Malicious Life: Recent Episodes
Cybereason
Malicious Life by Cybereason tells the unknown stories of the history of cybersecurity, with comments and reflections by real hackers, security experts, journalists, and politicians.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, long time critics of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, followed Weev's trial - but did not get involved. For the appeal, however, the organization decided to step it. But althought the EFF had some strong points against the CFAA - the justices, appearntly, had something very different on their mind.
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Much like Aaron Swartz did, Andrew "weev" Auernheimer fought against the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a law both men belived to be dangerous and unjust. But unlike Swartz, the internet's own boy, weev is an unapologetic troll who spread bile and chaos wherever he goes, a man who seemed to take pleasure in making others miserable. His fight raises a thorny question: when a bad person fights for a good cause, how should we feel about it?
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APT-10 is a Chinese nation-state threat actor that in recent years has been targeting Japanese IT & Instrastructure organizations using a sophisticated backdoor malware known as LODEINFO. Recently, Jin Ito & Loic Castel, researchers from Cybereason's IR Team, uncovered a new tool used by the group: NOOPDOOR, which incorporates highly sophisticated persistence mechanisms, allowing APT-10 to evade detection and remain inside enterprise networks for two or even three years.
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Aaron Barr was en-signals intelligence officer specializing in analytics. As part of HBGary Federal, he came up with a plan to unmask the key leaders of Anonymous, the infamous hacker collective. People who worked with Aaron warned him that his data was sub-par, but the determined vet claimed he had a strong "gut feeling" that he was on the right track. It all blew up in his face on one fateful Superbowl Sunday.
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On 17 and 18 of September 2024, thousands of pagers and hand held radio devices used by Hezbollah, exploded simultaneously across Lebanon and Syria, killing at least 42 terrorists and wounding more than 3,000.
Devon Ackerman, Cybereason’s Global Head of Digital Forensic and Incident response and a former Special Agent at the FBI's Operational Technology Division, discusses the lessons organizations can learn from this ultra-sophisticated supply chain attack. How such traumatic events impact the mindset of hacked organizations, what kind of threat actors are capable of pulling off long-term attacks like these, and the three most important steps organizations can take to minimize the chance of a supply chain attack.
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Could thousands of people keep a secret? Common sense says no—secrets spread, and people talk. But for over a decade, from 2006 to 2017, a website managed to stay under law enforcement’s radar, despite the fact that its many users were participating in illegal activities. The website’s users managed to keep it a secret for such a long time, because they shared one thing in common: they were creeps who traded nude photos. Until one user, driven by simple greed, brought it all crashing down.
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Scientology spies were trained in all covert operations techniques: surveillance, recruiting agents, infiltrating enemy lines, and blackmail. However, a suspicious librarian and a determined FBI agent brought the largest single spy operation in US government history to an end.
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In 1963, the FDA raided the headquaters of a budding new and esoteric religion - The Church of Scientology. In response to this and similar incidents to come, the church's founder - an eccentric science fiction author named L. Ron Hubbard - would go on to lead the single largest known government infiltration operation in United States history
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On Dec. 5, 2016, two senior Russian Intelligence officers and two civilians were arrested and accused of treason. A few weeks later, when Western journalists were finally able to speak with the men’s lawyers, they learned that the case was based on events that were, oddly enough, already widely known. This made the arrests even more peculiar.
As more details emerged over time, the picture became clearer, offering Westerners a rare glimpse into the typically secretive world of Russian intelligence.
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SNAP - better known as food stamps - goes back to the Great Depression. ,The physical stamps were replaced with EBT cards in the 1990s, but since these cards are without the secure EMV chip techonolgy, enterprising crimilas found ways to drain funds meant for low-income families.
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Nicole Kotsianas, an investigator with K2 Intelligence, made it her personal mission to hunt down the Hollywood Con Queen, who crulley tormented her victioms and shattered their dreams. Nicole's efforts bore unexpected fruits, when she discovered that the Con Queen was actually... a man.
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In 2015, two aspiring script writers flew to Indonesia to meet with executives of a large Chinese film corporation. It was a trap: the Hollywood Con Queen not only coned them out of tens of thousands of dollars, she also cruelly ruined their friendship. Two years later, a corporate investigator working for a big shot Hollywood producer, made a discovery that put her on the trail of this master of deciet.
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In the pre-internet era, encryption was a matter of life and death, and the motives behind these ciphers were varied and complex. Discover how George Lasry, a modern codebreaker, uncovered the secrets of Mary, Queen of Scots, hidden in the French National Library for over 400 years. This episode delves into the painstaking process and the historical impact of decoding these ancient messages, revealing the hidden motives and desperate actions of a doomed queen.
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Why did people write malware in the pre-internet days? Back then, there was no way to make money by writing malware. So why write them in the first place? The lack of a financial motivation meant that virus authors had a plethora of other motives - and this diverse mix of motives had, as we shall hear, an interesting effect on the design and style of viruses created at that period.
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Section 230 is the pivotal law that has enabled the rise of social media -while sparking heated debates over its implications. In this episode, we're charting the history of Section 230, from early landmark legal battles, to modern controversies, and exploring its complexities and the proposed changes that could redefine online speech and platform responsibility.
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In 2016, Joe Sullivan, former CISO of Facebook, was at the peak of his career. As Uber's new CISO, he and his team had just successfully prevented data from a recent breach from leaking to the internet. But less than a year later, Sullivan was unexpectedly fired from Uber, and three years later, the US Department of Justice announced criminal charges against him.
So, what happened at Uber?
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In this episode of ML, we're exploring the history of the well-known Nigerian Prince scam, also known as 419 or advanced fee scam, from its roots in a Parisian prison during the French Revolution, to the economic and social reason why this particular scam became so popular with African youth. Also, will AI make such scams more dangerous - or, counter intuitively, go against the interests of scammers?
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Dive into the world of open-source intelligence (OSINT) in this episode, where we uncover how ordinary citizens use publicly available data to unravel some of the most complex global mysteries. From tracking conflicts in real-time to exposing the truth behind high-profile incidents like the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, discover how OSINT is revolutionizing the field of investigative journalism and transforming how we perceive and verify information.
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A few weeks ago we had a listener’s meetup in New York, and as part of that meetup, I gave a talk in which I discussed how Malicious Life came to be - a story that goes back to my days as a ship's captain in the Israeli Navy - and then about how me and Nate craft the stories that you hear every other week. That last part, I hope, might also be beneficial to those of you, our listeners, who find themselves giving talks about technically complex ideas, cyber-related or not. The storytelling ideas and techniques I laid out in the talk are universal, and you’ll find them in blockbuster movies as well as podcast episodes.
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In the waning years of the 20th century, amid growing anxieties about the turn of the millennium, one man, Robert Bemer, observed the unfolding drama from his remote home on King Possum Lake. A revered figure in computing, Bemer had early on flagged a significant, looming issue known as the Y2K bug, which threatened to disrupt global systems as calendars rolled over to the year 2000. This episode delves into Bemer's life during this critical period, exploring his predictions, the ensuing global frenzy to avert disaster, and the disparate views on whether the billions spent in prevention were justified or merely a response to a misunderstood threat.
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In the 1950s and 60s - even leading into the 1990s - the cost of storage was so high, that using a 2-digit field for dates in a software instead of 4-digits could save an organization between $1.2-$2 Million dollars per GB of data. From this perspective, programming computers in the 1950s to record four-digit years would’ve been outright malpractice. But 40 years later, this shortcut became a ticking time bomb which one man, computer scientist Bob Bemer, was trying to diffuse before it was too late.
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The 2008 Russo-Georgian War marked a turning point: the first time cyberattacks were used alongside traditional warfare. But what happens when the attackers aren't soldiers, but ordinary citizens? This episode delves into the ethical and legal implications of civilian participation in cyberwarfare, examining real-world examples from Ukraine and beyond.
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In 1991, Kevin Mitnick was bouncing back from what was probably the lowest point of his life. He began to rebuild his life: he started working out and lost a hundred pounds, and most importantly - he was finally on the path towards ditching his self-destructive obsession of hacking.
But just as he was in the process of turning his life around, his brother introduced him to a hacker named Eric Heinz, who told him about a mysterious piece of equipment he came across while breaking into Pacific Bell: SAS, a testing system that allowed its user to listen in on all the calls going through the telephone network. SAS proved to be too great of a temptation for Mitnick, who desperately wanted to wield the power that the testing system could afford him.
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For Kevin Mitnick - perhaps the greatest social engineer who ever lived - hacking was an obsession: even though it ruined his marriage, landed him in scary correction facilities and almost cost him his sanity in solitary confinement, Mitnick wasn't able to shake the disease that compelled him to keep breaking into more and more communication systems.
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Right now, hundreds of thousands of people in the southern African country of Namibia are faced with a choice. At the end of next month, their phone service is going to be shut off permanently: to prevent that from happening, they’ll have to give up their data privacy. As a result, nearly two million Namibian citizens are facing a data privacy problem which may haunt them for years to come - and hundreds of thousands more are set to join them, or else they’ll lose their phone service for good. All of which raises the question: was making everybody register their SIM cards a good idea in the first place?
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In 2008, The 12 million PCs strong Mariposa Botnet infected almost half of Furture 100 companey - but the three men who ran it were basiclly script kiddies who didn't even knew how to code.
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Valdimir Levin is often presented as "the first online bank robber," and appeares on many lists of the "Top 10 Greatest Hackers." But a few veteran Russian hackers cliam that Levin's infamous hack had been mangled by the journlists who wrote about it. What's the truth behind the 1994 $10.7 million Citibank hack?...
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About a year ago, six academics from Ruhr University Bochum and the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security set out to survey engineers and developers on the subject of satellite cybersecurity. But most of these engineers were very reluctant to share any details about their satellites and their security aspects. Why were satellite engineers so reticent to talk about cybersecurity? What was so secretive, so wrong with it, that they didn’t feel they could answer even general questions, anonymously? Because let’s be clear: if there’s something wrong with the security of satellites, that’d be a serious problem.
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When investigators discovered in 1996 that US military networks were being extensively hacked, they didn't realize they were witnessing the birth of what would become Russia's formidable Turla APT espionage group. We uncover the 20-year metamorphosis of this original group of hackers into one of the most sophisticated and dangerous state-sponsored threats that's still active today.
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In August 2021, a port in Houston, Texas, was attacked. Over the following months, a series of attacks occurred in various locations, reminiscent of a serial killer's pattern. Targets included telecommunications companies, government agencies, power plants, and water treatment facilities. How did Volt Typhoon manage to evade authorities and analysts for such an extended period?
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By the time Forbidden Stories published its “Pegasus Project” in 2021, NSO was already knee deep in what was probably the worst PR disaster ever suffered by a cybersecurity company - and then, in November 2021, came the fateful blow: the US Dept. of Commerce added NSO to its “Entity List.” Is NSO to blame for its troubles? Could the company have acted differently to prevent its downfall?
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NSO Group, creator of the infamous Pegasus spyware, is widely regarded as a vile, immoral company: a sort of 21st century soldier of fortune, a mercenary in the service of corrupt and evil regimes. Yet among its many clients are many liberal democracies, including the US, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, to name but a few. So, is NSO really as evil as many think it is?
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The FBI explicitly advises companies against paying ransomware attackers - but itself payed 4.4 million dollars worth of Bitcoin after the Colonial Pipeline attack. So, should you listen to what the experts say, or follow what they occasionally do? It’s complicated, but we can model this problem.
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In the vast landscape of STEM, women constitute a mere 28% of the workforce. Yet, when we zoom into the realm of cybersecurity, the number dwindles even further to a startling 20 to 24 percent. What are the underlying reasons behind this disparity?
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In 1981, during the G7 Summit in Quebec, French president Francois Mitterand handen President Raegan a top secret collection of documents, called "Farewell Dossier." The information found in the dossier allowed the US to devise a cunning plan - the very first supply chain attack, if you will - to bring a firey end to one of largest industrial espionage campaigns in history.
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Much of the cybersecurity software in use today utilizes AI, especially things like spam filters and network traffic monitors. But will all those tools be enough to stop the proliferation of malware that will come from generative AI-driven cyber attacks? The potential of AI to disrupt cyberspace is far greater than any solutions we’ve come up with thus far, which is why some researchers are looking beyond the traditional answers, towards more aggressive measures.
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Every so often, the entire landscape of cybersecurity shifts, all at once: The latest seismic shift in the field occurred just last year. So in this episode of Malicious Life we’re going to take a look into the future of cybersecurity: at how generative AI like ChatGPT will change cyberspace, through the eyes of five research teams breaking ground in the field. We’ll start off simple, and gradually build to increasingly more complex, more futuristic examples of how this technology might well turn against us, forcing us to solve problems we’d never considered before.
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On the face of it, there's an obvious economic incentive for both vendors and security researchers to collaborate on disclosing vulnerabilities safely and privately. Yet bug bounty programs have gained prominence only in the past decade or so, and even today only a relatively small portion of vendors have such programs at place. Why is that?
The constant battle between those who wish to encrypt data and those who wish to break these ciphers has made modern encryption schemes extremely powerful. Subsequently, the tools and methods to break them became equivalently sophisticated. Yet, could it be that someone in the 15th century created a cipher that even today’s most brilliant codebreakers and most sophisticated and advanced tools - cannot break?...
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In 2019, Roman Seleznev, a 34 years-old Russian national, was sentenced to 27 years in prison: A sentence that’d make any criminal quiver. Seleznev's deeds had a horrendous effect on the 2.9 million individuals whose credit cards he stole and sold to cyber criminals for identity theft and financial crimes. On one hand, it’s hard to imagine any nonviolent computer crime worth 27 years in prison. But then what is an appropriate sentence for such a man as Seleznev?
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"We made a mistake and Sony paid a terrible price.” A terrible price indeed: an arrogant and ill-advised decision to include a rootkit in its music CDs cost Sony BMG a lot of money - and painted it as a self-centered, self-serving company that cares more about its bottom line than its customers. Why did Sony BMG make such a poor decision?
In the last episode of our show, we heard the story of Methbot: an army of hundreds of thousands of bots, programmatically viewing thousands of advertisements on thousands of made-up websites in order to siphon away millions of dollars worth of ad revenue. But even the giant Methbot scam was just a drop in the ocean that is ad fraud. Putting Zhukov in jail made hardly any difference at all, because of how many other people just like him are still out there today.
What makes ad fraud so successful, and so prevalent, and why can’t we stop it? The answer isn’t technical at all. It’s not hard to understand. But it’s a harsh reality that many people are simply not willing to face. Except the deeper you look into it, the deeper the well goes. In this episode, we’ll learn how Aleksandr Zhukov defrauded some of the biggest American corporations for millions of dollars. And we’ll ask the question that hardly anyone else is willing to acknowledge: Was this clever, successful, guilty cybercriminal merely a fall guy for everybody else playing his twisted game?
Right now, a man named Aleksandr Zhukov is sitting in jail for one of the most financially ruinous schemes ever invented for the internet. Zhukov is guilty. He was caught and convicted under a mountain of evidence against him.
Except the deeper you look into it, the deeper the well goes. In this episode, we’ll learn how Aleksandr Zhukov defrauded some of the biggest American corporations for millions of dollars. And we’ll ask the question that hardly anyone else is willing to acknowledge: Was this clever, successful, guilty cybercriminal merely a fall guy for everybody else playing his twisted game?
Right now, a man named Aleksandr Zhukov is sitting in jail for one of the most financially ruinous schemes ever invented for the internet. Zhukov is guilty. He was caught and convicted under a mountain of evidence against him.
Except the deeper you look into it, the deeper the well goes. In this episode, we’ll learn how Aleksandr Zhukov defrauded some of the biggest American corporations for millions of dollars. And we’ll ask the question that hardly anyone else is willing to acknowledge: Was this clever, successful, guilty cybercriminal merely a fall guy for everybody else playing his twisted game?
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The numbers can’t be any clearer: a DDoS attack costs less than a hundred dollars, while the price tag for mitigating it might reach tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. A single well crafted phishing email can easily circumvent cyber defenses which cost millions of dollars to set up. How can we change the extreame cost asymmetry between attackers and defenders in cyberspace?
We’ve all experienced the creepiness of modern data trafficking, but that kind of daily annoyance is the surface of a much bigger issue: Big Tech companies such as Amazon & Microsoft are lobbying policymakers to veto laws that harm their business, and often hide their lobbying behind industry coalitions or organizations with names that are vague and seemingly harmless. Will current and future privacy laws actually protect your information, or will they protect the companies collecting your information?
Disruptions to the world’s internet cables happen more often than you think: Whether it be ship anchors or animals or saboteurs, cut a few wires in the right places and at nearly the speed of light you can disrupt or shut off the internet for broad populations of people at a time. It is an immense power that runs through these lines — a power that can be sabotaged or, in the right hands, weaponized.
In the midst of 35,000 exhilarated spectators eagerly chanting the time-honored countdown to kick off the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, a sinister malware crept through the games’ network, threatening to disrupt the highly-anticipated event. The obvious question in everyone’s minds was – who was responsible for the attack? Who was vile enough to launch such a potentially destructive attack against an event which, more than anything, symbolizes peace and global cooperation?
Oמ May 23rd, 1989, Karl Koch – a 23 years old West German hacker who worked for the KGB – took a drive, from which he would never return: Nine days later his charred remains were found by the police in a remote forest. Was Koch assasinated by the US or the Sovient Union, or is there another, more ‘mystical’ explanation for his death?
Four decades ago, three quarters would’ve gone a lot further than they do today. With that kind of loose change you could’ve picked up some milk from the grocery store, or over half a gallon of gas, or a bus ticket. But that doesn’t explain why, on one fateful day in 1986, a systems administrator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California made such an issue over 75 missing cents.
You may have heard of the cyber operations performed by Russia. You definitely heard about the missiles being fired by Russia at Ukraine – but how about the propaganda being distributed through the different media platforms?
In this B-Side episode, our Senior Producer Nate Nelson interviewed Dr. Bilyana Lilly – CISSP, a leader in cybersecurity and information warfare with over fifteen years of managerial, technical, and research experience, and author of “Russian Information Warfare” – about the Russian use of instant messaging and social media platforms such as Telegram and Twitter in their war efforts. Dr. Lilly discusses who they are targeting and the real-world impact their propaganda has on various populations.
In the early 1970’s, US intelligance pointed at the possibility that the Russians have laid an underwater communication cable between two important naval bases in the Far East. The dangerous mission of installing a listening device on that cable was given to the navy most secretive and unusual submarine.
What happens when an NFT marketplace goes under, and disappears? You would imagine that the users’ NFTs are perfectly safe: after all, the blockchain itself is still there, right? But that’s not how things work in the real world.
Jason Bailey is the co-founder and CEO of ClubNFT, a company building the next generation of tools to discover, protect, and share NFTs. Jason is an early collector and proponent of CryptoArt, and he spoke with Nate Nelson, our Sr. producer, about the risks facing sellers and buyers who are unfamiliar with this new technology.
Physical artworks in museums are usually well-guarded – but digital artworks are something else entirely: in 2021 alone, scammers successfully stole 100 million dollars worth of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. Yet blockchain technology, where most NFTs live – is one of the most secure technologies in history. Why, then, are NFT collectors keep getting hacked?
Today we’re bringing back Haseeb Awan, the founder of Efani Secure Mobile – a bespoke cybersecurity-focused phone service, protecting high-risk individuals against mobile hacks. Haseeb will delve into the technicalities of SIM swapping, explaining the various techniques that hackers use to carry out this fraudulent activity. He will also provide insights into what telecommunication companies can do to prevent SIM swapping and what steps individuals can take to protect themselves from falling victim to this crime.
If SIM swap stories ever make the news, almost uniformly, they focus on people who lost a lot of money. But SIM swaps also take a psychological toll. Getting cut off from the grid all of a sudden, not knowing why, not being able to call for help. Even when it’s over, you never know if your attackers — whoever they are — will come back again.
A year ago we told you the story of Kaseya: an IT solutions company that was breached on July 2021, and its servers were used to spread ransomware to an estimated 800 to 1500 small to medium-sized businesses.
Nate Nelson, our Sr. producer, spoke with Rich Murray, who leads the FBI’s North Texas Cyber unit, about how the Federal Bureau of Investigations dealt with dealt with another attack by REvil – this time against the Texas government – and how they managed to figure out who was behind it.
Spamhaus’s decision to add Cyberbunker to its list of Spam sources led the Stophaus coalition to initiate a DDoS attack later dubbed “The attack that almost broke the Internet.” The fallout from this attack led to Cyberbunker relocating to a bunker in Germany – but it was the involvement of an Irish drug lord known as ‘The Penguin’ that led to the bullet-proof hosting company’s downfall.
Sven Kamphuis and Herman Johan Xennt are quite dissimilar: one is young, the other is old, one is a Freedom Fighter, the other a businessman. In 1996, their unlikely partenrship coalesced around a mutual deep hatred towards authority – and around a very unusual building: a Cold-War era nuclear bunker.
2011 was a pivotal year for Netflix: the now hugely successful company was then in the midst of a formidable transformation, changing from a mail-based DVD rental service to the modern streaming service that it is today. It was at this crucial point in the company’s history that Jason Chan, our guest in this episode, was hired by Netflix to lay the foundations for its cloud security protocols. Nate Nelson, our Sr. Producer, spoke with Jason about the decade he spent at the company, what he learned during his tenure there, and the ideas that took shape at that time, such as Chaos Engineering.
In his 1984 seminal paper – “Computer Viruses: Theory and Experiments” – Dr. Fred Cohen not only introduced the name ‘computer virus’, a term invented by his mentor, Leonard Adelman, but was also the first to analyze computer viruses in a rigorous mathematical way, proving that computer viruses were not only practical – but that they were in fact inevitable.
Nate Nelson, our Sr. producer, spoke with Dr. Cohen about his early research into computer viruses, his work with the US army, the panicky response from the US government – and the parallels between computer viruses and mental viruses – i.e. memes.
Thamar Gindin is an Israeli scholar whose research focuses on the Persian language. For the past seven years (at least) Thamar has been a target for an endless stream of spear-phishing attempts by the Iranian regime, trying to take over her email account and lure her away from her country’s borders. Her family, friends, and colleagues have also suffered numerous attacks. So, how does it feel to live for years with a virtual target mark on your back?…
Nobody likes cheaters, especially in video games: we play games to have fun, and nothing hurts the joy of playing a good game more than losing to a cheater. That is why EA is not the only publisher to implement kernel-mode anti-cheat software in their games: League of Legends and Valorant, for example, use similar software. Yet some people warn that installing such kernel-level systems is extremely dangerous. So, what’s the problem with kernel-mode anti-cheat software?
When it was founded in 2011, Norse Corp. – which described itself as “the world’s largest dedicated threat intelligence network” – had everything a promising startup could wish for: a charismatic and experienced founder, a rare and valuable technology, and few tens of millons of dollars from investors. Less than six years later, it all came crashing down in the most horrible death a business can experience. What went wrong in Norse Corp.?
John Deere, an American agricultural machinery manufacturer, has recently enraged many farmers and digital rights activists due to the restrictive fixing policy of its tractors. Now, an Australian white hat hacker named Sick Codes has demonstrated not only how he was able to jailbreak the company’s tractors and run Doom on them (because why not) - but also hack into its global operations center, demonstrating how hackers can easily take over a huge number of farming machines all over the world.
In 2006 the Russian Business Network pivoted its business: the once legitimate ISP became a ‘bullet-proof' hosting service, catering to the needs of cybercriminals. It quickly became the largest player in the Russian cybercrime landscape, with ~60% of all cybercrime activity related to Russia connected to it in some way. Following the Russian government’s years-old tradition of collaborating with organized crime, it's no wonder that the Russian Business Network quickly became Putin’s informal cyber attack arm.
Sports is not something that you usually hear mentioned when people talk about cybersecurity - but Chris Cochran and Ron Eddings, co-founders of Hacker Valley Media, believe that cyber professionals can take inspiration from MMA wrestlers and Chess Grandchampions to get to their own version of Peak Performance.
One day in 2008, Michael Daugherty - CEO and owner of LabMD, a cancer detection lab - got a call from an executive of TiVera, a cybersecurity company. The caller said that a file containing private medical data of some 9000 of LabMD's patients has been discovered online. When Michael refused to pay for TiVersa's hefty "consultation fee", it reported the incident to the FTC. This was the beginning of a ten-year-long legal battle that ultimately destroyed LabMD - but cost the Federal Agency dearly.
Media companies probably get hacked no more than other, non-media oriented organizations such as hospitals, banks, etc. But these hacks are often more visible and more memorable because… well, media companies are more public facing by their very nature. How can these organizations be hacked, and why should we care about such attacks? Nate Nelson spoke with Joel Molinoff, former chief information risk officer for CBS Corporation, and Dan Vasile, former vice president of information security at Paramount.
Financial markets make good targets for criminals: after all, that's where the big money is. Surprisingly, many of these criminals are not your run-of-the-mill black hat hacker, but brokers registered with the SEC: Genuine finance industry professionals.
Authentication has come a long way since the 1980s or 90s. But when it comes to phone calls - we’re still in the Middle Ages. Vishing, or Voice Scams, are probably as old as the Telephone itself, yet it is still very easy to impersonate someone over the phone or spoof a phone call’s origin. Rachel Tobac is a hacker and the CEO of SocialProof Security, where she helps people and companies keep their data safe by training and pen-testing them on social engineering risks. Rachel spoke with Nate Nelson, our Sr. producer, about Vishing: how common is it, where attackers get the information they need to impersonate someone from, and the many many psychological tricks they can employ to fool the person on the other side of the call.
In any trading market, at any time in history, no matter where you are, the most important thing you can possess isn’t actually money, or influence, or anything like that. Knowledge -- in particular, knowing something before everybody else -- is far more valuable. Some traders are willing to go to great lengths to get it before anyone else. In some cases, they’ll apply great ingenuity to the problem - but in others, they’ll use manipulation -- hacking into these technologies to gain an unfair advantage, and make a fortune along the way.
In any trading market, at any time in history, no matter where you are, the most important thing you can possess isn’t actually money, or influence, or anything like that. Knowledge -- in particular, knowing something before everybody else -- is far more valuable. Some traders are willing to go to great lengths to get it before anyone else. In some cases, they’ll apply great ingenuity to the problem - but in others, they’ll use manipulation -- hacking into these technologies to gain an unfair advantage, and make a fortune along the way.
The name Lulzsec is probably very familiar to listeners who were around in 2011, when this hacking group was at the peak of its nefarious activity. As their name implies, Lulzsec was known for trolling their victims: their childish behavior might have fooled some people into thinking that Lulzsec was mostly harmless - but as the story you’re about to hear will show, they were anything but.
The US government says that Kim Schmitz, better know as Kim DotCom, is the leader of a file sharing crime ring. He sees himself as a an internet freedom fighter: a fugitive on the run from vindictive overly-powerful governments. Can King Kimble escape the wrath of the USA?
The US government says that Kim Schmitz, better know as Kim DotCom, is the leader of a file sharing crime ring. He sees himself as a an internet freedom fighter: a fugitive on the run from vindictive overly-powerful governments. Can King Kimble escape the wrath of the USA?
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is usually considered a better solution for authentication than just using passwords. But Roger Grimes, a veteran security professional, and a Data-Driven Defense Evangelist claims that the sense of security current MFA solutions provides us - is false.
Language models are everywhere today: they run in the background of Google Translate and other translation tools; they help operate voice assistants like Alexa or Siri; and most interestingly, they are available via several experiential projects trying to emulate natural conversations, such as OpenAI’s GPT-3 and Google’s LaMDA. Can these models be hacked to gain access to the sensitive information they learned from their training data?
In May 2021, Following the Solarwinds and the Colonial Pipeline attacks, the Biden administration published a presidential Executive Order mandating the use of SBOMs - Software Bill of Materials - in all government agencies. What are SBOMs and how useful are they in cybersecurity? Nate Nelson talks to two experts: Allan Friedman (CISA) and Chris Blask (Cybeats).
Railway systems are a mess of old systems built on top of older systems, running ancient operating systems and exposing their most sensitive inner workings to commuters via WIFI. Why are railway systems so difficult to defend, and what are the most probable attack vectors against them? Nate Nelson, our senior producer, speaks with Israel Baron, Israel Railway's first ever CISO.
Railway systems are a mess of old systems built on top of older systems, running ancient operating systems and exposing their most sensitive inner workings to communers via Wifi. Why are railway systems so difficult to defend, and what are the most probable attack vectors against them? Nate Nelson, our Sr. producer, speaks with Israel Baron, Israel Railway's first ever CISO.
Silk Road’s success did more than bring the site more sellers and buyers, it also brought it more attention from law enforcement agencies as well as malicious hackers and other shady characters. Some of these shady characters, it turns out, were part of the task force aiming to shut down Silk Road...
Ken Thompson is a legendary computer scientist who also made a seminal contribution to computer security in 1983, when he described a nifty hack that could allow an attacker to plant an almost undetectable malicious code inside a C compiler. Surprisingly, it turns out a very similar hack was also used in the Solarwinds attack.
Silk Road’s success did more than bring the site more sellers and buyers, it also brought it more attention from law enforcement agencies as well as malicious hackers and other shady characters. Some of these shady characters, it turns out, were part of the task force aiming to shut down Silk Road...
Your organization was hit by ransomware, and it is now time to reach out to the hackers and negotiate the terms of a deal that will bring back your data, and (hopefully) won’t leave the company’s coffers empty. But before you sit down in front of your computer and fire off a message to the hackers - stop. Are you sure that you know what you’re doing? Are you certain that you won’t screw up the negotiations and do more harm than good?
Ross Ulbricht always had a thing with testing his limits. He was also an avid libertarian who wanted to change the world. And so, in 2010, he came up with the idea to build a truly free market: a website where anybody can buy and sell anything - including illegal drugs - anonymously: the ultimate experiment in individual freedom.
Will BitCoin and the other cryptocurrencies be able to replace money as we know it today? will governments embrace a future where they have no control over their currencies? Jacob Goldstein (Planet Money, What's Your Problem) talks to Nate Nelson about what the future holds for BitCoin.
Years before credit cards transactions gave banks and data-brokers free access to our private financial information, a man named David Chaum became the first person to really, materially grapple with the problem of privacy in money. His ideas inspired a movement of "Crypto Anarchists" who aspired to change money, forever.
A recording of last week's special Malicious Live Ask Us Anything event: How did Malicious Life come to be? How do we choose the stories we tell, who was Ran's most memorable guest - and why does Nate keep inserting weird names into the scripts?...
In June 2011, a Con Edison truck was parked outside of Hector Monsegur's New York apartment, every day for over a week. But Hector - better known as Sabu, the ringleader of the LulzSec hacking group -wasn't fooled: he guessed, correctly, that the FBI was on to him. But it turned out that of all the people who broke or disregarded the law in this particular story, only one man had a reason to worried: Jeremy Hammond.
George Friedman and Jeremy Hammond are two very different people: the former is a capitalist middleman, the latter an anarchist-communist hacker. A spy - and a hacker. But in certain respects, they’re actually quite similar: in what lines are they willing to cross to get to their goal.
AbdelKader Curnelius, a German Threat Researcher and an expert on the cybercrime ecosystem in German-speaking countries - shares a story about how he helped the German police put a sophisticated local cybercriminal behind bars, by uncovering tiny mistakes that this hacker did in the past.
In June 2012, an anonymous hacker posted a list of 6.5 Million encrypted passwords belonging to LinkedIn users on a Russian hacker forum. It was soon discovered that these passwords were hashed using an outdated and vulnerable hashing algorithm - and were also unsalted. The lawsuits followed suit shortly… what is 'hashing' and 'salting', and can we trust big organizations to keep our secrets safe?
Assaf Dahan, Threat Research Lead at Cybereason's Nocturnus team, describes a recently discovered cyber-espionage campaign targeting the Defense, Energy, Aerospace, Biotech and Pharma industries conducted by APT 41, AKA Winnti Group - a Chinese state-sponsored APT group known for its stealth and sophistication.
In 2007, Estonia - then already a technologically advanced country - suffered a large-scale DDoS attack which crippled many organizations and digital services. Joseph Carson, a Security Scientist and an adviser to several governments and conferences, talks with Nate Nelson about the lessons learned from that event, and how Estonia became what he calls 'A Cloud Country'."
In May 1990, officials from several law enforcement agencies gathered in Phoenix, Arizona, to announce a nationwide crackdown on illegal computer activity. This massive operation, carried out by hundreds of Secret Service and FBI agents, was focused on a new type of crime: Hacking. Yet as Isaac Newton said, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and the reaction to Operation Sundevil was the birth of a new power in the cybersphere: the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The MITRE Attack Flow Project is essentially a new way to visualize, analyze and share knowledge about sequences of adversary behavior. Ingrid Skoog, Ass. Director of R&D at the Center for Threat-Informed Defense, and Israel Barak - Cybereason's CISO, spoke with Nate Nelson about the benefits of the MITRE Attack Flow project to defenders and executives alike.
When 24-year-old Aaron Swartz was caught scraping millions of science articles off of JSTOR, he faced up to 35 years in prison plus a fine of up to 1 million dollars. Did Aaron's crime justify such a harsh punishment?
Before it invaded Ukraine, Russia was considered - and rightfully so - a cyber superpower. But a month and a half into the war, the lights in Ukraine are still on, as well as cellular communications and other important infrastructure. Lior Div (Cybereason's CEO), Yonatan Striem-Amit (CTO & Co-founder), and Sam Curry (CSO), talk about what we learned so far about the conflict - and what we might see in the future.
It’s not every day that we have a guest who’s suggesting a new paradigm for cybersecurity. Sounil Yu, CISO and Head of Research at JupiterOne, talks about a new framework for designing secure systems, a framework he calls D.I.E: acronym for Distributed, Immutable and Ephemeral. Sounil asks us to treat our precious data less like Pets, and more like Cattle. Sounds confusing? New paradigms always are.
We usually count the damage from a cyberattack in Dollars and Euros, but the psychological damage to the victims is rarely discussed, if at all. So, what is the psychological and emotional toll from cyberattacks? Can scams, hacks, and breaches lead to Cyber Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?
What is the most critical of all critical infrastructure? Is it Electricity? Water Supply? According to Jeff Engles, CEO of Conquest Cyber, it's our Banking and Finance systems. Jeff spoke with Nate Nelson, our Senior Producer, about the resilience of our financial system, worst-case scenarios, and will backups be able to save our butts if and when?
By the 1970s, Crypto AG was a large and thriving company, employing over 400 people. This final episode of the series is going to explore how a spying operation affecting over 100 countries, for 70 years, was kept secret the whole time -- from governments, from militaries and intelligence services, and even the company’s own personnel.
Quantum Computing is a fascinating and revolutionary technology that has been gaining significant ground in the past decade, with researchers from both academia and the commercial sector - such as Google and IBM - announcing major breakthroughs every few weeks. Mike Redding, CTO of Quantropi, a company specializing in Quantum Encryption - claims that this revolution is even closer than most of us think.
How did Boris Hagelin succeed in selling compromised cipher machines to half the world, for more than 50 years? Some have speculated that it was some kind of backdoor. But, no - it was more clever than that... but Bo Jr., Hagelin's son, who became an important part of his father's company, did not approve of the secret deal with the NSA...
Assaf Dahan, Head of Threat Research with the Cybereason Nocturnus Team, discusses new discoveries about Iranian APTs Moses Staff and Phosphorus that blur the line between state-sponsored attacks and criminal activity.
General McArthur, Egpyt's Anwar Sadat, and Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini: These are just a few of the dozens, likely hundreds of targets of arguably the biggest, most ambitious hacking operation ever. A secret mission that lasted nearly a century, and influenced the course of so many of the most important events of history. The history you thought you knew.
Attacks against Small-to-Medium size businesses currently represent roughly 40% to 50% of all data breaches. Josh Ablett, founder and CISO of Adelia Risk, speaks with Nate Nelsn about the kind of security he usually finds in SMBs when he’s called in to make an initial security assessment - spoiler: not a pretty picture - the impact of data breaches on SMBs, and what role do insurance companies play in improving the state of security in that often overlooked segment of the industry.
Israel is a small country - yet its cyber security industry is exceptionally successful. In this episode, we go back to the Yom Kippur War of 1973, to discover how a national trauma and an Intelligence failure paved the way for Israel to become a cyber security mini-empire.
Pete Hertzog is a security expert and an educator with a vision: he wants our kids to learn about cybersecurity, and not just about not talking to strangers online - he wants them to learn even more advanced stuff, such as security analysis and hacking. Pete spoke with Nate Nelson about his Hacker Highschool initiative, and the lessons he learned from it.
"Hello. We are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them, we have devised a test." These words, found in a message posted on 4Chan in January 2012, started a global 'treasure hunt' - with thousands of puzzle-loving and curious individuals desperately competing with one another to be the first to crack the devilish puzzles created by the mysterious Cicada 3301. Who is Cicada, and what are their goals?
In the late ’80s to early 2000s, the NSA transitioned from being a hardware-first organization - that is, creating and operating physical spying devices - to software-first: excelling in hacking networks, tracking people online, etc. That transition was by no means easy: the NSA, by that point, was a huge organization - and big organizations are notorious for being very resistant to change. Jeff Man, our guest today, was one of the first people at the NSA to make the transition from hardware to software, and he shares with us his experiences from that period.
When the FBI asked Apple, following the 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, to write code that would give the FBI access to a suspect's iPhone - Apple refused, arguing that forcing it to write code goes against the First Amendment. Apple's claim wasn't the first time that this highly controversial claim was invoked in judicial proceedings…
A digital 'vaccine' was released to address Log4Shell, which has been called 'the single biggest, most critical vulnerability ever.' Nate Nelson talks to Yonatan Striem-Amit, CTO & Co-Founder of Cybereason (our sponsor) about the vulnerability, and about Cybereason's unusual vaccine: software that uses the same vulnerability to close the breach.
In 2003, Shawn Carpenter - an employee of Sandia National Laboratory - was at a crossroads: should he ignore a Chinese attack against U.S. targets, as his superiors ordered him to do - or do what he thinks is right, and continue investigating the case on his own?
Last month, in November of 2021, Cybereason - our show’s sponsor - released a special report titled: “Organizations at Risk: Ransomware Attackers Don’t Take Holidays”, focusing on the threat of ransomware attacks during weekends and holidays. Nate Nelson, our Sr. producer, talked with Ken Westin, Cybereason’s Director of Security Strategy, about why attackers love holidays and weekends, and why ransomware attacks during these times are so effective and dangerous.
In March, 2016, Microsoft had something exciting to tell the world: the tech giant unveiled an AI chatbot with the personality of a teenager. Microsoft Tay - as it was nicknamed - could tweet, answer questions and even make its own memes. But within mere hours of going live, Tay began outputting racist, anti-Semitic and misogynist tweets.
The Wild West Hackin’ Fest is a unique security conference. Not only because it's held in South Dakota and not only because of the Wild West visual vibe - but also because of the emphasis it puts on diversity and lowering the entry barriers for people who wish to join the world of information security. Eliad Kimhy talks to John Stand, one of the conference's founders.
To capture Alexey Ivanov and his business partner and bring them to justice, the FBI created an elaborate ruse: a fake company named 'Invita', complete with a fake website and a fake office building. Ray Pompon, a security professional, was brought in as an 'evil security consultant", to convince Alexey to demonstrate his hacking skills on a pre-arranged honeypot...Alexey came up with a 'brilliant' idea: hacking American corporations, and then blackmailing them - forcing them to hire his services as a 'security consultant.'
by China Telecom and routed through China. In 2017, traffic from Sweden and Norway to a large American news organization in Japan was hijacked - also to China - for about 6 weeks. What is IP Hijacking (a.k.a. BGP Hijacking), and what are its security implications? Nate Nelson talks to Dr. Yuval Shavitt, from from Tel Aviv University‘s Cyber Research Center.
Alexey Ivanov was exactly the kind of person to benefit from the early-2000's dot-com boom: He was bright, talented, and knew his stuff. His only problem was the fact that he was born in Chelyabinsk, a sleepy Russian town in the middle of nowhere…when he sent his resume to American companies, nobody was willing to bet on him. Alexey came up with a 'brilliant' idea: hacking American corporations, and then blackmailing them - forcing them to hire his services as a 'security consultant.'
The NSA is one of the world's most formidable and powerful intelligence agencies. Some people fear that the National Security Agency’s advanced capabilities would one day be directed inwards, instead of outwards. Are those fears justified? Is the NSA more dangerous than it is useful? Nate Nelson spoke with Ira Winkler, who started his career at the NSA.
In May 2017, Marcus Hutchins - AKA MalwareTech - became a hero for stopping WannaCry, a particularly nasty ransomware that spread quickly all over the world. Yet his fame also brought to light his troubled past as the teenage Black Hat hacker who created KRONOS, a dangerous rootkit. Should a criminal-turned-hero be punished for his past crimes?…
In July, 2021, Nocturnus - Cybereason’s Threat Research and Intelligence team - was called to investigate an espionage campaign targeting Aerospace and Telecommunications companies, mainly in the Middle East. Their investigation resulted in the discovery of a new threat actor that has been operating since at least 2018, and new and sophisticated malware that abuses Dropbox. Nate Nelson, Our Sr. producer, spoke with Assaf Dahan - senior Director and Head of Threat Research at Nocturnus - about the investigation.
Find the full report about "Operation GhostShell" at: www.cybereason.com/ghostshell
Smart Homes are slowly but surely becoming a part of our everyday lives, and so far it seems that Smart TVs - equipped with microphones, cameras, and an internet connection - are the weakest link. What are the current and potential threats against smart TVs - and is a person's smart home, still his castle?...
In some ways, cyber security is like Art - and that’s not a good thing… MITRE’s ATT&CK framework tries to make sense of the collective knowledge of the security community, and share that knowledge so that cyber defence become less an art form, and more about using the correct tools and technique. Nate Nelson, our Sr. producer, talks with Israel Barak - Cybereaon’s CISO and a regular guest of our podcast - about MITRE ATT&CK, and how it can help your organization stay safe.
Every year, seemingly, there’s a new story of some software - like 'Tik Tok' or 'FaceApp' - from a hostile country that may or may not be a security threat to us in the west. So what should be done in cases like this? What if the U.S. just banned all technology from Russia and China? Is it a good idea? Is it even possible?
Darknet Diaries, Jack Rhysider's show, is the most popular cyber security podcast - and one of the most successful tech podcasts in the US in general. Eliad Kimhy spoke with Jack about the origins of Darknet Diaries, his heroes and role models, and the effect the show’s success has had on his personal life - which, you might be surprised to discover, wasn’t always 100% positive.
It's every company's nightmare: a mysterious stranger approached an employee of Tesla's Gigafactory in Nevada, and offered him 1 million dollars to do a very simple job - insert a malware-laden USB flash drive into a computer in the company, and keep it running for 8 hours.
Lt. Colonel (Ret.) Bill Hagestad talks to Nate Nelson about how China's culture and troubled history of western colonialization influence its goverment views and actions regarding the global internet, and its interactions with western technology companies such as Google and Nortel.
What do you get when you take a hypersexual, drug enthusiast gun-toting paranoid - and add some serious amounts of money to the mix? You get a life so bizarre, so unbelievably extreme, that people will tell its story even after you’re long gone. Murder, rape, drugs, lies and a possible Dead Man's Switch... it's all part of John McAfee's story.
Nate Nelson talks to Art Coviello, Former CEO of RSA Security, and Malcolm Harkins, Vice President & Chief Security Officer at Intel, about the current cyber security landscape - 10 years after the RSA Breach.
Nate Nelson talks to Assaf Dahan, Sr. Director and Head of Threat Research at Cybereason’s Nocturnus team about a recent attack they uncovered, on multiple major Telecommunication companies.
The Jester is a patriotic, pro-American Hacktivist that since 2010 has waged a personal cyberwar against an array of targets he considers to be “the bad guys.” But detractors have insinuated that some of the Jester's operations were little more than internet sleight-of-hand. So, who is The Jester and what can we make of his reported exploits?
In 2005, when Albert Gonzalez was hacking his way into the networks of many retail chains in the US, credit cards were still very insecure: magnetic stripes and signed receipts did little to stop smart hackers such as Gonzalez and his crew. Sherri Davidoff talks to Nate Nelson about the past and present state of credit card security.
In early 2007, a Secret Service agent operating out of San Diego takes a flight halfway across the world. He’s going to meet with Europe’s most prolific stolen card salesman. It is this meeting that will be the beginning of the end for Albert Gonzalez and his 'All Star' crew of hackers, international businessmen and mules.
DerbyCon was all about making the community - a family. Dave Kennedy, one of the founders of DerbyCon, talks about the unique vibe of the conference, his fear of clowns, and why he'll never - NEVER - listen to a Busta Rhymes album again.
Working with the Secret Service, Albert Gonzalez was outstanding. He was such a good employee, in fact, that they had him do seminars, and speak at government conferences. At one point he met personally with the then Director of the Secret Service. Albert gave a presentation, and got to shake the man’s hand. It’s a remarkable redemption story, you’d have to say. There was just one caveat. You see, Albert Gonzalez went from stealing millions of credit cards to quarterbacking the largest cyber crime bust in U.S history. And then? He went back to the Dark Side.
Jeff Moss, founder of the DEF CON Hacker convention (and also the BlackHat convention), talks to Eliad about the origins of DEF CON, its "interesting" relationship with law enforcement agencies, and some of the notable shenanigans the conference attendees pulled off over the years...
It was as a teenager that Albert Gonzalez--one of the few greatest cybercriminals in history--developed the obsession that would go on to ruin his life. Gonzalez and some of his friends would go on to pull off some of the most remarkable crimes in the history of computers - but they just didn’t know when to stop. If they did, they might have gotten away with it. They might not have ruined their lives.
THOTCON is not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill security conference - and it's even obvious from the moment you browse their website. How did a local, small-scale event in Chicago, grow to become a major cybersecurity conference, and what is its connection to The Matrix movie? Producer Eliad Kimhy talks to Nick Percoco and Jonathan Tomek, two of THOTCON's founders.
For more than a decade, China orchestrated a sophisticated espionage campaign against Nortel Networks, using Huawei, Chinese civilians working in Canada, and even organized crime gangs to steal important technical and operational information. When Nortel finally fell, the Chinese were there to reap the rewards of their death.
On Friday, May 7th, 2021, Colonial Pipeline suffered a cyberattack that forced the company to shut down its operations. As a result, gasoline outages were reported in many East Coast states. The entity behind the attack is a criminal group known as DarkSide. Nate Nelson, our Sr. producer, spoke with Assaf Dahan - Head of Threat Research at Cybereason - about the Colonial Pipeline attack: how & why it happened, and its implications - both for the security of critical infrastructure in the US, and for the criminal underworld of Ransomware groups. That last one is particularly interesting, since it seems that the Colonial Pipeline attack has set off a somewhat unexpected trend on the dark web.
In the wake of RSA's disclosure of the breach, the company cyber analysts chose not to boot the attackers of their network - but followed their activities closely, trying to figure out their identities and motives. For the first time since the actual breach, a decade ago, we'll get the (surprising) answers to those questions - and more.
In the early 2000s, Nortel was consciously, intentionally, aggressively positioning itself as a partner and a friend of China. At the same time, it was China's number one target for corporate espionage - and an early victim of its new 'Unrestricted Warfare' doctrine.
In the early 2000s, Nortel was consciously, intentionally, aggressively positioning itself as a partner and a friend of China. At the same time, it was China's number one target for corporate espionage - and an early victim of its new 'Unrestricted Warfare' doctrine.
Security BSides - or just 'BSides', for short' - is the first grassroots, DIY, open security conference in the world - with more than 650 events in more than 50 countries. Jack Daniel, one of BSides' founders, recalls how the conference started, and what do such 'community-oriented' events contribute that other events often cannot.
Back in the 1990s, Cyberwarfare was a word rarely used in the West - and definitely unheard of in China, which was just taking it's first steps in the Internet. Two Chinese military officers, veterans of the semi-conflict with Taiwan, helped shape the role of cyber in modern warfare in China and beyond.
Andrew Ginter, VP of Industrial Security at Waterfall Security Solutions, speaks to Sr. Producer Nate Nelson about the cybersecurity of Nuclear facilities. How protected are modern nuclear power plants?
Chris Wysopal, a cyber security pionneer and one of L0pht's founding members, talks about the group's 1998 testimony in the Senate, how they used shaming to force cooporations to fix their software, and the (not so fortunate) consequenses of the sale to @stake.
In the early days, the L0pht guys tinkered with what they already had laying around, or could find dumpster diving. But things change, of course. By the end of the ‘90s many of the L0pht hackers had quit their day jobs, incorporating under the name “L0pht Heavy Industries”, and moving into a nicer space, the “new L0pht.” Seven days after Y2K, they merged with @stake, an internet security startup. It was a signal that hacking wasn’t just for the kids anymore.
'L0pht', or 'L0pht Heavy Indutries', was one of the most infuencial hacker collectives of the 90's: it's members were even invited to testify infront of the Congress on the current state of Internet security. In this episode, four L0pht's founding members - Count Zero, Weld Pond, Kingpin & Dildog - talk about the begining and influence of the L0pht on cyber security.
Israel Barack, Cybereason's CISO and an expert on cyber-warfare, on the recent MS Exchange hack that hit thousands of organizations worldwide: what happened, what were the vulenrabilites expolited in the attack - and what can we do to defend against such attacks in the future.
When the NotPetya pandemic hit, Cyber Analyst Amit Serper was sitting in his parents' living room, getting ready to go out with a few friends. He didn't have most of his tools with him, but he nonetheless took a swipe at the malware. An hour later, he held the precious vaccine.
On June 28th, 2017, millions of Ukranians were celebrating 'Constitution Day.' Their national holiday turned into a nightmare, as tens of thousands of computers all over the country were infected by a mysterious malware. By that afternoon, the cyber-pandemic was already going global.
It seems likely that legislation alone won't be able to regulate the widespread use of facial recognition. Andrew Maximov, who uses AI to fight Belarus's dictatorship, shows us another way facical recognition can be used - this time for us, instead of against us.
There are plenty of reasons why Police should use AI for facial recognition: after all, Humans are notoriously bad eye witnesses. However, placing AI in the hands of law enforcement does have its dangers - due to the limitations of the technology itself, and the biases of the officers who use it.
Clearview AI scrapes billions of images off social media and the open web, applies facial recognition algorithms on them - and sells that data to law enforcement agencies all over the world. But who are the people behind this secretive company, and what did a breach into its databases reveal?
FC, aka 'Freaky Clown', is an expert in "Physical assessments" - otherwise known as breaking into ultra-secure office buildings. FC shares some of his (incredible) adventures, as well as some tips and tricks on how to protect your organization's HQ from hackers such as himself.
Ran talks to Israel Barak, Cybereason's CISO and a Cyber-defense and Warfare expert, about the recent SolarWinds hack that impacted upto 18,000(!) enterprise organizations in the US. What is a Supply Chain Attack, how can organizations defend against it - and what does all this have to do with Evolution and Natural Selection?...
For our 100th episode, we bring you three stories that tie in to previous episodes of the show: Shadow Inc. (Election Hacking), J&K (Max Headroom) and T-Shirt-Gate (Yahoo's Ugly Death). Enjoy :-)
In the mid-90's, a Dutch TV repairman claimed he invented a revolutionary data compression technology that could compress a full-length movie into just 8KB.
In 1983, the US got word that an ally's embassy - probably France's - was bugged by the Soviets. This reports triggered Operation GUNMAN: a complete removal & de-bugging of all electronic devices in the US embassy in the USSR. This secretive operation resulted in a surprising discovery - and made the NSA what it is today.
Georgia's elections infrastructure had been hacked multiple times since 2014 - both by Russian Intelligence and local White Hat hackers. The upcoming elections are plagued with uncertainty - and uncertainty and democracy go together like wet hands and electrical outlets.
Today we’re talking about just one state. One which, depending on which way it leans, might bring the entire electoral college with it. One which, as of this writing, is absolutely, positively, neck and neck. Dead heat. A few votes one way or the other could swing it. In other words: this is the kind of state that cannot afford to be hacked. But might be.
About a year ago, Cybereason's Managed Detection and Response team (aka MDR) stumbled upon a attack involving Russian cybercriminals, POS devices and an entire new family of previously undiscovered malware.
Between 2010 and 2014, Yahoo was hacked numerous times - each time setting a new 'world record' for the largest data breach in history. It also hid those breaches from it's investors, customers and the SEC.
When Marissa Mayer joined Yahoo as CEO, the company's stock rose 2% the day of the announcement. But the new CEO was basically initiated into her job by a major data breath - and the worst was yet to come.
Falun Gong is a religious movement heavily persecuted in China. In 2017, members of the movement sued Cisco Systems for aiding and abetting the Chinese government in this persecution - since Cisco helped China erect 'Golden Shield'": the massive Chinese IT infrastructure project which combined internet censorship and pervasive Chinese state cyberspying.
The Great Firewall is just mind-bogglingly big, repressing freedom of speech and information for over 800 million Chinese internet users every year. The Great Firewall is so big that it’s worth asking: how did the Chinese manage to build it in the first place? 20 years ago, our info-sec technology was much less advanced than it is today. China was a second-rate technology power, not even comparable to their position today. Most of all: a firewall, like the one they proposed, had never existed before--or, for that matter, since. How, then, did they pull it off?
Ran & Israel Barak, Cybereason's CISO, discuss the latest development in ransomware evolution: multi-stage attacks in which the attackers infiltrate the target network, steal data and gather intelligence - before detonating the ransomware to cause maximal denial-of-service to the victim organization. What does this new tactic mean for the use of backups as a mean to mitigate the risk from ransomware? This episode was recorded live on July 29th, 2020.
In 2015 Bastian Obermayer, an investigative journalist for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, received a message every journalist dreams of: the biggest leak in journalism history. But dealing with the massive 2.7 Terabyte data-dump, 11.5 million documents - while making sure his source's identity could not be uncovered, turned out to be a huge challenge.
Hackers keep modifying and improving their methods of operations. Assaf Dahan, Sr. Director and Head of Threat Research at Cybereason, tells us about the recent shift to Blackmail - as a way to pressure Ransomware victims to pay the ransom.
On August 1st, 2017, Bitcoin forked. But it wasn't the SegWit2x fork everyone was talking about - It was a different fork, supported by a coalition of miners who, in doing what they were doing, were essentially ditching SegWit2x in favor of their own scaling solution. What happened here? Who betrayed SegWit2x?
SegWit2x was proposed as a solution to Bitcoin's network problems - but some people in the anti-2x movement claimed that it is nothing less than a cyber-attack: a 51% attack on Bitcoin, to be precise. This is getting ugly.
A black market economy has developed around Fortnite's in-game currency. Cyber criminals are hacking user accounts, juicing credit cards, and selling virtual currency for real-life dollars and cents. To ensure fun and safety for players, the cycle must be stopped.
In 2017, Bitcoin was winning. Money, attention, success poured out of every seam. It appeared that a golden age had dawned. But just under the surface, the network was teetering on the verge of collapse. Technical problems that were just nuisances when the community was small now became glaring and potentially lethal. Debates among tight communities of knowledgeable users and developers ballooned into full-on internet wars. Factions hardened. Heroes became enemies of the people.
Amit Serper was doing a routine inspection on a client's network, when he came across a suspicious-looking pen-testing tool, exhibiting RAT-like behavior. We'll follow Amit's investigation, and in the process learn the basics of cyber research.
The COVID19 pandemic forced organizations to transition to a work-from-home model - and many of them were unprepared for such a radical departure from the ‘normal’ security perimeter. Sam Curry, Cybereason's CSO, talks to Ran about the lessons learned from COVID19, and what steps should Cyber Security professionals take in order to be ready for a future outbreak.
At the end of our last episode, it kind of seemed like Huawei--the Chinese telecommunications company accused of aiding in state cyberspying--was completely innocent. They were being accused of crimes they may not have committed, based on evidence that largely did not exist. The conspiracies around them seemed unfair at best, malicious at worst. But there’s another side to this story, of course. Huawei didn’t end up on people’s radars for no reason. They’ve earned their notoriety.
At the end of our last episode, it kind of seemed like Huawei--the Chinese telecommunications company accused of aiding in state cyberspying--was completely innocent. They were being accused of crimes they may not have committed, based on evidence that largely did not exist. The conspiracies around them seemed unfair at best, malicious at worst. But there’s another side to this story, of course. Huawei didn’t end up on people’s radars for no reason. They’ve earned their notoriety.
Over the past 20 years, western governments have accused Huawei of everything from IP theft to financial fraud to cyber spying. Often, these claims are made either with no evidence, or only circumstantial evidence. Is Huawei really a national security threat, or are they a political scapegoat?
On November 22nd, 1987, a hacker took over the signals of two Chicago-area TV stations and broadcast two bizarre and somewhat vulgar messages. In this episode we explore this notorious hack, and its implications on the nature of hacking in general.
The fact that ToTok came out of the United Arab Emirates is no surprise: in recent years, the UAE has deployed some of the most sophisticated mobile device exploits ever seen. But they got a lot of help from one country in particular... today’s episode is about the UAE. But it’s really about the Americans.
The corporate structure supporting ToTok involved at least half a dozen real companies, shell companies and intelligence groups, with the individuals who actually operated the app being hidden behind other individuals given sinecure jobs and ponied around to the public as the supposed developers. Ultimately, though, every path that begins with ToTok ends with one very rich and powerful man at the heart of the Emirati state. His name is Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan.
Only a few months after its release, ToTok - an ordinary messaging app, with no exceptional features - had over five million downloads, and held the number 4 position in Apple's App Store global charts. So what was it that made ToTok so popular, so quickly? The answer: nothing good.
As much as we can imagine what it’s like to be a defender in a cyber-conflict, we don’t really know what it is - unless we’re in the shoes the time of it happening. That's what simulations are for.
Banks & other financial institutions face a variety of security threats: from state-sponsored cyber-attacks, to smaller acts of fraud, to thousands of random malware attacks from the web. To survive in this hostile landscape, these organizations turned to the military for inspiration.
Petro Rabigh were facing lots of problems in defending their systems. But they did get lucky in one sense: their hackers were unprepared when their plan went awry. Who were the hackers that infiltrated the Saudi petrochemical plant, and what can this breach teach us?
Industrial Security requires a different skill set--really, an entirely different mindset than working in IT does. In this episode we dive into the story of one of the most dangerous malware ever to be discovered in the wild: Triton/Trisis.
Deep Fakes are set to revolutionize content creation, but alongside this technology's benefits, it also has the potential two sow havoc, fear, and distrust via Social Networks. Just this week, Facebook disclosed a network of fake users it found, whose profile images were all deep faked. So, how can we identify deep fakes - even before they go online?
Over the past two years, the internet has been inundated with celebrity Deep Fake videos of all kinds: Obama, Putin, and Trump deliver speeches they never gave, Gal Gadot "stars” in a porn video, and professional comedians such as Bill Hader eerily turn into the people they impersonate, like Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
What all of these videos have in common is that they were mostly created by amateur developers or small startups with tight budgets - but their quality is surprisingly good, and in some cases as good as what the biggest movie studios were able to produce with huge budgets just a few years ago.
So what happened in the last five years, that turned special effects from being the exclusive domain of industry experts - into something a 14-year-old can create more or less at the touch of a button? Like the top end of a floating glacier, Deep Fakes are by and large only the visible product of a fascinating - and much deeper - technological revolution in the field of artificial intelligence. As we shall soon see, this revolution has the potential to put some very powerful tools in the hands of both attackers and defenders in the world of cyber-security.
Sam Curry is Cybereason's Chief Security Officer and an award-winning cyber security visionary. Sam & Ran discuss Sam's upcoming webinar, in which he will present his insights into what 2020 will bring for the security industry: the rise of 5G cellular networks, The US Presidential Elections, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and more.
Even the best hackers are human, and humans are inescapably unique. Forensic Linguistics, Behavioral Signatures and Cultural Captchas can help defenders identify and (maybe) catch even the best of hackers.
Thousands of companies are losing millions of dollars to cyber attacks. An insurance seems an ideal solution to their woes - yet this kind of insurance is much less common today, than it should be. What's the problem with Cyber insurance?
Nate Nelson speaks with Amit Serper & Sam Curry, notable veteran in Cyber Security, about Malware-As-A-Service, bullet-proof hosting, avoiding the lure of the 'dark side' and more.
In 2010, Nikita Kuzmin returned to the malware scene with Gozi 2.0, an improved version of the successful banking Trojan. How did Gozi 2.0 fair against Zeus & the new generation of Trojans, and what can we learn from Nikita's story about how does one become a malicious hacker in the first place?
In this out-of-band episode, we're bringing you the full interview with Lodrina Cherne, a Digital Forensics Expert, on Spyware : what is it, how it works, who sells it, and how you can avoid it yourself.
Nikita Kuzmin could have been a whiz programmer or a CEO of a successful startup. But as a teen in Moscow, he fell in with the wrong crowd, and his entrepreneurial skills found a different path: Gozi, the oddest and most brilliant malware operation ever conceived to that point in time.
Today's Cyber Stalkers have free access to almost government-grade spyware software with which they can terrorize their victims. Who's enabling the commercial spyware market?
Ran and Eliad Kimhi, one of the show's top producers, discuss the recent Listener's Survey results: what do like and dislike about the show, ideas you gave us for future improvements - and what do our listeners think about Ran's accent?...
Google, it turned out, was only one of 35 major US corporations hit in Aurora. Was is an espionage campaign, or could it be that it all began with one top ranking Chinese official who googled his own name - and wasn't happy with the search results?...
In January 2010, Google revealed in its blog that it was hacked. This attack, since known as Operation Aurora, is attributed to China. In this series of episodes, we'll expose the complicated and often turbulent relationship between the world's largest internet company, and the world's most populated nation.
Is the use of deadly force a legitimate – and practical – response to cyber attacks? what lessons did Israel learn from the Yom Kippur War of 1973 about the best way to manage it’s offensive cyber units? How can governments ‘signal’ to their opponents their cyber power, without actually deploying cyber weapons? Join us […]
Ad Blockers, such as AdBlock Plus, provide an important service to users who find web ads annoying, creepy and sometimes even dangerous. In recent years, how ever, the business models adopted by some blockers present us with a moral dilemma.
Can a malware be too successful? This is the story of Conficker, one of the most advanced worms in history - and how its success led to its ultimate failure.
A rare, inside look, at how Cybereason's researchers were able to uncover one of the largest Cyber Espionage campaigns ever discovered, against multiple Telecommunications companies around the world.
The YIPL phreaking magazine was the spiritual predecessor to the better-known '2600' zine, and it was founded by a ideological party determined to bring down the largest monopoly in US history: Bell Telephone.
After the Challenger Disaster of 1986, NASA had a hard time convincing the public that the Galileo spacecraft, fueled by radioactive Plutonium, is safe to launch. The WANK worm, it turns out, was a message aim at NASA - from the two most powerful hackers in the world.
After the Challenger Disaster of 1986, NASA had a hard time convincing the public that the Galileo spacecraft, fueled by radioactive Plutonium, is safe to launch. The WANK worm, it turns out, was a message aim at NASA - from the two most powerful hackers in the world.
On October 16th, 1989, NASA's scientists went into work preparing to launch a spacecraft that very day. But when they sat down to their computers, they were met with an unexpected greeting: “Your system has been officially WANKed. You talk of times of peace for all, and then prepare for war.”
After its momentous breach, Equifax's CEO Richard Smith said: “Equifax will not be defined by this incident, but rather by how we respond.” Well, he was spot on, but not in a good way.
In their 120 year history, Equifax never sold anything, or provided any service to ordinary folks - except collect DATA. In 2017, that huge data repository, a 1000 times larger then the Library of Congress, got hacked.
Twenty years ago, a 15-years old Norwegian kid was put on trial for breaking the DVD Copy Prevention system. His case spawned a whole new "artistic" movement...
Guglielmo Marconi--the beloved, hated, disputed inventor of radio--gets trolled by a mustached magician in the world’s first ever, wireless, grey hat hack.
In its prime, Mt. Gox was essentially the place where Bitcoin happened. But for two years, Mt. Gox was imploding from the inside - while soaring to unprecedented success on the outside.
In its prime, Mt. Gox was essentially the place where Bitcoin happened. But for two years, Mt. Gox was imploding from the inside - while soaring to unprecedented success on the outside.
Today on Malicious Life, tens of thousands of people get robbed. Then a community gets together to ask: should we take our money back, or let the hacker walk with it?
Today on Malicious Life, tens of thousands of people get robbed. Then a community gets together to ask: should we take our money back, or let the hacker walk with it?
How did the Jerusalem virus trigger the birth of the entire Anti Virus industry in Israel? A high-stakes wager on Live TV, and more.
Although scary, the Jerusalem virus, discovered in Israel in 1987, was in fact a rather simple virus. How, then, did the virus trigger the birth of an entire national industry?
Eugene Spafford (aka Spaf), a professor of computer science at Purdue University, was the first researcher to publish a detailed analysis of the infamous Morris Worm. Gene talks to Ran about this incident, as well as how was security different in the 1980’s.
It’s a weapon that harnessed the strength of millions of computers at once: a cannon so powerful it could break through any wall, take down any website. It is “the Great Cannon”.
On the second installment of our Ashely Madison hack retelling, we look at the fallout of one of the hack, and the people who’ve suffered from it.
When Ashley Madison got hacked, it made international headlines. Why? Because it wasn’t just a major event. It demonstrated how there’s information even more sensitive, even more significant than your credit card, or your social security number: your secrets.
As we prepare to release an awesome 2-part story in two weeks, we decided to give you a chance to go back to some old favorites and check out some of the behind-the-scenes interviews of Malicious Life. Graham Cluley tells about his entry into the world of security. There are stories aplenty in this interview- Graham […]
If movies have taught me anything, it’s that if you want to rob a bank, you dress as the cleaning crew. The people behind the Target hack must have seen one action film too many, because when they decided to hack one of the biggest retailers in the world, they did so via the HVAC […]
How does the outbreak of a “plague” inside a video game- a bug, essentially- affect real-life disease research?
Stuxnet was a devastating weapon, but who wielded it? That is the question we try to answer with the final installment of our Stuxnet series. In this episode, we explore other, similar battles of the modern cyber war, and look further into the topic of Zero Day vulnerabilities. With special guests: Andrew Ginter, and Blake […]
Stuxnet was a weapon, a kind of a smart bomb- perhaps one of the smartest bombs ever created. A bomb that couldn’t rely on operators, cameras, and laser targeting, instead it had to “think” its way to its destination. An invisible commando unit, dropped deep behind enemy lines. And its payload- not explosives, but lines […]
Where armies once fought with bullets and bombs, they now engage in clandestine, invisible warfare. In 2010 a virus was discovered that would change the world’s perception of cyber warfare forever. Dubbed Stuxnet, this malicious piece of code has a single focus- to stop to development of Iran’s nuclear program. Part one of this three […]
The Shammon Virus. There is a single company, run by a royal family, which employs the majority of the Saudi working population. It’s worth more than Apple, Google, and Amazon…by a lot. The Saudi Aramco oil company is one of the most significant commercial entities in human history. It’s hard to imagine, then, what could […]
Not all malware is created equal. Some malware will attempt to erase your files, demand ransom, or steal your information. Others will do no such thing- and still end up being worse. Don’t believe us? What if a virus made your computer send pornography to fifty of your closest friends and family? Yes, including your […]
A young woman is arrested by the Chinese government while trying to cross the border to Tibet. Her interrogator, a Chinese spy, pulls out a dossier full of information regarding her activity online. It turns out she’s been visiting pro-Tibet websites, and for that, she’s sentenced to two months in jail. What is GhostNet? Find […]
In an attempt to halt the Morris worm’s path of destruction, a systems administrator at Harvard shut down the university router through which Andy Sudduth’s message would be sent to the internet. The post didn’t go through until after it was too late. In a tragic movie-twist, the fix that everybody needed was heard by […]
We’ve introduced you to some of the seminal malware attacks that have shaped cybersecurity history. Perhaps no other incident in history, though, has had the effect on how we think about computer security today as the Morris worm.
How far should a die-hard fan go, in order to bring closer to them the thing that they love? In one of the most interesting, yet relatively unknown cybersecurity stories, a young hacker attempts to steal his favorite game prior to its release and then attempts to blackmail his victims into hiring him. An evil […]
Catching a criminal is by no means easy, but there’s something we take for granted in any crime: that the criminal has a face and a name, that they used a specific weapon on a specific target, and that the crime had ended once it was complete. But what about a crime without a […]
When representatives from the Democratic National Committee reached out to a silicon valley cybersecurity company, to investigate a potential breach in their computer system, it’s hard to imagine what they might have expected to come of it. It didn’t take long to discover that something was amiss. Red flags were popping up all over the […]
Those who have experienced a cybercrime know the feelings of frustration and helplessness that come along with it. A hacker could be halfway across the world when they attack you, and you might have no way of figuring out who it was or catching them even if you could. So frustrating. But is there really nothing we […]
What governments and powerful organizations regularly use, others will find ways to use as well. Cyber activity fits so incredibly well with terrorism. Actors can remain hidden, or reveal themselves to the world; Create propaganda campaign, or aim for real damage. Join us on this episode of Malicious Life, as we learn the story of […]
The NSA has many means at its disposal. But how does it use these means, and for what goals? Discover the (literally) secret history of the NSA’s cyber activity. Travel with us to Russia and back, learn the origins of FISA, and find out more about the government agency so secret it was once dubbed […]
The early 2000s were an interesting time in Information Security. This is roughly the period when malware transitioned from viruses written by teenagers for fun, to cybercrime tools in the hands of sophisticated criminals. This week’s story took place in that time frame – and was a precursor of that transition. It is also a cautionary […]
The largest hack in U.S military history may have been conducted by… The NSA. In 1997, a wargame conducted by the NSA showed just how unprepared we were for a potential cybernetic strike- in 4 days, NSA hackers were able to take down entire military networks. It revealed the dire consequences of a possible cyberattack, and even […]
It’s the holidays and everyone’s on vacation – but the Internet never rests and neither do the bad guys in cybersecurity. So, for this holiday special, we figured we’ll air an interesting interview we did a few weeks back with Amit Serper, Principal Security Researcher at Cybereason, NotPetya vaccinator, and former cyber warrior for the […]
From the Bulgarian hacker scene of the 90’s, featured in episodes 1 and 2, we now move to the vibrant underground hacker scene of West and East Berlin. Working secretly for the KGB, a young Berliner hacker attempts to hack the U.S military network, only to be stopped by a curious, and inventive astronomer. A […]
The threat of fire and fury stands at the center of all modern conflicts- nuclear bombs that can eradicate life in seconds are the ultimate weapon of war, as they pose a huge threat to centers of population. But what of the cyber war? What threat could it possibly pose to life as we know […]
Guerrilla warfare has been around for as long as conventional warfare has. The idea that a small force, through cunning and brazen action, could overtake a larger force is an old one. From pirates who would take merchant ships by surprise, to lengthy military campaigns against an enemy that is hiding in plain sight. The […]
Governments around the world have been making devious use of the internet as a platform to spread, not malware, but propaganda. As in all wars, propaganda is a huge part of the modern cyber war. Join us as we explore the roots, and the most creative uses of the internet to spread information and disinformation […]
WikiLeaks has ushered in a new age in whistle blowing: Modern leakers such as Chelsea Manning – who’s story is the focus of our current episode – expose huge amounts of confidential information. But can these mega-leaks really influence the actions and policies of governments?
Stuxnet was a devastating weapon, but who wielded it? That is the question we try to answer with the final installment of our Stuxnet series. In this episode, we explore other, similar battles of the modern cyber war, and look further into the topic of Zero Day vulnerabilities. With special guests: Andrew Ginter, and Blake […]
Stuxnet was a weapon, a kind of a smart bomb- perhaps one of the smartest bombs ever created. A bomb that couldn’t rely on operators, cameras, and laser targeting, instead it had to “think” its way to its destination. An invisible commando unit, dropped deep behind enemy lines. And its payload- not explosives, but lines […]
Where armies once fought with bullets and bombs, they now engage in clandestine, invisible warfare. In 2010 a virus was discovered that would change the world’s perception of cyber warfare forever. Dubbed Stuxnet, this malicious piece of code has a single focus- to stop to development of Iran’s nuclear program. Part one of this three […]
A global FBI manhunt for the world’s most wanted cyber criminal ends in the capture of a massive criminal network, but with the escape of the man himself. Security experts who operate within the gray areas of morality develop botnets that destroy personal devices infected with malicious botnets in what they call “the chemotherapy of […]
WannaCry’s widespread cyber attack on more than 200,000 computers all over the world made headlines – but only a few people remember a similar attack, named The AIDS Trojan, almost 30 years earlier… In this episode of Malicious Life, we go deep into the world of ransomware to examine its roots, the tools used and […]
2016 is known throughout the circles of information security as “The Year of The DDoS Attacks”, and rightfully so: 5 large scale DDoS attacks – ‘Distributed Denial Of Service’ – shocked the technology world. In this episode of Malicious Life, we examine how the power of the internet itself can be harvested and deployed to […]
In this episode of Malicious Life, we take a look at one of the oldest forms of criminal activity on the web- the spam empires of the 90’s and 2000’s. Find out how these multi-million dollar industries operated, how they served as a half step towards the organized online crime groups of the modern age, […]
In 1989, a message was found in a virus: “Eddie Lives…Somewhere in Time!”. ‘Eddie’ was a particularly nasty virus, and its discovery led a young Bulgarian security researcher down a rabbit hole, on a hunt for the prolific creator of the Eddie virus: The Dark Avenger. With special guests: Vesselin Bontchev, Graham Cluley.
Cybercrime is one of the most notable threats we face as computer users, nowadays. But it wasn’t always so. Those of us who’ve been in the field long enough may remember a time when computer viruses were much more innocent, and virus authors were usually just bored computer geeks- not members of a sophisticated, well-organized […]