Hacking Humans

Latest Episodes:

Scams, scams, and more scams. Oct 26, 2023

Show notes

Mallory Sofastaii, a consumer investigative reporter from WMAR TV, is joining Dave and Joe to discuss some recent scams she's seen in her reporting. Dave and Joe share some listener follow up from Kenneth who writes in with a suggestion on creating separate email addresses. Dave's story this week follows fake browser scams and how one has gotten a face lift, and what it looks like now. Joe's story is on a new term WIRED is calling "obituary pirates," people who create YouTube videos themselves casually reciting information about loved ones deaths. Our catch of the day comes from Joe this week, he shares an email he received from one of his old email addresses.

Links to the stories:

Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at hackinghumans@thecyberwire.com.

Encore: zero-day (adjective) [Word Notes] Oct 24, 2023

Show notes

A class of software-security-weakness-issues where independent researchers discover a software flaw before the owners of the code discover it. Zero-day, or 0-day in hacker slang, refers to the moment the race starts, on day zero, between network defenders who are trying to fix the flaw before hackers leverage it to cause damage. It is a race because on day zero, there is no known fix to the issue.

Scoring cybersecurity in the NFL. Oct 19, 2023

Show notes

Joe Oregon, Chief of Cybersecurity at CISA, sits down to discuss the tabletop exercise that CISA, the NFL, and local partners conducted in preparation for Super Bowl LVIII. Joe and Dave share some listener follow up from Rory who wirtes in to talk tin foil hats. Joe's story shares the interesting finds after conducting a cybersecurity survey at ISI. Dave's story follows the 77 year old woman, Marjorie Bloom, who ended up losing over $600,000, her whole lifes savings by falling for a common tech scam. Our catch of the day comes from listener Damien who writes in with an email from the "federal reserve bank of USA" to inform him that he has received a car with $16.7million attached to it and he needs to claim it.

Links to the stories:

Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at hackinghumans@thecyberwire.com.

extended detection response (XDR) (noun) [Word Notes] Oct 17, 2023

Show notes

A unified security incident detection and response platform that connects to multiple tools in the security stack via APIs, collects telemetry from each, and attempts to correlate that telemetry into a coherent threat picture.

CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/extended-detection-and-response

Audio reference link: Film Major. 2022. Enemy of the State (1998) Faraday Cage HD Tony Scott; Will Smith, Gene Hackman Jon Voight [Video]. YouTube. URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3gy4otg-24

Encore: Ways to make fraud less lucrative. Oct 12, 2023

Show notes

Brett Johnson, Chief Criminal Officer at Arkose Labs, sits down with Dave to discuss his history & ways to make fraud efforts less lucrative for bad actors. Dave and Joe share some listener follow up from Graham about one way that helps him stay safe against fake URLs. Dave's story is about bomb email attacks, in which someones email is spammed with hundreds to thousands of emails in hopes of hiding important information contained in one of the thousands of emails, perhaps from a financial institute. Joe's story is on how the FBI is warning the public to beware of tech support scammers and how they are targeting financial accounts using remote desktop software. Our catch of the day comes from listener Norman, who shares a story about how his Steam account got hijacked and how a hacker impersonating a Steam employee was trying to help him.

Links to stories:

Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at hackinghumans@thecyberwire.com or hit us up on Twitter.

Encore: social engineering (noun) Oct 10, 2023

Show notes

The art of convincing a person or persons to take an action that may or may not be in their best interests. Social engineering in some form or the other has been around since the beginning of time. The biblical story of Esau and Jacob might be considered one of the earliest written social engineering stories. As applied to cybersecurity, it usually involves hackers obtaining information illegitimately by deceiving or manipulating people who have legitimate access to that information. Common tactics involve phishing attacks and watering hole attacks.

Encore: Is inflation affecting the Dark Web? Oct 05, 2023

Show notes

Dov Lerner, a Security Research Lead from Cybersixgill, sits down with Dave to discuss how inflation hasn't affected the Dark Web, including how the cratering of cryptocurrency may have affected things. Joe and Dave share some follow up from listener Pelle, who writes in about their grandmother who was scammed over the phone for her PIN, among other information, allowing the scammers to get away with much more than money. This week, Joe's story comes from a listener named Kyle, who shared an article about protecting against AiTM (adversary-in-the-middle) phishing techniques that bypass multi-factor authentication. Dave's story is about a new video being released that shares the most common WhatsApp scams and how to avoid them. Our catch of the day comes from listener Vlad, who shares his story regarding an email he received stating he is owed 1 million dollars, and how he's not falling for the scammer’s latest attempt.

Links to stories:

Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at hackinghumans@thecyberwire.com or hit us up on Twitter.

joint cyber defense collaborative (JCDC) (noun) [Word Notes] Oct 03, 2023

Show notes

A cyber information-sharing U.S. Government organization designed to foster the public-private partnership.

CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/joint-cyber-defense-collaborative

Audio reference link: Jen Easterly. 2021. CISA Director Addresses the National Technology Security Coalition [Video]. YouTube. URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucb1FQXqsao

Stealing your car's identity. Sep 28, 2023

Show notes

This week our guest is, Sam Crowther, Kasada CEO, he's sharing his team's findings on "Stolen Auto Accounts: The $2 Price Tag on Your Car’s Identity." Joe and Dave share some listener follow up from Steve who writes in sharing an email he thought to be a scam, but turned out it was real. Listener Derek writes in with a question regarding AI and phishing emails. Joe's story comes from Proofpoint as they share their 2023 State of the Phish report. Dave's story follows an email that was sent out saying that the receiver has had a sexually explicit video leaked to an adults-only website, and to remove the video in question from the site, the receiver can send $200. Our catch of the day comes from listener Tony who writes in to share an email he and his school received claiming that the person who sent the email found pornographic material on the schools website.

Links to follow-up and stories:

Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at hackinghumans@thecyberwire.com or hit us up on Twitter.

Encore: penetration test (noun) [Word Notes] Sep 26, 2023

Show notes

The process of evaluating the security of a system or network by simulating an attack on it. Sometimes called "ethical hacking" or white hat hacking. The phrase started to appear in U.S. military circles in the mid 1960s as time sharing computers became more necessary for daily operations. Computer security experts from Rand Corporation began describing computer compromises as “penetrations.” By the early 1970s, government leaders formed tiger teams of penetration testers to probe for weaknesses in various government systems.

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