Risky Bulletin

Authorities dismantle the KillSec hacking group, South Africa thwarts a ransomware attack against air traffic control systems, the US sanctions Venezuelan ATM hackers and a Chinese APT targets AI experts.

Amberleigh Jack and James Wilson chat about OpenAI agents’ recent escapades into Australian government websites. OpenAI has promised to “rebuild trust with Australians” but we’re likely getting a glimpse into the new normal, here.

They also discuss how the ShinyHunters hacking group has found itself on law enforcement’s target list after breaching FBI systems. The group played some stupid games and they appear to be in the “stupid prizes” stage.

This episode is also available on YouTube

A ShinyHunters suspect has been arrested in the Netherlands, Apple fixes an iOS zero-day found by Meta, recent Citrix zero-days see mass exploitation within hours and NVIDIA launches an AI sandboxing platform.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about the rise of fully automated LLM-driven hacking campaigns among criminals and even state hacking groups. For those with the right risk appetite, a move fast and break things hacking approach using AI can pay off.

This episode is also available on YouTube.

Intel removes cash rewards from its bug bounty program, OpenAI agents probed dozens of organizations, Fraudsters scam €95 million from an Italian bank and Bitget is hacked for $350 million.

In this Risky Business sponsored interview James Wilson chats to Kieron Hughes and Andrzej Matykiewicz from PortSwigger about the company’s latest AI pen-testing product, Burp AT. The model has different levels of autonomy modes and is natively integrated with Burp Suite so once it finds vulnerabilities it can spin up intruder attacks, configure everything and brute-force the code.

The three also chat about the experiences of beta trial users, including one that found a vulnerability that disclosed reports from the company’s anonymous whistle blower platform.

A major vulnerability has been found in the ancient TACACS+ networking protocol, Australia’s Prime Minister claims an OpenAI agent hacked the country’s Medicare website, OpenAI gives Ukraine access to its Daybreak cyber-defense program and the UK will establish an anti-disinformation center.

Tom Uren and Patrick Gray talk about US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ruling out liability exemptions for AI companies. Its a good move. Leaving the companies on the hook keeps the pressure on them to do better with their cyber security and testing controls.

They also discuss a Russian AI-powered cyberespionage campaign run by a group known as Midnight Blizzard. It used AI workflows to run the entire campaign so they got a lot more hacking done and accepted AI mistakes. This makes sense given that they want more intelligence from Ukrainian targets and don’t care at all about getting caught.

This episode is also available on YouTube.

A network of 10,000 AI servers is masking malicious Chinese AI activity, Ukrainian hackers leak Russia’s naval secrets, ShinyHunters hacks the FBI, and the EvilTokens phishing service is disrupted by tech companies.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about whether there is such a thing as real-time cyber defence. Will agentic AI save us from hacking AI?

This episode is also available on YouTube.