Risky Bulletin

Tom Uren and James Wilson talk about moves from several European governments to ditch Signal and set up their own encrypted messaging systems for internal government use. These efforts are motivated by concerns about phishing and sovereignty, but the solutions being adopted are imperfect and will come with their own set of problems. Signal fills a space that can’t be filled with sovereign capability.

They also talk about Fast16 malware. We are only now learning about the second arm of a mid-2000s campaign to delay Iran’s nuclear weapons program that included the infamous Stuxnet worm.

This episode is also available on YouTube



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Microsoft disrupts a malware-signing service used by ransomware gangs, a CISA contractor leaks sensitive GovCloud keys, vulnerability exploitation is now the dominant network entry vector, and Drupal readies security updates for a “highly critical” vulnerability.



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Risky Bulletin: Microsoft takes down MSaaS used by ransomware gangs

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq look at Department 4 of Bauman Moscow State Technical University where students learn how to hack for the state. Its curriculum is extremely explicit about how the hacking and propaganda operations are relevant to state operations. They discuss whether this is an advantage for Russia’s cyber program and look at what Western intelligence agencies do instead.

This episode is also available on YouTube.



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The GRU's Hogwarts


Vlodymyr Styran's substack


BTN92 with Alex Joske, how the MSS became a cyber juggernaut

Indonesia emerges as a new cyber scam hub, Grafana got hacked and held for ransom, the Fast16 malware subverted software used to simulate nuclear explosions, and a new Microsoft Exchange zero-day is under attack.



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Risky Bulletin: Indonesia emerges as a new hub for cyber scams

In this sponsored interview James Wilson chats with Push Security’s Chief Research Officer Jacques Louw about how the company has integrated an army of AI agents into its threat detection platform.

Not only has agentic AI led to the discovery of Install Fix campaigns, but it will help simplify the platform for new customers.



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