Wi-Fi.

But it was, like, a little thing that suggested

the correct one... it says "guest."

So you probably thought that that's the one

- you should be connecting to. - Oh, wow.

So, when you connected to it,

everything you entered in there,

like your last name, your room number,

we basically collected that.

Hotel room numbers... it's kind of what hotels use

- as an authentication key. - Oh, my God.

And with that, then we were able

to pull off a social engineering attack,

which gave us a copy of your room key.

Good afternoon.

Could you print another key for my room, please?

We needed someone to impersonate you, essentially,

and we had my lovely wife, Diana,

call up the reception and say,

"Hey, can you please give my colleague another key?"

My co-worker, Gianna, she's in room 2086.

No other questions asked,

they gave me a key to your room.

Then with that, we were able to gain access to your room,

where we installed some hidden cameras

so we could see, when you access the safe,

- what the keypad was. - Wow.

So, even if you had put your laptop

or your phone in there, it wouldn't have mattered,

- we could have gotten in. - You could have gotten in.

So, at this point, we kind of had complete access to your laptop...

- There's the binary. - Nice.

What we basically did was we installed

something called a backdoor on your system,

that would then connect out to a computer we controlled,

allowing us to execute commands on your computer.

So, at that point, we could share your screen,

see exactly what you were looking at at all times.

Uh, we could record off the webcam

to watch you as you walked around the room,

hijack your Skype sessions.

So, how did you get my credit card information?

Every time you press a button,

there is an event that happens in the machine,

and we can capture that. You can see here,

we have your credit card information

from when you were booking your trip to Cuba.

Is there any personal information of mine

that you couldn't have gotten access to?

I don't think so.

So, you could have hijacked my whole identity?

Yeah, and you know, the attacks we pulled off here

really weren't hyper sophisticated,

so I always like to say, if someone wants to hack you,

- they're gonna be able to. - Yeah.

We bought you some souvenirs.

This is, obviously, the flag of Russia.

- Thank you very much. - Actually, you know, we used your credit card, so.

Right.

Cyber-attacks originating in Russia

have become increasingly brazen,

including a data breach of more than 500 million Yahoo Mail accounts

and a scheme that stole 160 million credit cards

from American corporations.

Russian cyber-security firm, Group IB, hunts hackers.

They showed us online hacker forums

filled with troves of stolen data.

We're looking at websites that are D.C.,

US government websites,

and when we click on them,

you can see the username and the login.

Uh, it's all the information to access these accounts.

So, these people may not know

that her e-mail has been hacked?

Wow.

So, my name could be in there. I wouldn't even know.

These cyber crimes

are committed by blackhat hackers

who can steal critical data and damage networks.

They exist anonymously on the web,

but we found one who agreed to talk to us.

Hi, there.

Gianna. Nice to meet you.

- Gianna. Nice to meet you. - Hi.

Though he first hesitated, Kostya eventually agreed

to show us some of his hacks.

And, so, what are you doing with all this personal information?

And then what will they use that information for?

What's the most amount of money

you've made off of a hack like this one?

Spurred by the trillions of dollars online

and a generation raised on the Web,

hacking from Russia and around the world,

is flourishing.

And increasingly, hackers are targeting

the world's most lucrative market,

the US.

But at DHS,

the first line of defense are hackers themselves.

I hack into agencies, and then,

after the hacking is done,

I go in, and I teach them how we did it,

so then, they can actually go through and fix those vulnerabilities

so the actual bad guys can't get in.

That's a map of 82,000

critical infrastructures sites in the United States

that are basically exposed directly to the Internet.

- Wow. - We're talking about water systems,

manufacturing plants, building automation.

When you start to aggregate it at a scale of 82,000, right,

now, intruding upon a lot of those systems all at once

could cause, you know, a significant issue.

How do you see cyber-attacks, uh, advancing,

in the next 10, 20, 30 years?

At a technical level, we're gonna be constantly evolving.

As adversaries create new capabilities,

we'll create new countermeasures.

As we advance past their capabilities with countermeasures,

they'll create new capabilities.

It's always gonna be that kind of arms race type of activity.

I think this problem is one that...

it's certainly one that we can work on,

but I don't think it's ever gonna completely go away.

This is gonna be with us for a long time, I think.

Since 1980, outbreaks of infectious diseases

have more than tripled worldwide.

Nearly every year, somewhere around the globe,

a different disease has emerged,

leading to varying degrees of infection and widespread panic.

Fear of Ebola in infected countries and beyond, is palpable.

Bird Flu has hit North America.

As our world continues to become more interconnected,

the threat of one of these outbreaks

growing into a global pandemic

is becoming increasingly real.

To see if and how we can actually prevent

this next pandemic from happening,

we sent Suroosh Alvi to the Zika Forest in Uganda.

So, we are walking into the Zika Forest right now.

We're with our pals

from the Uganda Virus Research Institute.

We are gonna set up some insect traps,

and discover new viruses.

So, this is the very tower that was used

to discover the original Zika virus?

It was right here?

Long before the Zika outbreak in Brazil caused global panic,

it was first discovered here in Uganda in 1947.

Pathogens are constantly mutating

and acquiring new traits,

so researchers monitor the mosquitoes

to track the emerging infections

that could ignite the next pandemic.

Okay.

There are mosquitoes flying all around me right now.

Doesn't fill me with warm and fuzzies.

Tropical forests like this

are breeding grounds for new viruses.

Once untouched, human populations

now destroy around seven million hectares of forest each year,

allowing diseases to have an easier time

getting into human populations.

There are houses right there.

There's been encroachment upon the forest,

and the airport is just past the houses.

What are the implications

of people living so close to this forest?

Each year,

a million people are killed

by diseases transmitted from mosquitoes.

And with increasing temperatures and population growth,

that death toll is expected to climb in the coming years.

The Zika vaccine trials are progressing right now,

and even though it's daunting to vaccinate the entire world,

scientists have proven they can eliminate threats.

In 1967,

the World Health Organization launched a campaign

to eliminate one of the biggest killers in human history.

Dr. Larry Brilliant was part of the team

that eradicated smallpox

using a very simple concept.

Instead of gong all through India or Bangladesh

and trying to vaccinate everybody,

we got the idea

that if we gave the vaccine

only to those

who were closest to an infected person,

and you put a ring around every infected person,

with your scarce vaccine,

you would abort the epidemic,

and that's what worked.

We have a lot of vaccines,

but the vaccines we have are for known viruses.

When the next unknown virus

jumps from an animal to a human,

we're not gonna have a vaccine on day one.

These live bird markets are prevalent

throughout the developing world,

and the tight quarters that these animals are in

make it very easy

for pathogens and infectious disease

to spread from animals to humans.

Almost 70% of human infections

actually come from animals.

Dr. Denis Byarugaba

investigates the threat of avian influenza

in live bird markets.

- Standing there... - Yeah?

... you could smell some little bit of stuff...

- Yeah. - ... from the cages.

Now, these are aerosols that are coming from the cages.

And should there be an infection in those cages,

you are automatically inhaling them.

So, that smell that I was smelling over there...

what you are referring to as an aerosol,

is potentially really bad for us?

If there was any potential pathogen

that was within those poultry,

the likelihood that you would pick it up from those aerosols,

as the birds fluff their feathers, is very high.

There is a high concentration of poultry

from different regions,

where they are exposed and come in with different infections.

There is slaughtering of these birds

within the markets,

in very unhygienic conditions.

And if these are zoonotic,

then you expose and get this infection

into the human population.

Could you define or explain what zoonosis is?

Zoonosis is a disease that is transmitted

from animals to humans.

The typical example is, for example, influenza.

And they are quite many.

With the population increases in these countries,

should the world be afraid of a crazy bird flu pandemic

at a level that we've never seen before?

For now, the major threat, actually,

is those diseases that we are unable

to find treatment for or contain.

Each zoonotic disease poses a unique threat.

Transmitted from bodily fluids,

the deadly Ebola epidemic

was exacerbated by the poorly-developed health systems

and living conditions in West Africa.

The SARS outbreak was less lethal

but struck wealthy countries as it went airborne

and spread between people in cities and hospitals.

We are truly in the middle

of the evolution of an epidemic.

Global health systems were unprepared

as these diseases devastated people around the globe.

But if a disease as deadly as Ebola

can transmit through the air like SARS,

the consequences would be dire.

In the Netherlands,

a scientist proved just how easily

this mutation could occur.

Dr. Ron Fouchier demonstrated

how he genetically modified the H5N1 bird flu virus

to transmit through the air.

A deadly airborne virus is potentially a nightmare scenario,

so why create it?

To prove that the H5N1 bird flu virus

could acquire the traits of becoming airborne transmissible.

So now we can find out exactly what it takes

for an animal virus to become airborne.

Despite the breakthrough of his findings,

Dr. Fouchier's work sent shock waves

through the international community.

There were a lot of concerns about

your findings being out in the public.

Yes. So, when we submitted our manuscript for publication,

the US government judged that our manuscript

could be used by people to construct

biological weapons of terror.

We argued that the information that we collected

had to be sent back

to the countries where outbreaks are occurring

to inform the people about what to be on the lookout for.

You eventually did publish your findings,

- is that correct? - That's correct.

We convinced the World Health Organization

to have a meeting with the countries

that were facing outbreaks,

to explain why they would need the information.

And so the people in Uganda

or in Indonesia or China who do surveillance

can be on the lookout for the mutations

and the biological traits

associated with increased risk.

What you're doing in the lab

is happening in nature all the time.

Absolutely. Flu pandemics happen every 20, 30 years

without any involvement of scientists...

mad scientists or good scientists.

What we did in the lab was nothing different

from what is happening

in animals around the globe every day.

When an animal virus mutates

and spreads into the human population,

it inevitably causes chaos and panic.

As the Ebola crisis spiraled out of control in 2014,

the US government spent $2.4 billion in response,

more than a quarter of the US's entire annual global health budget,

pushing scientists like Dr. Brilliant

to find more preemptive solutions for future outbreaks.

We have to strengthen public health

in the poorest countries to make ourselves safe.

Human beings are only as strong

as our weakest surveillance system.

This is one instance where "America first"

means working with the poorest countries of the world

to protect them out of selfishness,

our own enlightened self-interest.

Uganda is now at the forefront of deadly disease monitoring,

with a remarkably effective bio-surveillance system

that was implemented with the help of American health agencies

and the US Army.

These motorcycle guys, there's a whole network of them.

They ride around, they pick up blood samples,

and they take it from the local clinics to the bigger hospitals.

It was originally set up to deal with

the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

And then they had the very smart idea

to piggyback the examination

of the blood samples for other infections

like Ebola, SARS, yellow fever.

It's very lo-fi and rudimentary and cheap,

but it's working.

In 2007,

146 people were infected by a small Ebola outbreak in Uganda.

Since then, three outbreaks have emerged here,

but this bio-surveillance system helped prevent each one

from spreading beyond 25 infections.

It's not just surveillance of humans,

it's surveillance of animals

who could carry a virus that we don't know about

but has potential for human disease.

We sample from poultry and swine,

for rapid virus detection,

so that immediately, we are able to detect it,

before it spreads out massively to other areas.

If we have good pandemic preparation,

if we find outbreaks quickly,

we won't have that pandemic. It's our option.

Outbreaks are inevitable,

pandemics are optional.