Hacking Humans

A device connected to a network that accepts communications from other endpoints like laptops, mobile devices, IoT equipment, routers, switches, and any tool on the security stack.

Guest Eric Solis of MOVO Cash talks with Dave about the increase of fraud attacks on consumers and businesses by not having a body of regulations for digital payments, Dave's story is about his recent pillow purchase prompting him to do online reviews for an extra bonus, Joe shares some details from Verizon's Cyber-Espionage report, and our Catch of the Day is a letter from a listener named Jim wh...

An extension of the traditional Basic Input/Output System or BIOS that, during the boot process, facilitates the communication between the computer’s firmware and the computer’s operating system.

Guest Arjun Sambamoorthy of Armorblox talks with Dave about five targeted phishing campaigns that weaponize various Google services during their attack flow, Joe's story is about the MegaMillions jackpot that is approaching epic proportions and attracting the attention of scammers, Dave's story comes from a listener over on the Grumpy Old Geeks podcast about a Venmo incident, and our Catch of the...

An operating system program running in the background designed to perform a specific task when certain conditions or events occur.

Guest Umesh Sachdev of Uniphore talks with Dave about how call centers are becoming the new fraud vector, Dave's story involves an email that has a Trump scandal .jar file attached that's really a RAT, Joe has a story about hackers spoofing a victim's phone number making emergency calls where the police respond to the victim's home with force, he also talks about credential stuffing for swatting a...

Also known as spyware and adware, it is a software category where developers design the application neither to cause explicit harm nor to accomplish some conventional legitimate purpose, but when run, usually annoys the user and often performs actions that the developer did not disclose, and that the user regards as undesirable.

Dave switches gears and shares a story from the National Law Review with a social engineering spin to it about a theft exclusion in a title company's errors and omissions policy, Joe shares a story from Facebook taking action against hacking groups, The Catch of the Day comes Joe himself with a connection request he received on LinkedIn, and later in the show, Dave's conversation with Carey O’Conn...

An automatic software bug and vulnerability discovery technique that input's invalid, unexpected and/or random data or fuzz into a program and then monitors the program's reaction to it.

A family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original Unix system built by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie in the 1960s.

Dave has a story of an investment scam featuring celebrities, Joe warns of scams surrounding the Coronavirus, the Catch of the Day features Joe's son-in-law's adventure with thousands of bot infiltrations, and later in the show, Dave's extended interview with magicians and entertainers Penn and Teller at RSAC 2020 in San Francisco. Links to stories: Revealed: fake 'traders' allegedly prey on victi...

A network monitoring and filtering technique that examines both the header information and the payload of every packet traversing a network access point.

Dave shares a story of airport penetration testing with high degree of yuck-factor. Joe explores research on protecting passwords from social engineering. The catch-of-the-day comes courtesy of Graham Cluley's email spam box. Dave interviews Wired's Security Staff Writer Lily Hay Newman on her article tracking Nigerian email scammers.  Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at...

A clandestine set of applications designed to give hackers access and control over a target device.

A set of behaviors that precisely describes a cyber adversary attack campaign.

Joe talks about phishing lures with holiday packages, current events, and things he expects to see in your inbox soon, Dave's shares a blog post on how to troll a Nigerian prince, The Catch of the Day comes from a listener named Christian who received an email from an ill churchgoer that tests US knowledge of geography, and later in the show, Carole Theriault returns with a conversation with Rebec...

In this case Identity is the set of credentials, usually electronic that vouch for who you are and theft is to steal. The theft of a person's identity for purposes of fraud.

Joe provides some listener feedback on allowing site notifications, Dave shares good news in his story about taking down money mules, Joe's got not as good news about a phishing campaign targeting the COVID-19 vaccine cold chain, The Catch of the Day comes from a listener named Virginia who received a phishing email impersonating a bank, and later in the show, Dave's conversation with Neal Dennis...

A software, hardware or hybrid encryption layer between two devices on the network that makes the traffic between the sites opaque to the other devices on the same network.

Information used by leadership to make decisions regarding the cybersecurity posture of their organization.

Joe has a story about fake websites with advanced profiling tools and malicious software by OceanLotus, Dave's story is about sites that ask if it's ok to send you notifications, The Catch of the Day comes from a listener named William who received a phishing email from the boss, and later in the show, Dave's conversation with Mike Slaugh from USAA on his predictions for 2021 and best practices fo...

A reflection or amplification distributed denial-of-service attack in which hackers query Internet network time protocol servers, NTP servers for short, for the correct time, but spoof the destination address of their target victims.

From the intrusion kill-chain model, the delivery of a “lure” via a text message to a potential victim by pretending to be some trustworthy person or organization in order to trick the victim into revealing sensitive information. Smishing is a portmanteau word made of two other words, the acronym “SMS” and the cyber coinage “Phishing“. It’s a text-message-centric variation of the email-based phish...

Joe shares his Classic Cons Part 3, Dave has an Apple device scam story, The Catch of the Day is your assassination heads-up, and later in the show our interview with Jonna Mendez, retired CIA intelligence officer and former Chief of Disguise. Link to story: Twitter 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.

A network switch configuration setting that forwards a copy of each incoming and outgoing packet to a third switch port. Also known as SPAN or Switched Port Analyzer, RAP or Roving Analysis Port, and TAP or Test Access Point. When network managers and security investigators want to capture packets for analysis, they need some sort of generic TAP or Test Access Point. You can buy specialized equipm...