Transatlantic Cable Podcast

  For the 293 rd episode of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast, we are down to a two-man booth as both Dave and Jag are away on vacation. To kick things off, Ahmed and I take a look at a story that pulls the curtain back on one of the web's most notorious websites – 4Chan. We were kind of shocked when we saw who was one of the benefactors and am pretty sure that you will be as well.   We th...

Episode 292 of the Transatlantic Cable Podcast is here! This week, the team talk about aggressive AI and how the DEA have turned Apple AirTags into a surveillance tool against criminals. Moving on, the team discuss recent news that Nvidia's CTO thinks that crypto-currencies don't "bring anything useful for society" – pretty bold words for a business that sold GPU cards to crypto-miners just a few...

Episode 291 of the Transatlantic Cable Podcast kicks off with news around OpenAI's recent decision to reduce the amount of information it's sharing about how ChatGPT is trained, causing some to worry that it's no longer as open as originally designed.  From there discussion moves to a recent story around the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) in America and hackers looking to leverage DEA's int...

Please accept our apologies for the audio in places - we've done what we can to clean it up - back to normal scheduling next week!  Welcome to the 290 th episode of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast. In this episode, we kick things off with a discussion on how ransomware gangs are taking new leaps to extort money. Spoiler alert - you aren't going to like it one bit. From there, we jump int...

In episode 289 of the Transatlantic Cable, the team look at four new stories to tempt your earbuds.   This week kicks off with news that TikTok are implementing a 60-minute time limit for users under 18.   Following that, discussion moves to further developments around FTX, this time about their missing $9 billion. To wrap up, we discuss news around Call of Duty players taking back Black Ops III f...

The latest episode of the Transatlantic Cable sees the team starting out with news around Signal and their refusal to weaken encryption for the U.K government.   Following that, the team move onto discussions around Meta and National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's (NCMEC) campaign to help people with the spread of minors' intimate images online. To wrap up, the team discuss SnapChat A...

The latest episode of the Transatlantic Cable starts off with news that GoDaddy, one of the largest web hosting services was hacked back in 2020 and the attackers were able to gain access to the back end of millions of websites, helping them to push malware and steal credentials. Moving from there the team look at news of the recent remove of SMS 2FA (two factor authentication) from Twitter, spark...

The latest episode of the Transatlantic Cable kicks off once again with a discussion around A.I – this time, looking at how it could soon be used by musicians to help them create music – but concerns grow that it could one day be used to create music (much like it can now be used to create art). From there the team discus how a pair of developers have created an A.I that generates lifelike police...

Episode 285 of the Transatlantic Cable kicks off with yet more news around A.I and the ever-interesting topic of ChatGPT.   However, this time, the discussion starts with regulation and the CTO of Open AI believes that it's inevitable.   Moving from that to a more quirky story, still involving A.I however: a small team have used AI to create a never-ending Seinfield episode, streaming over on Twit...

Episode 284 kicks off with a story that is going to surprise no one: over 50% of smart appliances are not connected to the internet, which is a surprise to only the manufacturers – it seems people aren't really convinced by Wi-Fi enabled refrigerators or washing machines, it seems. Moving on from that, the team discuss news that AI audio is becoming a problem, with AI company ElevenLabs saying tha...

Episode 283 kicks off with the recent (good news) story that ransomware gangs earnings are down by quite a bit from last year – turns out that people are starting to treat backups properly and are refusing to pay – great news for 2023!  Following that, the team look at troubling news, this time from the crypto-currency world, with a story looking at the recent collapse of Genesis. Moving from cryp...

Episode 282 kicks off with new research from Which? Showing that 'smart' technology might not be as smart as we've been led to believe – their research shows that most devices stop receiving updates from 2 years, even thought the device has a suggested life of 10 – it seems more work needs to be done.  From there the team look at two stories around A.I, the first on the media sensation, ChatGPT an...

The first episode of 2023 of the Transatlantic Cable Podcast kicks off with news around the "recent" Twitter hack – emphasis on recent as the data was actually siphoned from Twitter back in 2021, but has only recently come to light – timing is everything it seems.  From there, the team look at news that the Web3 industry lost a whopping $4 billion to crypto-fraud last year – apparently, this is go...

The final episode of the year brings some pretty big stories for the Transatlantic Cable team. Kicking off this week, discussion starts with a troubling story about democracies and spyware – in particular, how others are leveraging the malicious software to try to subvert democratic countries. Moving from that, the team look at the big news of the week, with word that Twitter users have voted to r...

Episode 279 of the Transatlantic Cable kicks off with a troubling story about purported Chinese hacker group, APT41 attacking and stealing US Covid relief payments, to the cool tune of $20 million.  Whilst details are thin, concerns are being raised around just how much of the nearly $800 billion was actually used by people in need. From there the team move onto discussions around North Korea's La...

Episode 278 of the Transatlantic Cable kicks off with news that the previous Twitter hack, back in 2021 is now much larger than initially suspected. Not great news for the already troubled social media site.  From there, the team discuss recent news that nightclub owners in Miami are struggling with slumping sales after the recent crypto-crash – it appears many crypto advocates moved there to spen...

Episode 277 of the Transatlantic Cable only really has two topics of discussion this week. The first, and probably most prominent is the sale and consequent that happened over on Twitter.  Twitter threads across the globe are blanketed in a sea of #RIPTwitter and #Twitterdeath, but what is the actual real possible outcome? Following that, the team take a look at the other big story of the week, wi...

  Episode 276 of the Transatlantic Cable kicks off with the US Department of Justice that revealed it seized $3.36bn (£2.9bn) of Bitcoin last year which was stolen from an infamous darknet website. Then, How Twitter users are using the platform's new Elon Musk era changes to impersonate official video game companies. Moving on, we look at the advanced threat predictions for 2023. And FTX investiga...

    Episode 275 of the Transatlantic Cable kicks off with a 26-year-old Ukrainian man awaiting extradition from the Netherlands to the United States on charges that he acted as a core developer for Raccoon malware. Then, bad news from Dropbox as it disclosed a security breach after threat actors stole 130 code repositories after gaining access to one of its GitHub accounts using employee credentia...

Episode 274 of the Transatlantic Cable kicks off with a story that has wide ramifications if it goes ahead. The EU has finalised plans for their DMA, or Digital Markets Act, which would open up things such as app stores and messenger apps to third-parties – in effect, it would enable users (eventually) to install app stores from competing services on their devices.  However, how it will work in pr...

Episode 273 of the Transatlantic Cable kicks off with 65,000+ companies' data being leaked! As Microsoft confirmed, a server misconfiguration caused the leak. Then, the discussion moved on to Netflix. The streaming service is changing its policy on password sharing – and will start charging people to share accounts. You can also now turn your crypto coins into cocktails as the first Metaverse nigh...

What are NFTs, why are they so much a topic of debate right now and why is Ivan Kwiatkowski from Kaspersky's Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) so critical of them and blockchains?  We sat down with him recently to talk about his thoughts on this, the recent Ethereum merge (and why he thinks it ultimately won't solve the underlying problems with crypto), scaling issues inherent in blockchai...

Episode 272 of the Transatlantic Cable kicks off with a report into gaming and gamers attituded towards everything from work / gaming balance and cheating - if you're interested in the gaming space, be sure to check it out.  After that, the team discuss the recent news that Kanye West (aka: Ye) is purchasing the controversial social platform, Parler. After those stories, discussion moves onto an i...

Episode 271 kicks off with talk around a recent story suggesting that a third of children have adult social media accounts, in an attempt to access the full version of social sites.  From there discussion moves over to talk about TikTok and third-party tracking – something readers with long memories will remember that Facebook Meta has been doing for quite some time already.  To wrap up, the duo d...

Over the past few years, the notion of ethics has come up quite a bit within cybersecurity circles. One of the leading voices, has been my colleague, Ivan Kwiatkowski. Earlier this year, he gave a talk called Ethics in Cyberwar Times at the Pass The Salt conference: I sat down with him and Anastasia Kazakova of our public affairs department for a special edition of the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cabl...