# Government Hacking Tools Are Now in Criminals' Hands (with Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai)

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-404-media-podcast-6582713/government-hacking-tools-are-now-in-criminals-hands-with-lorenzo-franceschi-bicchierai
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-404-media-podcast-6582713/government-hacking-tools-are-now-in-criminals-hands-with-lorenzo-franceschi-bicchierai.md
Podcast: [The 404 Media Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-404-media-podcast-6582713)
Published: 2026-04-27T10:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://pdst.fm/e/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/arttrk.com/p/2D5E6/mgln.ai/e/1246/tracking.swap.fm/track/AoSMVIl7piQbthzJoBqJ/traffic.megaphone.fm/TBIEA5127349318.mp3?updated=1776999824
Audio file: https://pdst.fm/e/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/arttrk.com/p/2D5E6/mgln.ai/e/1246/tracking.swap.fm/track/AoSMVIl7piQbthzJoBqJ/traffic.megaphone.fm/TBIEA5127349318.mp3?updated=1776999824
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-404-media-podcast-6582713/episodes/government-hacking-tools-are-now-in-criminals-hands-with-lorenzo-franceschi-bicchierai
Duration seconds: 3063

## Resource

This 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 Youtube Version: https://youtu.be/MWxLqopMo5o Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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## Transcript

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