Videos

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq look at all the strands of evidence that make people think NSA is a top-tier cyber actor.

Tom Uren and Patrick Gray discuss how the Signalgate messages betray an alarming lack of security nous at the highest levels of the US natsec leadership. It’s head-scratchingly bad.

They also discuss the possibility the Trump Administration will reconstitute the CSRB. The Board wasn’t perfect, but in our view it is better to get it started again rather than waiting for reviews to determine its perfect form.

In this Soap Box edition of Risky Business host Patrick Gray talks to Knocknoc CEO Adam Pointon about how to easily rein in attack surface by glueing your single sign-on service to your network controls.

Do your Palo Alto and Fortinet devices really need to be discoverable by ransomware crews? Does your file transfer appliance need to be open to the whole world? What about your SSH and RDP? Your Citrix? Your (gasp) Exchange Online servers??

You can do a lot with IP allowlisting and simple Identity Aware Proxies (IAPs) to minimise your exposure.

Knocknoc is a bit of a “Risky Business speci…

On this week’s show Patrick Gray and Adam Boileau discuss the week’s cybersecurity news:

• Yes, the Trump admin really did just add a journo to their Yemen-attack-planning Signal group
• The Github actions hack is smaller than we thought, but was targeting crypto
• Remote code exec in Kubernetes, ouch
• Oracle denies its cloud got owned, but that sure does look like customer keymat
• Taiwanese hardware maker Clevo packs its private keys into bios update zip
• US Treasury un-sanctions Tornado Cash, party time in Pyongyang?

This week’s episode is sponsored by runZero. Long time hackerman HD Moore joins to talk about how network vulnerability scanning has atrophied, and what he’s doing to bring it back en vogue. Do you miss early 2000s Nessus? HD knows it, he’s got you fam. …

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about why people studying cyber operations are fascinated by 0days. These are vulnerabilities or exploits that have been found in a system before the vendor or manufacturer is made aware of them and so therefore no fix exists.

Tom Uren and Patrick Gray discuss how China’s Ministry of State Security is increasingly doxxing and threatening Taiwanese APT operators. In some ways this mirrors the US strategy of naming and shaming Chinese cyber operators in indictments that contain lots of supporting information. But although MSS statements are filled with propaganda rather than technical detail, naming Taiwanese military hackers has some bite.

They also discuss Russia’s ‘shadow war’ sabotage campaign across Europe. The Russian campaign mostly relies on traditional sabotage and finding local proxies to throw bombs. But it does make sense for Western governments to respond with destructive cyber operations….

On this week’s show Patrick Gray and Adam Boileau discuss the week’s cybersecurity news:

• Github Actions supply chain attack loots keys and secrets from 23k projects
• Why a VC fund now owns a minority stake in Risky Business Media (!?!?)
• China doxes Taiwanese military hackers
• Microsoft thinks .lnk file whitespace trick isn’t worth patching but APTs sure love it
• CISA delivers government efficiency by re-hiring fired staff… to put them on paid leave
• …and Google acquires Wiz for $32bn

This week’s show is sponsored by Zero Networks, and they have sent along a happy customer to talk about their experience. Aaron Steinke is Head of Infrastructure at La Trobe Financial, an asset management firm in Australia. Aaron talks through bringing modern zero-trust goodness to the reality of a technology environment that’s been around 40 years. …

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about how offensive cyber operations could do so much more than just ‘deny, disrupt, degrade and destroy’. Grugq thinks this thinking is rooted in US military culture and he wonders why cyber operations are always so mean.

Tom Uren and Patrick Gray discuss how X is actively engaging in political interference outside the US. The risks mirror those of TikTok. American legislators moved against TikTok because it could potentially be a powerful tool for the Chinese government to interfere with American political discourse. X is a realised threat, not a potential one, so we expect that foreign governments will start to consider a ban.

They also explore why mass firing of probationary employees in NSA and intelligence agencies is particularly damaging.

This episode is sponsored by https://greynoise.io.

On this week’s show Patrick Gray and Adam Boileau discuss the week’s cybersecurity news with special guest Rob Joyce, a Former Special Assistant to the US President and Director of Cybersecurity for NSA.

They talk through:

• A realistic bluetooth-proximity phishing attack against Passkeys
• A very patient ransomware actor encrypts an entire enterprise with a puny linux webcam processor
• The ESP32 backdoor that is neither a door nor at the back
• The X DDoS that Elon said was Ukraine is claimed by pro-Palestinian hacktivists
• Years later, LastPass hackers are still emptying crypto-wallets
• …and it turns out North Korea nailed {Safe}Wallet with a malicious docker image. Nice!…