Lost In Cyberia

Picture this: it’s 1 am and you’re about to go to sleep. You glance at your phone and the unread email count is climbing, again and again. You open your inbox to find hundreds of newsletters you never signed up for, in languages you don’t speak, from websites you’ve never heard of. What is going on?

It’s a decoy. Scammers flood your inbox so that one email, usually a receipt or confirmation for a fraudulent purchase, gets buried before you ever see it.

In this episode, we’re joined by Sekar Langit, a cybersecurity specialist at a financial institution in New York, who lived this exact scenario. Even with experience running security awareness, she found herself with a hijacked card and a $1,000 lilac iPhone waiting to be collected. Sekar walks us through what happened, how card skimming at ATMs fits into the picture, what to look for before you use a cash machine, and why trusting your instinct (and Googling it) might be the best defence you have.

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Have you thought about changing careers recently? Our guest has changed careers multiple times. She moved from tourism and events, to employment consulting, to tech, and finally into space.

Geraldine Olea is the founder of Academy Olea, which helps professionals pivot into tech careers, and Olea Pacific Advisory, which helps international space organisations enter the Australian market. She was a Mentor of the Year finalist at this year's Space Connect Awards, and her writing on career transitions and diversity in tech has appeared in Entrepreneur, The Daily Telegraph, and Women's Agenda.

Annie-Mei and Anika sit down with Geraldine to talk about how people can use their existing skills to transition into other industries, as well as the relationship between cybersecurity and space. They discuss the famous Australian movie The Dish and what the space industry is like.

They also get into why more women are moving into cybersecurity, what it's like being the diversity hire in a male-dominated industry, and why representation can't rest on the shoulders of just one person.

Note: just to clarify that The Dish in Parkes is a telescope

Connect with Geraldine: 
🔗 academyolea.com 
🔗 oleapacificadvisory.com

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Content note: this episode discusses technology-facilitated abuse and may not be suitable for all listeners.

In this episode, we're joined by Emerald Sage who is the founder and CEO of the Digital Resilience Project, a not-for-profit supporting people experiencing technology-facilitated abuse through trauma-informed digital safety services.

With over 20 years in open source intelligence (OSINT), including more than a decade working within Australia's government security and intelligence community, Emerald is now using her skills to give back through the Digital Resilience Project.

We break down what OSINT actually is, why it's become a democratising force in intelligence work, and how the very same techniques used for national security can be weaponised against everyday people. 

While we all want to take photos of special moments in our life (eg. graduations, weddings and birthdays), Emerald provides some useful tips on how we can be a little more careful so that we aren't giving away things like our location or workplace.

We also go deep on technology-facilitated abuse: how perpetrators exploit smart home devices, connected vehicles, and AI-generated image-based abuse to monitor and control victim-survivors, and why Emerald believes the biggest misconception about digital safety is that it's a 'tech problem' rather than a people problem. 

We asked what inspired Emerald to start the Digital Resilience Project and the reasons may surprise you.

Resources mentioned:

• Digital Resilience Project (digitalresilienceproject.org)
• ANROWS research on technology-facilitated abuse (https://www.anrows.org.au/publication/technology-facilitated-abuse-national-survey-of-australian-adults-experiences/read/)
• eSafety Commissioner's Office (https://www.esafety.gov.au/)

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What is it actually like to be a cybercriminal?

Well, you're about to find out. We spoke to Sammy Chuks, a cybersecurity leader, vCISO, and founder of Hck4G.

Sammy grew up in Lagos in Nigeria. A country where youth unemployment sits close to 80% and the paths available to young people is limited. 

He became the neighbourhood's go-to computer repair guy, but inadvertently became the IT support for local cybercriminals, learning the mechanics of business email compromise, romance scams, and money laundering.

But at one point he asked himself, 'What am I doing? What do I want to do with my life?' After coming to Australia, Sammy's future was looking bright. He started getting good jobs and was creating a better life for himself. 

He kept thinking though about the thousands of teenagers who are lured into cybercrime. And it's not just a problem in Africa, it's happening in other parts of the world too.

In this episode you'll hear how cybercrime in Nigeria has shifted from taboo to culture. Parents are now buying laptops for their kids to participate, which is crazy.

We also discuss Hck4G. Why it exists and how it's helping to provide pathways for people outside of cybercrime, victim support and community education.

If you'd like to check out Hck4G, head to their website: https://hck4g.org/

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Are you a small business owner wondering how to protect your business against scams and cyber attacks?

In this episode of Lost in Cyberia, we are joined by Kimberley Roberts-Salee, Head of Marketing & Communications at Cyber Wardens. Australia's free, government-funded cybersecurity training program for small businesses.

Kim brings a human take to a topic that can feel overwhelming. Coming from a small business marketing background, she's proof that you don't need to be an IT expert to protect yourself online.

We cover:

• The three most common cybercrimes targeting small businesses: inbox break-ins, invoice scams, and online banking fraud
• Why long, strong, unique passwords + multi-factor authentication are still the gold standard
• How cyber criminals are less 'hoodie guy in a basement' and more organised crime empires
• The real cost of a cyber attack: financial, mental, and reputational
• Why the fear approach to cybersecurity doesn't work, and what does
• The surprisingly cybersecurity-savvy world of acupuncturists
• Why your team needs a code word in the age of AI deepfakes
• And the simple habit that could save you thousands: just call and check

Whether you run a small business, work for one, or just want to protect yourself online, this episode gives you practical, jargon-free advice you can use today.

Visit cyberwardens.com.au to access free courses (including foundations, AI safety for small business, and supply chain security).

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If financial crime were a country, it would be the third biggest economy after the United States and China.

Iain Russell, threat prevention director at Unphish, joins Annie-Mei and Anika to walk through the shift from awareness to disruption. He talks about how they're using open-source intelligence, pattern matching, and machine learning to take down fraudulent domains, rogue apps, and social media impersonation before any damage is done. Because relying on consumers to spot every threat is just not feasible.

The conversation goes deep on how AI and cheap dark web toolkits have industrialised fraud, lowering the barrier to entry so that almost anyone can run a scam at scale. Iain explains why this isn't just a consumer affairs issue anymore. The money flowing through these pipelines is funding organised crime and, in some cases, destabilising governments.

That brings us to Australia's Scams Prevention Framework (SPF) and why it falls short. With key industry codes still missing, major sectors like superannuation and crypto left out, and no clear roadmap for what comes next, Iain breaks down what good policy could actually look like, and what other countries are already doing that we could learn from.

We need to stop victim blaming people who fall for scams and instead drive change in a world where everyone is expected to operate online.

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Why do people click on phishing links? Is it due to lack of awareness training? Is it lack of interest in securing their organisation? And what happens when AI agents, cognitive warfare, and weaponised ambiguity enter the picture?

We chat with Dr. Matt Canham who is the director of the Cognitive Security Institute, former cybercrime investigator with the U.S. Department of Justice, and one of the leading voices in behavioural cybersecurity.

Dr. Canham shares his research on 'repeat clickers'. This is the small percentage of users (around 3–5%) responsible for nearly half of all simulated phishing incidents. Crucially, it's not ignorance. These people know the policies. So what's actually going wrong, and how do we fix it? The answer involves training the brain's fast, automatic responses rather than relying on conscious decision-making.

The conversation then expands into the territory of AI agents as a new attack surface, the emerging field of neurosecurity, and cognitive warfare. If you're not sure what cognitive warfare is we explain how it's the disruption of decision-making as a strategic weapon. Dr. Canham also introduces the concept of ASID attacks, which exploit narrative and ambiguity rather than software vulnerabilities.

Plus, details on the first-ever Cognitive Security Conference, coming to Las Vegas this August.

Cognitive Security Institute:
https://www.cognitivesecurityinstitute.org/

Cognitive Security Institute Conference tickets:
https://www.cognitivesecurityinstitute.org/cognitive-security-conference

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The best thing about attending events around the world is the people you meet. Annie-Mei met Jadon at a DEFCON after-party in 2025, where Jadon was struggling to get the bartender's attention for a beer. Nothing bonds people like needing a cold beverage. Jadon is the founder of New York-based Maro, a tool he describes as a security buddy that helps employees actually follow policy. Maro is a cute flame character that intervenes in real time when someone's about to paste sensitive data into an unapproved AI tool or fall for a social engineering attack.

Jadon took an unusual path to cybersecurity. At Yale, he studied books so that he'd be able to understand what people were talking about at cocktail parties (which, to be fair, is a useful skill to have) but then he ended up going down the computer science path. He got the attention of a salesperson who he cold contacted and managed to get an internship at Threat Stack. 

The three of us discussed a lot of topics including AI regulation, sovereign AI, cognitive security and so much more. Make sure you endorse Jadon for 'tequila' on LinkedIn!

Jadon’s LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jadoncm?utm_source=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=member_ios

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When life gets overwhelming, more and more people are turning to AI chatbots for emotional support, and it's not hard to see why. Traditional therapy remains out of reach for many due to cost, stigma, and availability. But what happens when the tool you're leaning on was never designed to hold that weight?

In this episode, we chat to Dr. Rachel Wood. She's a cyber psychology PhD and founder of the AI Mental Health Collective. Dr. Wood helps us untangle the growing relationship between artificial intelligence and our emotional lives. She explains the difference between the general-purpose 'omnibots' millions use daily and the clinically grounded, human-supervised tools actually built for mental health support. The difference, she argues, matters more than most people realise.

We explore how AI can be genuinely useful as a rehearsal space. A low-stakes environment to practise empathy, work through difficult conversations, and build social confidence. But we can't rely on it too heavily because that comes with costs like cognitive offloading, emotional dependency, eroded critical thinking, and the subtle but significant loss of what she calls 'failure and repair' in human relationships.

We also get into the design choices that either protect or endanger users, and why sharing your most sensitive emotional data with an AI platform carries real privacy risks.

The takeaway? AI is going to continue to be used but it'll never fully replace other forms of mental health support. As Dr. Wood puts it, nothing protects us from over-dependence on technology quite like investing in high-quality human connection.

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Policy. Diplomacy. Cyber. Three words guaranteed to clear a room (or so you'd think).

But cyber diplomacy matters and we provide real-world examples like the 2007 cyber attacks on Estonia, the Medibank breach and Australia slapping sanctions on Russian hackers and the infamous Stuxnet worm. 

In this episode we break down what cyber diplomacy is, why it matters and what Australia is actually doing to strengthen ties across the Indo-Pacific (with a healthy dose of Mean Girls references and Harry Potter nostalgia thrown in).

(P.S. Anika called it 3 Days in Mariupol - it's 20 Days in Mariupol. Still haunting either way)

Australian Volunteers Program:

https://www.australianvolunteers.com/

20 Days In Mariupol:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/11/20-days-in-mariupol-documentary-oscar

Why is it called the Quad?

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-real-significance-of-the-quad/

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