Risky Business News Podcast

Cybercriminals stole more than $16 billion last year, Iran tries to hack an EU official, the Lazarus Groups pulls off a successful watering hole and zero-day attack, and WhatsApp adds new chat privacy features.

Tom Uren and Adam Boileau talk about how scam compound criminal syndicates are responding to strong government action by moving operations overseas. It’s good they are being affected, but they are shifting into new countries that don’t have the ability to counter industrial-scale transnational organised crime.

They also discuss CISA’s Secure by Design initiative and that key people behind the program have left the organisation. Given prospective job cuts at CISA it is hard to see the initiative getting a lot of love, but international cyber security authorities should pick up the slack.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

Russian military personnel targeted with Android spyware, Trump defends Hegseth after second Signalgate scandal, CISA’s Secure by Design leaders depart the agency, and forced-labour cyber scam compounds expand globally.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq discuss whether cyber operations can be ‘strategic’, that is, can they affect the fate of nations.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

Zoom has a remote control feature so of course crypto thieves are abusing it, hackers make $700 million in unauthorised stock trades, a Chinese APT leaks its exploits and Euro MPs traveling to Hungary are offered anti-spying pouches for their phones.

In this Risky Bulletin sponsor interview Shane Harding, CEO of Devicie, talks to Tom Uren about trends in the enterprise software and security market that he thinks will have huge impacts. Software is becoming smarter and aims to solve problems rather than simply provide capabilities and Microsoft has embarked on a big push into the SME security market.

Chris Krebs resigns from SentinelOne and vows to fight, the Thai army and police doxed pro-democracy dissidents, CISA extends MITRE’s CVE contract, and Apple patches two iOS zero-days.

Tom Uren and Patrick Gray discuss Trump’s order singling out Chris Krebs, former head of CISA, that requires investigations into Krebs and also punishes his employer. It is a move deliberately designed to chill dissent and they look at what the cyber security industry will likely do in response, which is probably not much.

The pair also discuss what is being interpreted as an admission that Chinese senior leadership is behind the Volt Typhoon hacking of US critical infrastructure.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

MITRE corporation says funding cuts will impact the CVE database, China accuses NSA employees of an Asian Winter Games hack, a ransomware attack disrupts dialysis clinics, the CA/Browser Forum will limit TLS certificate lifetime to 47 days, and 4chan gets hacked.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq look at the idea of global critical infrastructure. One common example is submarine cables, which are globally important but are vulnerable because they are hard to defend. But what about services from tech giants? Are they global critical infrastructure?

This episode is also available on Youtube.