The Com
29
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7
EPISODES
7
PODCASTS
Search complete. 29 mentions across 7 episodes found for "The Com".
Oct 1, 2026
Sam CoatesHOST
Um, uh, just 'cause we're in the indep-- We're in the in-between bit of the conference season, so we are slightly, uh, jumping around.
Sam CoatesHOST
But there was one more bit of kind of leftover from Labour conference that I wanted to mark.
Sam CoatesHOST
This is really interesting, and I can see this roaring up and, and coming back to hurt, right? Um, or certainly rankle in the coming weeks.
Sam CoatesHOST
And it's a great story from my colleague, Lucy McDaid.
Sam CoatesHOST
Um, so much of what Andy Burnham talks about is devolution, and certainly the plans that exist for this new government are about the additional powers to give metro mayors like Andy was until a few weeks ago.
Sam CoatesHOST
I know that they're very alive to this in the Cabinet Office about how to solve this problem, but the truth is that there's no quick fix.
Sam CoatesHOST
Nothing can happen probably for about a year and a half to create new structures, and in the meantime, all these announcements, including one by John Healey this week, are being, uh, rolled out.
Sam CoatesHOST
Um, and it does seem to be a gap in the communication that throws some areas, some in the south in particular, a little bit under, under the bus.
Joseph CoxGUEST
Yeah.
Joseph CoxGUEST
So ShinyHunters would probably disagree with what I'm about to say, but I would say they do come from or are associated with something called The Com, which is short for community.
Joseph CoxGUEST
This is a very large group, community, or sort of overarching collective of hackers and fraudsters who mostly operate in North America, England, and increasingly Europe and sometimes the Middle East as well.
Joseph CoxGUEST
These groups often use violence, brickings, shootings, potentially murders as well, to gain access to sensitive companies and systems and all of that.
Carolyn BeelerHOST
Can you, uh, tell me some of ShinyHunter's greatest hits, let's say, like the biggest, uh, extortion jobs that they have pulled off for companies?
Joseph CoxGUEST
Yeah.
Joseph CoxGUEST
I would sort of broaden it out more to the wider Com ecosystem, where there's a lot of video game companies, for example, where people are leaking, you know, unreleased footage of Grand Theft Auto VI and that sort of thing.
Joseph CoxGUEST
I reported several years ago that one of these groups targeted Electronic Arts, the video game giant.
Wilfred FrostHOST
Short term and don't, don't be honest about the problems as if the voter doesn't realize that they're there.
Anna JonesHOST
Now, the number of antisemitic incidents at British universities is significantly higher than before the seventh of October attacks nearly three years ago.
Anna JonesHOST
Uh, this is research from the Community Security Trust, which monitors antisemitism in Britain, and it's recorded ninety-five reports of antisemitic incidents affecting Jewish students, academics, university staff or campus organizations during the twenty twenty-five to twenty twenty-six academic year.
Anna JonesHOST
That's up from eighty-three over the previous twelve months, so a fourteen percent increase.
Anna JonesHOST
And of course, the new academic year is getting underway now, uh, so the charity is urging institutions, uh, to make a clear distinction between anti-Israel speech or activity and antisemitism and enforce this difference through disciplinary action when necessary.
Taha SiddiquiGUEST
And then in 2017, before this attack, six months before the attack, I was also charged under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act for cybercrime and counterterrorism, where the Federal Investigation Agency sent me a letter at my home for an investigation into my social media activity, saying that it is an investigation I should be well aware of without mentioning what it was about.
Taha SiddiquiGUEST
It wasn't a particular one story or two stories.
Taha SiddiquiGUEST
I mean, I did several stories, but the common thing between all my stories was that I was exposing the abuse of the Pakistani military.
Taha SiddiquiGUEST
I was talking about enforced disappearances that the Pakistan military was involved in.
Taha SiddiquiGUEST
I was talking about how They were running death squads in Balochistan.
Mariana van ZellerHOST
Right.
James McGibneyGUEST
Like, even on the Com guys, putting these people on blast is leading me to other people.
Mariana van ZellerHOST
Mm-hmm.
James McGibneyGUEST
Because other perps that were working with these guys are freaking out now-
Mariana van ZellerHOST
Like-
James McGibneyGUEST
Yeah
Mariana van ZellerHOST
... at least, you know, this, the crypto scammers, the Com, they're making millions of dollars out of it.
James McGibneyGUEST
There's a reason for that.
Jeff LunglhoferGUEST
Sorry that we have to use acronyms.
Jeff LunglhoferGUEST
But North Korean actors trying to get hired into these key protocols and stealing billions of dollars, right? Um, we aren't talking about, uh, social engineering and criminal actor groups like The Com going after our, our, uh, our customers.
Jeff LunglhoferGUEST
Not just, not just Coinbase customers, self-custody, folks that are self-custoding their crypto, customers at other exchanges.
Jeff LunglhoferGUEST
You know, those are very real threats that are, that are manifesting like today.
Jeremy KirkHOST
And so, you know, today, like the online threns- threat landscape for companies is fairly treacherous.
Jeremy KirkHOST
Um, and like I said in the intro, we're gonna talk a little bit about, uh, what's kinda known broadly as the COM.
Jeremy KirkHOST
Um, what online communities gave rise to these, these groups of, of threat actors?
Michael FletcherGUEST
Yeah.
Michael FletcherGUEST
So the COM, and for, for any researchers or anyone actually in the field, pretty much everyone knows the COM links back to the original group, which was The Scene.
Michael FletcherGUEST
Uh, The Scene is a, a throwback way before we had Discord and Telegram, right? Scene is the original guys, uh, back on IRC chat.
Michael FletcherGUEST
Uh, 2010, pre-2010, you know, young kids, some older guys that, uh, probably acted as mentors back then, but you're talking just text chat essentially, and, uh, a g- a group of guys that found each other in different ways.
15 MINS LATER
Michael FletcherGUEST
It's kind of like, okay, so that was a cool run.