Leo Laporte is an Elite Hacker

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Leo Laporte — radio DJ who discovered he could fool people into thinking he was a geek — gave out his wiki’s address, running on his Mac Pro at his home, live on This Week in Google.

What followed was a series of rapid edits, much to everyone’s amusement. The wiki was unauthenticated, and collaborative editing is the purpose of a wiki.

Even though nobody who edited his wiki did anything wrong, he decided to threaten those who visited his public wiki, which you can see in the video above.

During the This Week in Tech pre-show, he claimed his wiki and Minecraft server functioned as a honeypot, while Jason C. Cleanthes (EffenDumb) did his dumb fake laugh and talked over Leo Laporte constantly.

Here’s the best part: Leo’s lie about getting people’s IPs is as transparent as Father Robert Ballecer’s lies, because the wiki he was running is open source. There is no logging of IP addresses.

The request logging uses this format:

:method :url :status :res[content-length] - :response-time ms

Examples:

GET /welcome-visitors.html 200 3103 - 59.461 ms
GET /style.css 200 7501 - 17.738 ms
GET /theme/style.css 200 0 - 25.627 ms

“So… nice job.”
— Leo Laporte

Furthermore, did a law enforcement entity give Leo Laporte subpoena powers? Can he now connect IPs to people? If so, what unlawful activity is Officer Laporte investigating? Editing a public, unauthenticated wiki to include content he would rather not be there?

33 thoughts on “Leo Laporte is an Elite Hacker”

  1. Another amazing dance number from Leo. He can’t even say “I screwed up and my wiki was destroyed, My bad”

    Instead its a “I have all these IPs” Horrors.

    I believe during the same wonderful show (or TNSS pre-show) EffenDumb (please note I usually don’t call people names, but here I’m forced to), said he was ‘shystered’ (Google the derivation). I believe that term has been relegated to the category of verbs not used. Like ‘niggardly’

    Leo then went off on a merry hunt for domain names. He seems to have a bee up his (shrinking) ass about urls. He then shorted over the one he bought. “Reo.Report”. I’m not going to look for the exact phrase he used but it was something like “When you say it this way it’s funny” Employees erupted in hysterical laughter. I assume any Asians present wondered.

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    1. Oops, shorted -> chortled. Fuck me. No No FUCK YOU

      Ha Ha ha said:

      Leo then went off on a merry hunt for domain names. He seems to have a bee up his (shrinking) ass about urls.He then chortled over the one he bought.“Reo.Report”.I’m not going to look for the exact phrase he used but it was something like “When you say it this way it’s funny” Employees erupted in hysterical laughter.I assume any Asians present wondered.

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    2. If you use this site’s DVR, you can see that this happened on:

      ——————
      14:20 Sunday Mar 6, 2016
      ——————

      2:20 – Leo buys domain name and then admits it is a “racist” domain name (reo.report) because he can’t do anything with but still bought it because it was cheap ($18). Leo then lists a bunch of domains he owns but most of them he doesn’t do anything with. And then ponders what domains go well with Leo dot ____.

      For laughs and because it is probably contains better content than actual TWiT shows, I have been using the DVR during the past few days to watch the pre- and post-show banter.. the following are the highlights..

      —————-
      10:58 Saturday Mar 5, 2016
      —————-

      5:15 – Leo: “Get that shot of my salad.. this is kind of wilted”

      6:18 – Leo: “This is the prettiest phone EVA.. EVA.. EVA”

      32:25 – Leo: “We have the lease in our hands, we just have to sign it. It is closer to our house which is nice. More than a third of it (the current studio) is un-useable.”

      34:00 – Scott Wilkenson laughs (clue Scott’s standard loud HAAAAAAAAAA!!!) when Leo says a picture of the “bricks” will be made and vinyl wallpaper of the bricks available.

      —————
      11:58 Saturday Mar 5, 2016
      —————

      46:58 – Leo: “I have enemies.. I don’t want to take responsibility but I do have enemies. I don’t think they’re that smart. The website was DDOSed very briefly a few days ago.. Can I mention this? This is not on the radio, just on my podcast.”

      ——————-
      12:58 Saturday Mar 5, 2016
      ——————-

      1:40 – Leo: “Hey Amazon (his Amazon Echo), ask for a fart.”

      2:30 – Leo: “As the shows as gotten more successful and reached a broader audience, I get more dumb people.. I am getting more of the general public so that’s kind of reduced the general toner, the quality of my interactions.”

      8:10 – Leo: “Lisa says why don’t we do an Echo show?”

      38:40 Leo: “So there is a guy named Carl Malamud who is a GREAT friend and hero of mine..”

      48:50 – Someone needs to make a GIF of Leo bouncing really high on his ball!!

      ———————–
      13:58 Saturday Mar 5, 2016
      ———————–

      42:45 – Padre: “I went to Burning Man once.. ALL I REMEMBER was that there was alkaline dust everywhere.. it was a weird time”

      43:50 – Leo: “I am back to manly man purse. I tired of the feminine man purse.”

      48:30 – Leo: “Your Latin sounds very Spanish” Padre: “My Latin is horrible. I only know litergical Latin. I can do the service in Latin.”

      49:50 – Leo to Padre: “Priest reusable grocery bags. You need a few of these.”

      ————–
      15:58 Saturday Mar 5, 2016
      ————–

      22:22 – Leo talking about his large home energy bill: “A few hundred dollars a month is the swamp cooler in the wine cellar.”

      26:45 to 32:27 – Leo basically drones on about his Telsa

      ———————
      10:24 Sunday Mar 6, 2016
      ———————

      51:55 – “The (Leica) Q showed up.. Man I love that camera.. I am not going to talk about that camera, it’s too expensive.” (over $4000)

      52:35 – Leo starts to caress his camera.

      57:15 – Leo: “Cameras I’m good at spending money on. I’m way too good at that.”

      —————
      14:20 Sunday Mar 6, 2016
      —————

      20:00 – Leo buys a HTC Vive (surprise)

      —————–
      13:00 Monday Mar 7, 2016
      —————–

      2:25 – Leo: “Hosts don’t do anything.”

      6:35 – Leo: “I’m gonna be sad when I have to return my Audi.”

      22:45 – Leo talks about going to New York to see a Broadway show.

      —————-
      10:30 Tuesday Mar 8, 2016

      42:50 – Leo: (speaking about going to see the musical “Hamilton” in New York) “I’m excited. I’m so excited.. I spent a ridiculous amount of money to get the tickets. I bought them on Stubhub. I feel bad about that. I want to see it with the orginal cast. Then I’m going to listen to the soundtrack obsessibly of course.”

      ————–
      12:30 Tuesday Mar 8, 2016
      ————–

      50:35 – Leo: “I’m sure you guys don’t want me to spend $30,000 of YOUR money.. (he quickly then says) of brick money to save the bricks.”

      51:55 – Leo: “We can do a new fundraiser. It’s gonna cost us half a million dollars to do the move. We raised, I think, $250,000 with the first fundraiser. It’s a half a million out of my pocket.. I have to write a check. More bricks to save the bricks!”

      ————
      13:30 Tuesday Mar 8, 2016
      ————

      7:50 – Leo talking to Steve Gibson about the sleeping meds Steve sent him. Leo states he didn’t sleep well on Monday night

      13:51 – Leo: “This is the last studio.. a ten year lease with a five year option. I will be 74, 75 probably when the last of the lease runs out. I doubt I will be moving into a new studio at age 75. If I do, it will be to my house. I don’t anticipate retiring but I might slow down a little bit. But right now I would do it forever. Nobody gonna want to hear from an old man about technology.

      17:59 – Leo says his son wants “to do this” (work at/run TWiT).. “I’m not saying TWiT will go away necessarily, just me. And I don’t want to go away but I might not have a choice.”

      ———–
      15:30 Tuesday Mar 8, 2016
      ———–

      29:35 – Steve: “Someone said, “Steve, I heard you and Leo talking about your sleep formula. I desperately want SQRL. I desperately need SpinRite 6.1” Editorial comment —> Are either of these EVER going to get completed? SQRL has been in development on since October, 2013, and Steve just said he is back to that full time. WHEN was Steve ever not fulltime with SQRL?? And SpinRite 6.0 is from 2004. Also, in the past, Steve has talked about SpinRite 7.0 (Security Now #463 – July 8, 2014) but at Steve’s snail’s work pace, exactly which decade will either product actually see the light of day?

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      1. This is incredible, he makes over $7 million a year, squanders the money on Hamilton tickets and cameras he does not need, Tesla’s and Audi A8s. And HE IS GOING TO ASK FOR FREE MONEY FROM HIS AUDIENCE FOR more BRICKS???

        The gall of this a-hole.

        And how dumb is the audience??

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      2. ———–
        15:30 Tuesday Mar 8, 2016
        ———–

        29:35 – Steve: “Someone said, “Steve, I heard you and Leo talking about your sleep formula.I desperately want SQRL.I desperately need SpinRite 6.1”Editorial comment —> Are either of these EVER going to get completed?SQRL has been in development on since October, 2013, and Steve just said he is back to that full time.WHEN was Steve ever not fulltime with SQRL?? And SpinRite 6.0 is from 2004.Also, in the past, Steve has talked about SpinRite 7.0 (Security Now #463 – July 8, 2014) but at Steve’s snail’s work pace, exactly which decade will either product actually see the light of day?

        That charlatan SG will NEVER complete SQRL . Even Soup thinks it is a ridiculous standard that has no hope of adoption. And once people start really looking at it, there will be holes found in the security.

        Steve is riding on his own coattails, which are attached to a snake oil product. The sun is setting on the near-autistic Steve Gibson.

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        1. Please for the love of God. Just take the guy out with a ‘shot to the head’ then we won’t get any more of your near autistic comments about Steve Gibson.
          You have a serious obsession…

          Get help!

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      3. Benny Hill said:
        2:30 – Leo:“As the shows [have] gotten more successful and reached a broader audience, I get more dumb people.. I am getting more of the general public so that’s kind of reduced the general toner, the quality of my interactions.”

        Leo piqued in popularity in the early 2000’s and he never had a troll problem. He was always cheating on his wife, lying, fake personality and everything else but the content was good.

        He got the troll problem because the asshole built something great and then started feeding his audience shit and calling it pie.

        Also, some of the people on this site did some brilliant work and that’s the reason the trolls took off in popularity.The marketing of TD from the beginning with the YouTube, Twitter and disruptions in IRC were effective. The nicknames were great, none better than #soupguzzler. The tech knowledge is (unusually) high on this site although, with respect to this article,Leo may have gotten IPs if I am understanding what he did.

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          1. He could even have my name, home address, phone #, SSN, etc but couldn’t do jack with it and even if he did use that information to personally contact me or have others to do so, I could file for a restraining order and even sue him (depending on the circumstances).

            OTOH if you’re a #shutin, you probably think your IP address is worth more than life itself and the idea of others seeing or having it probably scares the crap out of you.

            Now let’s look at the circumstances here, first he tells the audience to log into his personal home server then a few days later says “AH HA I have your IP addresses!” …okay great, now what?

            He can’t go to law enforcement and claim he was hacked because he invited people and no crime was committed and he can’t use that information to subpoena records from ISPs because again, he invited people to his personal server and no crime was committed.

            The End.

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        1. Old twit watcher said: Leo piqued in popularity in the early 2000’s and he never had a troll problem.

          His popularity is waning fast, makes me sad. He has a pinned tweet for few weeks now and he gets like 30 likes. My niece gets more likes from the girls in her class. He is finished. You guys killed his popularity, your proud of that?

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      4. 46:58 – Leo: “I have enemies.. I don’t want to take responsibility but I do have enemies. I don’t think they’re that smart. The website was DDOSed very briefly a few days ago.. Can I mention this? This is not on the radio, just on my podcast.”

        Think at this point he was talking about the radio stations being off the air. He was making out that his enemies had taken down the iheart network.

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      5. Fuck me! Does every time his stepson or himself screw up that server or his shitty website he uses the DDoS blame game. Maybe if he didn’t give out the web address to his server to his sycophantic fuckwit viewers or have a shitty cumbersome and confusing website he might not have websites go down or get overloaded but fucking blaming it on “enemies” the same enemies that he imagines when he gets stopped for speeding or enemies that purchase the property he operates his brick shit house from and then tell him to look for another place where his gold digging wife can operate her brothel from.

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      6. Benny Hill said: —> Are either of these EVER going to get completed?

        He is the only developer working on this stuff. It is also a lot of assembly when it comes to Spinrite, which still takes a lot of extra time and concentration. He also has a inside beta track on all of this stuff that gets released/tested with his “GRC newsgroup”

        Imagine if you had to test software in beta with the Totaldrama audience? How far do you think you would get in that amount of time?

        I would say to buy Spinrite, but version 7 isn’t out yet and may never be out at this rate. (spinrite is a good tool, but there are others that have the same level of functionality)

        2016 will probably be the year of the SQRL, and 2017 will be the year of SpinRite 7.

        -TYFYC

        Also I think Leo should hand over Twit to Jerry Pournelle so we can get to the end of Twit and it would be at least interesting to watch again.

          » Quote comment

        1. Not trying to diss Steve’s work methods or his results as he obviously can test and produce a working product that pretty much does what it is suppose to do. What I was commenting on is just that The MAN IS SLOWWWWW!! Quote from Security Now 410 from June 26, 2013 (almost three years ago) ( https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-410.txt)..

          “This was driven by my current R&D effort, essentially, for the next release of SpinRite, which I’m calling 6.1. My intent is not to rewrite SpinRite. That would take a long time… So I’m fully looking at a v7 which will actually be a restart because I want to add features.. So I’m very methodical in the way I approach things.,, But it’s been on my radar for a while.”

          So almost three years ago and four months before SQRL, Steve was talking openly about 6.1 and 7.0 but, today, neither seem to be any closer to being finished than when Steve mentioned them back in 2013. Yes, Steve pretty much works as a one man operation. That is his choice and apparently it is one he is comfortable with. Just means he works at a glacial pace. That is all I was pointing out. Just for the record, Steve first mentioned 6.1 during SN episode 336, recorded January 18th, 2012 (over four years ago).. “..there will be a SpinRite 6.1 SOON to deal with the evolution which has occurred since I finished SpinRite 6.0. And that’ll be free for everyone to update.” Steve’s definition of SOON must be different than the dictionary’s!

          As for Jerry Pournelle, not sure what point you are making since JP hasn’t been on “This Week in Tech” since ep. 499 (over a year ago) , is 82 and in terrible health (stroke in Dec, 2014). I am sorry but today’s Jerry Pournelle isn’t your father’s Jerry Pournelle.. no it wouldn’t be interesting to watch again.

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  2. How can someone who’s spent hundreds of hours talking with Steve “Gem of TWiT” Gibson conclude that some throwaway demo is worth inviting the Internet into their living room?

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  3. Leo at the end says “I have several people’s home IP addresses.” But I thought it has already been established that an IP address does not point to a specific person, that mapping a single IP to a person is unreliable as there is a drift rate for IP addresses. I thought an IP address only provides a rough geographical location, not a specific street address. Am I wrong or does Leo know something different? Just in case Leo did get IP addresses, what would he do with them? DDOS those addresses?? Stalk those who he thinks went to a IP address that he himself freely gave out knowing more than a few persons would hear and remember that address? I doubt law enforcement would do anything as it seems he was giving some kind of implied permission for people to join his Minecraft server by giving out that server’s address so specifically ( nitrominecraft.com:3000).. “Why not and what the hell” is what Leo said!

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    1. The only thing he can do is determine what ISP the IPs belong to – and then convince a judge to send a subpoena to the ISP to release the information of the customer who was using that IP during that time period – exactly like how the MPAA and RIAA were going after downloaders.

      It’s not technically impossible to go after someone for DDOSing his minecraft server (if that’s what actually happened), but I’m sure it’s far more work and money that he’s willing to spend – he won’t be able to buy a new camera right away if he tries to get those IPs prosecuted. (And, if you were dumb enough to DDOS from a US based IP pool, you deserve to be caught.)

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      1. WhatTheActualFuck said: content than actual TWiT shows, I have been using the

        WhatTheActualFuck said:
        —>
        It’s not technically impossible to go after someone for DDOSing his minecraft server (if that’s what actually happened), but I’m sure it’s far more work and money that he’s willing to spend – he won’t be able to buy a new camera right away if he tries to get those IPs prosecuted.(And, if you were dumb enough to DDOS from a US based IP pool, you deserve to be caught.)
        <——

        I believe it was only some people doing what a wiki does. Editing it.

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  4. Yup fatfuck Leo I’m pretty sure is getting all his computers and devices scanned port by port by half of the Chinese/Easter block script kiddies
    What a clown
    he’s proud he can see a few ip’s yet fails to secure himself
    Won’t be long he’ll start complaining something weird is going on with his home devices and pc’s

    Hope u got your “life lock”premium paid up fatfuck, your going to need it

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    1. I have always assumed that is a ‘tell’ letting us know that he is lying to the audience. But I have been a client of Curry-Dvorak Consulting for so long that I assume all fake laughs mean that a lie was just told or is about to be told. The technique works great when I talk to my peers and bosses on a conference call.

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  5. So what exactly what posted on his wiki?

    Were they innocuous edits or was it meanie jilted lover stuff like “jingle bells, Lisa smells, Leo gains some weight”?

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