Videos

In this Soap Box edition of the Risky Business podcast host Patrick Gray chats with Adam Pointon, CEO of Knocknoc, about the failure of Zero Trust as a comprehensive architecture.

Most networks look like they were designed in 1999, and most Zero Trust products look like they were designed for 2049.

Instead, Patrick and Adam pitch something in the middle: Zero Trust(ish) networks, where Zero Trust principles are applied selectively where possible.

Instead of trying to re-architect entire networks, maybe it’s time we learned to apply Zero Trust principles selectively against risky assets. It’s a better approach than the status quo, which involves liberal use of the “risk accepted” stamp.

Tom Uren and James Wilson talk about the cybercrime ecosystem shifting towards data theft extortion, stealing sensitive data and extracting ransoms from victims by threatening to leak it. For organisations whose reputation is very important to them, data leaks are a bigger threat than having their files locked up.

They also discuss how the rise of AI makes it worth reinvigorating CISA’s Secure by Design initiative.

On this week’s show Patrick Gray and James Wilson are joined by guest co-host Brad Arkin to talk through the week’s news, including:

• The AI-agent-hacks-stuff saga continues. This week we have one booting gymgoers from full classes to nab its owner a spot
• Somehow OpenAI’s legal team allowed the company to spill all the Hugging Face tea at BlackHat and it’s hot and delicious
• More details emerge about Iran’s hacking campaign against US water utilities, but Brad is unimpressed
• It turns out TeamPCP has been around longer than we thought and predates the AI era
• Some absolute plonker kept the DEFCON party going on a Delta flight home. No word yet on if they made the plane fly sideways…

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about examples of cyber resistance and whether they achieve their goals.

Tom Uren and James Wilson talk about North Korea losing control over some of its hacker workforce. Expect some tightening of controls and oversight, and perhaps even a reduction in the country’s ransomware operations.

They also discuss escalating attacks on American water infrastructure. Although the impact of these attacks is relatively minor so far, the US government has been slow to respond from a political perspective.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about whether hacker culture is inherently anti-authoritarian and how different states get their country’s hackers to work for the state.

Tom Uren and James Wilson talk about open-weight AI models and distillation. These topics have been subject to a lot of US government attention in recent weeks, but let’s not forget that America’s overriding goal is to remain ahead of China in the AI race. There are better ways to do that than overindexing on distillation.

They also discuss Iranian attacks on US critical infrastructure. Given that the war in Iran is unpopular, incidents that make headlines without causing serious impact are perfectly calibrated.

On this week’s show special guest co-host Pete Ranks, the former director of the CIA’s Centre for Cyber Intelligence, joins Patrick Gray and James Wilson to discuss the week’s cybersecurity news. They cover:

• Everyone signs the open weights open letter, except Anthropic… of course.
• OpenAI had no idea it had hacked Hugging Face
• Kimi K3 open weights released and they’re massive!
• Why a more aggressive response is needed to cyber attacks on OT
• And much, much more!

This week’s show is brought to you by SpecterOps. In this week’s sponsor interview Justin Kohler and Jared Atkinson talk about how SpecterOps’ Bloodhound now supports AWS attack paths. Run it against your AWS infra, but only if you have a strong stomach. The results will terrify you….

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq discuss how important people are to cyber power and whether the rise of AI is changing that.

Tom Uren and James Wilson talk about the future of open-weight models. For different reasons, both the Chinese and American governments have reasons to crack down on them.

They also talk about arrests of several members of the Scattered Spider juvenile cybercrime collective.