Transatlantic Cable Podcast

In the 165th episode of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast, Dave and Jeff take a look at the Security Analyst Summit (SAS2020) and the upcoming research, including news about a UEFI malware strain.

From there, they also look into news about a New Jersey hospital that was hit by ransomware, but took it upon themselves to reach out to the attackers to pay them off.  

To wrap up, Dave and Jeff also take a look at a recent, concerning, vulnerability in the Grindr dating app as well as a snafu involving the U.K PHE (Public Health England) and an out-of-date excel spreadsheet file format.

Tune in! 

For the 164th episode of the Transatlantic Cable Podcast, Jeff and I look at a growing concern in the states: the U.S general election.

The story, from the BBC talks about what big-tech companies are doing to try to avoid a confrontation between the two sides in the upcoming election. There’s a real worry from the big tech companies that fake-news along with a growing divide amongst voters could cause real-world issues.

From there, Jeff and I take a look at yet another ransomware attack on a hospital chain in America, this time affecting 400 hospitals – many of the staff have had to use pen and paper as all hospital records are stored online. We then jump to a chat with Denis Legezo from the Kaspersky GReAT team about some upcoming SAS Online research.

To wrap up, we look at a story about Google, GDPR data privacy and children. If you liked what you heard, consider subscribing!

For the 163rd episode of the Transatlantic Cable Podcast, Dave and I kick things off with one of our favourite topics – Facebook.

In this tale the Silicon Valley titan is locked in a battle with Ireland’s Data Protection Commission. This battle has the location and sharing of European data with US servers. There is also a threat from Facebook to pull out of the region entirely. Let’s hope that we have enough popcorn to watch this one play out.

From there, we hop into a sad story out of Germany. Over the past week, a story has come out that a patient died after having to be redirected due to the first hospital being hit with ransomware. From there, we take a few minutes to review the new documentary The Social Dilemma. If you haven’t heard about it, the film takes a look at the negative aspects tied to social networks. Please note, if you don’t want spoilers, please fast forward at this point in the podcast. To close out the show, we look at the millions of people who are still getting DVDs via mail from Netflix.

For the 162nd edition of the Transatlantic Cable Podcast, Dave and I take a break from the mic to welcome in a special feature from our friends over at Tomorrow Unlocked. This episode takes a look at the digitization of schooling for parents and educators during the COVID-19 global pandemic. A full summary of the episode can be seen below:

Digitization is transforming all facets of society, not just work environments. The pandemic is driving this digitization at an astonishing speed, showing that there is still a lot more to be done: The field of education is mainly reactive, as new disruptive technologies develop in other industries and are then applied and accommodated into existing educational cultures and systems. The latest big disruption in the education sector was due to the Corona crisis. Millions of students had to learn from home from one day to another and schools had to react quickly. To understand more about the current situation, and how education has to change in the future we invited Filip Dochy, an expert on education at the KU Leuven, and two parents Daniela Alvarez De Lugo and Riccardo de Rinalidini to talk with our host David Jacoby about the future of education.

Episode 161 of the Kaspersky podcast kicks off with something that should have been left in the past: zoom-bombing. Turns out that it’s still very much a nuisance and is now being used to attack schools and lessons.

From there, Dave and Jeff look at how “three middle-aged Dutch hackers” managed to break into Donald Trump’s Twitter account back in 2016 thanks to credential stuffing and poor password management. They’ve since handed the details over to the relevant U.S authorities. Dave and Jeff then move onto look at how Portland, Oregon is trying to take on facial recognition by banning the use of it to both private and public institutions. To wrap up, they look at an intriguing update from the U.K where Bear Grylls is asking Scouts to take a ‘fake news’ test, helping children to better understand fake news and why it spreads.

We will interrupt our usual programming for the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable Podcast to take a look at a new documentary about the Kuril Islands.

The documentary From Kurils with Love, is a new project from Kaspersky’s Tomorrow Unlocked that takes a look at the Kuril Islands. 

For this podcast, I sit down with my coworkers Alejandro Arango and Povel Torudd who were on the expedition and were involved in the production of the documentary. During our 35+ minute conversation, we touch on everything from where the Kurils are and why they are important to living on a boat with strangers to what’s next for Kaspersky. For more information or to see the full documentary, please click on the links below.

Since it is 2020, and an election year in the US, Dave and I kick off this week’s Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable Podcast by looking at Russian troll farms.

On this story, the FBI laid a tip to Facebook, who in turn took down a number of accounts tied to the Internet Research Agency. It seems that this may have stopped the accounts before the disinformation spice could flow. From there, we stay in the land of fakeness, however we jump from news to fake Amazon reviews. This deep dive from the media exposed some interesting things about product reviews on the ecommerce giant in the UK at least.

Our third story stays on the topic of things that are fake. Unlike politics and reviews, this story takes a look at AI and Deep Fakes. Microsoft has developed a technology that will help fight Deep Fakes. To close out the podcast, we look at some new legislature in the UK that should help protect the data for kids using apps.

Dave and I kick off the 158th edition of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable Podcast, by looking at some malware that – gasp – is now on Macs.

In a new post, Patrick Wardle talks about how Shlayer malware was actually approved by Apple. So much for Macs get no viruses. From there, we head to a story that is almost made for a TV or Netflix movie. The tale looks at espionage and how the FBI and Tesla halted a cyberattack.

Our third story heads to the gaming sector and the illicit marketplace for Fortnite accounts. From there, we head into a vulnerability in Slack. To close things out, we look at an advisory from the FBI where older daters are being targeted in a scam.

For the 157th episode of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable Podcast, Dave and I jump to both sides of the Atlantic for some fun and interesting stories.

We start off looking into charges that the former CSO of Uber is facing. According to the allegations, there was hush money paid and also some lying to investigators and suppressing evidence. From there, we stay in the States and look at the University of Utah who paid cybercriminals after a ransomware attack.

The third story jumps across the pond to a bit of a Passw0rd1 problem for Home Office. You see, this agency had a bit of a snafu when their Passw0rd1 was displayed on a flip chart in one of their office windows for the world to see. We close out the podcast by looking into a new lawsuit against Zoom. The folks arguing that the marketing of the company, especially around the word encryption, was a bit misleading.

Dave and I kick off the 156th edition of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable Podcast, by talking about one of our favorite types of alcohol.

You see, while Dave likes his Jack Daniel’s, we are not talking mixed drinks. Rather, we discuss how the parent company of the US Bourbon, Brown-Forman, has suffered a ransomware attack. This attack continues the trend of big companies getting hit with ransomware. Our second story dives into the new to us industry of dropshipping. This business seems to have people making money off of people looking to buy products pushed by influencers or knock off sites. To us, sounds like a pyramid scheme where the consumer is the one who will suffer. From there, we jump to high tea at the Ritz in London. This case is an interesting scam that our affluent readers will want to keep an eye on.

For our fourth story, we take a look at the potential GDPR impact of an issue of data storage. To close out the podcast, we head to the land down under and a snafu involving credentials being shared on live TV.