Cyber Threats and Geopolitical Tensions

On this week’s show, Patrick Gray and Adam Boileau discuss the weeks security news, including:

• Russia’s disinformation peddlers face multifaceted sternness from the DoJ
• Telegram is now law enforcement’s bestest new pal, all of a sudden
• Iran’s banking industry arranges a payment plan for a ransom
• Columbia investigates how it sent private jets full of cash to pay for Pegasus
• Microsoft innovates with Un-Patch Tuesday
• And much, much more.

This week’s sponsor is Kroll Cyber, and one of their incident responders Paul Wells joins to discuss that one weird trick that actually helps - preparing for an incident before hand, rather than learning all those hard lessons in the middle of a crisis.

This week’s episode is also available on Youtube.

Show notes

• Risky Biz News: Doppelganger gets a kick in the butt from Uncle Sam
• Russia focusing on American social media stars to covertly influence voters | Reuters
• Russian pro-democracy nonprofit investigates alleged data breach by Kremlin-backed hackers
• Biden administration hits Russia with sanctions over efforts to manipulate U.S. opinion ahead of the election
• US hits Chinese companies with new sanctions over Russia-Ukraine war
• Elon Musk’s Starlink backtracks to comply with Brazil’s ban on X | Elon Musk | The Guardian
• Why It's So Hard to Fully Block X in Brazil | WIRED
• Durov says Telegram will tackle criticism of how it moderates content | Reuters
• Navalny allies accuse Telegram and other platforms of censorship | Economy News | Al Jazeera
• How India tamed Twitter and set a global standard for online censorship - The Washington Post
• 2 white supremacists tried to spark race war by soliciting murder and hate crimes on Telegram, feds say
• Matthew Garrett: "Why clone a yubikey when you c…" - Nondeterministic Computer
• Iran pays millions in ransom to end massive cyberattack on banks, officials say – POLITICO
• Four Delaware men charged in international sextortion scheme that netted nearly $2 million | CyberScoop
• Colombian president suggests prior administration illegally sent $11 million in cash to Israel for spyware
• Poland’s constitutional court finds commission investigating use of Pegasus spyware unconstitutional | Notes From Poland
• CISA says SonicWall bug being exploited as experts warn of ransomware gang use
• SonicWall SSLVPN access control flaw is now exploited in attacks
• Bug Left Some Windows PCs Dangerously Unpatched – Krebs on Security