This week, Jeff and I chat with Ivan Kwiatkowski from Kaspersky’s GReAT to talk about the recent controversy surrounding Google’s decision to “burn” a zero-day exploit in use by US spies. We also talk briefly about another zero-day discovery: Kaspersky found it, and it requires IT teams’ immediate attention.

Moving on, we discuss data breaches in Facebook, LinkedIn, and Clubhouse that could affect users’ privacy for years to come. From there we turn our attention to a story looking at the “average” UK hacker and how one person wanted to take out 70% of the Internet by destroying three Amazon server centers.

If all that floats your boat, be sure to subscribe. For more information on the stories we covered, see the links below:

With Easter holidays in the UK, we gave David the day off for recording the 196th episode of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast. Instead, I am joined by two of my colleages from our Global Research and Analyst Team (GReAT).

Last week, Dmitry Bestuzhev and Fabio Assolini hosted a webinar on the threat landscape in the financial sector. During our conversation, we touch on the state of financial threats, how Covid impacted the online threats and more.

For the 195th edition of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast, Dave and I focus on crime. Now this ranges from everything from dumb criminals to statistics and ransomware.

The first story we look at travels from Italy to the Dominican Republic and back again. In this case we have a mafia member who was on the run from Italian law enforcement and living in the Caribbean. The problem was that this fugitive had a love for cooking. So much so that he broadcast his cooking on YouTube. The problem for him was that despite hiding his face, he left his tattoos exposed. I guess they were memorable as it led to his arrest and extradition.

From there, we look at a recent report from Canalys that outlines the sheer volume of leaked and stolen data that is circulating across the web due to data breaches. The third story is ransomware turned extortion after a criminal gang finds a slew of pornography on an IT worker’s computer. To close things out, we discuss the latest school to fall victim to ransomware.

We are slowly chipping away towards the second century mark for the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast. During our conversation, Dave and I go everywhere from the courtroom to the streets to the home.

To kick off the 194th edition, we move to the intersect of military and automotive. In this story from Joseph Cox, we look at a contractor looking to sell the location data of billions of cars to the US military. This one has a lot of question marks and what ifs when it comes to what could go wrong. From there, we head to the courtroom where Zoom calls are making compelling theater for the world of reddit. The question here though is what really should we be watching.

For our third story, we head to an emerging story of people renting out unused bandwidth for profit to anyone in the world. Is this a VPN? Is it a DDoS for hire? They say it will NOT be used for illicit activities, but I for one am not convinced. We close out the podcast by looking at the case of a hacked NHS employee account that turned into a PS5 scam.

We kick off the 193rd edition of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast with a bit of a PSA from Facebook. The social giant is rolling out tools to help people get the Covid-19 vaccine.

While Dave and I have some misgivings about the “public” service here from Facebook, we both agree that you should get a vaccine. From there, we sit down and talk with Vladimir Kuskov, Head of Advanced Threat Research and Software Classification at Kaspersky, on what the latest is with the Microsoft Exchange zero days and their exploitation. We then head to the world of deepfakes for a pair of stories. The first takes a look at some machine vs. machine battle. A new software is able to identify whether a video is a deepfake or real McCoy based upon reflections in the eyes. The second story of the deepfakes takes a look at woman in Pennsylvania who created pictures and videos of rivals to her daughter on the cheerleading team.

We then cross the pond to discuss a hoovering campaign by the Home Office. Sure it was an “experiment,” but is it really? To close out the show, we look at Nvidia’s battle against cryptomining.

In episode 193 of the Transatlantic Cable, Dave and Jeff look at news around a new ransomware attack that hit a bank in the US, which also included a doxing angle few expected.

From there they look at a story over on Threatpost about Google’s decision to begin the process of removing third-party tracking cookies from its browser.  However, the technology they’re looking to replace it with, FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) is not without its critics.

From there, there’s discussion on DeepFakes and the business opportunities they may hold, along with the concerns that people still have with them.  To wrap up, They briefly touch on a breaking news story around the European Banking Authority being hit by a Microsoft Exchange attack.

Welcome to the 191st iteration of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable Podcast. On this week’s episode, Dave and I discuss fines, privacy, doxing and more.

To kick things off, we look at a pair of stories that discuss fines levied on social networking sites. The first pertains to TikTok and minors, while the second one discusses Illinois ruling against Facebook in a class action suit. From there, we stay on the social media train and discuss a recent move from Twitter to flag false information pertaining to Covid-19 vaccines.

From there, we hop into an interview that David did with our HR team about the future of work, state of HR and more. We close out the podcast talking about a doxing that comes for users of Gab from a hacktivist group.

For the 190th episode of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable Podcast, Dave and I focus on two main topics: Facebook vs. Australia (and EU) & Clubhouse.

We kick things off in the spot the cool kids are raving about on the Internets: Clubhouse. The invite-only, audio-focused iOS App has taken Silicone Valley and the social network conversation by storm, not for all the right reasons though. In these two stories, we look at a developer who created an android app to use Clubhouse and also a short-lived site that scraped content of the site and published it for anyone to see. So needless to say, privacy is a wee bit of a concern. From there, we jump into a recent announcement from Nvidia looking to alter some graphic cards to dissuade cyrpto-mining.

To close out the podcast, we take a look at the current showdown between Australia and Facebook. We discuss the current situation, the history as well as how this could impact other countries or Unions (See, Europe). I also give my take which is not overly a popular one, but maybe some of you agree with it.

In episode 189 of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable, Jeff and myself talk a look at some stories you might have missed this week. We start by taking a look at a recent story from Threatpost, which looks at recent research that health apps are vulnerable to different forms of attack. From there, we take a dive into a story looking at iMessage, drug-deals and the police – hint: the story doesn’t end well for the bad-guys.

We then move onto a concerning story around a former employee of a firm, who’s accused of lacing the company network with ransomware after being let go. Talk about holding a grudge.

We end on a fun note with the recent “I’m not a cat” zoom call blunder. Remember, on the internet nobody knows you’re a cat.

We’ve got a jumbo version of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable Podcast for you all this week – complete with the usual array of stories, but also an interview to help shed some light on some recent financial news.

To kick off Episode 188, we dive into the world of cryptocurrency. First, we look to the purchase of $1.5B in Bitcoin by Tesla and then hop over into the surge of Dogecoin as of late. Since both of these tie nicely with the recent hullabaloo with RobinHood and WallStreetBets (WSB), Dave sat down with Alexey Pupyshev, Waves Technologies evangelist, co-founder of Neutrino protocol and Gravity protocol to discuss crypto and what was really happening the last couple of weeks.

From there, we head to the state of Florida where a water treatment system was accessed not once, but TWICE, by an unidentified hacker who altered the water composition. Our fourth story of the day takes a look at the group behind Ziggy ransomware shutting up shop and posting the decryption keys online. To close things out, we take a look at a really weird story from the BBC on a photographer’s pictures of cows that were deemed too racy for Facebook ads.

In a special episode of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast, Jeff and I were lucky enough to chat with Tara Seals and Lindsey O’Donnel from Threatpost. During the podcast, we talk about the recent Capitol Hill attacks and what they mean for digital privacy, data security and even free speech.

Whilst talking about that, we also move onto other topics of discussion including looking at recent discussion around the balkanization (or splintering) of the internet into smaller, less open versions of the internet, or even cutting whole countries off from the World Wide Web.

To open up the 186th edition of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable Podcast, Dave and I return to one of our favorite punching bags – Facebook. Unlike many of our talks that center around privacy, data sharing or things like that, we dive into ads a bit.

How does this fit the podcast? Well let’s just say that it includes an article penned by someone who worked on the new Borat movie and ads about guns, tactical gear and what “Trump followers” see. From there, we stay in the bubble of influence and discuss the still-missing laptop that was stolen during the Capitol insurrection from Nancy Pelosi’s office. This tale is one that is turning stranger and stranger as the days go on.

Following that story, we stay in the world of law & order to give virtual high-fives and claps for the joint law enforcement effort that took down the Emotet network. To close things out, we head back to the realm of Facebook to discuss a new study that takes a look at the emotional and mental stresses that the social network has on teenagers.

For the 185th edition of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable Podcast, Jeff and I sat down with our good friend, Marco Preuss from the Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) to talk about the work he’s done looking at second hand devices and the data that was found on them.

The research is the culmination of weeks’ worth of trawling through these devices (hard-drives, mobile phones, laptops, etc.) in order to see what was left on them after they were sold. During the podcast, Marco talks about how much data is actually left on the devices – ranging from innocent documents right through to nude photos and other explicit or illegal information. The worrying thing is that many people believe they’ve deleted the data, but in actual fact it remains on the devices after deletion. Marco, Dave and Jeff also discuss what people can do to safely and securely wipe the data off their devices if they intend to sell them on.

For the 184th edition of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable Podcast, Jeff and I sat down with Claire Hatcher - head of business development for Kaspersky Fraud Prevention.

During the call, we discuss the wide-ranging issues surrounding fraud and how it affects its victims – something that’s often forgotten about as it’s sometimes portrayed as a “victimless crime.” We also chat about how people can best defend against fraud and scams, especially email and phone scams, and also briefly look at an upcoming webinar that Claire is hosting.

For the 183rd edition of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable Podcast, Jeff and I look at some of the big news stories doing the rounds in the cyber-security field.

This week, we dive back into the recent Capitol hill attacks with a news story suggesting that the house speaker, Nancy Pelosi’s, had one of her laptops stolen. The story goes on to suggest that it’s possible the thief was planning to sell it to Russia, but details are thing on the ground. Following that, we look at how the controversial app, Parler could soon see a return to Apple’s App store after Tim Cook recently said it could return, as long as it committed to better moderating the content published on the social network.

Moving away from the recent Capitol Hill attacks, we look at how fraudsters are *still* using verified Twitter accounts to scam people out of bitcoin, with recent estimates showing that over half a million has been stolen so far.

Finally, to wrap up we look at a Windows 10 flaw as well as a recent study showing how macaques (yes, monkeys) have learned to steal items of high-value as people are more likely to offer food in order to get their items back. Madness.

For the 182nd edition of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable Podcast, Dave and I tackle the biggest story of 2021 so far – the cyber ramifications of the insurrection at the US Capitol along with Twitter bans and more.

We kick the podcast by looking into an op-ed on ZDNet about the cybersecurity fallout of last week’s storming of the Capitol. Now, while I am pretty sure that everyone has seen it, but if you are living under a rock, please check out more here. Now what is not covered in the main news is the cyber impact of things. The rioters had physical access to, and even stole a few, computers during the occupation. Now while the article goes into some deep conspiracy levels, there are some things that really need to be considered. Following that, we talk about Parler, from it’s ban to takedown. Somewhere during that timeline, hackers have downloaded all of the public data from the platform – even things believed to be deleted. This will be an interesting story to keep an eye on as well as the doxing that is sure to come. We stay on this topic and look at Twitter’s ban of many accounts including the President of the USA as well as 70K Qanon members. This not only looks at the why, but also as to what the future may hold for privacy and censorship of the web. To close things out, we look at Angela Merkel’s take on the banning of Donald Trump and what it means.

Welcome to the first episode of the the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable Podcast (number 181 overall) of 2021. Unfortunately Covid is still here, but so are we (take that how you will).

To kick things off, we pour one out for Adobe Flash. The much maligned program has been put out to pasture by Adobe – please hold your joy as we take a moment of silence </sarcasm>. From there, we dive into the music world with a case of corporate espionage. In this case, Dave and I who is to blame MORE in this hacking and theft story involving Ticketmaster and an unnamed competitor. Now, we don’t do victim shaming here, but also point out some bad security operations.

Our third story heads back to another weird intersection – this time crime and IoT. In this tale, “hackers,” more likely script kiddies, are reusing leaked credentials to hack into IoT doorbells in their swatting efforts. To close things out, we stay in the IoT realm and look at an advisory from the NCSC on how to clean your devices before selling them on a secondary market or what you should do if you buy one used.