Explore every episode of the podcast Risky Bulletin

Russia tells data centers to deploy drone defenses, Dropbox discloses a security breach, a new spyware wave hits Serbia, and CISA scraps six free cybersecurity assessment programs.

• Risky Bulletin: Russia tells data centers to deploy drone defenses

Tom Uren and James Wilson talk about China’s long-term shift to getting private companies to build botnets for cyberespionage. A disruption effort from the US this week is good news, but China has been using these networks for a surprisingly long time and will rebuild.

They also discuss a hack at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). It looks like the Qilin ransomware group might have stolen data from the ATF’s CALEA, or lawful intercept system. That’s a big deal!

Finally, they discuss efforts to fix US water sector security. Sprinkling free tools on the problem will have limited impact.

This episode is also available on YouTube

A BGP hijack delivered malicious Virtualizor updates, the White House launches Project Watershed 250, Indian authorities take down a Telegram doxing bot, and Composer packages deliver iOS badness.

• Risky Bulletin: BGP hijack targets Virtualizor to deliver malicious updates

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about how AI is the perfect hacker, but what makes it perfect for states is the opposite of what makes it perfect for criminals.

This episode is also available on YouTube.

• Bitdefender Labs report on SilkParasite
• OpenAI on the Hugging Face incident

Dutch intelligence services will get new powers, a security expert has been arrested in Israel for hacking, the BTS hacker gets a 20 year sentence in South Korea, and an AfD politician in Germany has been linked to a Russian cybercrime hosting service.

• Risky Bulletin: Dutch intel services to get extensive new powers

In this Risky Business sponsored interview, James Wilson chats with Dropzone AI’s founder and CEO Edward Wu to debunk the adage, “an attacker only has to be right once”. Modern intruders need to be successful across multiple steps before actually reaching an organisation’s “crown jewels”.

The pair chat about where AI helps attackers, why autonomous post-compromise agents aren’t quite here yet, and how AI can bolster the capacity of security teams when investigating alerts and reducing response times.

Two members of TeamPCP arrested in Australia, Qilin hits the US firearms agency, America seizes two more Chinese botnets, CISA says most cyber activity is opportunistic.

• Risky Bulletin: Two TeamPCP members arrested in Australia

Tom Uren and James Wilson talk about evidence that Chinese APT groups are using AI in a really sensible way, to beef up their malware arsenal. This will make it harder for threat intel firms to cluster activity for attribution.

They also discuss the US disrupting Iranian hackers by revealing that some of them are hacking the country’s own firms. That’s a new tactic, but making that information public in a Treasury Department sanctions package doesn’t really make sense.

This episode is also available on YouTube

Russia begins blocking the DoH and DoT protocols, Russian hacktivists leak Spanish police and military personnel data, China and South Korea detain a vishing gang, and AI malware is not that common.

• Risky Bulletin: Russia starts blocking DoH and DoT

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about whether the increasing use of AI will make it harder for forensics teams to determine who is responsible for a hack.

This episode is also available on YouTube.

• Florian Roth X post
• Phrack issue 59, Defeating Forensic Analysis on Unix
• Phrack issue 62, Remote Exec

Expired credit cards can be used for malicious transactions, Iranian hackers shut down a UK power plant, the Lazarus Group hacks South Korea’s Presidential Office, and an Android malware strain is infecting smart cars.

• Risky Bulletin: Expired cards can be used for new transactions

In this Risky Business sponsored interview, James Wilson chats with Luke Jennings, Push Security’s VP of Research, about how stronger authentication is pushing attackers towards the authorisation layer.

Device code phishing is on the rise. Luke explains how these attacks can survive passkeys and phishing-resistant MFA and, importantly, how defenders can check if their controls against these attacks actually work.

The US warns of AI-aided attacks against Siemens PLCs, hackers breach Latvia’s road traffic agency, a new hacking tool enrolls an attacker’s passkey to your account, and academics find source code overlaps between Geedge devices and China’s Great Firewall

• Risky Bulletin: Academics find source code overlaps between Geedge and China's Great Firewall

Tom Uren and James Wilson talk about President Donald Trump’s memo enlisting the US private sector to tackle cybercriminals. The initiative gets the big idea right: traditional law enforcement approaches have not worked against cybercriminals so the government has turned to disruption operations, but there simply isn’t enough government capacity. So it is time to bring in the private sector.

They also discuss Ukraine’s combined cyber and kinetic strikes against Wildberries, the logistics company that is called the Amazon of Russia. These cyber operations didn’t amplify the effects of kinetic strikes, but it is great propaganda to say that they did.

This episode is also available on YouTube

Slovakia finds Russian backdoors on its speed cameras, French police used a public exploit to hack EncroChat, Microsoft delays Exchange updates due to a deluge of AI bugs, and a ransomware-affiliate poses as a data recovery firm.

• Risky Bulletin: Slovakia finds Russian backdoor in traffic speed cameras

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq discuss The Offense Death Cycle, a paper looking at how to take advantage of a defender’s ability to control a network to discover intruders.

This episode is also available on YouTube.

• The Offense Death Cycle: Proactive Environmental Control as a Method of Persistent Cyber Defense
• Between Two Nerds: Exploits are not cyber power

The EU publishes its upcoming cybersecurity standards, hackers breach France’s tax agency, threat actors exploit a GeoServer zero-day hours after disclosure, and an exploit unlocks old AMD CPUs with one instruction.

• Risky Bulletin: The EU publishes its upcoming cybersecurity standards

In this Risky Business sponsored interview, Casey Ellis chats with Socket founder Feross Aboukhadijeh about npm 12’s move to disable install scripts by default. Attackers are already shifting payloads into package source code, and Feross explains why teams need to understand what third-party code actually does before allowing it into their environments.

The White House will let private companies carry out offensive cyber ops, an AI hacking campaign breached Taiwan’s government, a macOS bug was exploited over the internet to drop cryptominers, and Kenya orders internet cafes to store logs.

• Risky Bulletin: White House lets private companies carry out offensive cyber ops

Tom Uren and James Wilson talk about the cybercrime ecosystem shifting towards data theft extortion, stealing sensitive data and extracting ransoms from victims by threatening to leak it. For organisations whose reputation is very important to them, data leaks are a bigger threat than having their files locked up.

They also discuss how the rise of AI makes it worth reinvigorating CISA’s Secure by Design initiative.

Russian state hackers adopt fake job interview tactics, a Portuguese man will face trial for developing a malicious AI chatbot, an AI assistant hacks an Australian gym, and OpenAI releases cyber models for blue teams.

• Risky Bulletin: Russian hackers adopt the fake job interview tactics

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about examples of cyber resistance and whether they achieve their goals.

This epsiode is also available on YouTube.

• The Record on the Belarus Cyber Partisans
• BTN6, How Ukraine could use its IT army

Two American law firms pay multi-million dollar ransoms, a Metabase zero-day is being used in data theft attacks, Russian hackers disrupted a second power plant in Poland, and there’s a remote code execution bug in WordPress… again!

• Risky Bulletin: Pwnie Awards 2026 winners

In this Risky Business sponsored interview, Catalin Cimpanu talks with Michael Leland, Field CTO at Island, about the company’s seamless expansion into SASE and enterprise AI.

• About Michael Leland

A Meta AI model also escaped a testing sandbox, a cyberattack disrupts ports in North Carolina, the Philippines will establish a cybersecurity agency, and a Ransom Cartel admin gets 16 years in prison.

• Risky Bulletin: Meta's AI joins Anthropic and OpenAI in the hacky-hacky

Tom Uren and James Wilson talk about North Korea losing control over some of its hacker workforce. Expect some tightening of controls and oversight, and perhaps even a reduction in the country’s ransomware operations.

They also discuss escalating attacks on American water infrastructure. Although the impact of these attacks is relatively minor so far, the US government has been slow to respond from a political perspective.

This episode is also available on YouTube

A hacker breached Hungary’s State Treasury, Russia will mandate 40 apps on all smartphones next year, hackers steal Liechtenstein’s business database, and an AI agent got real CVEs for hallucinated vulnerability reports.

• Risky Bulletin: Hacker breaches Hungary's State Treasury

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about whether hacker culture is inherently anti-authoritarian and how different states get their country’s hackers to work for the state.

This episode is also available on YouTube.

• Daily NK, North Korean elite hacking ring busted
• North Korean smartphone hacking

Anthropic models also did the hacky-hacks, Coldcard was hacked for $70 million in Bitcoin, npm adds publish-time malware scanning, and Russia is behind the recent hotel WiFi hacks.

• Risky Bulletin: Russia is behind the recent hotel WiFi hacks

In this sponsored interview James Wilson chats with Permiso CTO Ian Ahl about detecting ShinyHunters-style attackers as they move through cloud and SaaS environments.

Ian explains how ordinary-looking events such as a password reset, a new MFA device, unusual searches and a first-time AWS role assumption can combine to reveal an intrusion. Permiso’s platform connects these signals across identity providers, cloud platforms and SaaS applications. They also discuss how AI is helping attackers move from initial access to extortion in just four hours.

A non-profit puts a $22,000 bounty on the INC ransomware group, hackers breach the UK Department for Education, Russia charges Telegram founder Pavel Durov, and the FCC bans foreign robots and power inverters.

• Risky Bulletin: Non-profit offers $22,000 bounty for INC ransomware group

Tom Uren and James Wilson talk about open-weight AI models and distillation. These topics have been subject to a lot of US government attention in recent weeks, but let’s not forget that America’s overriding goal is to remain ahead of China in the AI race. There are better ways to do that than overindexing on distillation.

They also discuss Iranian attacks on US critical infrastructure. Given that the war in Iran is unpopular, incidents that make headlines without causing serious impact are perfectly calibrated.

This episode is also available on YouTube

A cyberattack has disrupted water utilities in more than 30 communities in Minnesota, Denmark tests a secondary banking system in case of a cyberattack, North Korea arrests bank hackers, and a new Chinese cyber contractor has been identified.

• Risky Bulletin: New Chinese cyber contractor identified

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq discuss how important people are to cyber power and whether the rise of AI is changing that.

This episode is also available on YouTube.

• Hugging Face incident
• OpenAI release
• Security review cost from Vercel

A JSON bug is about to rock the Java world, scam compounds continue in Myanmar despite the junta crackdown, and Google has a new APT naming scheme.

• Risky Bulletin: A JSON RCE bug is about to rock the Java world

In this sponsored interview James Wilson chats with Airlock Digital co-founders David Cottingham and Daniel Schell about how attackers are using LLMs to enumerate EDR detections.

LLMs dramatically reduce the time and specialist labour needed to extract rulesets out of EDR products. What once might have taken months of manual reversing can now be accelerated by “burning tokens”. The takeaway is that defenders increasingly need to assume attackers have visibility into how their endpoint security products work.

A Russian hacking campaign targets Zimbra servers, the US accuses Moonshot AI of distillation attacks, Iran targets more PLC vendors, and Google adds selfie video to its login options.

• Risky Bulletin: Western cyber agencies warn of Russian hacks of Zimbra servers

Tom Uren and James Wilson talk about the future of open-weight models. For different reasons, both the Chinese and American governments have reasons to crack down on them.

They also talk about arrests of several members of the Scattered Spider juvenile cybercrime collective.

This episode is also available on YouTube

Rogue OpenAI models were behind last week’s Hugging Face breach, the Linux kernel discloses 442 vulnerabilities as the AI bugpocalypse settles in, France becomes the first EU country to pass a social media age limit, and Germany takes down the Kratos phishing service.

• Risky Bulletin: Linux kernel discloses 442 CVEs as AI bugpocalypse settles in

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq discuss what mainland Chinese analysts think about Russia’s use of cyber operations in the war in Ukraine.

This episode is also available on YouTube.

• Cyber Lessons from Russia's War in Ukraine

A hacker wipes Romania’s entire land registry database, Magnet Forensics sues a former employee for leaking an iPhone exploit, an autonomous AI agent hacked Hugging Face, and an unauthenticated remote code execution bug was finally found in WordPress.

• Risky Bulletin: Hacker wipes Romania's entire land registry database

In this Risky Business sponsor interview Casey Ellis chats with Haroon Meer from Thinkst about building companies customers don’t hate. Haroon explains why Thinkst still offers Canary tokens for free and why it has avoided annual price hikes on its paid products. They talk about Eric Ries’s “Incorruptible”, Rob Lee’s 100-year-company approach at Dragos, and why keeping customers happy is a better business strategy than chasing easy sugar highs.

Tom Uren and James Wilson talk about different ways ransomware groups are taking advantage of AI. The relatively new FulcrumSec group uses simple techniques to breach companies and then uses AI to get more leverage over victims in its extortion negotiations.

They also discuss the ever so many bugs being patched. This is good for organisations that patch, but it will leave a very long tail of unpatched vulnerabilities.

This episode is also available on YouTube

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq discuss just how important exploits are for cyber operations using data published in a new paper authored by two members of Ukraine’s cyber security agency.

This episode is also available on YouTube.

• Exploits were never the point
• Rethinking Exploitation in Cyber War: Reassessing the Role of Software Exploits in Wartime
• Max Smeets' chapter 5 from "No Shortcuts": The Elements of an Offensive Cyber Capability

The NSA’s Tailored Access Operations team is back, India bans an app used to hack e-rickshaws, Accenture has another data breach, and a leak exposes a suspected Chinese cyber contractor.

The Risky Bulletin newsletter and podcast will be on an editorial break until July 20.

• Risky Bulletin: India bans app used to hack e-rickshaws in viral videos

In this Risky Business sponsored interview, Tom Uren chats with Sublime Security Product Manager AJ Williams about how the company targets its AI use. Rather than throwing its AI agents at everything, Sublime gives them the time-consuming email security tasks that humans don’t want to do.

Its ASA (Autonomous Security Analyst) agent investigates suspicious and user-reported messages, while the ADÉ (Autonomous Detection Engineer) agent writes new detection coverage for attacks that slipped through.

Tom Uren and James Wilson talk about a new US Supreme Court decision that puts the current EU-US data sharing agreement at risk. American intelligence collection efforts have been at the centre of legal challenges of these on-again off-again data transfer agreements, and if the current agreement were struck down it would cripple Section 702 collection from Europe.

They also discuss Canada’s effort to be more transparent about its active cyber operations, those that degrade and disrupt foreign adversaries.

This episode is also available on YouTube

The DHS inspector general will investigate forced CISA reassignments, Canada hacked a ransomware gang, Taiwan charges two executives with helping Chinese hackers, and new vulnerabilities can disable Hoymiles solar panels.

• Risky Bulletin: All new cars to include a camera aimed at the driver's face

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk about why we haven’t seen an explosion of devastating hacks even though AI has been used to discover lots and lots of bugs.

This episode is also available on YouTube.

• Jerry Gamblin | X
• Cyber: Ignore the Penetration Testers
• Phineas Fisher's hacking team write up
• Phineas Fisher

A European MP’s phone was infected by Pegasus spyware, Android drops its PIN guessing limit from 1,800 attempts to 20, Alibaba bans employees from using Claude at work, and there’s a new vulnerability in the Linux kernel.

• Risky Bulletin: Android drops PIN guessing limit from 1,800 attempts to just 20