Transatlantic Cable Podcast

This week on the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast, Ahmed, Dave, and I confirm once more how bad I am at trivia and then also cover a handful of some serious security related stuff.

To kick off the podcast, we discuss Apple’s new photo scanning practice meant to battle child pornography with AI. We stay in the realm of photography to look at Instagram shutting down a like farm.

For our third story, we discuss the dark market for COVID-19 vaccination cards. We have some strong feelings on the topic, so this story gets a bit heated.

Moving along, our fourth story takes a dive into the criminal world for some good ol’ crook-on-crook crime. In this story, a shortchanged affiliate of the Conti ransomware-for-hire syndicate retaliates by leaking the group’s playbook. We then take a break to offer a teaser to the second episode of our Community Conversations podcasts with Serge Droz of FIRST. The full episode will run over the weekend. We close out the podcast throwing some mud at the Internet of Things.

In this week’s episode of the Transatlantic Cable podcast Jeff, Ahmed, and I look at some of the more interesting stories to come out of the cybersecurity space this week.

We start on a sombre note, with a story of a woman who found a video of herself on Pornhub. After getting the content taken down, she began working with a team to create an app that uses AI to help women find content that includes their faces. Following that, we discuss some recent news about Instagram, which is defaulting all teen accounts to private, and an upcoming Android update that privacy advocates should appreciate.

From there, we have two additional stories: the first about an Instagram influencer convicted of money laundering and BEC (business e-mail compromise) scams, and finally, what an art teacher did with a dead cat (yes, really).

On this week’s edition of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast, Ahmed, Dave, and I discuss a variety of topics. We kick off the program with a story from the EU and a new look at making Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies more trackable.

The proposed changes in the EU could take up to two years to enact, and we have a lot of questions.

From there, we jump to a story about a ransomware hit on ransomware group Babuk. After that, it’s Dave’s interview about the dangers of image-based sexual abuse and how we can stop it.

Then, it’s off to a round of our recurring quiz, where I continue to suck. Then, following a break for our second interview —a look at a new children’s book featuring Midori Kuma — it’s the latest in REvil-v-Kaseya saga. In this latest wrinkle, Kaseya obtained a universal decryptor.

Finally, it’s back to the UK, where a leak of gun forum users has gun owners on edge, and a brief discussion of Amazon shutting down NSO activity on its servers.

Earlier in the week, we teased a miniseries called the Community Podcasts, which you’ll find right alongside the Transatlantic Cable podcast. I will remain your faithful host, and Anastasiya Kazakova of our Government Affairs office will join me.

This series of podcasts features frank conversations with cyberheroes who unite people despite everything — growing fragmentation, confrontation, and ever-changing cyberthreats — people are still building communities and uniting folks to work together for the common good. Why are they doing that? And is it working?

For our first episode, we focus on the Geneva Dialogue, launched in 2018 by the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) in cooperation with the Geneva Internet Platform (GIP), the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), ETH Zurich, and the University of Lausanne. The flourishing initiative is uniting even more stakeholders across the globe; however, its initial goals seemed much broader than today’s, and the list of organizers has changed.

Today’s guests:

• Jonas Grätz, political affairs officer for cyberdiplomacy at the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, International Security Division;
• Vladimir Radunovic, director of cybersecurity and e-diplomacy programs at DiploFoundation.

With Ahmed on vacation, the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast returns this week to its original lineup.

Dave and I kick off this week’s episode with a look at the latest from REvil and its victims. (Spoiler alert: Despite the quiet, things are not great.) From there, we head to Southeast Asia, where LuminousMoth has been targeting government organizations. Instead of giving you our hot takes and thoughts on the APT action, we discuss the research and actor with senior Kaspersky security researcher Mark Lechtik.

Following that, we discuss Amazon’s potential Alexa tracking device for kids.

That calls for a change of topic, to a sneak peek of our new miniseries, Community Conversations. We will be interviewing members of organizations in the infosec community that are collaborating across borders to make a positive impact in the space. We will launch the series over the coming weekend.

Following the preview, we discuss Twitter’s curious account verification practices: specifically, the case of a verified cat. Next, facial recognition in retail stores may be more prevalent than you think.

To close out the episode, Dave and I discuss the pros and cons of buying a Cold War bunker — just ~$700K.

In this week’s episode of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast, Ahmed, Jeff and I are back around the virtual round table to talk all things cyber.

We kick this week’s episode off with the news that Interpol are urging countries to unite against the ransomware pandemic. From there, we look at how a hacker going by the alias ‘integra’ is offering 26.99 bitcoins (nearly $1 million USD at the time of writing) for zero-days and undetectable RATs (remote access Trojans).

From there, we look at a recently patched SolarWinds vulnerability and news that Tencent (a Chinese gaming behemoth) is looking to use facial recognition software to stop children playing past a certain time. To close, we discuss the recent news around the Right to Repair movement in America and Europe.

This week on the podcast, Jeff’s on vacation, so Ahmed and I tackle some thorny cybersec issues on our own.

We start with news that EA’s billion dollar franchise, Apex Legends, faced hacking concerns from gamers about the state of TitanFall, Respawn’s first foray into the FPS genre. From there, we move on to news that Google has taken the ban-hammer to some developers who placed Trojans inside their apps to scrape Facebook credentials.

Other stories this week include discussion about APT28, aka Fancy Bear, targeting governments around the world, plus an exclusive chat with Kaspersky security researcher David Emm about the recent REvil attacks.

For the 208th episode of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast, Dave’s gone missing, and Ahmed and I debate whether it is leisure or if something more nefarious is going on. We don’t quite get to the bottom of it, but we do cover a wide array of topics, from a political sex tape leaked on OnlyFans to PS3 leaks and ransomware in US schools.

We start with the electoral scene in New York state, where a user on Onlyfans and Twitter leaked a BDSM video of politician Zack Weiner and a partner. Both platforms took down the video and banned the user, but the reply from Weiner is what caught our attention as a standup response to a truly personal doxing.

From there, we have to mention Ahmed’s complete quiz game dominance. Sadly, I am not able to overtake David’s massive lead, and we move on to a story of PS3 hacking for online gaming.

In the next segment, I sit down with Kurt Baumgartner to discuss the latest on school ransomware in the United States, the government reclaiming funds from ransomware crooks, and more. We continue with news of a potentially new scraping of data from 700 million LinkedIn users before closing out with a new government joining Have I Been Pwned.  

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Welcome to the 207th edition of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast! This week, Dave, Ahmed, and I chat about a number of topics — and we also have some changes to our big board of quiz points.

We kick things off with a pair of stories about AI and surveillance. The first is from the UK, where AI can now tell authorities if people were adhering to social distancing guidelines. The next is about a Chinese company using smile recognition for employees entering the office. Smile for the camera.

After a short break for a tip from Ahmed, we’re on to the first round of the week’s quiz game. I won’t spoil it here, but let’s just say there is a bit of a shocker. Following the fun, we get back to business, discussing recent APT activity from the Persian-speaking Ferocious Kitten group with researchers Mark Lechtik and Aseel Kayal.

After the interview, we look at the insecurity of America’s water facilities before wrapping up with a discussion of consent and the COVID-19 app in Massachusetts.

This week, Jeff, Ahmed, and I kick off episode 206 of the Transatlantic Cable podcast with a discussion about Ireland’s change in stop and search law, including a new law allowing police to force people to unlock digital devices such as phones and tablets.

From there, we move on to further discussion of ransomware and the recent G7 talks, with US President Biden seeking tougher stances on ransomware gangs. We also touch on the JBS meat processing company’s recent decision to pay ransom to REvil.

To wrap up, we talk about the recent EA hack and Facebook’s singing about WhatsApp privacy cred in a new advertisement.