ShadowTalk: Powered by ReliaQuest

An employee connects to hotel Wi-Fi, receives a familiar Microsoft 365 sign-in prompt, and authenticates. No phishing email. No malicious link. No suspicious attachment. Yet an attacker walks away with a valid, MFA-satisfied session token.

 Join hosts Alexandra Moore and John Dilgen as they break down:

• How compromised hotel and conference-center Wi-Fi gateways silently redirect Microsoft authentication traffic
• Why hardcoded DNS, opportunistic encrypted DNS, and MFA may not stop the attack
• How device-code phishing and WPAD abuse expand the campaign’s reach
• Practical defenses—including always-on, full-tunnel VPN, strict-mode encrypted DNS, and Conditional Access controls

 Two questions your organization should be asking right now:

• Does your always-on VPN tunnel all DNS and authentication traffic, or do split-tunneling exceptions leave traveling employees exposed?
• Who is permitted to authenticate through the device-code flow, and does each exception have a legitimate business justification?

John Dilgen: Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst at ReliaQuest, where he specializes in researching cyber threats impacting ReliaQuest customers. With a strong technical background, he previously served as an Incident Response Analyst and Trainer at ReliaQuest.

Alexandra Moore: Manager of Threat Intelligence at ReliaQuest, where she leads intelligence analysis and customer dissemination to help organizations understand and respond to emerging cyber threats. Prior to this, she established and scaled monitoring across Russian-language cybercriminal platforms at Digital Shadows, building collection and analytical coverage to support digital risk protection capabilities.

Defenders aren't losing ground on one front, they're losing it on two at once. The largest Patch Tuesday in history just dropped alongside a 1,380% surge in phishing, and threat actors aren't waiting for you to catch up.

Join hosts Alexandra Moore and John Dilgen as they break down: 

• How new extortion group Helix and ClickFix are weaponizing identity compromise at scale 
• Why 622 vulnerabilities in a single week signals a permanent shift in the discovery rate
• Practical defenses for both fronts without doubling your team

 Two questions your organization should be asking right now:

• Have you audited which accounts in your environment are permitted to authenticate via device code grants and restricted the ones that don't need it?
• Does your IR runbook hunt for additional compromised accounts, or does it stop at the one sending extortion demands?

Resources: https://linktr.ee/ReliaQuestShadowTalk

John Dilgen: Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst at ReliaQuest, where he specializes in researching cyber threats impacting ReliaQuest customers. With a strong technical background, he previously served as an Incident Response Analyst and Trainer at ReliaQuest.

Alexandra Moore: Manager of Threat Intelligence at ReliaQuest, where she leads intelligence analysis and customer dissemination to help organizations understand and respond to emerging cyber threats. Prior to this, she established and scaled monitoring across Russian-language cybercriminal platforms at Digital Shadows, building collection and analytical coverage to support digital risk protection capabilities.

When a 20-person team using AI, automated tools, and a list of default credentials compromised 70,000 devices across 194 countries they exposed how mature the criminal market behind credential theft has become. Initial access brokers are now packaging pre-validated enterprise access for an average of $113,000, and the window from information stealer infection to ransomware deployment is just seven days.

Join hosts Tehman Tariq and John Dilgen as they break down:

• The mechanics behind FortiBleed and what made it so effective at scale
• How the IAB market has turned stolen credentials into a premium product
• Why identity drift and non-human identities are becoming attackers' favorite targets

 Two questions your organization should be asking right now:

• Does your credential compromise runbook treat session termination as the first step — or is password rotation all that's covered?
• Can your team name the owner and rotation schedule for your top 10 most privileged non-human identities?

Resources: https://linktr.ee/ReliaQuestShadowTalk

Tehman Tariq: Sr. Manager of Cyber Operations at ReliaQuest. He has spent a majority of my career leading our Incident Response, Security Architecture, and Detection teams. As well has working hand in hand with CISOs to introduce automation allowing for the maturity of their security programs.

John Dilgen: Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst at ReliaQuest, where he specializes in researching cyber threats impacting ReliaQuest customers. With a strong technical background, he previously served as an Incident Response Analyst and Trainer at ReliaQuest.

When 300,000 internal messages from the world's most prolific ransomware gang were leaked, they exposed more then a shadowy underground network, a full company. HR departments. Conti operated with the structure of a mid-sized software firm, and that changes how defenders need to think about the ransomware landscape today.

Join host John and special guest Geoff White, journalist and author of Rinsed, as they discuss:

• How Conti's internal org chart compares to a legitimate software company
• The human cost of ransomware targeting critical infrastructure
• Why ransomware groups keep splintering and rebuilding

 Two questions your organization should be asking right now:

• When your team thinks about ransomware, are they thinking about a criminal enterprise with structure, funding, and KPIs — or just a hacker in a hoodie?
• Does your incident response plan account for a negotiation with operators who already know your financials?

Resources: https://linktr.ee/ReliaQuestShadowTalk

Geoff White: One of the world's leading journalists covering organized crime and technology, with decades of experience investigating fraudsters, hackers, and money launderers. His work has been featured by BBC News, Sky News, Audible, and The Sunday Times, and he has delivered over 300 keynote talks across more than a dozen countries for global brands including Microsoft, HSBC, and Mastercard. He is the author of three books, including The Lazarus Heist — which spawned a hit BBC podcast that ranked number one in the UK Apple charts — and his latest, Rinsed (2024), which The Financial Times called "Riveting." Geoff brings a rare investigative lens to cybercrime, giving ShadowTalk listeners an inside look at the criminal enterprises shaping today's threat landscape.

John Dilgen: Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst at ReliaQuest, where he specializes in researching cyber threats impacting ReliaQuest customers. With a strong technical background, he previously served as an Incident Response Analyst and Trainer at ReliaQuest.

AI is not replacing threat actors, instead it is making them faster, cheaper, and harder to stop. From AI powered phishing campaigns generating thousands of pages simultaneously, to a newly discovered macOS implant called Gaslight that injects fabricated system error messages into AI powered triage pipelines, the arms race between attackers and defenders is accelerating. The question is not whether AI is being used against your organization. It is whether your defenses are keeping pace.

Join hosts Brandon and John as they discuss:

• How threat actors are leveraging AI across social engineering and malicious code generation
• The Gaslight macOS malware with anti-AI analysis tactics
• What organizations need to do right now to match attackers

 Two questions your organization should be asking right now:

• How long does it actually take your team to detect and contain a critical severity alert?

• Are your detections layered across enough diverse log sources?

Resources: https://linktr.ee/ReliaQuestShadowTalk

John Dilgen: Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst at ReliaQuest, where he specializes in researching cyber threats impacting ReliaQuest customers. With a strong technical background, he previously served as an Incident Response Analyst and Trainer at ReliaQuest.

Brandon Tirado: Director of GreyMatter Operations for ReliaQuest. A skilled cyber defense professional with a unique combination of management and hands-on experience. With a deep understanding of adversary motives and the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) they use to achieve their goals, Brandon enjoys operationalizing his knowledge to make it more difficult for adversaries to operate within the environments of ReliaQuest customers. His managerial and hands-on experience enriches ShadowTalk with practical and strategic viewpoints.

In the Klue compromises threat actors walked in through a trusted integration, using legitimate credentials to quietly siphon Salesforce CRM data at scale. The challenge isn't just responding to Klue. It's recognizing that every OAuth-connected integration in your environment is part of your attack surface.

Join hosts Alexandra and John as they discuss:

• How compromised Klue integrations were leveraged to exfiltrate Salesforce CRM data
• Attribution and what it signals about the evolving data extortion landscape
• How Oauth token and device code theft is growing

 Two questions your organization should be asking right now:

• How many third-party integrations in your environment have active OAuth access to platforms holding critical data — and when were they last audited?
• Do you have detections in place for unusual Salesforce API query volume and service account behavior that could signal an active exfiltration?

Resources: https://linktr.ee/ReliaQuestShadowTalk

John Dilgen: Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst at ReliaQuest, where he specializes in researching cyber threats impacting ReliaQuest customers. With a strong technical background, he previously served as an Incident Response Analyst and Trainer at ReliaQuest.

Alexandra Moore: Manager of Threat Intelligence at ReliaQuest, where she leads intelligence analysis and customer dissemination to help organizations understand and respond to emerging cyber threats. Prior to this, she established and scaled monitoring across Russian-language cybercriminal platforms at Digital Shadows, building collection and analytical coverage to support digital risk protection capabilities.

ShinyHunters dominated headlines this week: a zero-day, a BreachForums listing, and unverified claims all hitting at once. The problem isn't just keeping up with the volume. It's knowing which of it is real, which is noise, and what your team actually needs to act on.

Join hosts Tehman and John as they discuss:

• ShinyHunters zero-day exploitation of CVE-2026-35273
• Why a BreachForums listing extends the threat well beyond the initial compromise
• What proactive, resource-development-stage detection looks like in practice

 Two questions your organization should be asking right now:

• Is your Oracle PeopleSoft Environment Management Hub internet-facing?
• Do you have dark web and criminal forum monitoring in place to detect before the attack begins?

Resources: https://linktr.ee/ReliaQuestShadowTalk

John Dilgen: Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst at ReliaQuest, where he specializes in researching cyber threats impacting ReliaQuest customers. With a strong technical background, he previously served as an Incident Response Analyst and Trainer at ReliaQuest.

Tehman Tariq: Sr. Manager of Cyber Operations at ReliaQuest. He has spent a majority of my career leading our Incident Response, Security Architecture, and Detection teams. As well has working hand in hand with CISOs to introduce automation allowing for the maturity of their security programs.

Your team built defenses around known China-linked clusters. The file hashes are tracked. The behavioral patterns are documented. What those weren't built to catch is a new cluster that studied those exact defenses and engineered around them. A China-linked attacker compromised an internet-facing IIS server, maintained access for over 75 days, and came back on fresh infrastructure.

With four China-linked clusters converging on the same legacy IIS stack in twelve months, defenders building detection programs around yesterday's cluster are already behind the next one.

Join hosts Alex and John as they discuss:

• How OP-512 engineered its tooling to evade defenses
• Why killing a malicious process is incomplete
• What advantage cross-source correlation provides

Two questions your organization should be asking right now:

• When your detection sources each generate a separate low-confidence signal from the same host, does anything in your current workflow correlate those signals automatically?
• Do you have internet-facing IIS servers running end-of-life .NET in your environment, and does your vulnerability-management workflow prioritize correctly?

Resources: https://linktr.ee/ReliaQuestShadowTalk

Alexandra Moore: Manager of Threat Intelligence at ReliaQuest, where she leads intelligence analysis and customer dissemination to help organizations understand and respond to emerging cyber threats. Prior to this, she established and scaled monitoring across Russian-language cybercriminal platforms at Digital Shadows, building collection and analytical coverage to support digital risk protection capabilities.

John Dilgen: Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst at ReliaQuest, where he specializes in researching cyber threats impacting ReliaQuest customers. With a strong technical background, he previously served as an Incident Response Analyst and Trainer at ReliaQuest.

Your team patches the device. The firmware version matches the advisory. The ticket closes. The device comes off the remediation queue. What your workflow never tracked is that the advisory also required six manual LDAP configuration steps — and without them, the authentication bypass still works. An initial access broker authenticated through the VPN, reached a domain-joined file server, and was gone in under 40 minutes. Your dashboard still showed a clean queue.

With initial access brokers operating on disciplined, sub-hour timelines and patch-management workflows built around a single completion step, defenders are closing tickets on devices that are still wide open.

Join hosts Tehman and John as they discuss:

• How a firmware update can still leave a device fully exploitable
• How initial access brokers progressed their attack in under 40 minutes
• Why teams that prioritize from a single vulnerability score alone are behind

 Two questions your organization should be asking right now:

• Does your patch-management workflow include a separate item for post-patch manual configuration requirements?
• When CISA, NVD, and the vendor publish different CVSS scores for the same CVE, does your vulnerability-management policy specify which authority takes precedence — and does it supplement static scoring with a dynamic signal like EPSS? 

Tune in for expert insights, practical takeaways, and the full threat report: https://linktr.ee/ReliaQuestShadowTalk

Tehman Tariq: Sr. Manager of Cyber Operations at ReliaQuest. He has spent a majority of my career leading our Incident Response, Security Architecture, and Detection teams. As well has working hand in hand with CISOs to introduce automation allowing for the maturity of their security programs.

John Dilgen: John Dilgen is a Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst at ReliaQuest, where he specializes in researching cyber threats impacting ReliaQuest customers. With a strong technical background, he previously served as an Incident Response Analyst and Trainer at ReliaQuest. 

Your user clicked a link, landed on a real Microsoft login page, typed their password, completed MFA, and walked away thinking nothing happened. Somewhere across the internet, an attacker's device just received an authenticated session token. The password is irrelevant. The MFA prompt already fired and passed. With PhaaS platforms now converging on token-theft tradecraft and post-compromise automation executing in seconds, defenders are racing a scripted attacker with a manual playbook.

Join hosts Brandon and John as they discuss:

• How device code phishing uses real authentication infrastructure to capture valid session tokens
• How one campaign hit 35,000+ users across 13,000+ organizations in 26 countries
• Why rogue device registrations complete before the average analyst reads the alert

 Two questions your organization should be asking right now:

• Has your Conditional Access policy been reviewed specifically for device code grant flows, not whether CA policies exist, but whether they cover the OAuth flows that session-token theft actually exploits?
• When a phishing confirmation fires, how many manual steps stand between that alert and full token revocation with rogue device deregistration, and is that response faster than the attacker's automation?

Resources: https://linktr.ee/ReliaQuestShadowTalk

Brandon Tirado: Director of GreyMatter Operations for ReliaQuest. A skilled cyber defense professional with a unique combination of management and hands-on experience. With a deep understanding of adversary motives and the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) they use to achieve their goals, Brandon enjoys operationalizing his knowledge to make it more difficult for adversaries to operate within the environments of ReliaQuest customers. His managerial and hands-on experience enriches ShadowTalk with practical and strategic viewpoints.

John Dilgen: Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst at ReliaQuest, where he specializes in researching cyber threats impacting ReliaQuest customers. With a strong technical background, he previously served as an Incident Response Analyst and Trainer at ReliaQuest.