Tom Uren and Amberleigh Jack talk about Huawei’s contract to manage storage for Spain’s lawful intercept system. News broke this week that Spain had signed a €12 million contract, but it turns out Huawei has been involved in the system since 2004!

They also discuss arrests in the UK of four individuals associated with Scattered Spider. The criminal resumés of two of the suspects support the idea that there are key individuals with outsize impact. But they also reinforce that the online communities they are involved in act as training grounds for cyber criminals. Arrests will slow hacks, not stop them.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

Salt Typhoon breaches a US state’s National Guard, Ukrainian hackers wipe the servers of a Russian drone maker, the UK relocates Afghans caught up in a data leak, and Microsoft outsources some US government work to China.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq examine whether US cyber operations are too stealthy. Could they get more bang for the buck if they adopted a devil may care attitude to getting busted?

This episode is also available on Youtube.

A radio equipment vulnerability can bring trains to sudden stops, researchers prevent a Lazarus crypto attack, Spain hands Huawei control over its phone wiretapping system, and CISA warns of ongoing CitrixBleed 2 attacks.

In this Risky Business sponsored interview, Zero Networks Field CTO, Chris Boehm discusses the everyone-gets-an-AI future with Casey Ellis. Zero Networks makes network microsegmentation achievable without simply handing an AI control of the network. Will generative artificial intelligence ever be trusted to make hard access control decisions?

Two billion eSIMs receive crucial security patches, China’s cyber militias go on the offensive, four Scattered Spider members detained over UK retail attacks, and a Russian basketball player is arrested in a ransomware case.

Tom Uren and Amberleigh Jack talk about our developing understanding of the group that people call Scattered Spider. Independent security firms agree that there are a small number of key people that are driving the group’s outrageous success. That gives us hope that targeted action might stem the bleeding.

They also talk about data leaks from China’s cyber espionage ecosystem that are for sale on a data leak site. These look to contain actionable information from a counterintelligence point of view. And Tom wonders if a market for espionage-as-a-service will develop?

This episode is also available on Youtube.

Italy arrests a Chinese APT hacker, a Russian drone software group gets wiped, the SatanLock ransomware operation shuts down, and browser extensions power a web scraping botnet.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about how there is an opportunity for the US to expand its 0day and talent acquisition pool to Asia. They revisit a paper comparing the Chinese and American 0day acquisition strategies and have some quibbles.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

Chinese security researchers claim to have found a new American APT, the SEC and SolarWinds are seeking a settlement, a company insider was behind Brazil’s bank hack, and Luis Vuitton discloses a security breach.