Risky Bulletin

Tom Uren and Patrick Gray talk about a new report that compares Chinese and American 0day pipelines. The US is narrowly focussed on acquiring exquisitely stealthy and reliable exploits, while China casts a far broader net. That was fine in the past, but as 0days get harder and harder to find, the report argues that the US needs to change the way it goes about getting them.

The pair also talk about Cyber Command supporting the US bomb strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. We like to believe in magic cyber capabilities, but we suspect the truth was far more mundane in this case.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

Hackers fully open a valve at a Norwegian dam, the US house bans WhatsApp on staff devices, Russia wants to build a national IMEI database, and four REvil members are released after time served.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq dive into the motivations and actions of Predatory Sparrow, a purported hacktivist group that has been attacking Iran for the last five years and has leapt into the Iran-Israel war.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

The White House rejects the Pentagon’s nominee for NSA & CyberCom leader, the FCC probes the US Cyber Trust Mark program, a cyberattack disrupts Russia’s animal products industry, and hackers leak data about everyone in Paraguay.

In this Risky Bulletin sponsor interview Fletcher Heisler, CEO of Authentik, talks to Tom Uren about the inflection points that make organisations consider rationalising their Identity Providers (IdPs). The pair also discuss sovereign tech stacks and how to earn the trust of customers.

Russian hackers abuse app-specific passwords to bypass multi-factor, the tenth Salt Typhoon victim is identified, Predatory Sparrow destroys $90 million from an Iranian crypto-exchange, and Argentina arrests a Russian disinfo gang.

Tom Uren and Patrick Gray talk about a Minnesota man who used people-search services to locate, stalk and eventually murder political targets.

They also discuss purported hacktivist group Predatory Sparrow weighing in on the Iran-Israel conflict. It has attacked Iran’s financial system including a bank associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp and also burnt USD$90 million worth of cryptocurrency from an Iranian exchange

This episode is also available on Youtube.

An Israeli-linked hacktivist group claims attack on Iranian bank, Chrome gets a new prompt to prevent local network attacks, a Century-old German napkin company goes under following ransomware attack, and Europol takes down the Archetyp dark web market.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq take a look at a new AI-powered covert influence campaign and compare it to World War 2 efforts.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

Email accounts compromised at the Washington Post, shady email provider Cock.li gets hacked, hackers steal data from a French university, and the EU invests €145 million in hospital cybersecurity.