A software program installed unintentionally by a user that typically performs tasks not asked for by the installer. CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/potentially-unwanted-program Audio reference link: Butler, S., 2022. Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPS) EXPLAINED [Video]. YouTube. URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L429Iahbww (accessed 1.6.23)....
Jan 24, 2023•5 min•Season 3Ep. 131
Rohit Dhamankar from Fortra’s Alert Logic joins Dave to discuss the decline in ransomware attacks and lessons learned from the front lines. Dave and Joe share some listener follow up from Keith regarding Dave's story from last episode and how he recognizes the scams being mentioned and offers his opinions on the matter. Joe shares two stories this week, one about his ironclad gift he gave to his wife, with his second story following the buzz surrounding OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT, their new int...
Jan 19, 2023•50 min•Season 5Ep. 228
Malware that disables a system in exchange for a ransom, usually by encrypting the system's data until the user pays for the decryption key. CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/ransomware Audio reference link: https://watch.amazon.com/detail?gti=amzn1.dv.gti.d6a9f744-47b0-ac70-aa56-b31fd0f58482&territory=US&ref_=share_ios_season&r=web...
Jan 17, 2023•8 min•Season 3Ep. 130
Chip Gibbons, CISO at Thrive, sits down with Dave to talk about how to defend against social engineering attacks in banking. Dave starts us off this week with a story about Amazon opening up its selling market to Pakistani residents, and what consequences that led to for the organization’s business. Joe's story follows a scam targeting soldiers in the Army. The Army warns against unknown individuals purporting to be noncommissioned officers that are calling said soldiers and asking them for mone...
Jan 12, 2023•54 min•Season 5Ep. 227
The name of a wireless access point. CyberWire Glossary link . Audio reference link: SSID Management - CompTIA Security+ SY0-401: 1.5 , Professor Messer, uploaded August 3rd, 2014.
Jan 10, 2023•6 min•Season 3Ep. 129
Guest Eric Levine, Co-founder and CEO at Berbix, joins Dave to discuss identity fraud. Dave and Joe share comments from listener Chris on a series of SMS messages he got from "Wells Fargo." Joe's story previews what is coming for social engineering attacks in 2023 and how to prepare to improve your safety online, while Dave's story is about sextortion scammers in rural India and how they are blackmailing victims. Our catch of the day comes from listener George who's been receiving a lot of scam ...
Jan 05, 2023•53 min•Season 5Ep. 226
A U.S. Government specification for data encryption using an asymmetric key algorithm. CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/advanced-encryption-standard Audio reference link: papadoc73. “Claude Debussy: Clair De Lune.” YouTube , YouTube, 6 Oct. 2008.
Jan 03, 2023•9 min•Season 3Ep. 128
Thanks for joining us again for another episode of fun project brought to you by the team of Hacking Humans, the CyberWire's social engineering podcast. Hacking Humans co-host Dave Bittner is joined by Rick Howard in this series where they view clips from their favorite movies and television shows with examples of the social engineering scams and schemes you hear Dave and co-host Joe Carrigan talk about on Hacking Humans. In this episode, Dave and Rick watch each of the selected scenes, describe...
Dec 29, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the CyberWire and our friends! Enjoy our rendition of the 12 Days of Malware created by Dave Bittner and performed by Dave and friends: Rachel Tobac, Jayson Street, Ron Eddings & Chris Cochran, Ray [Redacted], Dinah Davis, Camille Stewart, Rick Howard, Michelle Dennedy, Jack Rhysider, Johannes Ullrich, and Charity Wright. Ba dum bum bum. Sing along if you are game! Check out our video for the full effect! The 12 Days of Malware lyrics On the first day ...
Dec 25, 2022•7 min
This week, Carole Theriault sits down to interview Dr. Jessica Barker from Cygenta to discuss the latest Instagram scams and how to avoid them. Dave and Joe share some follow-up on Apple, why they are being sued, and how you can protect yourself, as well as a new USPS scam affecting Connecticut. Dave's story follows a message board on smartphones being stolen and what happens after the thieves obtain the stolen phone. Joe's story is on a complex scam where the scammers choose ambitious individua...
Dec 22, 2022•52 min•Season 5Ep. 225
A set of tools designed to safeguard data while in use in motion and at rest. CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/data-loss-prevention Audio reference link: HistoryHeard. “ Data Loss Prevention - CompTIA Security+ SY0-501 - 2.1 ,” Professor Messer, uploaded 20 November 2017
Dec 20, 2022•7 min•Season 3Ep. 127
Thanks for joining us again for another episode of fun project brought to you by the team of Hacking Humans, the CyberWire's social engineering podcast. Hacking Humans co-host Dave Bittner is joined by Rick Howard in this series where they view clips from their favorite movies and television shows with examples of the social engineering scams and schemes you hear Dave and co-host Joe Carrigan talk about on Hacking Humans. In this episode, Dave and Rick watch each of the selected scenes, describe...
Dec 18, 2022•28 min•Season 2Ep. 14
Kaspars Ruklis, the Program Manager for Media Literacy from IREX sits down with Dave to talk about the very verified media literacy program. Dave and Joe share some listener followup on some of the business' common language, this week, listener Vicki asks about the term "EULA" and what it stands for. Joe's story follows a scam that is particularly alarming around the holiday's, about fake barcodes on gift cards. A former police officer found this scam as she was trying to check out with a gift c...
Dec 15, 2022•53 min•Season 5Ep. 224
A system that translates text-based URLs to their underlying numerical IP addresses. CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/domain-name-system-dns Audio reference link: HistoryHeard. “ History Heard: Paul Mockapetris. ” YouTube , YouTube, 5 Apr. 2009.
Dec 13, 2022•10 min•Season 3Ep. 126
Thanks for joining us again for another episode of fun project brought to you by the team of Hacking Humans, the CyberWire's social engineering podcast. Hacking Humans co-host Dave Bittner is joined by Rick Howard in this series where they view clips from their favorite movies and television shows with examples of the social engineering scams and schemes you hear Dave and co-host Joe Carrigan talk about on Hacking Humans. In this episode, Dave and Rick watch each of the selected scenes, describe...
Dec 11, 2022•20 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Guest Giulia Porter, Vice President of RoboKiller, discusses their mid-year report on phone scams. Following that phone scam line, Dave has a story about the international takedown of online crimeware that spoofed caller ID with a service called iSpoof. Dave notes there are some helpful tips for scams related to caller ID included in the article. Joe talks about news on social media (note: Joe's stance is: DO NOT get your news on social media). He talks about several pieces he found on leadstori...
Dec 08, 2022•48 min•Season 5Ep. 223
A social engineering technique in which a threat actor poses as a trusted person or entity in order to trick the victim into disclosing information or performing an action that benefits the attacker. CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/pretexting Audio reference link: “ Batch Pin Hurt Charlize Theron Skin | the Italian Job (2003) Movie Scene. ” YouTube , YouTube, 22 Nov. 2016....
Dec 06, 2022•6 min•Season 3Ep. 125
This week, Carole Theriault is interviewing DEFCON Black Badge holder Chris Kirsch from RunZero on the recent DEFCON 30 vishing competition. Dave and Joe share some listener follow up from 3 different listeners, who share stories on disposable email addresses, as well as a little insight on a Best Buy scam mentioned in a previous episode. Joe's story is on gaming companies and whether or not they have to stoop down to stemming growth in cheats, hacks, and other types of fraud to keep customers c...
Dec 01, 2022•55 min•Season 5Ep. 222
A layer seven firewall designed to block threats at the application layer of the open system interconnection model, the OSI model. CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/web-application-firewall Audio reference link: “VCF East 9.1 - Ches' Computer Security Adventures - Bill Cheswick.” YouTube , 29 Dec. 2015, https://youtu.be/trR1cuBtcPs ....
Nov 29, 2022•9 min•Season 3Ep. 124
Thanks for joining us again for another episode of fun project brought to you by the team of Hacking Humans, the CyberWire's social engineering podcast. Hacking Humans co-host Dave Bittner is joined by Rick Howard in this series where they view clips from their favorite movies and television shows with examples of the social engineering scams and schemes you hear Dave and co-host Joe Carrigan talk about on Hacking Humans. In this episode, Dave and Rick watch each of the selected scenes, describe...
Nov 24, 2022•23 min•Season 1Ep. 12
An IT governance framework developed by ISACA. CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/cobit Audio reference link: isacappc. “How Do You Explain Cobit to Your Dad – or Your CEO?” YouTube , YouTube, 24 Aug. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYATVkddIyw .
Nov 22, 2022•7 min•Season 3Ep. 123
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 i...
Nov 17, 2022•52 min•Season 5Ep. 221
A security architecture that incorporates the cloud shared responsibility model, a vendor provided security stack, and network peering with one or more of the big content providers and their associated fiber networks. CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/security-service-edge Audio reference link: Netskope (2022). What is Security Service Edge (SSE). YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9H84nvgBqw [Accessed 21 Oct. 2022]....
Nov 15, 2022•8 min•Season 3Ep. 122
Kurtis Minder, CEO of GroupSense joins Dave to discuss how ransomware new laws leave small business behind. Dave and Joe share some follow up on Elon Musk after his big purchase and the changes that now follow. Joe's story follows Kalamazoo County residents and a new scam that is popping up, where they are being targeted by scammers through Facebook messenger video calls. Dave shares a story that hits home for him about an email that his father received from Best Buy claiming that he will be cha...
Nov 10, 2022•50 min•Season 5Ep. 220
A social engineering tactic in which hackers build a malicious domain to mimic a legitimate one. CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/domain-spoofing Audio reference link: “Mission Impossible Fallout - Hospital Scene.” YouTube , YouTube, 8 Oct. 2018,
Nov 08, 2022•8 min•Season 3Ep. 121
We’re sharing a preview of a podcast we enjoy called “What’s Your Problem?” Every week on What’s Your Problem, entrepreneurs talk about the future they’re trying to build and the problems they have to solve to get there. How do you build cars that can actually drive themselves? How do you use technology to bring down the cost of airfares? And how do you teach a computer to understand sports? Hosted by former Planet Money host Jacob Goldstein, What’s Your Problem? helps listeners understand the p...
Nov 03, 2022•2 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Jameeka Green Aaron, CISO, Customer Identity at Okta, sits down with Dave to speak about their State of Secure Identity report. Dave and Joe share some listener follow up from Richard, who writes in to share his thoughts on the discussion of the phishing kit targeting WordPress sites in a previous episode, and also writes in about last episode’s discussion on how companies were turning on employees who are overworked with two remote jobs and shares how Equifax was one of these companies. Dave's ...
Nov 03, 2022•52 min•Season 5Ep. 219
A layer seven firewall that sits in line at the boundary between the internet and an organization's network perimeter that allows security policy enforcement and can perform certain prevention and detection tasks. CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/secure-web-gateway Audio reference link: Vintage Computer Federation (2015). VCF East 9.1 - Ches’ Computer Security Adventures - Bill Cheswick. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trR1cuBtcPs....
Nov 01, 2022•9 min•Season 3Ep. 120
Enjoy this CyberWire classic. They did the Mash...the did the Malware Mash...
Oct 28, 2022•3 min
Kim Allman from NortonLifeLock, and Carrie Neill from the National PTA, sit down with Dave to discuss the Smart Talk 2.0 tool. Joe and Dave share some follow up on an exciting new position Joe has accepted as the Director of Cyber Science at a company called Harbor Labs. This week, Joe's story comes from listener Beau, who writes in about an ATM scam he fell victim to, sharing how the scammers were spamming his phone with texts, emails, and calls before he figured out what was going on. Dave's s...
Oct 27, 2022•43 min•Season 5Ep. 218