Know Your Adversary™

In Episode 6 of Know Your Adversary™, we detail a previous supply chain attack from 2007 and then again in 2015 against a security software company. Our guest is Lucidum CEO, Joel Fulton. Foreign nation states conducted detailed recon and knew when a router was going to be rebooted for maintenance updates. Upon rebooting the router, the attackers “slipped through the crack” and into the software provider’s network by exploiting a vulnerability of the router model.

In Episode 5 of Know Your Adversary™, we discuss a 2018 Nisos insider threat investigation of network sabotage that caused almost $1M in business operations loss. Following a recent M&A transaction, IT engineers of the nearly acquired subsidiary were upset with their new roles. The results of the sabotage were a complete subsidiary network outage for over a week and a subsequent Nisos, partner, and FBI investigation that led to the arrest and detention of one co-conspirator.

In Episode 4 of Know Your Adversary, we are joined by Gigamon Senior Manager Joe Slowik. Our discussion takes a look into the world of Russian nation-state hacking units, particularly the GRU and the SVR. We take a deep dive into the 2015 and 2016 cyber attacks against the Ukrainian power grid and review how Russia’s capabilities are increasing in sophistication, mainly through lateral hand-offs between the teams of hackers operating in IT and OT environments.

In Episode 3 of Know Your Adversary™ we are joined by Shawn Valle, former Chief Information Security Officer at Rapid 7. Our discussion takes a look into the world of online platform abuse and fraud. We explore threat actors’ use of bots to make bulk purchases online. We also tell the story of a security researcher on the wrong side of the law. Learn about the path he took from disclosing a breach to demanding a ransom payment.

In Episode 2 of KYA, we discuss an attempted compromise of a Managed Service Provider by a disgruntled former employee who tried to sell backdoor access on the dark web. Our guest the VP of Threat Hunting at Binary Defense, Randy Pargman.

Key Takeaways:

In most cases, malicious actors typically fall into several groups that perpetuate different stages of digital crimes.

Selling unauthorized access that could impact hundreds of other commercial victims justified unmasking at the identity level.

In episode 1 of the Know Your Adversary™ Podcast, we are joined by Mark Ray,  former FBI Special Agent, Kamal Ghali  former Assistant US Attorney and current partner at Bondurant, Mixon & Elmore, and former FBI Forensics Expert and current Technical Principal at Nisos Willis McDonald. We discuss one of the most famous cyber criminal cases of the 21st century, the attribution and takedown of Spyeye malware developer Alexander Panin and his primary facilitator Hamza Bendallaj.

Welcome to the podcast series, “Know Your Adversary™”.  In this podcast series, we will  show you how organizations can achieve attribution, unmask adversaries,  and understand the context of threats against their enterprise. Thank you and stay tuned for our first episode which will be the attribution of the well-known Spyeye malware developers.