Welcome to the 229th episode of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast. Ahmed, Dave and I start by looking into the world of NFTs.

In this tale, it seems that a pirate site will allow users to download any NFT that has been bought and sold. Please tell me again, how a NFT site can be fooled by CTL-Right Click? From there, we dive into the Metaverse, where Facebook is rolling out their clone of the Oasis.

Now, while they say that the haptic gloves will help make digital handshakes and eliminate business travel, we all know what they are really about… data. For our third story, we discuss how a glitch at Tesla locked some folks out of their autos.

After the Tesla snafu, we jump to an odd story in the US. While there is a lot of weird in the US going on at any given day, this story takes a look at a woman who tried to buy a hitman to kill her ex-husband. Fortunately for him, and unfortunately for her, she used a fake site that then shared her info with the authorities. Now, for a PSA, please check out the site, it is quite comical and anyone who would think that it is legitimate, you have to wonder a bit. We close out the pod looking at a warning from the FBI on potential ransomware attacks tied to the US-Thanksgiving holiday as well as some tips to stay safe online shopping.

Episode 228 of the Transatlantic Cable take a look at some more serious stories this week, including news of REvil arrests.

To begin with, Dave, Jeff and Ahmed jump on news that Twitter “vigilantes” are trying to be good cop, by hunting down crypto-scammers in the DeFi (decentralized finance) world, but not all is as it appears.  From there discussion moves onto how, briefly, a scammer was able to hit number one spot in Google for ‘OpenSea’ – which is a legitimate site for the trading of NFTs – be wary of clicking without checking as ever!

Finally, to wrap up the team look at two stories around ransomware, the first around the return of Emotet and the second looking at the recent arrest of an affiliate related to the REvil ransomware gang.

In this week’s jam-packed episode of the Transatlantic Cable podcast, Jeff, Ahmed, and I tackle some prickly topics. To begin, we look at how the FBI is making some serious noise about DarkSide, offering $10 million for the capture of gang members.

From there we have a look at Facebook shutting down its controversial facial recognition system.

After that, it’s two stories about crypto: the first a scam having to do with Squid Games cryptocurrency and the second looking at how the mayor-elect of New York, Eric Adams, has requested his first three paychecks be payable in Bitcoin.

To open episode 226, we hit the road running, discussing a $10 billion hit on social media channels, caused by Apple. In this story, we take a look at the business impact Apple’s app-tracking policy has had on major social networks including Facebook, Snapchat, and more. From there, we discuss Facebook’s change to Meta.

Our third story takes us back to school, with a trip to Harvard, where there is a bit of tomfoolery and black hat SEO going on with the university’s self-publishing system.

After that, we talk about German authorities’ exposing one of the REvil group’s major players. To close out the podcast, we have a weird story involving an Instagram hacker using hostage-style videos for scams.

Welcome back to the Community Podcasts, a mini-series on the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast. Joining me again as our co-host for this series is Anastasiya Kazakova, a Senior Public Affairs Manager who coordinates global cyber diplomacy projects at Kaspersky.

As a reminder, the Community Podcasts is a short series of podcasts featuring frank cyber diplomacy conversations with cyber-heroes who unite people despite everything – growing fragmentation, confrontation, and cyber threats – there are people who build communities and unite people to work together for the common good. Why are they doing this? And are their efforts working?

For our 4th episode, by Allison Pytlak, the Program Manager for Reaching Critical Will. Reaching Critical Will is the disarmament program of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the oldest women’s peace organization in the world. Reaching Critical Will works for disarmament and arms control of many different weapon systems, the reduction of global military spending and militarism, and the investigation of gendered aspects of the impact of weapons. Allison contributes to the organization’s monitoring and analysis of disarmament processes and its research and other publications, as well as liaises with UN, government, and civil society colleagues.

Over the course of our conversation, we discuss the importance of gender in the international cybersecurity landscape, working with the UN, what the future holds for her and WILPF and more.