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The Defender's Advantage Podcast

Latest episodes

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May 16, 2024 • 28min

Investigations Into Zero-Day Exploitation of the Ivanti Connect Secure Appliances

Mandiant Principal Analysts John Wolfram and Tyler McLellan join host Luke McNamara to discuss their research in the "Cutting Edge" blog series, a series of investigations into zero-day exploitation of Ivanti appliances.  John and Tyler discuss the process of analyzing the initial exploitation, and the attribution challenges that emerged following the disclosure and widespread exploitation by a range of threat actors.  They also discuss the role a suspected Volt Typhoon cluster played into the follow-on exploitation, and share their thoughts on what else we might see from China-nexus zero-day exploitation of edge infrastructure this year.  For more on this research, please check out: Cutting Edge, Part 1: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/suspected-apt-targets-ivanti-zero-dayCutting Edge, Part 2: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/investigating-ivanti-zero-day-exploitationCutting Edge, Part 3: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/investigating-ivanti-exploitation-persistenceCutting Edge, Part 4: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/ivanti-post-exploitation-lateral-movementFollow John on X at  @Big_Bad_W0lf_Follow Tyler on X at @tylabs
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Apr 29, 2024 • 26min

M-Trends 2024 with Mandiant Consulting Vice President Jurgen Kutscher

Jurgen Kutscher, Mandiant Vice President for Consulting, joins host Luke McNamara to discuss the findings of the M-Trends 2024 report.  Jurgen shares his perspective on the "By the Numbers" data, the theme of evasion of detection in this year's report, and how Mandiant consultants have been leveraging AI in purple and red teaming operations. For more on the M-Trends 2024 report: http://cloud.google.com/security/m-trends
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Apr 11, 2024 • 41min

Assessing the State of Multifaceted Extortion Operations

Kimberly Goody, Head of Mandiant's Cyber Crime Analysis team and Jeremy Kennelly, Lead Analyst of the same team join host Luke McNamara to breakdown the current state of ransomware and data theft extortion. Kimberly and Jeremy describe how 2023 differed from the activity they witnessed the year prior, and how changes in the makeup of various groups have played out in the threat landscape, why certain sectors see more targeting, and more.
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Mar 29, 2024 • 43min

Hunting for "Living off the Land" Activity

Host Luke McNamara is joined by Mandiant consultants Shanmukhanand Naikwade and Dan Nutting to discuss hunting for threat actors utilizing "living off the land" (LotL) techniques. They discuss how LotL techniques differ from traditional malware based attacks, ways to differentiate between normal and malicious use of utilities, Volt Typhoon, and more. 
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Mar 14, 2024 • 26min

Director of NSA's Cybersecurity Collaboration Center on Trends in 2024

Morgan Adamski, Director of the NSA's Cybersecurity Collaboration Center (CCC) joins host Luke McNamara to discuss the threat posed by Volt Typhoon and other threat actors utilizing living off the land (LotL) techniques, zero-day exploitation trends, how the CCC works with private sector organizations,  and more. 
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Feb 21, 2024 • 35min

The North Korean IT Workers

Principal Analyst Michael Barnhart joins host Luke McNamara to discuss Mandiant's research into the threat posed by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) usage of IT workers to gain access to enterprises. For more on Mandiant's analysis of North Korea's cyber capabilities, please see: https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/north-korea-cyber-structure-alignment-2023
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Feb 7, 2024 • 44min

Prescriptions for a Healthy Cybersecurity Future with Google Cloud's OCISO

Taylor Lehmann (Director, Google Cloud Office of the CISO) and Bill Reid (Security Architect, Google Cloud Office of the CISO) join host Luke McNamara to discuss their takeaways from the last year of threat activity witnessed by enterprises within healthcare and life sciences. They discuss applying threat intelligence to third-party risk management, threat modeling, and more. For more on the work of Google Cloud's Office of the CISO: https://cloud.google.com/solutions/security/board-of-directors?hl=en#additional-thought-leadership-resources
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Jan 25, 2024 • 28min

Is The CTI Lifecycle Due For An Update?

Mandiant Intelligence Advisor Renze Jongman joins host Luke McNamara to discuss his  blog on the CTI Process Hyperloop and applying threat intelligence to the needs of the security organization and larger enterprise. For more on this topic, please see: https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/cti-process-hyperloop
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Jan 10, 2024 • 45min

Threat Trends: Hacktivists' Continued Use of DDoS

For our first episode of 2024, host Luke McNamara is joined by Mandiant Senior Technical Director Jose Nazario and Principal Analysts Alden Wahlstrom and Josh Palatucci, to discuss the hacktivist DDoS activity they tracked over the last year. 
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Dec 12, 2023 • 38min

Threat Trends: Tales from the 2023 Trenches

Doug Bienstock and Josh Madelay, Regional Leads for Mandiant Consulting, discuss threat trends in 2023 including business email compromise, common initial infection vectors, social engineering tactics, theft of credentials from outsourcing vendors, Fin 11's activities, enhancing security measures, rise of adversary-in-the-middle techniques, and data theft by ransomware threat actors.

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