8th Layer Insights

In this conversation, Perry sits down with Dr. Bilyana Lilly to discuss her new book Digital Mindhunters (Coming Oct 30) and the intersection of cybersecurity, disinformation, and AI. She describes the narrative structure of her book, navigating a world of cyber threats and influence operations, and the evolving landscape of disinformation with AI amplifying threats. Dr. Lilly emphasizes the impor...

In this episode, Perry catches-up with Stephanie (Snow) & JC Carruthers. They talk about social engineering, the DEFCON Social Engineering Community / Village, and share their favorite (and most embarrassing) social engineering stories. Perry also gives a quick update on his recent exploits entering an AI chatbot into the Social Engineering Village CTF, speaking at the DEFCON AI Village, and the r...

On this episode, Perry gets to sit down with Ed Skoudis to discuss the simplicity and complexities of cybersecurity ethics. Ed's new book is The Code of Honor: Embracing Ethics in Cybersecurity. Guest: Ed Skoudis (LinkedIn) (Twitter) (Website) Books and References: The Code of Honor: Embracing Ethics in Cybersecurity, by Paul J. Maurer and Ed Skoudis The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, P...

On this episode, Perry gets to sit down with Jon Gillham. Jon is the founder and CEO of Originality.ai -- an AI content detection platform designed to help website owners, content marketers, writers and publishers hit 'publish' with integrity in the world of generative AI. In this interview, we get the lowdown on how AI content detection works, what it is good at, and where some of the current lim...

On this episode, Perry gets to sit down with investigative journalist, author, and podcaster, Geoff White. They discuss Geoff's new book, "Rinsed: From Cartels to Crypto: How the Tech Industry Washes Money for the World's Deadliest Crooks", the state of global cybercrime, and (everybody's favorite topic) artificial intelligence. Guest: Geoff White (LinkedIn) (Twitter) Books and References: Rinsed:...

In this episode, Perry sits down with award winning cybersecurity author, George Finney to discuss his recent book, Project Zero Trust. This is a broad discussion that hits on the concepts of Zero Trust, George's approach to writing the book, his passion for storytelling, and much more. Guest: George Finney (LinkedIn) (Website) Books and References: Project Zero Trust: A Story about a Strategy for...

In this episode Perry Carpenter sits down with Rachel Tobac to debrief after her recent KB4-CON session, "How I'd Hack You Live" where she... well... hacked Perry live. Perry and Rachel explore how age-old deception techniques are being revamped for the digital age. The discussion spans the future of social engineering, the increasing role of AI in security, and a few other fun bits. Guest: Rachel...

On this episode Perry sits down with Dr. Matthew Canham to explore ways in which AI can be weaponized against us, and how age old social engineering tactics can be used to trick large language models. Guest: Dr. Matthew Canham (LinkedIn) (Website) Books and References (Books are Amazon Associate Links and help support the show): Cognitive Security Institute YouTube Channel Cognitive Security Insti...

On this episode Perry sits down with Jeremy Treadwell, a people-first technologist and futurist, to get the lowdown on how a futurist approaches the world. Guest: Jeremy Treadwell (LinkedIn) (Twitter) Books and References (Books are Amazon Associate Links and help support the show): YouTube Video: What UX/UI Taught Me about Improving Security Awareness [SANS Security Awareness Summit 2022], Jeremy...

Welcome to season 5 of 8th Layer Insights! To celebrate Valentine's Day, Perry sits down with Emmy winning reporter Kerry Tomlinson to talk about the time she turned the tables on a romance scammer. Guest: Kerry Tomlinson (LinkedIn) (Website) (YouTube) Books and References: YouTube video: Inside a romance scam: how to make a catfisher sing YouTube video: Scammers are stealing people's faces for li...

On this episode, Perry celebrates the one year birthday of ChatGPT by taking a look at AI from technological, philosophical, and folkloric perspectives. We see how AI was formed based on human words and works, and how it can now shape the future of human legend and belief. Guests: Brandon Karpf, Vice President at N2K Networks (LinkedIn) (Website) Dr. Lynne S. McNeill, Associate Professor at Utah S...

Let's face it. Most of us have a love/hate relationship with technology and technological advances. We dream about the new thing... but when it arrives, we are usually a little disappointed. Many of us also lament the constant erosion of privacy, the changes in social norms, and more. And, little-by-little, we allow those aspects of new technology to make us numb. We accept the cognitive dissonanc...

On today's show, Perry sits down with Rick Howard to discuss Rick's new book and the concept of "First Principles" as they apply in the domain of cybersecurity. Rick Howard is the CSO of N2K and the Chief Analyst, and Senior Fellow at the N2K Cyber, formerly CyberWire. His past lives include CSO at Palo Alto Networks, CISO at TASC, the GM at Verisign/iDefense, the Counterpane SOC Director, and the...

If you’ve been listening to this show for a while, you’ll know that we’ve touched on the topic of Open Source Intelligence (otherwise known as OSINT) several times. It is an area of information security that penetration testing that’s been getting quite a bit of attention over the past several years. When you think about the digital world we live in, where we have a proliferation of personal, orga...

Listen in as Perry Carpenter & Dr. Jessica Barker present their joint session, "Conversational Security Awareness" at the SANS Managing Human Risk Summit. ... and stay tuned after the presentation for a quick conversation between Perry, Jessica, and Lance Spitzner (SANS) as they discuss themes from this year's event. Guests: Dr. Jessica Barker (LinkedIn) (Twitter) Jeremy Treadwell (LinkedIn) (Twit...

On today's show, Perry sits down with Jayson E. Street to discuss his unique blend of social engineering, physical penetration testing, and security awareness. Jayson refers to this as being trained by a simulated adversary. At the heart of Jayson's method is intense boldness in his approach to social engineering and penetration testing coupled with an equally intense passion for helping his clien...

Hey all! I'm at BlackHat and Defcon this week. If you're there, track me down. I'd love to meet you! This week's episode is an encore of one of my favorites. My interview with James Linton (a.k.a. The Email Prankster). In 2017, James went on a virtual joyride exploiting the ways that people interact with emails. One of the most interesting things about James' story is that his exploits didn't rely...

There has been a lot of buzz for the past few years about the benefits and importance of establishing security champions programs. These are groups of people in your organization who become vital, responsible, and proactive contributing evangelists to the security culture of your organization. I often refer to them as "culture carriers." And, while there is general agreement that these are good pr...

On this episode, Perry sits down with Chad Peterson, Managing Director at NetSPI, to discuss the importance of penetration testing. We touch on aspects of social engineering, discussing complex security issues with Boards of Directors, the prevalence of Ransomware, and some of the unique challenges facing the healthcare industry. Guest: Chad Peterson (LinkedIn) (Twitter) Books & References (Books...

On this episode, what cybersecurity professionals need to understand about how social signaling and incentives really work. Today's episode features a conversation with Uri Gneezy. In the field of cybersecurity, we are very interested in identifying proactive and positive ways to encourage the behavior we want. That's where Uri comes in. Uri is a well-known behavioral economist and professor of ec...

In this episode, Perry Carpenter sits down with renowned mentalist and skeptic, Banachek. Banachek (Steve Shaw) grew up with a fascination in magic and a frustration with psychic frauds. As a teenager, he contacted magician and skeptic, James “The Amazing” Randi and ended up working with Randi on a special initiative known as Project Alpha, which set out to expose a general lack of objectivity in...

This week's episode is a late Star Wars ("May the 4th Be With You") celebration. We check out a couple interesting articles about security-related lessons embedded in the Star Wars movies, and Perry sits down with Adam Shostack, author of the new book, Threats: What Every Engineer Should Learn From Star Wars to discuss threat modeling principles using Star Wars related examples. Guest: Adam Shosta...

Welcome to season 4, episode 1 of 8th Layer Insights! On this episode, Perry speaks with Josiah Dykstra (Senior Fellow, Office of Innovation at the National Security Agency) about the new book he co-authored with Eugene Spafford and Leigh Metcalf. The book is titled Cybersecurity Myths and Misconceptions: Avoiding the Hazards and Pitfalls that Derail Us, This topic coincides well with Perry's rece...

For the last episode of season 3, I thought we'd talk about something that's been in the news quite a lot recently: Authentication and Password Managers. As security professionals, we've decried the password for decades. Multifactor authentication (MFA) has started to gain popularity... but not without its own issues. Security leaders and tech teams may have once again hoped for a silver bullet, o...

Hey all! An announcement and something special! First, the announcement: Here's your chance to participate in the final episode of 8Li season 3. If you’ve got a question or comment that you’d like me to try to answer or respond to, leave a voice message at https://www.speakpipe.com/8Li. Frankly, that would make it more engaging than if I just read your questions. But, if you aren’t able to record...