The Host Unknown Podcast

This week in InfoSec  (08:24)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

12th November 2012: John McAfee went into hiding because his neighbour, Gregory Faull, was found dead from a gunshot. Belize police wanted him to come in for questioning, but he fled to Guatemala where he was then arrested. He was never charged, though he lost a $25 million wrongful death suit.

https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1856538748361515355   

12th November 2000: Bill Gates demonstrates a functional prototype of a Tablet PC. Microsoft claims “the Tablet PC will represent the next major evolution in PC design and functionality.” However, the Tablet PC initiative never really took off and it wasn't until Apple introduced the iPad in 2010 that tablet computing was widely adopted.

Microsoft Declares Tablets Are the Future

Rant of the Week (15:41)

Amazon MOVEit Leaker Claims to Be Ethical Hacker

A threat actor who posted 2.8 million lines of Amazon employee data last week has taken to the dark web to claim they are doing so to raise awareness of poor security practice.

The individual, who goes by the online moniker “Nam3L3ss,” claimed in a series of posts to have obtained data from 25 organisations whose data was compromised via last year’s MOVEit exploit.

Billy Big Balls of the Week (24:12)

O2's AI granny knits tall tales to waste scam callers' time

Watch out, scammers. O2 has created a new weapon in the fight against fraud: an AI granny that will keep you talking until you get bored and give up.

O2, the mobile operator arm of Brit telecoms giant Virgin Media, says it has built the human-like AI to answer calls from fraudsters in real time, keeping them busy on the phone and wasting their time by pretending to be a potential vulnerable target.

"Daisy" is claimed to be indistinguishable from a real person, fooling scammers into thinking they've found perfect prey thanks to its ability to engage in "human-like" rambling chat, the biz claims.

For several weeks in the run-up to International Fraud Awareness Week (November 17–23), the AI has already frustrated scam callers with meandering stories about her family and talked at length about her passion for knitting, according to O2.

Industry News (28:20)

Amazon MOVEit Leaker Claims to Be Ethical Hacker

Bank of England U-turns on Vulnerability Disclosure Rules

Massive Telecom Hack Exposes US Officials to Chinese Espionage

Microsoft Power Pages Misconfiguration Leads to Data Exposure

Sitting Ducks DNS Attacks Put Global Domains at Risk

O2’s AI Granny Outsmarts Scam Callers with Knitting Tales

Ransomware Groups Use Cloud Services For Data Exfiltration

Bitfinex Hacker Jailed for Five Years Over Billion Dollar Crypto Heist

Palo Alto Networks Confirms New Zero-Day Being Exploited by Threat Actors

Tweet of the Week (36:05)

https://x.com/J4vv4D/status/1856981250306687143

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This week in InfoSec (13:28)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

5th November 1993: Bugtraq was created by Scott Chasin as a full disclosure vulnerability reporting mailing list at the dawn of the World Wide Web. Bugtraq had an enormous influence on how orgs responded to vuln disclosure and paved the way for a shift which led to bug bounty programs.

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1853799779626578186  

5th November 2007: Google introduces the Android platform, its mobile operating system for cell phones based on a modified version of the Linux operating system. The first Android-based phone would ship in September of 2008.

https://thisdayintechhistory.com/11/05/android-introduced/

Rant of the Week (18:54)  

Voted in America? This Site Doxed You

If you voted in the U.S. presidential election yesterday in which Donald Trump won comfortably, or a previous election, a website powered by a right-wing group is probably doxing you. VoteRef makes it trivial for anyone to search the name, physical address, age, party affiliation, and whether someone voted that year for people living in most states instantly and for free. This can include ordinary citizens, celebrities, domestic abuse survivors, and many other people.

Voting rolls are public records, and ways to more readily access them are not new. But during a time of intense division, political violence, or even the broader threat of data being used to dox or harass anyone, sites like VoteRef turn a vital part of the democratic process—simply voting—into a security and privacy threat.

Billy Big Balls of the Week (27:09)

Schneider Electric ransomware crew demands $125k paid in baguettes

https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/05/schneider_electric_cybersecurity_incident/

Schneider Electric confirmed that it is investigating a breach as a ransomware group Hellcat claims to have stolen more than 40 GB of compressed data — and demanded the French multinational energy management company pay $125,000 in baguettes or else see its sensitive customer and operational information leaked.

And yes, you read that right: payment in baguettes. As in bread.

Schneider Electric declined to answer The Register's specific questions about the intrusion, including if the attackers really want $125,000 in baguettes or if they would settle for cryptocurrency. 

A spokesperson, however, emailed us the following statement:

"Schneider Electric is investigating a cybersecurity incident involving unauthorised access to one of our internal project execution tracking platforms which is hosted within an isolated environment. Our Global Incident Response team has been immediately mobilised to respond to the incident. Schneider Electric's products and services remain unaffected."

Industry News (33:18)

Google Cloud to Mandate Multifactor Authentication by 2025

IRISSCON: Organizations Still Falling Victim to Predictable Cyber-Attacks

Defenders Outpace Attackers in AI Adoption

UK Cybersecurity Wages Soar Above Inflation as Stress Levels Rise

NCSC Publishes Tips to Tackle Malvertising Threat

Canada Orders Shutdown of Local TikTok Branch Over Security Concerns

UK Regulator Urges Stronger Data Protection in AI Recruitment Tools

Interlock Ransomware Targets US Healthcare, IT and Government Sectors

Major Oilfield Supplier Hit by Ransomware Attack

Tweet of the Week (41:01)

https://twitter.com/fesshole/status/1854832499714576399

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No notes this week - Andy had ONE job...

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How does Thom also do the episode notes? 

This week in infosec  was about a EULA

Rant of the week

https://securityaffairs.com/170125/laws-and-regulations/sec-fined-4-companies-misleading-disclosures-impact-solarwinds-attack.html

Billy Big Balls

https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/24/anthropic_claude_model_can_use_computers/

Some news articles from infosecurity-magazine.com 

Tweet of the week 

https://x.com/thomas_violence/status/1849627627474293148 

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This week in InfoSec  (08:29)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

10th October 1995: Netscape introduced the "Netscape Bugs Bounty", a program rewarding users who report "bugs" in the beta versions of its recently announced Netscape Navigator 2.0 web browser.

Navigator was the dominant browser from 1995-1998, when it was overtaken by Internet Explorer.

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1844466277718556683

8th October 2008: University student David Kernell was arraigned. He compromised the Yahoo! email account of US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, using public info to reset her password, posting her emails to 4chan. He was later found guilty and died from MS complications in 2018.

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1843619068302983592

Rant of the Week (20:24) 

Cards Against Humanity campaigns to encourage voting, expose personal data abuse

Up to $100 for planning to vote and a public smear – how is this not illegal?

The troublemakers behind the party game Cards Against Humanity have launched a campaign demonstrating how easy it is to buy sensitive personal data about American voters, while simultaneously encouraging those Americans to plan how to cast a vote in the upcoming presidential election.

The "Cards Against Humanity Pays You to Give a Shit" campaign uses US citizens' personal data obtained from a broker to identify whether individuals voted in the 2020 US presidential election and how they lean politically. Those who didn't vote are asked to put info into the website, promise to vote in the upcoming election, make a voting plan, "and publicly post 'Donald Trump is a human toilet'" in exchange for up to $100.

Billy Big Balls of the Week (28:42)

FBI created a cryptocurrency so it could watch it being abused

The FBI created its own cryptocurrency so it could watch suspected fraudsters use it – an idea that worked so well it produced arrests in three countries

News of the Feds' currency, an Ethereum-based instrument named NexFundAI, appeared in a Wednesday Department of Justice announcement that eighteen individuals have been charged "for widespread fraud and manipulation in the cryptocurrency markets."

The Feds allege some of the fraud involved "wash trades" – transactions conducted solely to increase the volume of trades in a security or other asset. Rising volumes of trades are often seen as an indicator that a stock is of increasing interest as it has good growth prospects – a signal that can see prices rise. But wash trades are often conducted by related entities, or even the same entity, to create a false market signal – an arrangement also known as "pump and dump."

Industry News (34:36) 

New EU Body to Centralize Complaints Against Facebook, TikTok, YouTube

New Generation of Malicious QR Codes Uncovered by Researchers

Apple’s iPhone Mirroring Flaw Exposes Employee Privacy Risks

Former RAC Employees Get Suspended Sentence for Data Theft

Internet Archive Breached, 31 Million Records Exposed

Marriott Agrees $52m Settlement for Massive Data Breach

EU Adopts Cyber Resilience Act for Connected Devices

Over 10m Conversations Exposed in AI Call Center Hack

Disinformation Campaign Targets Moldova Ahead of EU Referendum

Tweet of the Week (45:07)

https://twitter.com/JackRhysider/status/1844502566799085769

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This week in InfoSec  (10:01)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

27th September 2001: Jan de Wit was sentenced to 150 hours of community service in the Netherlands for creating and spreading the Anna Kournikova virus. It was one of the first of the major viruses created from a virus toolkit - the dawn of cybercrime toolkits.

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1839709145282277614

3rd October 2017: A week after he retired as the result of Equifax's data breach, former CEO Richard F. Smith told members of Congress that one person in the IT department was at fault.

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1841893372035838342

Rant of the Week (14:52)

It's true, social media moderators do go after conservatives

Because they're most likely to share crappy misinformation online

Since Elon Musk bought Twitter nearly two years ago – a $44 billion acquisition he tried to pull out of – the mogul has driven a narrative that moderation of the microblogging website disproportionately targeted conservatives, libertarians, and Trump supporters.

A scientific paper published in the journal Nature this week confirms that was the case, with justification. The groups more likely to be subjected to moderation were also more likely to share misinformation from low-quality news sites.

Billy Big Balls of the Week (21:49)

Use this link to read the story: https://www.404media.co/email/e7ecda94-675a-4538-901f-b2ccb35fe916/?ref=daily-stories-newsletter - the other link below for the show notes (the one above is tied to my account)

Someone Put Facial Recognition Tech onto Meta's Smart Glasses to Instantly Dox Strangers

A pair of students at Harvard have built what big tech companies refused to release publicly due to the overwhelming risks and danger involved: smart glasses with facial recognition technology that automatically looks up someone’s face and identifies them. The students have gone a step further too. Their customized glasses also pull other information about their subject from around the web, including their home address, phone number, and family members.

Industry News (32:05)

PwC Urges Boards to Give CISOs a Seat at the Table

Cyber-Attacks Hit Over a Third of English Schools

ISACA: European Security Teams Are Understaffed and Underfunded

T-Mobile to Pay $15.75m Penalty for Multiple Data Breaches

British Hacker Charged in the US For $3.75m Insider Trading Scheme

Meta Teams Up with Banks to Target Fraudsters

FIN7 Gang Hides Malware in AI “Deepnude” Sites

Northern Ireland Police Data Leak Sees Service Fined by ICO

Microsoft and US Government Disrupt Russian Star Blizzard Operations

Tweet of the Week (38:52)

https://twitter.com/iamdevloper/status/1842097858196979989

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This week in InfoSec  (10:44)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

18th September 2001: The Nimda worm was released. Utilising 5 different infection vectors, it became the most widespread virus/worm after only 22 minutes.

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1836495262409175187  

17th September 2014: Apple announced that the iOS 8 operating system (used on iPhone and iPad) would be architected to prevent it from being technically feasible for the company to extract data from customer devices. A day later Google made a similar announcement pertaining to Android.

With iOS 8 Update, Apple Will No Longer Provide User Data to Police

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1836071319030374437

Rant of the Week  (17:50)

No way? Big Tech's 'lucrative surveillance' of everyone is terrible for privacy, freedom

Buried beneath the endless feeds and attention-grabbing videos of the modern internet is a network of data harvesting and sale that's perhaps far more vast than most people realise, and it desperately needs regulation. 

That's the conclusion the FTC made after spending nearly four years poring over internal data from nine major social media and video streaming corporations in the US.

These internet behemoths are collecting vast amounts of data, both on and off their services, and the handling of such data is "woefully inadequate," particularly around data belonging to children and teenagers, the FTC said. 

Billy Big Balls of the Week (28:06)

LinkedIn started harvesting people's posts for training AI without asking for opt-in

LinkedIn started harvesting user-generated content to train its AI without asking for permission, angering netizens.

Microsoft’s self-help network on Wednesday published a "trust and safety" update in which senior veep and general counsel Blake Lawit revealed LinkedIn's use of people's posts and other data for both training and using its generative AI features.

In doing so, he said the site's privacy policy had been updated. We note this policy links to an FAQ that was updated sometime last week also confirming the automatic collecting of posts for training – meaning it appears LinkedIn started gathering up content for its AI models, and opting in users, well before Lawit’s post and the updated privacy policy advised of the changes today.

Industry News (35:07)  

Over Half of Breached UK Firms Pay Ransom

ICO Acts Against Sky Betting and Gaming Over Cookies

AT&T Agrees $13m FCC Settlement Over Cloud Data Breach

Europol Taskforce Disrupts Global Criminal Network Through Supply Chain Attack

Google Street View Images Used For Extortion Scams

8000 Claimants Sue Outsourcing Giant Capita Over 2023 Data Breach

Western Agencies Warn Risk from Chinese-Controlled Botnet

Going for Gold: HSBC Approves Quantum-Safe Technology for Tokenized Bullions

Cybersecurity Skills Gap Leaves Cloud Environments Vulnerable

Tweet of the Week  (42:39)

https://twitter.com/ProfWoodward/status/1837084678836171089

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This week in InfoSec  (11:25)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

12th September 2014: Stephane Chazelas contacted Bash maintainer Chet Ramey about a vulnerability he dubbed "Bashdoor", which later becoming known as Shellshock. It was publicly disclosed 12 days later.

Shellshock was kind of a big deal - and the vuln had been in Bash for 25 years!

https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1834293229472416242  

9th September 2001: Mark Curphey started OWASP (the Open Web Application Security Project). In 2023 it was renamed the Open Worldwide Application Security Project.

https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1833191889790480500  

Rant of the Week (16:33)

WhatsApp's 'View Once' could be 'View Whenever' due to a flaw

A popular privacy feature in WhatsApp is "completely broken and can be trivially bypassed," according to developers at cryptowallet startup Zengo.

According to cofounder Tal Be'ery, his team was building a web interface when they discovered a flaw in WhatsApp's View Once. While the feature was supposed to be limited to platforms where the necessary controls could be enforced, such as mobile clients, the WhatsApp API server didn't properly enforce it.

The server would still send these messages to other platforms, but they couldn't be viewed - unless someone fiddled with the code.

"The View [O]nce media messages are technically the same as regular media messages, only with the “view once” flag set," the technical explanation states.

"Which means it’s the virtual equivalent of putting a note on the picture that says 'don’t look.' All that is required for attackers to circumvent it, is merely to set this flag to false and the media become regular and can be downloaded, forwarded and shared."

Billy Big Balls of the Week (27:10)

Australia’s government spent the week boxing Big Tech

The fun started on Monday when prime minister Anthony Albanese announced his intention to introduce a minimum age for social media, with a preference for the services to be off limits until kids turn 16.

"I want kids to have a childhood," the PM urged. "I want them off their devices … I want them to have real experiences with real people."

Albanese promised legislation to enact the rule will be tabled before Australia's next election, due by 2025. Opposition leader Peter Dutton broadly supported the proposal, which is pitched at parents who are tired of having to protect their kids online.

Industry news (34:34)

DoJ Distributes $18.5m to Western Union Fraud Victims

Poland's Supreme Court Blocks Pegasus Spyware Probe

UK Recognizes Data Centers as Critical National Infrastructure

Mastercard Acquires Global Threat Intelligence Firm Recorded Future for $2.65bn

TfL Confirms Customer Data Breach, 17-Year-Old Suspect Arrested

Irish Data Protection Regulator to Investigate Google AI

Microsoft Vows to Prevent Future CrowdStrike-Like Outages

Record $65m Settlement for Hacked Patient Photos

Malicious Actors Spreading False US Voter Registration Breach Claims

Tweet of the Week (41:57)

https://x.com/MikeTalonNYC/status/1834311262563377553

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This week in InfoSec  (13:08)  

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

3rd September 2014: Twitter launched its bug bounty program via the HackerOne platform, stating it would award at least $140 for vulnerabilities found in http://x.com/ or its Android or iOS apps.

$140? 140 was the max tweet length. $1.6 million has been paid out since inception.

https://twitter.com/XSecurity/status/507220774336225280

https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1831408686604140602

30th August 2014: A user of the message board 4chan posted leaked nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Kirsten Dunst, and other celebrities. Several years later 4 people were sentenced for crimes related to the hacking of Apple iCloud accounts of dozens of targeted individuals.

Apple knew of iCloud API weakness months before celeb photo leak broke

https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1830016468328575386

Rant of the Week (19:09)

'Error' causes Alexa to endorse Kamala Harris, refuse to discuss Trump

It would be perfectly reasonable to expect Amazon's digital assistant Alexa to decline to state opinions about the 2024 presidential race, but up until recently, that assumption would have been incorrect.

When asked to give reasons to vote for former President Donald Trump, Alexa demurred, according to a video from Fox Business. 

"I cannot provide responses that endorse any political party or its leader," Alexa responded. When asked the same about Vice President Kamala Harris, the Amazon AI was more than willing to endorse the Democratic candidate. 

"There are many reasons to vote for Kamala Harris," Alexa said. Among the reasons given was that Harris has a "comprehensive plan to address racial injustice," that she promises a "tough on crime approach," and that her record on criminal justice and immigration reform make her a "compelling candidate." 

Billy Big Balls of the Week (26:45)

Examples of Google Employees Trying to Avoid Creating Evidence in Antitrust Case

In its antitrust case against Google, the Federal Government filed a list of chats it had obtained that show Google employees explicitly asking each other to turn off a chat history feature to discuss sensitive subjects, showing repeatedly that Google workers understood they should try to avoid creating a paper trail of some of their activities. 

The filing came following a hearing in which judge Leonie Brinkema ripped Google for “destroyed” evidence while considering a filing from the Department of Justice asking the court to find “adverse interference” against Google, which would allow the court to assume it purposefully destroyed evidence. 

Previous filings, including in the Epic Games v Google lawsuit and this current antitrust case, have also shown Google employees purposefully turning history off.

The chats show 22 instances in which one Google employee told another Google employee to turn chat history off. In total, the court has dozens of specific employees who have told others to turn history off in DMs or broader group chats and channels. The document includes exchanges like this (each exchange includes different employees)

AND

Musician charged with $10M streaming royalties fraud using AI and bots

North Carolina musician Michael Smith was indicted for collecting over $10 million in royalty payments from Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and YouTube Music using AI-generated songs streamed by thousands of bots in a massive streaming fraud scheme.

According to court documents, Smith fraudulently inflated music streams on digital platforms between 2017 and 2024 with the assistance of an unnamed music promoter and the Chief Executive Officer of an AI music company.

He acquired hundreds of thousands of songs generated through artificial intelligence (AI) from a coconspirator and uploaded them to these streaming platforms. He then used automated bots to stream the AI-generated tracks billions of times.

Industry News (36:21)

South Korea Police Investigates Telegram Over Deepfake Porn

Irish Wildlife Park Warns Customers to Cancel Credit Cards Following Breach

TfL Claims Cyber-Incident is Not Impacting Services

Three Plead Guilty to Running MFA Bypass Site

Civil Rights Groups Call For Spyware Controls

Clearview AI Fined €30.5m by Dutch Watchdog Over Illegal Data Collection

Russian Blamed For Mass Disinformation Campaign Ahead of US Election

OnlyFans Hackers Targeted With Infostealer Malware

UK Signs Council of Europe AI Convention

Tweet of the Week (42:50)

https://twitter.com/0xdade/status/1831387831677415923

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This week in InfoSec  (07:42)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

29th August 1990: The UK's Computer Misuse Act 1990 went into effect, introducing 3 criminal offences related to unauthorised access and modification of "computer material".

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1829252932178719161  

27th August 1999: One of the first companies to offer a dedicated web application firewall (WAF) was Perfecto Technologies with its AppShield product. But it didn't use the terminology "WAF", instead describing it as "a plug and play" Internet application security solution."

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1828483993001492969

Rant of the Week (13:25) 

Watchdog warns FBI is sloppy on secure data storage and destruction

The FBI has made serious slip-ups in how it processes and destroys electronic storage media seized as part of investigations, according to an audit by the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General.

Drives containing national security data, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act information and documents classified as Secret were routinely unlabeled, opening the potential for it to be either lost or stolen, the report [PDF] addressed to FBI Director Christopher Wray states.

Ironically, this lack of identification might be considered a benefit, given the lax security at the FBI's facility used to destroy such media after they have been finished with.

The OIG report notes that it found boxes of hard drives and removable storage sitting open and unattended for "days or even weeks" because they were only sealed once the boxes were full. This potentially allows any of the 395 staff and contractors with access to the facility to have a rummage around.

Billy Big Balls of the Week (22:01)

Deadbeat dad faked his own death by hacking government databases

A US man has been sentenced to 81 months in jail for faking his own death by hacking government systems and officially marking himself as deceased.

The US Department of Justice on Tuesday detailed the case of Jesse Kipf, 39, who was sent down for computer fraud and aggravated identity theft.

In January 2023, Kipf used the credentials of a physician to access Hawaii's Death Registry System and create a "case" that recorded his own death.

"Kipf then completed a State of Hawaii Death Certificate Worksheet, assigned himself as the medical certifier for the case and certified his death, using the digital signature of the doctor," the DoJ wrote. The paperwork was all correct, so many government databases listed Kipf as deceased.

But he was very much alive and enjoying the fact that his "death" meant he didn't have to make child support payments or catch up on those he'd already missed. Evidence presented in court included internet search histories recorded on a laptop, with Kipf looking up terms including "Remove California child support for deceased."

Industry News (28:13)

Uber Hit With €290m GDPR Fine

FBI Flawed Data Handling Raises Security Concerns

Microsoft 365 Copilot Vulnerability Exposes User Data Risks

Money Laundering Dominates UK Fraud Cases

Ransomware Attacks Exposed 6.7 Million Records in US Schools

IT Engineer Charged For Attempting to Extort Former Employer

Surge in New Scams as Pig Butchering Dominates

Unpatched CCTV Cameras Exploited to Spread Mirai Variant

North Korean Hackers Launch New Wave of npm Package Attacks

Tweet of the Week (36:20)

https://x.com/fesshole/status/1828921760147767400

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