On this week’s edition of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast, Ahmed, Dave, and I discuss a variety of topics. We kick off the program with a story from the EU and a new look at making Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies more trackable.

The proposed changes in the EU could take up to two years to enact, and we have a lot of questions.

From there, we jump to a story about a ransomware hit on ransomware group Babuk. After that, it’s Dave’s interview about the dangers of image-based sexual abuse and how we can stop it.

Then, it’s off to a round of our recurring quiz, where I continue to suck. Then, following a break for our second interview —a look at a new children’s book featuring Midori Kuma — it’s the latest in REvil-v-Kaseya saga. In this latest wrinkle, Kaseya obtained a universal decryptor.

Finally, it’s back to the UK, where a leak of gun forum users has gun owners on edge, and a brief discussion of Amazon shutting down NSO activity on its servers.

Earlier in the week, we teased a miniseries called the Community Podcasts, which you’ll find right alongside the Transatlantic Cable podcast. I will remain your faithful host, and Anastasiya Kazakova of our Government Affairs office will join me.

This series of podcasts features frank conversations with cyberheroes who unite people despite everything — growing fragmentation, confrontation, and ever-changing cyberthreats — people are still building communities and uniting folks to work together for the common good. Why are they doing that? And is it working?

For our first episode, we focus on the Geneva Dialogue, launched in 2018 by the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) in cooperation with the Geneva Internet Platform (GIP), the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), ETH Zurich, and the University of Lausanne. The flourishing initiative is uniting even more stakeholders across the globe; however, its initial goals seemed much broader than today’s, and the list of organizers has changed.

Today’s guests:

• Jonas Grätz, political affairs officer for cyberdiplomacy at the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, International Security Division;
• Vladimir Radunovic, director of cybersecurity and e-diplomacy programs at DiploFoundation.

With Ahmed on vacation, the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast returns this week to its original lineup.

Dave and I kick off this week’s episode with a look at the latest from REvil and its victims. (Spoiler alert: Despite the quiet, things are not great.) From there, we head to Southeast Asia, where LuminousMoth has been targeting government organizations. Instead of giving you our hot takes and thoughts on the APT action, we discuss the research and actor with senior Kaspersky security researcher Mark Lechtik.

Following that, we discuss Amazon’s potential Alexa tracking device for kids.

That calls for a change of topic, to a sneak peek of our new miniseries, Community Conversations. We will be interviewing members of organizations in the infosec community that are collaborating across borders to make a positive impact in the space. We will launch the series over the coming weekend.

Following the preview, we discuss Twitter’s curious account verification practices: specifically, the case of a verified cat. Next, facial recognition in retail stores may be more prevalent than you think.

To close out the episode, Dave and I discuss the pros and cons of buying a Cold War bunker — just ~$700K.

In this week’s episode of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast, Ahmed, Jeff and I are back around the virtual round table to talk all things cyber.

We kick this week’s episode off with the news that Interpol are urging countries to unite against the ransomware pandemic. From there, we look at how a hacker going by the alias ‘integra’ is offering 26.99 bitcoins (nearly $1 million USD at the time of writing) for zero-days and undetectable RATs (remote access Trojans).

From there, we look at a recently patched SolarWinds vulnerability and news that Tencent (a Chinese gaming behemoth) is looking to use facial recognition software to stop children playing past a certain time. To close, we discuss the recent news around the Right to Repair movement in America and Europe.

This week on the podcast, Jeff’s on vacation, so Ahmed and I tackle some thorny cybersec issues on our own.

We start with news that EA’s billion dollar franchise, Apex Legends, faced hacking concerns from gamers about the state of TitanFall, Respawn’s first foray into the FPS genre. From there, we move on to news that Google has taken the ban-hammer to some developers who placed Trojans inside their apps to scrape Facebook credentials.

Other stories this week include discussion about APT28, aka Fancy Bear, targeting governments around the world, plus an exclusive chat with Kaspersky security researcher David Emm about the recent REvil attacks.

For the 208th episode of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast, Dave’s gone missing, and Ahmed and I debate whether it is leisure or if something more nefarious is going on. We don’t quite get to the bottom of it, but we do cover a wide array of topics, from a political sex tape leaked on OnlyFans to PS3 leaks and ransomware in US schools.

We start with the electoral scene in New York state, where a user on Onlyfans and Twitter leaked a BDSM video of politician Zack Weiner and a partner. Both platforms took down the video and banned the user, but the reply from Weiner is what caught our attention as a standup response to a truly personal doxing.

From there, we have to mention Ahmed’s complete quiz game dominance. Sadly, I am not able to overtake David’s massive lead, and we move on to a story of PS3 hacking for online gaming.

In the next segment, I sit down with Kurt Baumgartner to discuss the latest on school ransomware in the United States, the government reclaiming funds from ransomware crooks, and more. We continue with news of a potentially new scraping of data from 700 million LinkedIn users before closing out with a new government joining Have I Been Pwned.  

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Welcome to the 207th edition of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast! This week, Dave, Ahmed, and I chat about a number of topics — and we also have some changes to our big board of quiz points.

We kick things off with a pair of stories about AI and surveillance. The first is from the UK, where AI can now tell authorities if people were adhering to social distancing guidelines. The next is about a Chinese company using smile recognition for employees entering the office. Smile for the camera.

After a short break for a tip from Ahmed, we’re on to the first round of the week’s quiz game. I won’t spoil it here, but let’s just say there is a bit of a shocker. Following the fun, we get back to business, discussing recent APT activity from the Persian-speaking Ferocious Kitten group with researchers Mark Lechtik and Aseel Kayal.

After the interview, we look at the insecurity of America’s water facilities before wrapping up with a discussion of consent and the COVID-19 app in Massachusetts.

This week, Jeff, Ahmed, and I kick off episode 206 of the Transatlantic Cable podcast with a discussion about Ireland’s change in stop and search law, including a new law allowing police to force people to unlock digital devices such as phones and tablets.

From there, we move on to further discussion of ransomware and the recent G7 talks, with US President Biden seeking tougher stances on ransomware gangs. We also touch on the JBS meat processing company’s recent decision to pay ransom to REvil.

To wrap up, we talk about the recent EA hack and Facebook’s singing about WhatsApp privacy cred in a new advertisement.

This week on the Transatlantic Cable podcast, Jeff, Ahmed, and I look at how the DarkSide gang was able to use an old VPN account to breach the Colonial pipeline network. Moving on, we also chat about two related stories, including one in which lawmakers try to force companies to disclose attacks and one about the FBI reclaiming some of the $4.4 million ransom DarkSide has collected.

We also discuss a story about Apple AirTags, which the company is planning to update based on fears that stalkers could use them to track victims. Finally, we have an interesting discussion about daters adding COVID vaccine stickers to their dating app profiles.

We open the show with a hidden gem of a crime. British authorities thought they were pursuing a cannabis operation only to find a mining operation. The next story is a look at the FBI integration with Have I Been Pwned and some new site features worth looking into.

After that, I sit down with Rainer Bock of our team at Tomorrow Unlocked to learn about their latest — some cool videos are on the way, including an interactive one on Carbanak. Unfortunately, we also have to discuss the latest from SolarWinds and why the problem may not be going away as soon as we’d all like.

Dave and I cover a lot of ground this week on the Transatlantic Cable podcast, from how obscure movies are holding up to surviving COVID-19, plus SolarWinds and more.

We kick off the show with the latest on SolarWinds — not media speculation but straight from the horse’s mouth. In this article, our old colleague Dennis Fisher recaps a talk given by Sudhakhar Ramakrishna, SolarWinds CEO, on the attack and what they have learned. Then, heading across the pond, we reflect on three years of GDPR and the biggest fines levied to date.

For our third story, we take a look at Conti ransomware’s recent attacks on first responder and healthcare institutions. After that, Robby Cataldo, the managing director of Kaspersky North America, joins us to discuss RSA 2021, Cataldo’s bout with COVID-19, and how businesses have had to adapt to the pandemic. To close things out, we look at the fallout from a breach at Air India.

Welcome to episode 202 of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast. While much of the cyberworld will be juggling sales pitches and panels at RSA, we’re focusing on stories that will have more of an immediate impact on your security needs.

We open the episode discussing the latest with DarkSide. Are they dead? Did they hit Toshiba?

Moving along, we discuss the reemergence of Fin7 and its posing as a legitimate cybersecurity research firm. Staying on the topic of crime, but in sunny Brazil, the LatAm arm of our Global Research and Analysis team (GReAT) takes a look at an emergent financial Trojan called Bizarro. I chat with Fabio Assolini from the team to see why people should care and why the region is such a hotbed of financial crime.

Then it’s the latest in the DC Police vs. Babuk. It seems police tried to negotiate a ransom, but the crooks were not too interested. We then take a look at the need for patching at home and the office with Maria Namestnikova of GReAT Russia.

To close out the podcast we discuss a new texting scam involving deliveries in the UK and a lot of money lost.

Episode 201 of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast is the extended podcast we teased last week. More changes will come, but this will be a recurring theme and length.

For our first story, Dave and I take a look at yet another cryptoscam involving Elon Musk, whose hosting of Saturday Night Live netted scammers nearly $100K. Come on, Internet friends, we can do better. These scams are just a 2021 version of your cousin the Nigerian prince.

From there, we jump over to a ransomware hit on an entire city: Tulsa, Oklahoma. Staying on the topic of ransomware, Ivan Kwiatkowski joins us from the European arm of GReAT to dive a bit deeper into the interconnected ecosystem of ransomware. One could be forgiven for thinking it’s simply one big attack, but there’s a bit more here than meets the eye.

For our next story, we head to the world of 2FA, where Google is pushing another, more secure, form of the authentication to select users with the goal of eventually reaching all users.

Closing out the news portion of the podcast, we take a look at the latest in the saga of ransomware hitting the Colonial Pipeline in the USA. It’s clear a lot has yet to emerge. To close out the podcast, we chat with Dmitry Galov about the darknet component of ransomware.

It’s here — episode 200 of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable has landed! This week, Dave and Jeff chat about a new ransomware taskforce whose purpose is to stem the surge of ransomware attacks. From there, they look at issues surrounding Google’s ad network and scams — and why Google just can’t seem to get control over them. Following that, they briefly touch on doxing and how everybody can protect themselves from attack.

To wrap up, it’s a uniquely Canadian story: Beavers managed to chew through fiber optic cables for a small village in Western Canada.

Dave and I start episode 199 of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast with some good news in the infosec space: a researcher and his friend hunting bugs to help a family member pay for surgery. It’s not often we get a chance to talk about positive news, so this one is a bit of a breath of fresh air.

From there, we head back to the world of law enforcement and surveillance. In this story, a Florida law enforcement team was caught flying a surveillance drone over a protest/press conference reacting to a police shooting.

Our third story is about the latest from the REvil ransomware gang and its attempted extortion of Apple. Staying on the topic of ransomware, we talk about how that malicious action affected the world in 2020, and a new report from Kaspersky.

Closing out the podcast, we take a look at the news that an enterprise-level password manager has asked users to reset all passwords.

For this week’s episode of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast, Dave and Jeff snagged some time with Adam Dodge, CEO of EndTab, and Vladislav Tushkanov, a privacy expert here at Kaspersky, to talk about doxing. During our wide-ranging discussion, we talked about issues around doxing and why it’s a growing problem.

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.