Exploring Information Security - Exploring Information Security

Timothy De Block sits down with former FBI agent Scott Augenbaum to discuss his eye-opening trip to Cambodia, which has become the "online scam capital of the world". They dive into the terrifying evolution of "pig butchering" scams, how Chinese organized crime and geopolitical investments have fueled a massive criminal ecosystem, and why the ultimate vulnerability is still human psychology. Scott explains the massive scale of these operations and shares the single most important step you can take to avoid losing your money to these syndicates.

• The Ground Zero of Scams: Scott discusses his trip to Sihanoukville, Cambodia, a city filled with scam compounds hiding in plain sight behind casino facades and fortress-like buildings with their backs facing the street.

• The Pivot to "Pig Butchering": How China's 2018 ban on online gambling and the 2020 COVID-19 casino shutdowns forced organized crime to pivot to massive, highly organized cryptocurrency and romance advanced-fee scams.

• A Geopolitical Nightmare: The complexities of combating these compounds when they are backed by Chinese investment and infrastructure (such as a highway built using Huawei routers). This dynamic leaves local law enforcement hesitant to intervene and limits the FBI's power.

• The Anatomy of a $5.2 Million Scam: Scott breaks down a devastating case of "pig butchering," detailing how scammers use fake simulated trading apps, "spot gold trading," and artificial intelligence to fatten victims up before stealing millions.

• The Double Crisis: The conversation acknowledges the horrifying human trafficking of compound workers—often lured from underdeveloped nations by fake jobs—while also focusing on the victims in the US and globally who are losing billions.

• The "Cancer Drug" Problem: Why organizations and individuals often only invest in security after they've been breached to meet compliance requirements.

• One Essential Tip: The absolute necessity of understanding social engineering and enabling Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) on all mission-critical accounts, such as home routers, cellular providers, iCloud, and Gmail.

"If you're not going to make money through gambling, you're going to make money through the old-fashioned way, scamming." — Scott Augenbaum

"We don't need to make information security people smarter... We need to get the end users up to taking it seriously." — Scott Augenbaum

"I deal with people who want to buy the cancer drug after they had cancer. They don't want to buy it before because well, that's too much work." — Scott Augenbaum

• Book: The Secret to Cyber Security by Scott Augenbaum.

• Special Offer: Scott is generously offering a free audio or electronic copy of his book to listeners. Listen to the episode for details on how to claim it.

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Timothy De Block sits down with Keith Hoodlet, Security Researcher and founder of Securing.dev, to navigate the chaotic and rapidly evolving landscape of AI security.

They discuss why "learning" is the only vital skill left in security, how Large Language Models (LLMs) actually work (and how to break them), and the terrifying rise of AI Agents that can access your email and bank accounts. Keith explains the difference between inherent AI vulnerabilities—like model inversion—and the reckless implementation of AI agents that leads to "free DoorDash" exploits. They also dive into the existential risks of disinformation, where bots manipulate human outrage and poison the very data future models will train on.

• Learning in the AI Era:

  • The "Zero to Hero" approach: How Keith uses tools like Claude to generate comprehensive learning plans and documentation for his team.

  • Why accessible tools like YouTube and AI make learning technical concepts easier than ever.

• Understanding the "Black Box":

  • How LLMs Work: Keith breaks down LLMs as a "four-dimensional array of numbers" (weights) where words are converted into tokens and calculated against training data. * Open Weights: The ability for users to manipulate these weights to reinforce specific data (e.g., European history vs. Asian Pacific history).

• AI Vulnerabilities vs. Attacks:

  • Prompt Injection: "Social engineering" the chatbot to perform unintended actions.

  • Membership Inference: Determining if specific data (like yours) is in a training set, which has massive implications for GDPR and the "right to be forgotten".

  • Model Inversion: Stealing weights and training data. Keith cites speculation that Chinese espionage used this technique to "shortcut" their own model training using US labs' data.

  • Evasion Attacks: A technique rather than a vulnerability. Example: Jason Haddix bypassing filters to generate an image of Donald Duck smoking a cigar by describing the attributes rather than naming the character.

• The "Agent" Threat:

  • Running with Katanas: Giving AI agents access to browsers, file systems (~/.ssh), and payment methods is a massive security risk.

  • The DoorDash Exploit: A real-world example where a user tricked a friend's email-connected AI bot into ordering them free lunch for a week.

• Supply Chain & Disinformation:

  • Hallucination Squatting: AI generating code that pulls from non-existent packages, which attackers can then register to inject malware.

  • The Cracker Barrel Outrage: How a bot-driven disinformation campaign manufactured fake outrage over a logo change, fooling a major company and the news media.

  • Data Poisoning: The "Russian Pravda network" seeding false information to shape the training data of future US models.

• "It’s like we’re running with... not just scissors, we’re running with katanas. And the ground that we're on is constantly changing underneath our feet." — Keith Hoodlet

• "We never should have taught runes to sand and allowed it to think." — Keith Hoodlet

• "The biggest bombshell here is that we are the vulnerability. Because we're going to get manipulated by AI in some form or fashion." — Timothy De Block

Books:

• Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare by Thomas Rid.

• The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham.

• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

• Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert.

Videos & Articles:

• 3Blue1Brown (YouTube): "But what is a neural network?" (Deep Learning Series) .

• Keith’s Blog: "Life After the AI Apocalypse".

Keith Hoodlet is a Security Researcher at Trail of Bits and the creator of Securing.dev. A self-described "technologist who wants to move to the woods," Keith specializes in application security, threat modeling, and deciphering the complex intersection of code and human behavior.

• Website: securing.dev

• Mastodon: Keith on Infosec.Exchange

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In this timely episode of the Exploring Information Security podcast, Chris Maddalena and I continue our home lab series by answering a listener's question on how to find time for a home lab.

Chris (@cmaddalena) and I were asked the question on Twitter, "How do you make time for a home lab?" We answered the question on Twitter, but also decided the question was a good topic for an EIS episode. Home labs are great for advancing a career or breaking into information security. To find the time for them requires making them a priority. It's also good to have a purpose. The time I spend with a home lab is often sporadic and coincides with research on a given area.

In this episode we discuss:

• Making a home lab a priority

• Use cases for a home lab

• Ideas for fitting a home lab into a busy schedule

More resource:

• How to build a home lab

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In this getting stared episode of the Exploring Information Security podcast, I discuss how to build a home lab with Chris Maddalena.

Chris (@cmaddalena) and I have submitted to a couple of calls for training at CircleCityCon and Converge and BSides Detroit this summer on the topic of building a home lab. I will also be speaking on this subject at ShowMeCon. Home labs are great for advancing a career or breaking into information security. The bar is really low on getting started with one. A gaming laptop with decent specifications works great. For those with a lack of hardware or funds there are plenty of online resources to take advantage of. 

In this episode we discuss:

• What is a home lab?

• Why would someone want to build a home lab?

• What are the different kinds of home labs?

• What are the requirements?

• How to get started building a home lab

More resources:

• Practice CTF List / Permanant CTF List

• VMWare Player

• Oracle VirtualBox

• SamuraiWTF

• Security Onion

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Timothy De Block sits down with Walter Haydock, founder of StackAware, to break down the complex world of AI Governance. Walter moves beyond the buzzwords to define AI governance as the management of risk related to non-deterministic systems—systems where the same input doesn't guarantee the same output.

They explore why the biggest AI risk facing organizations today isn't necessarily a rogue chatbot or a sophisticated cyber attack, but rather HR systems (like video interviews and performance reviews) that are heavily regulated and often overlooked. Walter provides a practical, three-step roadmap for organizations to move from chaos to calculated risk-taking, emphasizing the need for quantitative risk measurement over vague "high/medium/low" assessments.

• What is AI Governance?

  • Walter defines it as measuring and managing the risks (security, reputation, contractual, regulatory) of non-deterministic systems.

  • The 3 Buckets of AI Security:

    1. AI for Security: AI-powered SOCs, fraud detection.

    2. AI for Hacking: Automated pentesting, generating phishing emails.

    3. Security for AI: The governance piece—securing the models and data themselves.

• The "Hidden" HR Vulnerability:

  • While security teams focus on hackers, the most urgent vulnerability is often in Human Resources. Tools for firing, hiring, and performance evaluation are highly regulated (e.g., NYC Local Law 144, Illinois AI Video Interview Act) yet frequently lack proper oversight.

• How to Build an AI Governance Program (The First 3 Steps):

  1. Establish a Policy: Define your risk appetite (what is okay vs. not okay).

  2. Inventory Systems (with Amnesty): Ask employees what they are using without fear of punishment to get an accurate picture.

  3. Risk Assessment: Assess the inventory against your policy. Use a tiered approach: prioritize regulated/cyber-physical systems first, then confidential data, then public data.

• Quantitative Risk Management:

  • Move away from "High/Medium/Low" charts. Walter advocates for measuring risk in dollars of loss expectancy using methodologies like FAIR (Factor Analysis of Information Risk) or the Hubbard Seiers method.

• Emerging Threats:

  • Agentic AI: The next 3-5 years will be defined by "non-deterministic systems interacting with other non-deterministic systems," creating complex governance challenges.

• Regulation Roundup:

  • Companies are largely unprepared for the wave of state-level AI laws coming online in places like Colorado (SB 205), California, Utah, and Texas.

• ISO 42001: The global standard for building AI management systems (similar to ISO 27001 for info sec).

• Cloud Security Alliance (CSA): Recommended for their AI Controls Matrix.

• Book: How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk by Douglas Hubbard and Richard Seiers.

• StackAware Risk Register: A free template combining Hubbard Seiers and FAIR methodologies.

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Timothy De Block and Ed Bailey, a former customer and current Field CISO at Cribl, discuss how the company is tackling the twin problems of data complexity and AI integration. Ed explains that Cribl's core mission—derived from the French word "cribé" (to screen or sift)—is to provide data flexibility and cost management by routing the most valuable data to expensive tools like SIEMs and everything else to cheap object storage. The conversation covers the 40x productivity gains from their "human in the loop AI", Cribl Co-Pilot, and their expansion into "agentic AI" to fight back against sophisticated threats.

• Data Flexibility & Cost Management: Cribl's primary value is giving customers the flexibility to route data from "anywhere to anywhere". This allows organizations to manage costs by classifying data:

  • Valuable Data: Sent to high-value, high-cost platforms like SIMs (Splunk, Elastic).

  • Retention Data: Sent to inexpensive object storage (3 to 5 cents per gig).

  • Matching Cost and Value: This approach ensures the most valuable data gets the premium analysis while retaining all data necessary for compliance, addressing the CISO's fear of missing a critical event.

• SIEM Migration and Onboarding: Cribl mitigates the risk of disruption during SIM migration—a major concern for CISOs—by acting as an abstraction layer. This can dramatically accelerate migration time; one large insurance company was able to migrate to a next-gen SIEM in five months, a process their CISO projected would have taken two years otherwise.

• Customer Success Story (UBA): Ed shared a story where his team used Cribl Stream to quickly integrate an expensive User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UBA) tool with their SIEM in two hours for a proof-of-concept. This saved 9-10 months and the deployment of 100,000 agents, providing 100% value from the UBA tool in just two weeks.

• "Human in the Loop AI": Cribl's initial AI focus is on Co-Pilot, which helps people use the tools better. This approach prioritizes accuracy and addresses the fact that enterprise tooling is often difficult to use.

• 40x Productivity Boost: Co-Pilot Editor automates the process of mapping data into complex, esoteric data schemas (for tools like Splunk and Elastic). This reduced the time to create a schema for a custom data type from approximately a week to about one hour, representing a massive gain in workflow productivity.

• Roadmap Shift to Agentic AI: Following CriblCon, the roadmap is shifting toward "agentic AI" that operates in the background, focused on building trust through carefully controlled and validated value.

• AI in Search: The Cribl Search product has built-in AI that suggests better ways for users to write searches and utilize features, addressing the fact that many organizations fail to get full value from their searching tools because users don't know how to use them efficiently.

• Data Classification Pain Point: The biggest challenge during deployment is that many users "have never really looked at their data". This leads to time spent classifying data and defining the "why" (what is the end goal) before working on the "how".

• Pricing Models: Cribl offers two main models:

  • Self-Managed (Stream & Edge): Uses a topline license (based on capacity/terabytes purchased).

  • Cloud (Lake & Search): Uses a consumption model (based on credits/what is actually used).

• Empowering the Customer: Cribl's mission is to empower customers by opening choices and enabling their goals, contrasting with other vendors where it's "easy to get in, the data never gets out".

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Timothy De Block sits down with Mike Holcomb, founder of UtilSec, to discuss the critical and often misunderstood world of Operational Technology (OT) and Industrial Control Systems (ICS) security. Mike shares the origin story of BSides ICS, a global community-driven event designed to bridge the gap between IT security, engineering, and plant operations. The conversation dives into the "myth" of the air gap, the physical security risks in manufacturing, and why small utilities are the next major front in the cyber arms race.

• The Vanishing Air Gap: While many believe OT systems are isolated, true air gaps are rare. Connectivity is driven by contractors dropping 5G hotspots for remote troubleshooting or employees charging phones on engineering workstations, inadvertently bridging OT networks to the internet.

• Physical Security is Cyber Security: If an attacker can physically touch a device, they can own it. Mike shares a story of a VPN concentrator being stolen from a data center because there were no cameras and physical access was loosely controlled.

• IT/OT Convergence: OT security is now "cyber security" because it involves TCP/IP packets, Windows machines in production environments, and networked PLC (Programmable Logic Controllers) and HMIs (Human Machine Interfaces).

• Origin Story: BSides ICS was born out of a desire for a practical, down-to-earth alternative to highly academic or expensive "bleeding edge" conferences.

• Global Expansion: Following a successful flagship event in Miami, BSides ICS is expanding globally in 2026 with events planned for Australia, Singapore, Argentina, Mexico City, and Bristol (UK).

• Miami Flagship Details:

  • Date: February 23, 2026 (Monday before the S4 conference).

  • Location: Miami Dade College, Wolfson Campus.

  • Keynotes: Bryson Bort and Dr. Emma Stewart.

  • Features: Lockpick Village, ICS Village CTF (Capture the Flag), and a focus on diversity (achieving 50% women speakers last year).

• The Hybrid Threat: Mike discusses his research on the alignment of state adversaries (low frequency, high impact) and activists (high frequency, low impact). The concern is a move toward a high-frequency, high-impact threat environment.

• The "Long Tail" of Utilities: There are 50,000 water utilities in the U.S. 35,000 of them serve fewer than 500 clients. These "mom and pop" utilities lack the budget for basic IT security, let alone advanced OT monitoring, making them highly vulnerable targets.

• Lessons from Colonial Pipeline & Jaguar Land Rover: Major incidents have shifted executive mindsets. Jaguar Land Rover's plants were down for five weeks due to fundamental failures in backup and recovery, highlighting that even large companies struggle with security basics.

• Empathy is a Tool: The biggest problem in the field is a lack of empathy between IT and OT teams. Successful security requires understanding the engineer's goal (keeping the plant running) before enforcing security controls.

• Free Resources: Mike provides over 40 hours of free course content on YouTube, covering OT essentials, OSINT, and pen testing for OT.

• Mike Holcomb’s Website: mikeholcomb.com (Training, consulting, and course links).

• BSides ICS Website: bsidesics.org.

• Standards: IEC 62443 (The global framework for securing OT/ICS).

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In this episode, Timothy De Block sits down with a panel of cybersecurity leaders—Chris Anderson, Roger Brotz, and Mike Vetri—to discuss the realities of moving from "boots on the ground" technical roles to senior leadership. The conversation explores the challenges of letting go of the keyboard, the critical importance of emotional intelligence, and why "empathy" is a high-performance tool in a high-stress industry.

• Chris Anderson: Security Consultant and Architect known for his "pot-stirring" approach to solving complex organizational security problems.

• Roger Brotz: CISO at Arcadia Healthcare with over four decades of experience, starting his journey in 1977.

• Mike Vetri: Senior Director of Security Operations at Veeva and former Air Force cyber operations officer.

The panel dives into the true meaning of leadership, noting that the word "passion" stems from the Latin word for "suffering". Leading a cyber team means being willing to suffer through mistakes and high-pressure incidents alongside your team.

Mike shares a pivotal study indicating that leaders who embrace emotional intelligence and empathy often exceed their annual revenue goals by 20%. Conversely, a lack of empathy directly correlates to high burnout and employee turnover.

The leaders recount personal failures, from failing to recognize team burnout during 16-hour-a-day incident responses to the "pride" of holding onto technical tasks for too long. They emphasize that failure is not a roadblock but a necessary inflection point for growth.

A major challenge for new leaders is translating "this is bad" into actionable business risk. Leaders must learn to speak the language of the boardroom, focusing on profit protection and risk management rather than just technical vulnerabilities.

• Set Boundaries Early: Don't let your job intrude on your personal life until it's too late; once you establish a habit of always being available, it’s hard to pull back.

• Find Your Barometer: Use a spouse or a trusted peer as a "barometer" to tell you when your stress levels are negatively impacting your leadership style.

• Work-Life Harmony: Move away from the idea of a perfect "50/50 balance" and strive for harmony where your professional and personal lives can coexist.

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Frank M. Catucci and Timothy De Block dive into a critical, high-impact remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability affecting React Server Components and popular frameworks like Next.js, a flaw widely being referred to as React2Shell.

They discuss the severity, the rapid weaponization by botnets and state actors, and the long-term struggle organizations face in patching this class of vulnerability.

• Critical Severity: The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-55182 (and sometimes including the Next.js version, CVE-2025-66478, which was merged into it), carries a maximum CVSS score of 10.0.

• The Flaw: The issue is an unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability stemming from insecure deserialization in the React Server Components (RSC) "Flight" protocol. This allows an attacker to execute arbitrary, privileged JavaScript code on the server simply by sending a specially crafted HTTP request.

• Widespread Impact: The vulnerability affects React 19.x and other popular frameworks that bundle the react-server implementation, most notably Next.js (versions 15.x and 16.x using the App Router). It is exploitable in default configurations.

• Rapid Weaponization: The speed of weaponization is "off the chain". Within a day of public disclosure, malicious payloads were observed, with activities including:

  • Deployment of Marai botnets.

  • Installation of cryptomining malware (XMRig).

  • Deployment of various backdoors and reverse shells (e.g., SNOWLIGHT, COMPOOD, PeerBlight).

  • Attacks by China-nexus threat groups (Earth Lamia and Jackpot Panda).

• Vulnerability Management Challenge: The core problem is identifying where these vulnerable components are running in a "ridiculous ecosystem". This is not just a problem for proprietary web apps, but for any IoT devices or camera systems that may be running React.

• The Shadow of Log4j: Frank notes that the fallout from this vulnerability is expected to be similar to Log4j, requiring multiple iterative patches over time (Log4j required around five versions).

  • Many organizations have not learned their lesson from Log4j.

  • Because the issue can be three or four layers deep in open-source packages, getting a full fix requires a cascade of patches from dependent projects.

• Mitigation is Complex: Patches should be applied immediately, but organizations must also consider third-party vendors and internal systems.

  • Post-Exploitation: Assume breach. If the vulnerability was exposed, it is a best practice to rotate all secrets, API keys, and credentials that the affected server had access to.

  • WAF as a Band-Aid: A Web Application Firewall (WAF) can be a mitigating control, but blindly installing one over a critical application is ill-advised as it can break essential functionality.

• The Business Battle: Security teams often face the "age-old kind of battle" of whether to fix a critical vulnerability with a potential break/fix risk or stay open for business. Highly regulated industries, even with a CISA KEV listing, may still slow patching due to mandatory change control and liability for monetary loss if systems go down.

• Nation-State & Persistence: State actors like those from China will sit on compromised access for long periods, establishing multiple layers of backdoors and obfuscated persistence mechanisms before an active strike.

• Botnet Proliferation: The vulnerability is being used to rapidly create new botnets for massive Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.

  • DoS attack sizes are reaching terabits per second.

  • DDoS attacks are so large that some security vendors have had to drop clients to protect their remaining customers.

• Supply Chain Security: The vulnerability highlights the urgent need for investment in Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs) and Application Security Posture Management (ASPM)/Application Security Risk Management (ASRM) solutions.

  • This includes looking beyond web servers to embedded systems, medical devices, and auto software.

  • Legislation is in progress to mandate that vendors cannot ship vulnerable software and to track these components.

• Immediate Patching: This is the only definitive mitigation. Upgrade to the patched versions immediately, prioritizing internet-facing services.

• Visibility Tools: Use tools for SBOMs, ASPM, or ASRM to accurately query your entire ecosystem for affected versions of React and related frameworks.

• Testing: Run benign proof-of-concept code to test for the vulnerability on your network. Examples include simple commands like whoami. (Note: Always use trusted, non-malicious payloads for internal testing.)

• Monitor CISA KEV: The vulnerability has been added to the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.

• Research: Look for IoCs (Indicators of Compromise) and TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures) associated with post-exploitation to hunt for pervasive access and backdoors.

China-nexus cyber threat groups rapidly exploit React2Shell ... - AWS, accessed December 12, 2025, https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/china-nexus-cyber-threat-groups-rapidly-exploit-react2shell-vulnerability-cve-2025-55182/

• How react2shell-guard Gives Devs a Practical Response Plan | by am | IT Security In Plain English | Dec, 2025, accessed December 12, 2025, https://medium.com/it-security-in-plain-english/how-react2shell-guard-gives-devs-a-practical-response-plan-5f86b98c44e4

• CVE-2025-55182 – React Server Components RCE via Flight ..., accessed December 12, 2025, https://www.offsec.com/blog/cve-2025-55182/

• Security Advisory: Critical RCE Vulnerabilities in React Server Components & Next.js - Snyk, accessed December 12, 2025, https://snyk.io/blog/security-advisory-critical-rce-vulnerabilities-react-server-components/

• React2Shell flaw (CVE-2025-55182) exploited for remote code execution, accessed December 12, 2025, https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2025/12/11/react2shell-flaw-cve-2025-55182-exploited-for-remote-code-execution/

• Detecting React2Shell: The maximum-severity RCE Vulnerability affecting React Server Components and Next.js | Sysdig, accessed December 12, 2025, https://www.sysdig.com/blog/detecting-react2shell

• CVE-2025-55182 - CVE Record, accessed December 12, 2025, https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-55182

• React2Shell (CVE-2025-55182): Critical React Vulnerability | Wiz Blog, accessed December 12, 2025, https://www.wiz.io/blog/critical-vulnerability-in-react-cve-2025-55182

• React2Shell Security Bulletin | Vercel Knowledge Base, accessed December 12, 2025, https://vercel.com/react2shell

• React2Shell and related RSC vulnerabilities threat brief: early ..., accessed December 12, 2025, https://blog.cloudflare.com/react2shell-rsc-vulnerabilities-exploitation-threat-brief/

• CVE-2025-55182: React2Shell Analysis, Proof-of-Concept Chaos ..., accessed December 12, 2025, https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/25/l/CVE-2025-55182-analysis-poc-itw.html

• React2Shell: Decoding CVE-2025-55182 – The Silent Threat in React Server Components, accessed December 12, 2025, https://blog.qualys.com/product-tech/2025/12/10/react2shell-decoding-cve-2025-55182-the-silent-threat-in-react-server-components

• Serious React2Shell Vulnerabilities Require Immediate Attention, accessed December 12, 2025, https://www.sonatype.com/blog/react2shell-rce-vulnerabilities-require-immediate-attention

• React2Shell and the Case for Deception in Your Vulnerability Management Program, accessed December 12, 2025, https://www.zscaler.com/blogs/product-insights/react2shell-and-case-deception-your-vulnerability-management-program

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In this tenacious edition of the Exploring Information Security podcast, I talk with Frank Catucci of Qualys as we answer the questions: "What is application security?"

Frank (@en0fmc) has a lot of experience with application security. His current role is the director for web application security and product management at Qualys.  He's also the chapter leader for OWASP Columbia, SC. He lives and breathes application security.

In this episode we discuss:

• What is applications security?

• Why is application security important?

• Where application security should be integrated

• Resources for getting into application security

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