Risky Bulletin

An AI-driven hacking campaign breached 600 Fortinet devices, Ivanti was hacked via its own product, Wikipedia bans Archive-dot-Today for DDoS attacks, and Chinese hackers breached Italy’s police force.

In this Risky Business sponsor interview, Casey Ellis and Feross Aboukhadijeh discuss how AI is affecting open source, chat about a few attacks the company has seen in the wild and introduce Socket’s answer to the smouldering trashfire: Socket Firewall.

RPKI relies on vulnerable servers, the French Ministry of Economy discloses a data breach, the UK gives tech platforms 48 hours to remove revenge porn, and ClickFix-attacks are responsible for 50% of malware infections.

Tom Uren and Amberleigh Jack talk about a groundswell of calls from European officials to build cyber capabilities to strike back against adversaries. There are good reasons that countries should have their own cyber capabilities, but if you don’t have the political will to strike back, having a magic cyber weapon doesn’t really make a difference.

They also talk about ‘distillation attacks’. They are a way that AI developers can steal the secret sauce of advanced models just by asking questions. It looks like American companies need government assistance if the US wants to keep its AI lead.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

A supply chain attack plants backdoors on Android tablets, the EU blocks AI from lawmakers’ devices, Cellebrite was used against a Kenyan politician, and a Chinese APT is exploiting a Dell zero-day.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq discuss whether middle powers should be investing in military cyber capabilities.

This episode is also available on Youtube

Cambodia promises to dismantle cyber scam compounds by April, CISA urges companies to adopt the OpenEoX standard, Linux gets post-quantum crypto support, and Palo Alto Networks avoids attributing an APT to China.

In this sponsored interview Casey Ellis chats to Tod Beardsley, VP of Security at RunZero about Kevology, the company’s analysis of CISA’s KEV list. Kevology lets you easily identify and fix vulnerabilities from the list that are urgent and relevant to you.

A Malware developer faked his own death to evade the FBI, Apple patches a zero-day used in a targeted attack, the Tianfu Cup quietly returns, and researchers spot the first malicious Outlook add-in.

Tom Uren and Amberleigh Jack talk about Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s messaging around personnel changes at the top of its security organisation. These signal a focus on selling security products rather than on making secure products.

They also discuss Expedition Cloud, a Chinese cyber range that replicated the critical infrastructure of neighbouring countries, apparently to develop and fine-tune cyber disruption operations.

Finally, they talk about what we’ve learnt about the role of cyber operations in the US bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities. It was far bigger than we previously thought.

This episode is also available on Youtube.