Risky Bulletin

The French government calls out Russian hacks for the first time, Marks & Spencer sends staff home after a ransomware attack, China accuses America of hacking a major cryptography provider, and AirBorne vulnerabilities impact Apple’s AirPlay.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq discuss the Southeast Asian criminal syndicates that run online scam compounds. Should organisations like US Cyber Command or the UK’s National Cyber Force target these gangs with disruption operations?

This episode is also available on Youtube.

A new prompt injection attack is effective against all the big AI models, Poland says Facebook is failing to remove malicious ads, Africa’s largest telco discloses a security breach, and hackers breach Malaysian brokerage accounts.

In this Risky Business News sponsor interview, Catalin Cimpanu talks with Edward Wu, founder and CEO of Dropzone AI. Edward talks about the impact AI in modern-day SOC teams and how its role slowly becomes a force multiplier and productivity boost rather than workforce replacement.

Cybercriminals stole more than $16 billion last year, Iran tries to hack an EU official, the Lazarus Groups pulls off a successful watering hole and zero-day attack, and WhatsApp adds new chat privacy features.

Tom Uren and Adam Boileau talk about how scam compound criminal syndicates are responding to strong government action by moving operations overseas. It’s good they are being affected, but they are shifting into new countries that don’t have the ability to counter industrial-scale transnational organised crime.

They also discuss CISA’s Secure by Design initiative and that key people behind the program have left the organisation. Given prospective job cuts at CISA it is hard to see the initiative getting a lot of love, but international cyber security authorities should pick up the slack.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

Russian military personnel targeted with Android spyware, Trump defends Hegseth after second Signalgate scandal, CISA’s Secure by Design leaders depart the agency, and forced-labour cyber scam compounds expand globally.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq discuss whether cyber operations can be ‘strategic’, that is, can they affect the fate of nations.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

Zoom has a remote control feature so of course crypto thieves are abusing it, hackers make $700 million in unauthorised stock trades, a Chinese APT leaks its exploits and Euro MPs traveling to Hungary are offered anti-spying pouches for their phones.

In this Risky Bulletin sponsor interview Shane Harding, CEO of Devicie, talks to Tom Uren about trends in the enterprise software and security market that he thinks will have huge impacts. Software is becoming smarter and aims to solve problems rather than simply provide capabilities and Microsoft has embarked on a big push into the SME security market.