Decipher Security Podcast

The fallout from the CrowdStrike outage continues more than a week after the faulty update, so Huntress security researcher John Hammond joins Dennis Fisher to talk about the lessons learned from the incident, our fragile software ecosystem, and what cybersecurity practitioners can do differently next time.

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Tyler Healy, CISO of Digital Ocean, joins Dennis Fisher to discuss the unique challenges of defending a huge platform, how AI is changing things for defenders, and what new challenges AI might bring in the near future. 

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CrowdStrike said a problem with an update the company pushed to Falcon sensors on Windows hosts on July 18 caused a blue screen of death, an issue that coincided with a Microsoft Azure outage and widespread outages across airlines, banks, hospitals, and other services.

Our story on this incident: https://duo.com/decipher/crowdstrike-windows-update-linked-to-global-outages

The Windows monoculture paper: https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2003/09/cyberinsecurity_the.html

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FIN7 is a highly active and capable cybercrime group also known as Carbanak that has been evolving and using its own tools such as AVNeutralizer for many years. SentinelOne researchers Antonio Cocomazzi helps us dig into the group's tactics and tools.

Read Antonio's new research here: https://www.sentinelone.com/labs/fin7-reboot-cybercrime-gang-enhances-ops-with-new-edr-bypasses-and-automated-attacks/

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Former NSA Deputy Director George Barnes joins Dennis Fisher to talk about his 35-year career at the agency, how he came to be intrigued by the cybersecurity world, the emergence of Cyber Command as a force inside the government, and what he sees as the priorities for defenders now.

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Chris Hughes, co-founder of Aquia and a Cyber Innovation Fellow at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, joins Dennis Fisher to talk about the challenges of supply chain security, working with the government to address systemic issues, and the importance of collaboration. 

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Dennis Fisher and Lindsey O'Donnell-Welch dig into the news of the TeamViewer corporate breach, attributed to APT29/Midnight Blizzard, and news of more victims from the Microsoft intrusion by the same group earlier this year.

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Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a critical form of defense for organizations, and threat actors are recognizing that: According to the latest Cisco Talos Incident Response Quarterly Trends report, instances related to MFA were involved in some capacity in half of all security incidents that the Talos team responded to in the first quarter of 2024.

Hazel Burton with Cisco Talos talks about how threat actors are using targeted social engineering techniques to try to skirt by MFA, how phishing kits are increasingly incorporating MFA bypass tactics, and what businesses can do.

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Metin Kortak, CISO with Rhymetec, talks about how organizations are approaching data privacy and security compliance, and thinking about risk management policies, when it comes to generative AI in the workplace.

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Michael Mann's 1995 thriller Heat is considered by many people to be the best crime movie ever made. And hidden inside the intricate plot is a story of a lone hacker with a background at DARPA who uses his skills to set up scores for the crews in LA's underworld. Meg Gardiner, the co-author of Heat 2, and Casey Ellis, cofounder of Bugcrowd, join Dennis Fisher to dig into the technological and psychological details of this modern masterpiece. This is Deciphering Heat.

Check out Meg's newest thriller, Shadowheart.

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