Risky Bulletin

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq discuss CISO’s expectations and priorities regarding budgets and what they will spend their money on. AI features heavily in 2027 priorities, but what will it deliver?

This episode is also available on YouTube.

Show notes

• The New Security Agenda

The FBI links the Binance hack to North Korea, game developers are being extorted with game-cloning threats, the Belarusian CyberPartisans hack Russia’s statistics service and Apple sends new mercenary spyware notifications.

Show notes

• Risky Bulletin: Game devs are being extorted with AI game-cloning threats

In this Risky Business News sponsor interview, Catalin Cimpanu talks with Luke Wescott, Threat Detection Engineer at Sublime Security. Luke talks through the rise of calendar-based phishing campaigns over the past year and the reasons behind it.

Show notes

• Luke Wescott on LinkedIn
• Sublime observes massive uptick in ICS phishing and calendar-based malware attacks

Billions stolen from Binance in a crypto hack, Last week’s PHP2Shell bugs are being exploited to hack Palo Alto Networks firewalls, The Brotli bugs also get a run, Belarusian state hackers carry out a wiper attack, and a hacker leaks the data of 41,000 DHS employees.

Show notes

• Risky Bulletin: Belarusian state hackers get on the data-wiping train

Tom Uren and Amberleigh Jack talk about new research that shows that Chinese open-weight AI models can be reeducated to remove pro-CCP bias. Good news for American businesses that want cheap AI, but we suspect that many knives will still be out for Chinese open-weight models.

They also discuss the near-misses from the PHP and Brotli bugs. We collectively dodged the bullet so that we only got grazed, but the good luck won’t last forever.

Finally, Tom looked at CISA’s 2030 strategy. Amazingly, it doesn’t really mention AI at all. Bizarre!

This episode is also available on YouTube.

Show notes

Moldova takes down more than 80 public services after a cyberattack, the White House launches a new cybersecurity pilot program, South Korea arrests an AI-assisted cybercrime ring, and the Electrum wallet patches a crypto-stealing bug.

Show notes

• Risky Bulletin: Moldova takes down 80+ public services after cyberattack

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about security culture. The PHP foundation seems to have had a change of heart about security, but what are the chances that OpenAI or other frontier AI labs will start to take it seriously?

This episode is also available on YouTube.

Show notes

• Today's PHP Security Release, and How We're Strengthening PHP Security
• Stefan Esser's month of PHP bugs
• Andon cord

While everyone was distracted by PHP, another RCE has been wrecking the internet, Australia’s ABC wipes some staff devices, a third PHP RCE is incoming and researchers discover a new DDoS attack vector in HTTP/3.

Show notes

• Risky Bulletin: While everyone was looking at PHP, another RCE is wrecking what's left of the internet

In this Risky Business sponsored interview James Wilson chats to Nebulock’s Head of Detection Strategy Alex Hurtado about the company’s threat hunting evaluation framework, GATES.

The pair talk through the five steps of Nebulock’s new acronym, and how they help remove gut feelings and guesswork when asking the question: “Should this threat hunt find be promoted to a detection rule”?

Show notes

• The GATES Method: when a hunt becomes a detection

A ransomware group used a supply chain compromise to hack around 40 shipping companies, the Pentagon assembles a technology sabotage unit, PHP2Shell exploitation gets underway and GoDaddy revokes 400,000 certs.

Show notes

• Risky Bulletin: Supply chain attack lets ransomware group inside 40+ shipping companies

Tom Uren and Amberleigh Jack talk about the weird bugging incident at OpenAI. It doesn’t look at all like it was normal state-backed espionage, but there are still good reasons the frontier labs should ensure that their crown jewels are safe.

They also discuss how cybercriminals are rapidly evolving their use of AI. The technology and harnesses available are getting better and the criminals are also discovering business models where they can sit back while AI automates most of the work.

This episode is also available on YouTube.

Show notes

A hacker hijacks more than 10% of Tor’s exit nodes, a second ransomware negotiator has been linked to ShinyHunters, a Chinese crime ring hacked Staples, and a hacker leaks emails from German far-right party AfD.

Show notes

• Risky Bulletin: Hacker hijacks 10% of Tor exit nodes

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq discuss whether the rise of AI coding will result in more or less bugs and whether it will ultimately make software more secure.

This episode is also available on YouTube.

Show notes

A serious vulnerability lets attackers escape Kernel-based virtual machines, OpenCode users become collateral damage in a distillation attack, supply chain incidents hit AOMEI and ConnectWise and Intel will discontinue SGX.

Show notes

• Risky Bulletin: PwnEscape vulnerability lets you escape KVM

In this Risky Business sponsored interview James Wilson chats with Sondera co-founder and CEO, Josh Devon, about while AI agents are highly capable, they’re not the best rule followers or decision makers.

The pair find themselves in the philosophical weeds about the whys behind agents’ lack of ability to determine, or care about, right from wrong before getting into how Sondera’s Auto Formulization, that gives specific behaviour guardrails to agents, can help.

Show notes

Three DataSuckers hacking group suspects arrested in Russia, Al Jazeera employees targeted with Candiru spyware, the US disrupts 40 North Korean laptop farms, and an OpenAI employee was arrested for planting a spy device.

Show notes

• Risky Bulletin: Russia arrests DataSuckers hacking group

Tom Uren and Amberleigh Jack talk about Russian targeting of Ukrainian data centres. That’s not good, but it looks like Russia is very poorly prepared for Ukraine’s retaliatory strikes. Karma!

They also discuss how open-weight models are getting good at cyber tasks while safeguards are easily bypassed. There is no chance of international regulation that will rein in these models, so it is time to loosen cyber safety restrictions on American frontier models.

This episode is also available on YouTube

Show notes

Spyware chips found inside Ledger crypto-wallets, a cyberattack defrosts supermarket freezers across France, Dutch-owned supermarkets go offline in multiple countries following a cyberattack, and the EU wants smart glasses to beep loudly when they’re recording.

Show notes

• Risky Bulletin: Spyware chip found in Ledger crypto-wallets

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq examine how ShinyHunters and the FBI both deceived themselves into believing they were immune to cyber threats.

This episode is also available on YouTube.

Show notes

• Krebs On Security
• FBI Director Kash Patel on ShinyHunters
• Brett Leatherman, the FBI Assistant Director for Cyber on ShinyHunters
• Hacker's Manifesto, 1986
• FBI and Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance
• FBI padding the top 10 list arrest numbers

Two ShinyHunters suspects arrested in Jordan and the US, hackers breach TLD registrars to get valid Google certs, Japanese authorities arrest a Qilin ransomware member and Google suspends its open-source bug bounty program after a flood of AI bug reports.

Show notes

• Risky Bulletin: ShinyHunters suspects arrested in US and Jordan