Transatlantic Cable Podcast

The final episode of the year brings some pretty big stories for the Transatlantic Cable team. Kicking off this week, discussion starts with a troubling story about democracies and spyware – in particular, how others are leveraging the malicious software to try to subvert democratic countries. Moving from that, the team look at the big news of the week, with word that Twitter users have voted to remove Elon Musk as CEO of the troubled social network. However, even if he is removed as owner, he’ll still have overall sway of what goes on the network.  

From there, discussion moves to security vulnerabilities in BrickLink – Lego’s official second-hand and vintage marketplace for LEGO bricks. According to Bleeping Computer, a vulnerability could have, “allowed an attacker to take over members' accounts, access and steal personally identifiable information (PII) stored on the platform, or even gain access to internal production data and compromise internal servers.” Thankfully, the flaws have since been fixed.

To wrap up, the team discuss a recent story about Epic Games – which has recently been fined $520 million (yes, half a BILLION dollars) for privacy violations, and what the FTC calls “dark patterns,” in order to “trick millions of gamers into making unintentional purchases.”

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Direct download: Transatlantic_Cable_Podcast_280.mp3
Category:technology -- posted at: 9:06am EDT

Episode 279 of the Transatlantic Cable kicks off with a troubling story about purported Chinese hacker group, APT41 attacking and stealing US Covid relief payments, to the cool tune of $20 million.  Whilst details are thin, concerns are being raised around just how much of the nearly $800 billion was actually used by people in need.

From there the team move onto discussions around North Korea’s Lazarus group, with details around a malicious app, designed to siphon off people’s crypto-currency.  After that, discussion moves to concerns that independent journalists in El Salvador are looking to sue the NSO Group for spying. 

The final story looks at news around LastPass and their recent data breach.

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Direct download: Transatlantic_Cable_Podcast_279.mp3
Category:technology -- posted at: 9:30am EDT

Episode 278 of the Transatlantic Cable kicks off with news that the previous Twitter hack, back in 2021 is now much larger than initially suspected. Not great news for the already troubled social media site.  From there, the team discuss recent news that nightclub owners in Miami are struggling with slumping sales after the recent crypto-crash – it appears many crypto advocates moved there to spend their hard-earned coins, but are now having to tighten their belts.

Staying in the crypto-currency world, the next story looks at yet another crash with BlockFi moving into receivership. Is this the crypto bubble bursting? Time will tell, it seems.

To wrap up, a story for all the Apple fans out there, with news that Apple appears to be tracking its user’s, even if those users have asked them not to.  Concerning? Possibly – especially considering that they made privacy a key focal point of their recent advertising campaigns.

If you liked what you heard, please do consider subscribing.

Direct download: Transatlantic_Cable_Podcast_278.mp3
Category:technology -- posted at: 6:38am EDT

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