Cybersecurity Sessions

This month’s episode takes off with a journey into the controversial world of skiplagging, also known as hidden city flying. Airlines and holiday businesses are taking legal action against passengers and websites like Skiplagged that exploit pricing loopholes, leaving empty seats on the second leg of multi-stop itineraries. But with scraper bots at the root of the issue, is there a technical solution to limit the practice?

On the topic of bots, a recent report from the University of California, Irvine, revealed that bots are now faster and more accurate than humans at solving CAPTCHA challenges. In this episode we discuss whether there is still a place for CAPTCHA in detecting bot traffic, and try to decipher Elon Musk’s comments about the report – Does it spell the end of bot detection, and is his X subscription model the only answer…?

To conclude, we go more in depth on scraper bots – not only do they facilitate skiplagging, but there are endless uses for scrapers, both well meaning and malicious. How concerned should businesses be about scraper bots, and does their presence often indicate more sinister attacks on the horizon?

Host

Dani Middleton-Wren – Head of Media, Netacea

Dani is a cybersecurity writer and marketing specialist, who strives to decipher the mysteries behind complex cybersecurity subjects and deliver them to a wide audience. Since joining Netacea in 2019, Dani has used her experience in journalism and analyst relations to create compelling external communication strategies that effectively articulate the threat of automated attacks.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-middleton-wren-95826767/

Panel

Matthew Gracey-McMinn – Head of Threat Research, Netacea

Matthew is an experienced Cyber Threat Intelligence professional with an MPhil from the University of Oxford. In his current role at Netacea, he researches and investigates the impact of malicious bots on online businesses and their customers.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewgraceymcminn

https://twitter.com/mgm_cybersec

Chris Collier – Head of Solution Engineering, Netacea

Chris is an experienced technical manager who joined Netacea in 2021. Since this time, he’s helped countless clients onboard with our bot management product, ensuring they get a solution that fits their business needs and integrates with their existing platforms.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-collier-82588859

Gary Clarke – Solutions Engineer, Netacea

Gaz is an experienced Solutions Engineer with 12 years’ experience working in the computer and retail industries. At Netacea Gaz helps businesses implement advanced bot management solutions to work in harmony with their existing systems and prevent automated threats from attacking. Gaz gained his bachelor’s degree focused in Computing; Software and Systems from Edge Hill University.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/clarkegs/

This month we begin by examining the 2023 National Risk Register, a public version of the National Security Risk Assessment, which assesses the most serious risks to lives, health, society, critical infrastructure, economy and sovereignty. Cyber-attacks on infrastructure are listed as moderate impact – Our panel discusses how businesses can use the information within the report to prepare for attacks and keep our critical infrastructure as secure as possible.

Next, our Principal Security Researcher Cyril Noel-Tagoe sheds some light on the murky underworld of illicit Telegram networks, where criminals plot and discuss their attacks, or sell their ill-gotten gains. Netacea CTO Andy Lole weighs in on the Online Safety Bill and its opposition to encrypted messaging apps having no way of sharing messaged with law enforcement, before Engineering Manager Karol Horosin joins the debate to explain the technical obstacles businesses like Meta face when developing such apps.

Finally, Cyril defines our attack of the month, which is residential proxy networks. He and Karol discuss why residential proxies are becoming such popular tools for criminals, and the difficulties businesses face in blocking malicious traffic that utilizes residential proxy networks to hide behind otherwise trustworthy IP addresses.

Host

Dani Middleton-Wren – Head of Media, Netacea

Dani is a cybersecurity writer and marketing specialist, who strives to decipher the mysteries behind complex cybersecurity subjects and deliver them to a wide audience. Since joining Netacea in 2019, Dani has used her experience in journalism and analyst relations to create compelling external communication strategies that effectively articulate the threat of automated attacks.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-middleton-wren-95826767/

Panel

Cyril Noel-Tagoe – Principal Security Researcher, Netacea

Cyril Noel-Tagoe is an experienced information security professional and Principal Security Researcher at Netacea. He spends his time researching, speaking and writing about malicious bots and other cyber security topics.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cybercyril

https://twitter.com/cyber_cyril

Andy Lole – CTO, Netacea

An experienced tech and product leader, Andy’s held leadership roles in digital marketplaces across real estate, travel and classifieds marketplaces. He’s developed and operated B2B SaaS tools and services, and core commercial platforms. At Netacea he focuses on expanding product delivery capabilities and customer experience.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andylole/

https://twitter.com/andylole

Karol Horosin – Engineering Manager, Netacea

As well as his role as Engineering Manager at Netacea, Karol is the founder of an AI sentiment analysis product sentimatic.io. He is a frequent conference speaker and writes online about programming, product development and startups on his personal blog.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/horosin/

https://twitter.com/horosin_

In this month’s episode, we start by focusing on the real-world impact of bots (scripts used to automate tasks and exploit business logic). In the UK, bots are being used to book up every available driving test before reselling them for profit; meanwhile in the US, gig workers delivering groceries are losing out to bots that hoard the most profitable delivery jobs. Our panel explains how this happens and discusses what can be done to stop it.

Meanwhile, the social media landscape is shifting rapidly. Free, unlimited access to APIs has become a thing of the past for users and businesses reliant on Twitter and Reddit. Fake accounts are still a looming problem across platforms, forcing the much-hyped IRL to close permanently. Are social media businesses taking the right approach to data scraping, fake account creation and access to their services, and will Meta’s Threads disrupt the industry?

Finally, we take a fresh look at ticket scalping considering legislative measures taken by the State of Victoria for Taylor Swift’s tour in Australia. Will it be enough to deter the touts?

Host

Dani Middleton-Wren – Head of Media, Netacea

Dani is a cybersecurity writer and marketing specialist, who strives to decipher the mysteries behind complex cybersecurity subjects and deliver them to a wide audience. Since joining Netacea in 2019, Dani has used her experience in journalism and analyst relations to create compelling external communication strategies that effectively articulate the threat of automated attacks.

Panel

Matthew Gracey-McMinn – Head of Threat Research, Netacea

Matthew is an experienced Cyber Threat Intelligence professional with an MPhil from the University of Oxford. In his current role at Netacea, he researches and investigates the impact of malicious bots on online businesses and their customers.

Chris Collier – Head of Solution Engineering, Netacea

Chris is an experienced technical manager who joined Netacea in 2021. Since this time, he’s helped countless clients onboard with our bot management product, ensuring they get a solution that fits their business needs and integrates with their existing platforms.

Paulina Cakalli – Lead Data Analyst, Netacea

Paulina works closely with Netacea's Data Science and Threat Research teams to develop new models for detecting anomalous web traffic, combining this with machine learning to produce recommendations for clients. She is a rising star in the world of data science, encouraging other women to enter STEM careers via various international speaking opportunities. She is co-founder of BSides Tirana, an international security conference. She received her masters' degree in mathematics and informatics engineering at the University of Tirana, where she was later an assistant lecturer.

A fresh Netacea panel of cyber experts are on hand once again to discuss the latest developments in security and bot-related news!

This month, in light of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman standing before US senators and requesting regulation of AI businesses, we give our views on whether one body – or even one nation – can or should regulate this rapidly developing industry.

Universal Music Group also instigated the removal of 7% of AI-generated tracks added to the service via Boomy, opening a debate about automated music creation, artistic copyrights and privacy, how AI models learn to make music, and how humans are influenced to create and consume music.

Also, with 69 arrests made by the Spanish police over a scalper bot ring targeting immigration appointments, our panel ponders how the approach to stopping such attacks differs depending on the target and industry.

Finally, credential stuffing is our attack of the month. As long as people reuse passwords across services, credential stuffing will be a viable attack – is it time the industry moved on and found a better way to authenticate users?

Host

Dani Middleton-Wren – Head of Media, Netacea

Dani is a cybersecurity writer and marketing specialist, who strives to decipher the mysteries behind complex cybersecurity subjects and deliver them to a wide audience. Since joining Netacea in 2019, Dani has used her experience in journalism and analyst relations to create compelling external communication strategies that effectively articulate the threat of automated attacks.

Panel

Cyril Noel-Tagoe – Principal Security Researcher, Netacea

Cyril Noel-Tagoe is an experienced information security professional and Principal Security Researcher at Netacea. He spends his time researching, speaking and writing about malicious bots and other cyber security topics.

Chris Collier – Solutions Engineering Manager, Netacea

Chris is an experienced technical manager who joined Netacea in 2021. Since this time, he’s helped countless clients onboard with our bot management product, ensuring they get a solution that fits their business needs and integrates with their existing platforms.

Andy Lole – CTO, Netacea

An experienced tech and product leader, Andy’s held leadership roles in digital marketplaces across real estate, travel and classifieds marketplaces. He’s developed and operated B2B SaaS tools and services, and core commercial platforms. At Netacea he focuses on expanding product delivery capabilities and customer experience.

In part two of our RSA Conference 2023 series, Netacea CPO Andy Still and CISO Andy Ash return from San Francisco to share their insights from the biggest cybersecurity event of the year.

As part of Netacea’s C-suite, both Andys are always looking ahead at how new threats are developing – “what’s new, scary and worth worrying about?” The rapid advancement of AI, both as an offensive threat to cybersecurity and as part of defensive technologies, was one such topic at RSA 2023, with Bryan Palma’s opening keynote speech grounding this complex issue and setting the tone for the rest of the conference.

Did their discoveries about AI & ML at RSA validate their own work at Netacea? Did they achieve their goals to explore the future of cybersecurity and confirm the direction of their own product? And did they pick up any useful swag?

Tune into this special bonus episode of the Cybersecurity Sessions podcast to find out!

Andy Still, Co-founder & Chief Product Officer at Netacea

Andy Still is a pioneer of digital performance for online systems, having authored several books on computing and web performance, application development and non-human web traffic. As Chief Product Officer, he leads the technical direction for Netacea’s products, as well as providing consultancy and thought leadership to clients.

Andy Ash, Chief Information Security Officer at Netacea

Andy Ash has worked in IT Services and cyber for 21 years. He has been part of Netacea since its inception and is currently CISO, overseeing the operation and security of the technical platform and Netacea Threat and Bot Expert teams.

Welcome to a new format for the Cybersecurity Sessions! We’ve refocused our podcasts to provide insights into the latest news and trends in cybersecurity, calling on the expertise of Netacea’s threat researchers, bot specialists and business leaders.

This month, new host Dani Middleton-Wren is joined by Matthew Gracey-McMinn, Chris Pace and Tom Platt. First they discuss the ever-intriguing topic of ethics in AI, with facial recognition tech from Clearview AI and PimEyes coming under legal and moral scrutiny, followed by the practicalities of fighting back against automated ticket scalping.

The recent Vulcan files leak is next up, calling into question how much we can trust information on social media and how much rhetoric is being generated by Russian bot accounts. Finally, Matthew answers questions from the team about the mechanics and impact of credit card cracking on payment gateways, retailers and consumers.

Host

Dani Middleton-Wren – Head of Media, Netacea

Dani is a cybersecurity writer and marketing specialist, who strives to decipher the mysteries behind complex cybersecurity subjects and deliver them to a wide audience. Since joining Netacea in 2019, Dani has used her experience in journalism and analyst relations to create compelling external communication strategies that effectively articulate the threat of automated attacks.

Panel

Matthew Gracey-McMinn – Head of Threat Research, Netacea

Matthew is an experienced Cyber Threat Intelligence professional with an MPhil from the University of Oxford. In his current role at Netacea, he researches and investigates the impact of malicious bots on online businesses and their customers.

Chris Pace – SVP Marketing, Netacea

Chris has more than 15 years of experience in cybersecurity and SaaS at companies including Sophos, Blue Coat, Recorded Future, and Immersive Labs. At Netacea, Chris applies his expertise to telling our company and product story in ways that engage and educate the market on the challenges of protecting businesses against the threat of automated attacks.

Thomas Platt – Bot Specialist, Netacea

Tom has been instrumental in the sales growth of Netacea since its inception. He works closely with Netacea's eCommerce customers, Product and Threat Research teams to drive industry research, thought leadership and knowledge sharing. Tom’s focus is to ensure Netacea and our customers stay ahead of emerging bot threats and share this knowledge with the wider community.

We’re going to San Francisco! Netacea will once again be at the Moscone Center from 24-27 April for the RSA Conference. We’re looking forward to it so much that we decided to compile our top five most anticipated sessions on the Cybersecurity Sessions podcast.

Special host Danielle Middleton-Wren will be in sunny San Francisco, alongside her two guests for this episode: Netacea co-founder and CPO Andy Still, and Netacea CISO Andy Ash. Andy S was at RSA last year and has some insights and advice for Andy A – an RSA first timer – ahead of their trip to the Golden City.

Meet Andy Still, Andy Ash and the rest of the Netacea team at RSA Conference 2023 in San Francisco from 24-27 April! Come to booth 1367 to chat about bots, API protection and online fraud prevention, or tell us what sessions you’ve enjoyed. See you there!

Andy Still, Co-founder & Chief Product Officer at Netacea

Andy Still is a pioneer of digital performance for online systems, having authored several books on computing and web performance, application development and non-human web traffic. As Chief Product Officer, he leads the technical direction for Netacea’s products, as well as providing consultancy and thought leadership to clients.

Andy Ash, Chief Information Security Officer at Netacea

Andy Ash has worked in IT Services and cyber for 21 years. He has been part of Netacea since its inception and is currently CISO, overseeing the operation and security of the technical platform and Netacea Threat and Bot Expert teams.

Key points

Our reliance on personal mobile devices leaves us vulnerable to attack; not just from anonymous criminal groups, but in some cases, from those closest to us. Stalkerware, a category of apps designed to secretly monitor the unsuspecting victim whose device they’re installed on, are a growing concern for security and privacy advocates, as well as law enforcement agencies.

This month on the Cybersecurity Sessions podcast, we talk to Martijn Grooten from the Coalition Against StalkerWare to expose how technology has become a tool for abusers to control their victims, and hopefully shed some light on what we can do to stop this from happening.

If you or someone you know is affected by stalkerware or anything covered in this episode, you may find the following resources useful:

Martijn Grooten - Digital Security Threat Analyst, Internews

Martijn Grooten, a former mathematician, has been working in IT security for 14 years. He is a Digital Security Threat Analyst at Internews and a fellow at the Civilsphere Lab. He was previously the Editor of Virus Bulletin and currently works as a consultant on several projects, many of which deal with supporting vulnerable people and groups with digital security, including the DeStalk Project and the Coalition Against Stalkerware.

Not a week goes by without a massive data leak being reported in the news – both in tech publications and across mainstream media. According to Atlas VPN, 5.9 billion credentials were leaked in 2021 alone. But it’s not just credentials under attack; personal data, payment information, sensitive corporate data, and even source code are all at risk of being leaked.

But how is so much data leaked so often? What do criminals do with this data once they have it? How much risk does this pose to the public, and what can be done about it?

To find out, we’ve invited Jurgita Lapienytė, Chief Editor of CyberNews, to talk us through some of the most notable data leaks reported in the media in recent years.

Jurgita Lapienytė aims to bring the most complicated cybersecurity topics to a broader audience, hoping that more and more people will find themselves chatting about ransomware over dinner. Before joining CyberNews, Jurgita spent more than a decade in business journalism. Her investigative pieces have brought more justice and transparency to the transport, showbiz, retail, and catering sectors.

If a stranger walked into your workplace and asked you your name and email address, would you co-operate? What if they asked you to open a door for them, or to use your laptop or phone, all whilst wearing a shirt that said “CHALLENGE ME” on it?

This is the malicious floorwalker, an example of the behavioral interventions staged by the UK Ministry of Defence to educate their workforce about security threats and put their teachings into practice. In this episode, Cyril speaks with Si Pavitt (Head of the Ministry of Defence Cyber Awareness, Behaviours and Culture Team) and Steve Dewsnip (Behavioural Scientist at Atkins) to find out how gamifying psychological theory delivers surprising results across as diverse an organization as the UK’s Ministry of Defence.

Si Pavitt is the Head of the Ministry of Defence Cyber Awareness, Behaviours and Culture (CyAB&C) team under the 2* Directorate of Cyber Defence and Risk (CyDR). He is primarily responsible for setting the strategic direction for socio-behavioural change as it relates to cyber-secure behaviour across Defence. He also provides consultancy to Defence human vulnerability and social engineering activities.

Stephen Dewsnip is a Behavioural Scientist and Organisational Change Consultant from Atkins Global. Working in the highly collaborative MOD Cyber Awareness Behaviours & Culture (CyAB&C) team, Stephen is responsible for the design and delivery of behavioural interventions to promote cyber-secure behaviours.