The Host Unknown Podcast

This week in InfoSec  (10:28)10th July 1999 - Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) member DilDog debuted the program Back Orifice 2000 (BO2k) at DEF CON 7. It was the successor to Back Orifice, released by cDc a year prior. DilDog proclaimed it "a remote administration tool for corporate America".https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/18111336060159836809th July 1981 - The game that launched two of the most famous characters in video game history is released for sale. Donkey Kong was created by Nintendo, a Japanese playing card and toy company turned fledgling video game developer, who was trying to create a hit game for the North American market. Unable at the time to acquire a license to create a video game based on the Popeye character, Nintendo decides to create a game mirroring the characteristics and rivalry of Popeye and Bluto. Donkey Kong is named after the game’s villain, a pet gorilla gone rogue. The game’s hero is originally called Jumpman, but is retroactively renamed Mario once the game becomes popular and Nintendo decides to use the character in future games.Due to the similarity between Donkey Kong and King Kong, Universal Studios sued Nintendo claiming Donkey Kong violated their trademark. Kong, however, is common Japanese slang for gorilla. The lawsuit was ruled in favor of Nintendo. The success of Donkey Kong helped Nintendo become one of the dominant companies in the video game market. Rant of the Week (15:55)Palestinians say Microsoft unfairly closing their accountsPalestinians living abroad have accused Microsoft of closing their email accounts without warning - cutting them off from crucial online services.They say it has left them unable to access bank accounts and job offers - and stopped them using Skype, which Microsoft owns, to contact relatives in war-torn Gaza.Microsoft says they violated its terms of service - a claim they dispute. Billy Big Balls of the Week (27:39)Scalpers Work With Hackers to Liberate Ticketmaster's ‘Non-Transferable’ TicketsA lawsuit filed in California by concert giant AXS has revealed a legal and technological battle between ticket scalpers and platforms like Ticketmaster and AXS, in which scalpers have figured out how to extract “untransferable” tickets from their accounts by generating entry barcodes on parallel infrastructure that the scalpers control and which can then be sold and transferred to customers.By reverse-engineering how Ticketmaster and AXS actually make their electronic tickets, scalpers have essentially figured out how to regenerate specific, genuine tickets that they have legally purchased from scratch onto infrastructure that they control. In doing so, they are removing the anti-scalping restrictions put on the tickets by Ticketmaster and AXS. 'Gay furry hackers' breach conservative US think tank behind Project 2025A collective of self-described "gay furry hackers" have released 2GB of data lifted from the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think-tank behind Project 2025 - a set of proposals that would bring the USA closer to being an authoritarian state.The hacktivist group, known as SiegedSec, has been running a campaign it calls "OpTransRights," targeting (mostly government) websites to disrupt efforts to enact or enforce anti-trans and anti-abortion laws. Industry News (33:26)10 Billion Passwords Leaked on Hacking ForumCrypto Thefts Double to $1.4 Billion, TRM Labs FindsRussia Blocks VPN Services in Information CrackdownTicketmaster Extortion Continues, Threat Actor Claims New Ticket LeakCyber-Attack on Evolve Bank Exposed Data of 7.6 Million CustomersMost Security Pros Admit Shadow SaaS and AI UseRussian Media Uses AI-Powered Software to Spread DisinformationSmishing Triad Targets India with Fraud SurgeFraud Campaign Targets Russians with Fake Olympics Tickets Tweet of the Week (41:18)https://x.com/dennishegstad/status/1810044171765645568 Come on! Like and bloody well subscribe!

This week in InfoSec  (07:40)With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield3 July 1996 - a mere 28 years ago the movie Independence Day was released.  In it, Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith fly into an alien vessel in a 50-year-old space junker, then upload a computer virus in less than 5 minuteshttps://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1808464060972667170 Rant of the Week (11:07)Cancer patient forced to make terrible decision after Qilin attack on London hospitalshttps://www.theregister.com/2024/07/05/qilin_impacts_patient/EXCLUSIVE The latest figures suggest that around 1,500 medical procedures have been canceled across some of London's biggest hospitals in the four weeks since Qilin's ransomware attack hit pathology services provider Synnovis. But perhaps no single person was affected as severely as Johanna Groothuizen.Hanna – the name she goes by – is now missing her right breast after her skin-sparing mastectomy and immediate breast reconstruction surgery was swapped out for a simple mastectomy at the last minute. Billy Big Balls of the Week (18:20)Ransomware scum who hit Indonesian government apologizes, hands over encryption keyhttps://www.theregister.com/2024/07/04/hackers_of_indonesian_government_apologize/ Industry News (24:28)Vinted Fined €2.3m Over Data Protection FailureEuropol Warns of Home Routing Challenges For Lawful InterceptionMeta Faces Suspension of AI Data Training in BrazilNew Ransomware Group Phones Execs to Extort PaymentUK’s NCA Leads Major Cobalt Strike TakedownCyber Extortion Soars: SMBs Hit Four Times HarderNew RUSI Report Exposes Psychological Toll of Ransomware, Urges ActionDozens of Arrests Disrupt €2.5m Vishing GangHealth Tech Execs Get Jail Time For $1bn Fraud Scheme Tweet of the Week (31:07) Come on! Like and bloody well subscribe!

This Week in InfoSec (12:30)With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield24th June 1987: The movie Spaceballs was released. With a budget of $23 million, it grossed $38 million at the box office in North America. Though 37 years have passed, the secret code scene remains a reminder of why security is hard.Watch the secret code scene from Spaceballs and weep. Or laugh. Or both. Has much changed when it comes to password security since the movie was released 37 years ago today?The 64 second scene: https:///youtu.be/a6iW-8xPw3khttps://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1805302016451002501   27th June 2011: Anonymous released its first cache from Operation AntiSec, information from a US anti-cyberterrorism program.https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1806302186487345226 Rant of the Week (18:15)Korean telco allegedly infected its P2P users with malwareA South Korean media outlet has alleged that local telco KT deliberately infected some customers with malware due to their excessive use of peer-to-peer (P2P) downloading tools.The number of infected users of “web hard drives” – the South Korean term for the online storage services that allow uploading and sharing of content – has reportedly reached 600,000. Billy Big Balls of the Week (26:33)Crypto scammers circle back, pose as lawyers, steal an extra $10M in truly devious planThe FBI says in just 12 months, scumbags stole circa $10 million from victims of crypto scams after posing as helpful lawyers offering to recover their lost tokens.Between February 2023-2024, scammers were kicking US victims while they were already down, preying on their financial vulnerability to defraud them for a second time in what must be seen as a new low, even for that particular breed of dirtball.It's the latest update from the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) on the ongoing issue which was first publicized in August last year.  Industry News (34:24)US Bans Kaspersky Over Alleged Kremlin LinksSellafield Pleads Guilty to Historic Cybersecurity OffensesPolish Prosecutors Step Up Probe into Pegasus Spyware OperationCredential Stuffing Attack Hits 72,000 Levi’s AccountsGoogle's Naptime Framework to Boost Vulnerability Research with AIFake Law Firms Con Victims of Crypto Scams, Warns FBIIT Leaders Split on Using GenAI For CybersecurityMajority of Critical Open Source Projects Contain Memory Unsafe CodeCISOs Reveal Firms Prioritize Savings Over Long-Term Security Tweet of the Week (43:08) https://twitter.com/StuAlanBecker/status/1806137799248359443Comments: https://twitter.com/derJamesJackson/status/1806307954586538205   Alternate TotW: https://twitter.com/susisnyder/status/1806222280382406836 Come on! Like and bloody well subscribe!

This week in InfoSec  (11:16)With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield5th of June  1991, a mere 33 years ago, : Philip Zimmermann sent the first release of PGP to 2 friends, Allan Hoeltje and Kelly Goen, to upload to the Internet. From the man himself, First, I sent it to Allan Hoeltje, who posted it to Peacenet, an ISP that specialized in grassroots political organizations, mainly in the peace movement. Peacenet was accessible to political activists all over the world. Then, I uploaded it to Kelly Goen, who proceeded to upload it to a Usenet newsgroup that specialized in distributing source code. At my request, he marked the Usenet posting as "US only". Kelly also uploaded it to many BBS systems around the country. I don't recall if the postings to the Internet began on June 5th or 6th.It may be surprising to some that back in 1991, I did not yet know enough about Usenet newsgroups to realize that a "US only" tag was merely an advisory tag that had little real effect on how Usenet propagated newsgroup postings. I thought it actually controlled how Usenet routed the posting. But back then, I had no clue how to post anything on a newsgroup, and didn't even have a clear idea what a newsgroup was.After releasing PGP, I immediately diverted my attention back to consulting work, to try to get caught up on my mortgage payments. I thought I could just release PGP 1.0 for MSDOS, and leave it alone for awhile, and let people play with it. I thought I could get back to it later, at my leisure. Little did I realize what a feeding frenzy PGP would set off. Apparently, there was a lot of pent-up demand for a tool like this. Volunteers from around the world were clamoring to help me port it to other platforms, add enhancements, and generally promote it. I did have to go back to work on paying gigs, but PGP continued to demand my time, pulled along by public enthusiasm.I assembled a team of volunteer engineers from around the world. They ported PGP to almost every platform (except for the Mac, which turned out to be harder). They translated PGP into foreign languages. And I started designing the PGP trust model, which I did not have time to finish in the first release. Fifteen months later, in September 1992, we released PGP 2.0, for MSDOS, several flavors of Unix, Commodore Amiga, Atari, and maybe a few other platforms, and in about ten foreign languages. PGP 2.0 had the now-famous PGP trust model, essentially in its present form.It was shortly after PGP 2.0's release that US Customs took an interest in the case. Little did they realize that they would help propel PGP's popularity, helping to ignite a controversy that would eventually lead to the demise of the US export restrictions on strong cryptography.7 June 2009. A mere 15 years ago.  Sophos launched its (utterly shit) IT vigilante marketing campaignDress up a British man (who appears to have had a nervous breakdown over a corporate data breach incident) in an orange gimp suit – that will sell security software for sure!At least, that was the plan made by Sophos’s marketing department for its “IT Vigilante” campaign.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gc6sDqofcIhttps://grahamcluley.com/top-five-worst-videos-anti-virus/Other awful videos:Happy birthday Eugene Kaspersky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujnq188E5-wEugene’s “silent movie”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib8UjCQl5sE&t=6s Rant of the Week (22:45)https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxee7317kgmoRussian hackers are behind the cyber attack on a number of major London hospitals, according to the former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre.Ransomware attacks on the healthcare industry as a whole have increased significantly over the past year. Whaley attributes the uptick to “lives on the line.”“While no sector is invulnerable to these attacks… healthcare providers have proven time and time again that they’re the most willing to pay a ransom following these incidents," Whaley said.“Bad actors know this and smell blood in water,” he added. Whaley pointed out that the rise in state-sponsored cyberattacks combined “with the further digitization of the NHS paints a pretty grim picture for the defensive capabilities of the British healthcare sector… and possibly a warning sign of much larger attacks to come.” Graham's Giant Gonads of the Week (30:51)Apple refused to pay bug bounty to Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Labhttps://therecord.media/kaspersky-apple-bug-bounty-declinedhttps://securelist.com/trng-2023/Apple has snubbed Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab, refusing to shell out a bug bounty for four zero-day vulnerabilities discovered in iPhone software.  Targets were infected using zero-click exploits via the iMessage platform, and the malware ran with root privileges, gaining complete control over the device and user data. The twist?The vulnerabilities were used to spy on Kaspersky employees.Kaspersky politely enquired whether it could be rewarded for finding the vulnerabilities used in the espionage campaign - known as Operation Triangulation.Kaspersky claims it was a "highly sophisticated" attack, so intricate it needed 13 bullet points to explain.Russia, not one to be outdone in the drama department, accused the U.S. and Apple of colluding to spy on Russian diplomats. Apple, of course, vehemently denied these allegations.It's like Eastenders.Amidst all this chaos, the U.S. and Russia are engaged in a geopolitical staring contest, with Apple caught in the crossfire. Apple, being an American company, has taken a stand against Russia's actions in Ukraine, suspending sales and removing apps. It's a bit like a tech giant trying to play peacemaker in a playground brawl.Kaspersky, meanwhile, has its own history with the U.S. government, having been banned from government use due to security concerns. It's a classic case of "guilty by association."So, will Kaspersky continue to report bugs to Apple despite the lack of reward? Only time will tell.Speaking to Russian-language media agency RTVI, Kaspersky’s research head Dmitry Galov said that typically cybersecurity companies like Kaspersky nominated a charity to receive the funds from the Apple Bug Bounty program instead of collecting the revenue itself. He added that although Kaspersky was confident the attacker was state-sponsored, he and his research team did not have the technical data needed to identify which state may have been behind the attack.A spokesperson for Kaspersky did not respond to whether it had nominated a charity when initially contacting Apple, nor whether the company’s refusal to issue a bounty would affect its decision to disclose vulnerabilities discovered in the future. Industry News (40:23)London Hospitals Cancel Operations Following Ransomware IncidentEmailGPT Exposed to Prompt Injection Attacks#Infosec2024: CISOs Need to Move Beyond Passwords to Keep Up With Security Threats#Infosec2024: Ransomware Ecosystem Transformed, New Groups “Changing the Rules”Security Flaws Found in Popular WooCommerce Plugin#Infosec2024: Collaboration is Key to an Effective Security Culture#Infosec2024: AI Red Teaming Provider Mindgard Named UK's Most Innovative Cyber SMEFBI Warns of Rise in Work-From-Home ScamsAccount Takeovers Outpace Ransomware as Top Security Concern Tweet of the Week (44:27)https://x.com/dakacki/status/1798882732203803070 Come on! Like and bloody well subscribe!

Hector Monsegur, also known as Sabu, discusses his cyberattacks and sentencing. Bing outage highlights Google's dominance. Various cybersecurity news explored, including cyber stalking and legal proceedings. DDOS attack on Internet Archive and scams revealed. Critique of Nord Pass features and business diversification. Playful banter and future episode teasers.

This podcast covers intriguing topics such as accusations against a cybersecurity consultant for hacking airline systems, Bill Gates' internet predictions, and the privacy concerns surrounding Microsoft's Windows Recall feature. The hosts also discuss cyber vigilantism, hacker actions against scammers, and government investments in combating cyber threats.

Topics include first NHS fine for data breach, Dropbox security breach, Chinese govt website vulnerabilities, challenges of company acquisitions and integration, whistleblowing on powerful entities, industry news on ransomware and Google ads, digital laundering for activists, and lighthearted tech humor and pranks.

This week in InfoSec  (07:04)With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield23rd April 2005: The first video uploaded to YouTube, “Me at the zoo,” is posted on April 23, 2005 at 8:27 PM by co-founder Jawed Karim. For now being a piece of history, the video is actually pretty dumb.Note to future entrepreneurs: what you do may be for posterity. Choose wisely.22nd April 1988: 1988: The VIRUS-L email mailing list was created and moderated by Ken van Wyk while he was working at Lehigh University. It was the first electronic forum dedicated to discussing computer viruses.https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1782424224348446910 Rant of the Week (13:21)Ring dinged for $5.6M after, among other claims, rogue insider spied on 'pretty girls'The FTC today announced it would be sending refunds totaling $5.6 million to Ring customers, paid from the Amazon subsidiary's coffers.The windfall stems from allegations made by the US watchdog that folks could have been, and were, spied upon by cybercriminals and rogue Ring workers via their Ring home security cameras.The regulator last year accused Ring of sloppy privacy protections that allowed the aforementioned spying to occur or potentially occur.Specifically, the FTC formally charged Ring with "compromising its customers' privacy by allowing any employee or contractor to access consumers' private videos and by failing to implement basic privacy and security protections, enabling hackers to take control of consumers' accounts, cameras, and videos." Billy Big Balls of the Week (21:41)Cops cuff man for allegedly framing colleague with AI-generated hate speech clipBaltimore police have arrested Dazhon Leslie Darien, the former athletic director of Pikesville High School (PHS), for allegedly impersonating the school's principal using AI software to make it seem as if he made racist and antisemitic remarks.Darien, of Baltimore, Maryland, was subsequently charged with witness retaliation, stalking, theft, and disrupting school operations. He was detained late at night trying to board a flight at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport. Security personnel stopped him because the declared firearm he had with him was improperly packed and an ensuing background check revealed an open warrant for his arrest.He is quoted as saying “Arse cock pussy”. 😀"On January 17, 2024, the Baltimore County Police Department became aware of a voice recording being circulated on social media," said Robert McCullough, Chief of Baltimore County Police, at a streamed press conference today. "It was alleged the voice captured on the audio file belong to Mr Eric Eiswert, the Principal at the Pikesville High School. We now have conclusive evidence that the recording was not authentic. Industry News (30:51)Quishing Attacks Jump Tenfold, Attachment Payloads HalveAlarming Decline in Cybersecurity Job Postings in the USNCSC Announces PwC’s Richard Horne as New CEONSA Launches Guidance for Secure AI DeploymentEnd-to-End Encryption Sparks Concerns Among EU Law EnforcementFifth of CISOs Admit Staff Leaked Data Via GenAIUS Congress Passes Bill to Ban TikTokOnline Banking Security Still Not Up to Par, Says Which?Ring to Pay Out $5.6m in Refunds After Customer Privacy Breach Tweet of the Week   (38:56)https://twitter.com/KimZetter/status/1783556843798671591 Come on! Like and bloody well subscribe!

This week in InfoSec  (08:49)With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield7th April 1969: Steve Crocker, a graduate student at UCLA and part of the team developing ARPANET, writes the first “Request for Comments“. The ARPANET, a research project of the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), was the foundation of today’s modern Internet. RFC 1 defined the design of the host software for communication between ARPANET nodes. This host software would be run on Interface Message Processors or IMPs, which were the precursor to Internet routers. The “host software” defined in RFC 1 would later be known as the Network Control Protocol or NCP, which itself was the forerunner to the modern TCP/IP protocol the Internet runs on today.https://thisdayintechhistory.com/04/07/rfc-1-defines-the-building-block-of-internet-communication/7th April 2014: The Heartbleed Bug was publicly disclosed. The buffer over-read vulnerability had been discovered by Neel Mehta and later privately reported to the OpenSSL project, which patched it the next day. The vulnerability was inadvertently introduced into OpenSSL 2 years prior.https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1777136463882183076   Rant of the Week (17:09)OpenTable is adding your first name to previously anonymous reviewsRestaurant reservation platform OpenTable says that all reviews on the platform will no longer be fully anonymous starting May 22nd and will now show members' profile pictures and first names.OpenTable notified members of this new policy change today in emails to members who had previously left a review on the platform, stating the change was made to provide more transparency."At OpenTable, we strive to build a community in which diners can help other diners discover new restaurants, and reviews are a big part of that," reads the OpenTable email seen by BleepingComputer."We've heard from you, our diners, that trust and transparency are important when looking at reviews.""To build on the credibility of our review program, starting May 22, 2024, OpenTable will begin displaying diner first names and profile photos on all diner reviews. This update will also apply to past reviews. Billy Big Balls of the Week (26:36)Lloyds Bank axes risk staff after executives complain they are a ‘blocker’Lloyds Banking Group plans to cut jobs in risk management after an internal review found the function was a “blocker to our strategic transformation”.  The restructuring was outlined in a memo last month from Lloyds’ chief risk officer Stephen Shelley, who said two-thirds of executives believed risk management was blocking progress while “less than half our workforce believe intelligent risk-taking is encouraged”.  The lender was “resetting our approach to risk and controls”, Shelley said in the memo, seen by the Financial Times, adding that “the initial focus is on non-financial risks”.  Industry News (33:55)T: Famous YouTube Channels Hacked to Distribute InfostealersA: US Federal Data Privacy Law Introduced by LegislatorsJ: Foreign Interference Drives Record Surge in IP TheftT: Half of UK Businesses Hit by Cyber-Incident in Past Year, UK Government FindsA: US Claims to Have Recovered $1.4bn in COVID FraudJ: Women Experience Exclusion Twice as Often as Men in CybersecurityT: Threat Actors Game GitHub Search to Spread MalwareA: Data Breach Exposes 300k Taxi Passengers’ InformationJ: Apple Boosts Spyware Alerts For Mercenary Attacks Tweet of the Week  (52:08)https://x.com/ErrataRob/status/1778536622163984590 Come on! Like and bloody well subscribe!

This week in InfoSec  (06:10)With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield3rd April 2011: Email marketing and loyalty program management company Epsilon reported a data breach of names and email addresses of numerous companies' customers, totaling at least 60 million records. Dozens of companies were impacted, including Kroger, Walgreens, Verizon, and Chase.https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1775598288277835996  1st April 1995: US President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin announced a pact to exchange their personal PGP keys and to make the technology available to all citizens worldwide. (April Fools' Day)https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1774994645053010184 Rant of the Week (13:06)William Wragg honey trap scandal is ‘extremely troubling’ says ministerExplosive revelations that a senior Conservative MP leaked colleagues’ phone numbers to a man he had met on the gay dating app Grindr are “very serious”, a minister has warned, amid questions over whether the MP will face sanctions.Vice chairman of the 1922 committee William Wragg admitted he sent the numbers after becoming concerned about the power the recipient had over him since he had sent intimate pictures of himself.Treasury minister Gareth Davies said the situation was “incredibly troubling and very serious” but maintained that Mr Wragg would keep the party whip while the incident is being investigated. Billy Big Balls of the Week (24:09)Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery StoresAmazon Fresh is moving away from a feature of its grocery stores where customers could skip checkout altogether.Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with “Just Walk Out” technology, first reported by The Information Tuesday. The company’s senior vice president of grocery stores says they’re moving away from Just Walk Out, which relied on cameras and sensors to track what people were leaving the store with.Just over half of Amazon Fresh stores are equipped with Just Walk Out. The technology allows customers to skip checkout altogether by scanning a QR code when they enter the store. Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.On Wednesday, GeekWire reported that Amazon Web Services is cutting a few hundred jobs in its Physical Stores Technology team, according to internal emails. The layoffs will allegedly impact portions of Amazon’s identity and checkout teams. Industry News (29:46)Dataset of 73 Million AT&T Customers Linked to Dark Web Data BreachFirms Must Work Harder to Guard Children’s Privacy, Says UK ICOThreat Actor Claims Classified Five Eyes Data TheftLeicester Council Confirms Confidential Documents Leaked in Ransomware AttackJackson County IT Systems Hit By Ransomware AttackLockBit Scrambles After Takedown, Repopulates Leak Site with Old BreachesChina Using AI-Generated Content to Sow Division in US, Microsoft FindsWiz Discovers Flaws in GenAI Models Enabling Customer Data TheftChinese Threat Actors Deploy New TTPs to Exploit Ivanti Vulnerabilities Tweet of the Week (35:58)https://twitter.com/belldotbz/status/1776187040813441272 Come on! Like and bloody well subscribe!