Risky Business News Podcast

Windows Update will deliver third party app updates, a public database exposed Russia’s nuclear secrets, US banks ask the SEC to rescind cyber breach disclosure rule, and ConnectWise discloses an APT breach.

Tom Uren and Patrick Gray talk about Russian DanaBot malware developers making a tailored variant of their malware specifically for espionage. This fills in some of the blanks on the exact relationship between Russian criminals and the country’s intelligence services.

They also discuss a US Director of National Intelligence initiative to centralise the purchase of commercially acquired information. Although this information can be used maliciously, having a one-stop-shop should make it easier to check that it is being used responsibly.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

Dutch intelligence discovers a new Russian APT, a ransomware attack hits the maker of MATLAB, 20 arrested in Nigeria over hacking exam results, and an Iranian pleads guilty for the Robbinhood ransomware attacks.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about cyber’s ‘hard problems’ and why they are intractable.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

A major exodus of leadership is underway at CISA, the US government will audit NIST over its vulnerability backlog; an ancient and mysterious APT has been linked to Spain’s government, and the SVG image format is great for phishing.

In this Risky Business News sponsor interview, Catalin Cimpanu talks with Bobby Filar, Head of Machine Learning at Sublime Security. Bobby takes us through the rising problem of spam bombing, or email bombing, a technique threat actors are increasingly using for initial access into corporate environments.

Law enforcement takes down the DanaBot and Lumma Stealer malware operations, the US government wants a centralized data broker platform, Turkey dismantles a Chinese IMSI catcher spy ring, and Russia hacked border cameras to track Ukrainian military aid.

Tom Uren and Patrick Gray talk about how Telegram took down the two largest ever criminal marketplaces recently. They used Telegram for all their communications and had collectively sold over USD$30 billion in illicit products. The pair discuss why Telegram is now cooperating with authorities after historically being reluctant and whether this assistance will continue.

They also discuss how Meta is awash with scam advertisements and how Chinese mobile app encryption is suspiciously awful.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

DDoSecrets archives 400GB of stolen TeleMessage data, the FBI closes its FISA watchdog office, Predatorgate lawsuit delayed due to interpreter shortage, and a wave of DDoS attacks disrupt Russian government portals.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq examine what makes it hard for even competent hackers to contribute to state-backed espionage agencies.

This episode is also available on Youtube.