Risky Bulletin

The Kaleidoscope ad fraud network infects 2.5 million devices a month, Germany seizes the eXch crypto-mixing service, the US takes down the Anyproxy botnet, and Chrome will use on-device AI to detect tech support scams.

In this Risky Bulletin sponsor interview James Pope, Director of Technical Enablement, talks to Tom Uren about his experience running networks and security centres at Black Hat conferences around the world. Pope talks about the challenges of running a SOC at a hacker conference, how conference networks around the world have a different character and talks about all the weird and wonderful security snafus he has found.

France says Russia’s influence operations are achieving results, Crowdstrike lays off 5% of its staff, a hacker dumps LockBit’s ransomware database, and a ransomware attack slows production at a major US medical device maker.

Tom Uren and Patrick Gray talk about how the US is planning to take the gloves off in cyberspace and conduct much more aggressive offensive cyber operations. US responses to cyber espionage have not been very aggressive to date, but Tom is not convinced that cyber punches are required, so much as blows that really hurt.

The pair also discuss TeleMessage, the Signal clone the Trump cabinet has been using. The app managed to sidestep certification and assessment processes and ended up being used by various agencies in the US government. And the White House. It’s a mystery how this happened.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

NSO Group ordered to pay Meta $167 million dollars, the White House tells N-S-A to cut 8% of its civilian staff, the US sanctions a Myanmar militia group leader for cyber scams, and one of the Nomad Bridge hackers gets arrested in Israel.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about an in-depth report on a Ukrainian hacking control panel. The panel shows how the Ukrainian group thinks about hacking operations and the pair discuss why the report exists and what it achieves.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

The Trump admin’s Signal clone gets hacked, a six-year-old backdoor comes to life to hijack online stores, a Phishing kingpin identified as a 24-year-old Chinese man, and Ireland fines TikTok for transferring EU user data to China.

In this Risky Bulletin sponsor interview Mike Wiaceck, CEO and founder of Stairwell, explains why he believes security is really a data storage and retrieval problem. He demonstrates how that pays off with in the analysis of new malware.

New Microsoft accounts will be passwordless by default, a Chinese APT is hijacking software updates, the US dominates EU cybersecurity market, and Commvault discloses a breach.

Tom Uren and Patrick Gray talk about a SentinelOne report about how it is constantly targeted by both cybercriminal and state-backed hackers. Security firms are high-value targets, so constant attacks on them are the new normal.

They also discuss an article that calls Signal “a kind of dark matter of American politics and media”. Many policy discussions occur on the app, and this explains the Trump administration’s extensive use of the app.

This episode is also available on Youtube.