Shadowing Practice: The worst week in cybersecurity history... so far - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Last week, while you were busy researching how to buy emergency rice and beans in bulk,
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a group of guys who technically aren't supposed to have internet access pulled off the largest theft in human history.
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A code editor owned by a rocket company spent 11 hours letting anyone SSH into your laptop,
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a prediction market got robbed in the middle of investigating its own customers for treason, and Anthropic showed that an unreleased
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Cloud model could get root on any unpatched
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Linux server just by sending it TCP packets.
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In today's video, we'll break down just another Thursday in this godforsaken hellhole we're trapped in.
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It is November 3rd, 2026, and we're watching the Code Report.
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You know, I would love nothing more than to just talk about the latest JavaScript framework, but here we are again.
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This time, it started last Thursday in the middle of the night when Cursor shipped a new official CloudCode extension.
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Unfortunately, they shipped it without actually knowing they shipped it.
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The extension would scan your machine for any keys or tokens it could find,
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and then set up a backdoor for attackers to come in later and steal them.
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It was only up for about 11 hours, but that was still long enough for around 5 ,000 people to install it.
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Thankfully, the backdoor required admin rights, which most people don't give to their text editor, so the blast radius was pretty limited.
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Meanwhile, around that same time, users on Polymarket started noticing that their funds were being drained simply by logging into the website.
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Now, this isn't that unusual for Polymarket users, but what was unusual was this time it wasn't their fault.
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It turns out a script from a company called DebugBear
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that Polymarket uses for performance monitoring was hijacked to sell all
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your current positions before wiring the proceeds to a hard -coded wallet.
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The hackers ended up getting over $2 million worth of funds before Polymarket pulled the script, which seems like a lot until you realize
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it's just a small price to pay on the road to destroying the lives of millions of young men across the world.
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Thankfully for Polymarket, the news didn't last long because just a few hours later,
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people started noticing something was up with Binance and it was way worse.
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In about 20 minutes, $6 .3 billion with a B worth of crypto across 10 different blockchains left Binance's hot wallets,
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which makes this the biggest theft in recorded history.
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According to Binance, a DevOps laptop was compromised, which allowed the attackers to submit withdrawal requests, then Binance's own system signed them.
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The next day, the FBI came out and said they believed that the North Korean group
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Trader Trader was behind the attack which was the same group that stole 1 .5 billion from Bybit last year.
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The good news is that if you had money on Binance is
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that it stopped being your problem pretty quickly since crypto isn't actually decentralized.
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Tether and Circle froze about $3 billion of the stolen stablecoins within an hour,
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and then Binance froze all withdrawals and spent the weekend refilling its wallets out of its own treasury and insurance funds.
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By Sunday, withdrawals were back on, and yesterday they posted proof of reserves showing everyone's balance was fully backed again,
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to which the users responded by kindly withdrawing $3 .6 billion from Binance anyway.
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And that wasn't even the worst part of the week.
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Back in early October, a Linux kernel maintainer named Eric Dumizet pushed a simple two -line fix
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that delayed freeing some memory until the kernel is sure nothing is still reading it.
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At the time, it didn't seem like a big deal
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and nobody really paid attention to it until a few weeks later
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when it got a 9 .8 out of 10 on the CVSS scale, which is the industry's way of ranking how bad a security bug is.
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It turns out that since 2016, every Linux kernel has had a bug in the code that handles new TCP connections.
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The way it works is every connection starts with the client sending a hello packet and the server sending one back.
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Normally, that first packet is pretty uninteresting, but you're allowed to attach a few extra options to it
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if you want the kernel to save those so it can use them when it builds its reply.
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The problem is that if the client sends the same hello twice at just the right moment,
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the two parts of the kernel end up working on the same connection at once,
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and one of them can free that saved memory while the other one is still reading it.
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So the server ends up building its reply out of memory that's already been freed,
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which means whatever else got written there in the meantime ends up in the reply, and if an attacker controls what that is,
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they can control what the kernel does next.
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Now getting that timing right is pretty tricky, which is why
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Red Hat initially rated it as a moderate 5 .9, and figured the worst case scenario was that the kernel would just crash,
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because if the exploit only works in one in a million tries,
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it's basically safe as long as the person trying it gets bored and runs out of money.
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The problem is that world no longer exists, which is exactly what Anthropic proved on October 27th
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when its red team published a post saying they handed the bug to an unreleased Claude model, and in about 48 minutes,
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the model had hit the timing enough times to get the server to leak a kernel memory address back to it.
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And just five minutes after that, it was able to start running commands as root.
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Debian and Oracle had patched kernels out within one day of the CVE, Red Hat took another two weeks to decide it was serious,
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and finally shipped fixes over the weekend.
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And Ubuntu still doesn't have one.
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But at least you can protect your own codebase with CodeRabbit, the sponsor of today's video.
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They got tired of seeing me make videos about new exploits hitting the timeline every week like this,
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so they just launched CodeRabbit Secure to provide continuous code security that's powered by actual reasoning instead of brittle regex rules.
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Their security agents are designed to think like an attacker.
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in order to hunt for real vulnerabilities across your entire codebase.
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Then it prioritizes actual risks based on reachability, exploitability, and blast radius.
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And it explains the problem to you in plain English, and suggests a fix you can approve in Merge from the diff.
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The CodeRabbit Secure reviews every PR before
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Merge, and you can also schedule deep scans across your full codebase to protect your backdoor 24 -7.
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Start with a free 14 -day trial at the link below, no credit card required.
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This has been The Code Report, thanks for watching, and I will see you in the next one.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “The worst week in cybersecurity history... so far”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: kernel, Binance, Polymarket, code. This video has 73 sentences and 1151 words to shadow. The speech runs for 5:30. The speaker talks fast, about 209 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. Only 79% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| kernel noun | /ˈkɝ.nəl/ | The core, center, or essence of an object or system. |
| server noun | /ˈsɝvɚ/ | A program that provides services to other programs or devices, either in the same computer or over a computer network. |
| attacker noun | /əˈtækɚ/ | Someone who attacks. |
| steal verb | /stiːl/ | To take illegally, or without the owner's permission, something owned by someone else without intending to return it. |
| wallet noun | /ˈwɑl.ət/ | A small case, often flat and often made of leather, for keeping money (especially paper money), credit cards, etc. |
| withdrawal noun | /wɪðˈdɹɔ(ə)l/ | Receiving from someone's care what one has earlier entrusted to them. Usually refers to money. |
| packet noun | /ˈpæk.ɪt/ | A small pack or package; a little bundle or parcel |
| extension noun | /ɪkˈstɛnʃən/ | The act of extending; a stretching out; enlargement in length, breadth, or time; an increase. |
| unusual adjective | /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/ | Not usual, out of the ordinary. |
| script noun | /skɹɪpt/ | A writing; a written document. |
| blast noun | /blæst/ | A violent gust of wind (in windy weather) or apparent wind (around a moving vehicle). |
| laptop noun | /ˈlæp.tɑp/ | A laptop computer. |
| theft noun | /θɛft/ | The act of stealing property. |
| freeze verb | /ˈfɹiːz/ | Especially of a liquid, to become solid due to low temperature. |
| scan verb | /skæn/ | To examine sequentially, carefully, or critically; to scrutinize; to behold closely. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. | |
| turn out verb | To end up; to result. | |
| break down verb | To stop functioning. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| get over verb | To overcome. | |
| pull off verb | To remove by pulling. | |
| set up verb | /ˌsɛt ˈʌp/ | To make ready for use. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | being drained · was hijacked · was compromised |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | guys who technically · attack which was · scale, which is |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has had · that's already been freed · has been |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 13 contractions and reduced forms, such as didn't, isn't, wasn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: withdrawal /wɪðˈdɹɔ(ə)l/, theft /θɛft/, withdraw /wɪðˈdɹɔ/, tether /ˈtɛðəɹ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: extension /ɪkˈstɛnʃən/, unusual /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/, treasury /ˈtɹɛʒ.ɚ.i/, prediction /pɹɪˈdɪkʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: unusual /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/, investigate /ɪnˈvɛs.tə.ɡeɪt/, continuous /kənˈtɪn.juː.əs/, technically /ˈtɛk.nɪˌkəl.i/, vulnerability /ˌvʌln(ə)ɹəˈbɪlɪti/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like kernel, server, attacker.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.