Greg Otto from Intel 471 joins Dave to discuss the findings of their work on "Cybercriminals preying on a travel surge with a host of different scams." Dave and Joe share some interesting listener follow up from Kevin, who writes in about the deepfakes episode and shares his comments on how scary the topic can be, especially with politicians. Dave shares a story about Charles Egunjobi, an auditor with the D.C. government, and how he fell victim to an online love scam costing elderly U.S. citizens $1.9 million. Joe touches on two stories, one being how a woman down in Texas is able to scam men out of some expensive items with a romance scam, and the other being a story that is warning Pennsylvania residents on a quick moving scam artist moving from state to state. Our catch of the day comes from Jon in California who writes in about about an email scam concerning a local job sent to him and how he needs to apply right away.

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The use of similar-looking characters in a phishing URL to spoof a legitimate site.

CyberWire Glossary link:

Audio reference link: “Mission Impossible III 2006 Masking 01,” uploaded by DISGUISE MASK, 28 July 2018.

This week Carole Theriault interviews Chuck Everette from Deep Instinct on public and private partnerships. Dave and Joe share some listener follow up from Rodney who writes in about flexible spending cards and chips inside them as well as sharing technology that helps keep the scammers away. Joe's story follows the trend of fake invoicing, specifically through PayPal and the newest string of scammers getting people to call in about a pending charge. Dave shares a story where people are getting sent fake Microsoft products in hopes to steal information after they plug these products into their computers. Our catch of the day comes from listener William who writes in about getting an increasing amount of emails from fake accounts saying they have charged his card and there is a pending transaction. William shares how the scammers are trying to get him to call in to dispute the charges.

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The deployment of rules to the security stack across all data islands, cloud, SaaS applications, data centers, and mobile devices designed to manifest an organization's cybersecurity first principle strategies of zero trust, intrusion kill chain prevention, resilience, and risk forecasting. 

CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/policy-orchestration

Audio reference link: “The Value of Using Security Policy Orchestration and Automation,” by David Monahan, uploaded by EMAResearch, 3 April, 2018

Guest Etay Maor of Cato Networks joins Dave Bittner to discuss the impact that deepfakes will have on our society, we share some fun feedback on the Lightning Rod story edit, Dave's story talks about how some of the most successful and lucrative online scams employ a “low-and-slow” approach, Joe's story is about 2 Arkansas farmer that scammed investors out of money for wind turbines, but used it for houses, cars and Disney World, and our Catch of the Day is from an unnamed listener with a supposed iPhone invoice.

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Software designed to prevent cheating in video games. 

CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/anti-cheat-software

Audio reference link: “The BIG Problem with Anti-Cheat,” by Techquickie, YouTube, 5 June 2020

Mallory Sofastaii from Baltimore's WMAR 2 News sits down with Joe to talk about some recent stories on scams she's covered on Matter for Mallory. Dave and Joe share some listener follow up from Robert who writes in about the technical means to protect phones from robocalls. He shares some insight on how carriers up in the north are able to protect phones. Dave shares a twitter thread from Brian Jay Jones, who is an author of biographies of Jim Henson, George Lucas and Dr. Seuss, who shares how he would have almost had his Twitter account hijacked if it weren't for 2-step verification. Joe's story is on a gentleman pleading guilty in PAC scams, raising almost 3.5 million by making false and misleading representations in the 2016 election. This week we have a string of catch of the days from different listeners sharing different SMS scams.

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Malware, in the guise of ransomware, that destroys data rather than encrypts.

CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/pseudoransomware

Audio reference link: “Some Men Just Want to Watch the World Burn | the Dark Knight,” by YouTube, 2 November 2019.

Ari Parker, Lead Advisor from Chapter, discussing "Tips for Avoiding Medicare Scams." Joe and Dave share some follow up from several listeners, who write in about various scams they have encountered. Joe's story is on Facebook messenger and how more and more victims are being claimed to scams and cons through the popular social media app. Dave's story shares disturbing information regarding LinkedIn scams, explaining how North Koreans are stealing resumes off the job site in a new crypto job search scam. Our catch of the day comes from listener Jon who writes in about him receiving $10,500,000.00 and how he needs to claim this offer before the end of 2021. Sadly he missed the deadline and wanted to share.

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A browser configuration control that prevents accessing resources within a private network.

CyberWire Glossary link:

Audio reference link: “TPM (Trusted Platform Module) - Computerphile,” Computerphile, 23 July 2021