Transatlantic Cable Podcast

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.

Direct download: KL_Podcast-204-128.mp3
Category:technology -- posted at: 10:59am EDT

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.

Direct download: KL_Podcast_203_20210526.mp3
Category:technology -- posted at: 5:50am EDT

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.

Direct download: KL-Podcast_202.mp3
Category:technology -- posted at: 10:48am EDT

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.

Direct download: tcp_201_-_Copy.mp3
Category:technology -- posted at: 5:55am EDT

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.

Direct download: 20210506_KL_Podcast_200.mp3
Category:technology -- posted at: 5:06am EDT

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.

Direct download: 20210428_KL_Podcast199.mp3
Category:technology -- posted at: 6:02am EDT

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.

Direct download: 20210421_KL_Podcast_198.mp3
Category:technology -- posted at: 5:49am EDT

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:

Direct download: 197_final.mp3
Category:technology -- posted at: 12:39pm EDT

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.

Direct download: 196_final.mp3
Category:technology -- posted at: 5:04am EDT

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.

Direct download: podcast_195_mixdown_1.mp3
Category:technology -- posted at: 5:06am EDT