In a quiet alley behind Orussey Market, nestled between a noodle stall and an herbal apothecary, was a place no one would have suspected: a tech lab disguised as a sewing shop.

The locals called it "Yiey Tech" — short for Yiey Tevada, or Grandma Angels.

Four grandmothers ran the shop. To the world, they were gentle ladies who repaired school uniforms, embroidered temple banners, and sold lucky red thread before Pchum Ben. But beneath their aprons and gentle smiles, they were Cambodia's most elusive hackers.

It all started during COVID, when the grandmas—Srey Yiey, Mae Yiey, Bong Yiey, and Dara Yiey—learned to use Zoom to attend their temple's online chanting. One thing led to another, and soon they were fixing their grandkids' school laptops, jailbreaking smart TVs, and tinkering with old Android phones to extend battery life.

But it was Srey Yiey who discovered hacking.

Her grandson had been scammed in an online gaming app. Furious, she stayed up all night watching YouTube tutorials in broken English and Thai. By morning, she'd traced the scammer's wallet and sent them a polite message in binary: "Touch my grandson again and I will turn your server into prahok."

The scammer refunded triple.

From that day forward, the grandmas formed a digital alliance. By day, they sewed and cooked and gave unsolicited advice to every teenager who walked by. By night, they became digital vigilantes.

They called themselves ក្រុមយាយកុំព្យូទ័រ (Krom Yiey Kompyuter) — the Grandma Computer Collective.

Their missions?

Exposing corrupt land deals hidden in fake PDF contracts.

Hacking into overpriced remittance apps to waive transfer fees for migrant workers.

Encrypting old Cambodian folktales and songs into NFTs to preserve Khmer heritage.

Teaching young girls in the neighborhood how to code using karaoke lyrics as syntax.

One day, the government announced a "smart surveillance upgrade" in central Phnom Penh. Overnight, every street camera blinked with facial recognition tech. But something strange happened: the system kept glitching, mistaking motorcycles for water buffalo and confusing monks with pop stars.

That was Mae Yiey's doing. She had hacked the AI to "think more Cambodian."

Meanwhile, Bong Yiey was creating a chatbot in Khmer that could argue with fake news on Facebook faster than any human. "No, nephew," it would reply to propaganda posts. "That article was written by a sock puppet account and translated poorly from Russian. Let me explain…"

And Dara Yiey? She had a secret project. She was building an app that could automatically detect loneliness in Khmer elder chats and schedule family visits using reverse GPS nudges and guilt-tripping voice notes.

Then came the big challenge: A foreign crypto company tried to buy up sacred land near Kulen Mountain using shell corporations.

The Grandmas went full stealth mode. They reverse-engineered the investors' smart contracts, exposed their entire network through a fake donation app, and sent a polite cease-and-desist embedded in a virtual monk's blessing chant. The deal collapsed within 48 hours.

Word spread.

They were never caught. But young coders began leaving jasmine flowers and USB drives filled with local code snippets at their shop each morning — as offerings and thanks.

And on every full moon, you might spot them on the rooftop of the sewing shop, sipping lotus tea under the stars, coding away in silence.

Not for fame. Not for money.

But to make sure Cambodia's future didn't forget its past — or its grandmothers.