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PODCAST

Research Saturday

Every Saturday, we sit down with cybersecurity researchers to talk shop about the latest threats, vulnerabilities, and technical discoveries.

technology tech news

All Episodes

26:46

The playbook for outpacing China.

Research Saturday ·

2024/09/07

This week, N2K's very own Brandon Karpf sits down with Kevin Lentz, Team Leader of the Cyber Pacific Project at the Global Disinformation Lab, and they discuss the recent threatcasting report "Cyber Competition in the Indo-Pacific Gray Zone 2035." This report, developed using the Threatcasting Method, examines how the U.S. and Indo-Pacific allies can coordinate their cyber defense efforts in response to future competition with China. It presents findings, trends, and recommendations based on

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22:46

Pop goes the developer.

Research Saturday ·

2024/08/31

Tim Peck, a Senior Threat Researcher at Securonix, is discussing their work on "Threat actors behind the DEV#POPPER campaign have retooled and are continuing to target software developers via social engineering." The DEV#POPPER campaign continues to evolve, now targeting developers with malware capable of operating on Linux, Windows, and macOS systems. The threat actors, believed to be North Korean, employ sophisticated social engineering tactics, such as fake job interviews, to deliver stealthy

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25:39

MaaS infrastructure exposed.

Research Saturday ·

2024/08/24

Robert Duncan, VP of Product Strategy from Netcraft, is discussing their work on "Mule-as-a-Service Infrastructure Exposed." Netcraft's new threat intelligence reveals the intricate connections within global fraud networks, showing how criminals use specialized services like Mule-as-a-Service (MaaS) to launder scam proceeds. By mapping the cyber and financial infrastructure, including bank accounts, crypto wallets, and phone numbers, Netcraft exposes how different scams are interconnected and

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24:17

Essential tools with critical security challenges.

Research Saturday ·

2024/08/17

Snir Ben Shimol from ZEST Security on their work, "How we hacked a cloud production environment by exploiting Terraform providers." In this blog, ZEST discusses the security risks associated with Terraform providers, particularly those from community sources. The research highlights the importance of carefully vetting providers, regular scanning, and following best practices like version pinning to mitigate potential vulnerabilities in cloud infrastructure management. The research can be found

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25:44

Prompts gone rogue.

Research Saturday ·

2024/08/10

Shachar Menashe, Senior Director of Security Research at JFrog, is talking about "When Prompts Go Rogue: Analyzing a Prompt Injection Code Execution in Vanna.AI." A security vulnerability in the Vanna.AI tool, called CVE-2024-5565, allows hackers to exploit large language models (LLMs) by manipulating user input to execute malicious code, a method known as prompt injection. This poses a significant risk when LLMs are connected to critical functions, highlighting the need for stronger security

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24:49

Spinning the web of tangled tactics.

Research Saturday ·

2024/08/03

This week, we are joined by Jason Baker, Senior Threat Consultant at GuidePoint Security, and he is discussing their work on "Worldwide Web: An Analysis of Tactics and Techniques Attributed to Scattered Spider." In early 2024, a current RansomHub RaaS affiliate was identified as a former Alphv/Black Cat affiliate and is believed to be linked to the Scattered Spider group, known for using overlapping tools, tactics, and victims. The high-confidence assessment by GuidePoint’s DFIR and GRIT teams is

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19:04

The Black Basta ransomware riddle.

Research Saturday ·

2024/07/27

Dick O'Brien from Symantec Threat Hunter team is talking about their work on "Ransomware Attackers May Have Used Privilege Escalation Vulnerability as Zero-day." Also going to provide some background/history on Black Basta. CVE-2024-26169 in the Windows Error Reporting Service, patched on March 12, 2024, allowed privilege escalation. Despite initial claims of no active exploitation, recent analysis indicates it may have been exploited as a zero-day before the patch. The research can be found

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23:30

Olympic scammers go for gold.

Research Saturday ·

2024/07/20

This week, we are joined by Selena Larson, Staff Threat Researcher, Lead Intelligence Analysis and Strategy at Proofpoint, as well as host of the "Only Malware in the Building" podcast, as she is discussing their research on "Scammers Create Fraudulent Olympics Ticketing Websites." Proofpoint recently identified a fraudulent website selling fake tickets to the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics and quickly suspended the domain. This site was among many identified by the French Gendarmerie Nationale and

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27:18

On the prowl for mobile malware.

Research Saturday ·

2024/07/13

This week, we are joined by Asheer Malhotra and Vitor Ventura from Cisco Talos, and they are discussing "Operation Celestial Force employs mobile and desktop malware to target Indian entities." Cisco Talos revealed Operation Celestial Force, an espionage campaign by the Pakistani threat group "Cosmic Leopard," targeting Indian defense, government, and technology sectors. Active for at least six years, the operation has recently increased its use of mobile malware and commercial spyware for

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20:32

Encore: Welcome to New York, it's been waitin' for you.

Research Saturday ·

2024/07/06

Joshua Miller from Proofpoint joins Dave to discuss findings on "Welcome to New York: Exploring TA453's Foray into LNKs and Mac Malware." In mid May, TA453, also known as Charming Kitten, APT42, Mint Sandstorm, and Yellow Garuda, was found sending a benign conversation lure masquerading as a senior fellow with the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) to the public media contact for a nuclear security expert at a US-based think tank focused on foreign affairs.The research states that "the email

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20:53

APT36's cyber blitz on India.

Research Saturday ·

2024/06/29

Ismael Valenzuela, Vice President Threat Research & Intelligence, from Blackberry Threat Research and Intelligence team is discussing their work on "Transparent Tribe Targets Indian Government, Defense, and Aerospace Sectors Leveraging Cross-Platform Programming Languages." BlackBerry has identified Transparent Tribe (APT36), a Pakistani-based advanced persistent threat group, targeting India's government, defense, and aerospace sectors from late 2023 to April 2024, using evolving toolkits and

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18:56

Piercing the through the fog.

Research Saturday ·

2024/06/22

Kerri Shafer-Page from Arctic Wolf joins us to discuss their work on "Lost in the Fog: A New Ransomware Threat." Starting in early May, Arctic Wolf's Incident Response team investigated Fog ransomware attacks on US education and recreation sectors, where attackers exploited compromised VPN credentials to access systems, disable Windows Defender, encrypt files, and delete backups.Despite the uniformity in ransomware payloads and ransom notes, the organizational structure of the responsible groups

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28:50

Exploring the mechanics of Infostealer malware.

Research Saturday ·

2024/06/15

This week, we are joined by a Security Researcher from SpyCloud Labs, James, who is discussing their work on "Unpacking Infostealer Malware: What we’ve learned from reverse engineering LummaC2 and Atomic macOS Stealer." Infostealer malware has become highly prevalent, with SpyCloud tracking over 50 families and finding that 1 in 5 digital identities are at risk.This research analyzes the workings and intentions behind infostealers like LummaC2 and Atomic macOS Stealer, focusing on the types of

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27:51

Riding the hype for new Arc browser.

Research Saturday ·

2024/06/08

Jérôme Segura, Senior Director of Threat Intelligence at Malwarebytes, is discussing their work on "Threat actors ride the hype for newly released Arc browser." The Arc browser, newly released for Windows, has quickly garnered positive reviews but has also attracted cybercriminals who are using deceptive Google search ads to distribute malware disguised as the browser.These malicious campaigns exploit the hype around Arc, using techniques like embedding malware in image files and utilizing the MEGA

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17:55

1700 IPs and counting.

Research Saturday ·

2024/06/01

Amit Malik, Director of Threat Research at Uptycs, is sharing their work on "New Threat Detected: Inside Our Discovery of the Log4j Campaign and Its XMRig Malware." The Uptycs Threat Research Team has discovered a large-scale Log4j campaign involving over 1700 IPs, aiming to deploy XMRig cryptominer malware.This ongoing operation was initially detected through the team's honeypot collection, prompting an in-depth analysis of the campaign. The research says "The JNDI plugin is particularly useful to

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30:59

International effort dismantles LockBit.

Research Saturday ·

2024/05/25

Jon DiMaggio, a Chief Security Strategist at Analyst1, is sharing his work on "Ransomware Diaries Volume 5: Unmasking LockBit." On February 19, 2024, the National Crime Agency (NCA), a UK sovereign law enforcement agency, in collaboration with the FBI, Europol, and nine other countries under "Operation Cronos," disrupted the LockBit ransomware gang’s data leak site used for shaming, extorting, and leaking victim data.The NCA greeted visitors to LockBit’s dark web leak site with a seizure banner,

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22:14

From secret images to encryption keys.

Research Saturday ·

2024/05/18

This week, we are joined by Hosein Yavarzadeh from the University of California San Diego, as he is discussing his work on "Pathfinder: High-Resolution Control-Flow Attacks Exploiting the Conditional Branch Predictor" This paper introduces new methods that let attackers read from and write to specific parts of high-performance CPUs, such as the path history register (PHR) and prediction history tables (PHTs). These methods allow two main types of attacks. One can reveal a program's control flow

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20:19

The double-edged sword of cyber espionage.

Research Saturday ·

2024/05/11

Dick O'Brien from Symantec Threat Hunter team is discussing their research on “Graph: Growing number of threats leveraging Microsoft API.” The team observed an increasing number of threats that have begun to leverage the Microsoft Graph API, usually to facilitate communications with command-and-control (C&C) infrastructure hosted on Microsoft cloud services. The research states "the technique was most recently used in an attack against an organization in Ukraine, where a previously undocumented

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35:22

Geopolitical tensions rise with China.

Research Saturday ·

2024/05/04

Adam Marré, CISO at Arctic Wolf, is diving deep into geopolitical tension with China including APT31, iSoon and TikTok with Dave this week. They also discuss some of the history behind China cyber operations.Adam shares information on how different APT groups are able to create spear phishing campaigns, and provides info on how to combat these groups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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15:34

Cerber ransomware strikes Linux.

Research Saturday ·

2024/04/27

Christopher Doman, Co-Founder and CTO at Cado Security, is talking about their research on "Cerber Ransomware: Dissecting the three heads." This research delves into Cerber ransomware being deployed onto servers running the Confluence application via the CVE-2023-22518 exploit. The research states "Cerber emerged and was at the peak of its activity around 2016, and has since only occasional campaigns, most recently targeting the aforementioned Confluence vulnerability." The research can be found

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420 results

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