On this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast, Dick O’Brien and Brigid O’Gorman are joined by Symantec threat researcher Gavin O’Gorman to discuss the Conti ransomware attack on Ireland’s national health service, how the response to this attack is going, and what the likely consequences of it may be. Elsewhere, another ransomware attack, this time on the world’s largest meat producer, JBS Foods, and Sweden’s Public Health Agency is also hit with some hack attempts. Meanwhile, the alleged leader of...
Jun 03, 2021•34 min•Ep 17•Transcript available on Metacast In this week’s Cyber Security Brief, Dick O’Brien and Brigid O’Gorman discuss the implications of the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack and the activities of the group behind it, Darkside. We also talk about what appears to be a reasonably new ransomware - Avaddon - that has been used in a string of attacks recently, while we also discuss an idea Brian Krebs wrote about that could potentially help deter ransomware actors from infecting your network. Away from the world of ransomware we talk ab...
May 20, 2021•23 min•Ep 16•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast, Brigid O Gorman and Dick O’Brien discuss some research we have recently been working on at Symantec. First, we discuss a blog we published this week, which looks at multi-factor authentication and how it has become a headache for malicious actors, leading them to adopt new attack techniques in an attempt to bypass or avoid it completely. We also discuss a report that we shared with customers recently looking at living off the land attack techniques an...
May 06, 2021•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Cyber Security Brief, Alan Neville joins Brigid O Gorman and Dick O’Brien to discuss the recent discovery of a zero-day vulnerability in popular VPN product Pulse Secure. We also discuss some recent developments in the SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange Server stories. Finally, we discuss a recent potential data breach at software testing company Codecov, and look at why UK authorities are warning government employees about potential approaches from foreign spies on social media.
Apr 22, 2021•22 min•Ep 14•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Cyber Security Brief, Brigid O Gorman and Dick O’Brien discuss the big Facebook data leak that has made headlines around the world this week, as well as a cyber attack aimed at European Union institutions, and a cyber incident impacting Australia’s parliament. We also discuss warnings from authorities in the U.S. about attackers attempting to exploit vulnerabilities in Fortinet FortiOS, while authorities in the UK have issued warnings about an increased risk of ransomware attacks ...
Apr 08, 2021•18 min•Ep 13•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast, Brigid O Gorman and Dick O’Brien discuss how ransomware attackers are now attempting to leverage the vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server. We also talk about an interesting interview given by one of the ReEvil ransomware gang to Recorded Future, evidence that ransomware payments increased over the last year, and the users of WeLeakInfo falling victim to their own data breach. Also, we warn U.S. taxpayers to be on the lookout for phishing campa...
Mar 25, 2021•21 min•Ep 12•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast, Brigid O Gorman and Dick O’Brien are joined by Symantec threat researcher Alan Neville to discuss the biggest cyber security story of the last couple of weeks - the vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server. Alan gives a comprehensive overview of the vulnerabilities, what’s happened since they became public knowledge last week, and the steps you can take to keep your organization’s network safe. He also talks about some of the post-compromise activ...
Mar 11, 2021•22 min•Ep 11•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast, Dick O’Brien and Brigid O’Gorman discuss some of the biggest cyber security stories of the last few weeks. Among the stories up for discussion are the bugs in Accellion’s 20-year-old FTA product, which led to multiple companies worldwide reporting breaches related to it. We also talk about the reports saying the Sandworm group has been carrying out a long-running spying campaign against multiple French IT services providers by compromising an open-sou...
Feb 25, 2021•23 min•Ep 10•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast, Dick O’Brien and Brigid O’Gorman round up some of the biggest cyber security stories of the last two weeks. We bring you the latest developments in the SolarWinds hack investigation, and chat about the significance of the disruption to the Emotet botnet. We also discuss some other recent takedowns and arrests, as well as some of the biggest ransomware stories of the last couple of weeks. We also talk about the recently reported cyber attack on a water...
Feb 11, 2021•23 min•Ep 9•Transcript available on Metacast Old threats and new feature in this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast. Dick O’Brien and Gavin O’Gorman discuss the latest developments in the SolarWinds hack investigation, including how Symantec investigators found Raindrop, an additional piece of malware used in the SolarWinds attacks against a select number of victims that were of interest to the attackers. We published a blog about Raindrop last week, and Dick and Gavin discuss how this new malware was discovered. Also, romance scams and D...
Jan 28, 2021•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Cyber Security Brief, the first of 2021, Dick O’Brien brings us a comprehensive update about some of the developments in the SolarWinds hack story, with a lot having happened since our last podcast. We also discuss some recent ransomware attacks, and how the healthcare sector is having a hard time with cyber attacks at the moment.
Jan 14, 2021•25 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast In this week’s Cyber Security Brief, the last one of 2020, find out all you need to know about the biggest news story of the week - the Sunburst supply chain attack targeting customers of software company SolarWinds. This is one of the biggest cyber security stories of the year, with thousands of organizations affected. Dick O’Brien and Symantec threat analyst Gavin O’Gorman give a comprehensive rundown of everything we know about this attack so far. Also, Twitter is handed a big fine by the Iri...
Dec 17, 2020•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast, we discuss what card skimmers are up to during the busiest shopping time of the year, while also bringing some good news about how EU authorities prevented almost $50 million in card fraud this year. Also on the agenda, are botnets abandoning banking Trojans in favour of ransomware? It looks like they might be. We also take a look at some COVID-19 related cyber security stories that are making the headlines, as well as the reemergence of the Gootkit i...
Dec 03, 2020•24 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast In this week’s Cyber Security Brief, Dick O’Brien and Brigid O’Gorman talk about some of the biggest cyber security stories of the last couple of weeks. There are multiple stories about APT groups to cover this week, including our own Threat Intel blog detailing a wide-ranging attack campaign that targeted Japan-linked companies in multiple sectors in 17 regions worldwide. We also discuss other public reports about a Chinese APT targeting governments in South East Asia, and nation-state backed a...
Nov 19, 2020•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this week’s Cyber Security Brief, Dick O’Brien and Brigid O’Gorman talk about some of the biggest cyber security stories of the last couple of weeks. Of course, this week’s U.S. Presidential Election gets a mention, while we also discuss the recently announced ‘retirement’ of the Maze ransomware gang, as well as a threat alert issued last week by authorities in the U.S. about Trickbot and the Ryuk ransomware. Elsewhere, a Russian man was jailed this week for his involvement with a financial b...
Nov 05, 2020•19 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Cyber Security Brief, Dick O’Brien and Brigid O’Gorman are joined by Symantec threat researchers Vikram Thakur and Alan Neville. Vikram discusses Symantec’s role in the cross-industry initiative to disrupt the Trickbot botnet. Symantec was part of a global partnership that secured a court order directing hosting providers to take down Trickbot’s infrastructure. Trickbot had spread prolifically across the internet for years and became one of the most commonly blocked types of malwa...
Oct 22, 2020•28 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast We are back! Welcome to Season 3 of the Cyber Security Brief podcast, recording now from home. We will be with you every fortnight going forward and we are delighted to be back to tell you all about what is happening in the world of cyber security. In this episode, Dick O’Brien and Brigid O’Gorman discuss some of the projects they have been working on while the podcast was off air - threats against the financial sector, North Korean threat actors’ activity, the WastedLocker ransomware, and an at...
Oct 08, 2020•20 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast In this week's Cyber Security Brief podcast, Brigid O'Gorman and Dick O'Brien discuss some of the biggest infosec news stories of the last week, including, new vulnerabilities in Intel chips, and the Microsoft SMB protocol, as well as the Rowhammer vulnerability being back in the headlines. As well as this, there is an intricate phishing scam targeting Russian speakers that uses a chatbot to help you hand over your information, a mysterious Vietnam-based group is releasing Trojanized hacking too...
Mar 12, 2020•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Cyber Security Brief, we bring you a round-up of some of the biggest cyber security stories of the last 7 days. Among the topics up for discussion are the latest innovations of ransomware criminals, a data breach at a controversial facial recognition company, and an investigation by Brian Krebs into a series of cyber attacks on companies in France that led to an interesting conclusion. Also this week, a survey reveals that many government employees feel ill-prepared to cope with a...
Mar 05, 2020•22 min•Ep 22•Transcript available on Metacast Candid Wueest and Dick O’Brien join the Cyber Security Brief from the RSA Conference in San Francisco this week. Both Candid and Dick were presenting at RSA this week – Dick on the topic of targeted ransomware, and Candid on the subject of formjacking. They fill us in on how their presentations went, the other interesting sessions they attended, what the big themes of the conference are this year, and their overall impressions of RSAC 2020.
Feb 27, 2020•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week’s Cyber Security Brief is part of our regular Attack Group of the Month series, though this time around it’s more like Tool of the Month, as we take a closer look at Pegasus. Pegasus is a mobile spyware that is owned and sold by Israeli company the NSO Group, which says it is a legitimate tool that it sells exclusively to law enforcement and government agencies. However, there have been many cases where Pegasus appears to have been misused and has been found on the phones of journalist...
Feb 20, 2020•13 min•Ep 20•Transcript available on Metacast In this week’s Cyber Security Brief, we discuss the various cyber security concerns facing the healthcare sector. Ransomware attacks are now one of the biggest challenges facing organizations in the healthcare industry, while data breaches also remain a major concern. Meanwhile, developments in medtech and the increased connectivity of hospitals and other healthcare organizations pose new challenges for practitioners and patients. We discuss the main threats facing the sector, and the steps you ...
Feb 13, 2020•20 min•Ep 19•Transcript available on Metacast In this week’s edition of the Cyber Security Brief, Brigid O’Gorman, Candid Wueest and Dick O’Brien discuss the U.S. Department of Defense’s new cyber security framework for its contractors, how easy it was for a performance artist in Germany to cause a fake traffic jam on Google Maps, and the way the coronavirus outbreak is being exploited by cyber scammers. Also this week, Google halves its Chrome patch gap, Microsoft Teams gets knocked offline, and how bugs in Microsoft Azure could have allow...
Feb 06, 2020•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this week’s Cyber Security Brief, Candid Wueest and Brigid O’Gorman bring you a round-up of the biggest cyber security news stories of the last week. We discuss the Shlayer malware, the publication of exploits for a vulnerability in Windows Remote Desktop Gateway, and how attackers may be able to eavesdrop on your conference calls. Also this week, there were a whole slew of news stories about ransomware, so we discuss some of those as well.
Jan 30, 2020•21 min•Ep 17•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Cyber Security Brief, we discuss a timely issue – the importance of patching software vulnerabilities and the necessity for organizations to have good patch management. We decided to cover this topic as it is something that has been much in the news recently: CVE-2020-0601, a vulnerability in Microsoft’s Windows CryptoAPI, that was reported to the software giant by the NSA and was described as “severe” by the security agency, has made many headlines in the last week. Vulnerabiliti...
Jan 23, 2020•20 min•Ep 16•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Cyber Security Brief, we discuss “living off the land”, where attackers use legitimate tools on your device or network for malicious purposes. Dick O’Brien is joined by Candid Wueest, who wrote a whitepaper on this very topic just before the holidays, to discuss the tools that are most commonly exploited by attackers using living off the land techniques, the prevalence of this kind of activity, and what organizations can do to protect themselves. As well as this, we give an overvi...
Jan 16, 2020•22 min•Ep 15•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Cyber Security Brief, we decide to take a look at an issue that is very topical at the moment – Iranian cyber espionage activity. Dick O’Brien and Gavin O’Gorman discuss some past campaigns we have seen carried out by Iranian actors, and the kind of cyber capabilities the country has. Threat researcher Gavin gives his opinion on what is likely to happen next when it comes to cyber activity, and if we are likely to see any cyber attacks by Iranian actors targeting U.S. organisation...
Jan 09, 2020•25 min•Ep 14•Transcript available on Metacast This week’s episode of the Cyber Security Brief is the last one of 2019, so we are taking a look back at some of the big stories of the year in the world of infosec. Brigid O’Gorman, Dick O’Brien and Candid Wueest discuss a range of topics, including targeted ransomware, living off the land, supply chain attacks, extortion scams, and formjacking. We are taking a short break for the holidays but will be back in January 2020 with lots more chat about the world of cyber security.
Dec 19, 2019•27 min•Ep 13•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Cyber Security Brief, we turn the spotlight onto targeted ransomware – one of the most active threats we observed in 2019. Targeted ransomware has seen huge growth since the start of 2018, with 2019, in particular, seeing a big rise in the number of targeted ransomware families operating. We take a look at the reasons for this growth, outline the activities of some of the most interesting targeted ransomware families that have emerged in 2019, take you through how an attack like t...
Dec 12, 2019•23 min•Ep 12•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast we are introducing a new feature – Attack Group of the Month. Every month we will bring in one of our expert threat researchers for a deep dive into the history, tactics, and techniques of notable attack groups, and discuss what you should do to keep your company safe from these sophisticated attackers. This week we look at Shamoon, an attack group that first appeared in 2012, causing waves when it wiped the disks on thousands of computers in two compa...
Dec 05, 2019•26 min•Ep 11•Transcript available on Metacast 
