Risky Business News Podcast

Two billion eSIMs receive crucial security patches, China’s cyber militias go on the offensive, four Scattered Spider members detained over UK retail attacks, and a Russian basketball player is arrested in a ransomware case.

Tom Uren and Amberleigh Jack talk about our developing understanding of the group that people call Scattered Spider. Independent security firms agree that there are a small number of key people that are driving the group’s outrageous success. That gives us hope that targeted action might stem the bleeding.

They also talk about data leaks from China’s cyber espionage ecosystem that are for sale on a data leak site. These look to contain actionable information from a counterintelligence point of view. And Tom wonders if a market for espionage-as-a-service will develop?

This episode is also available on Youtube.

Italy arrests a Chinese APT hacker, a Russian drone software group gets wiped, the SatanLock ransomware operation shuts down, and browser extensions power a web scraping botnet.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about how there is an opportunity for the US to expand its 0day and talent acquisition pool to Asia. They revisit a paper comparing the Chinese and American 0day acquisition strategies and have some quibbles.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

Chinese security researchers claim to have found a new American APT, the SEC and SolarWinds are seeking a settlement, a company insider was behind Brazil’s bank hack, and Luis Vuitton discloses a security breach.

In this sponsored interview, Patrick Gray chats with the CEO of Knocknoc, Adam Pointon.

They talk about the woeful state of internal enterprise networks and how many control system networks aren’t appropriately segmented.

Adam also explains why Knocknoc released a very simple identity aware proxy: For too long the Zero Trust “industry” has focussed on securing access to critical applications, while everything else is left behind to get owned. This is Zero Trust for crappy apps! Zero Trust for the rest of us!

A ransomware operation shuts down and releases free decryption keys, the FBI investigates a ransomware negotiator for taking kickbacks, Spain arrests two over government hacks, and hackers steal $185 million from Brazilian financial institutions.

Tom Uren and Patrick Gray discuss warnings about Iranian cyber attacks on US critical infrastructure. Despite many many warnings, there have been no actual attacks and they discuss the reasons why Iran would want to avoid escalatory cyber attacks.

They also talk about how the FBI is struggling to deal with the democratisation of surveillance and data analysis, what the agency calls Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance (UTS). A Department of Justice audit of the FBI’s response finds the threat from UTS is real and that sources have been murdered. But it seems that the FBI just doesn’t care.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

The US sanctions another Russian bulletproof hosting provider, the International Criminal Court discloses a security breach, the US dismantles 29 North Korean laptop farms, and a Chinese student gets jailed in the UK for SMS blasting.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about how Microsoft has embraced digital sovereignty and is bending over backwards to satisfy European tech supply chain concerns.

This episode is also available on Youtube.