Week in Review: UK LegalAid collapse, public ransomware approval, Salesforce breach impact

Summary

Cyber Security Headlines: Week in Review Hosted by CISO Series - Released August 8, 2025

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Overview

In this episode of Cyber Security Headlines, hosted by Rich from the CISO Series, guest Montes Fitzpatrick, CISO at Navis Montez, delves into the week's most pressing cybersecurity issues. The discussion encompasses the collapse of the UK Legal Aid program due to cyber attacks, Ohio's pioneering cybersecurity regulations on ransomware payments, the PBS data breach, the impact of a Salesforce breach linked to the Shiny Hunters group, an attack on Luxembourg's Huawei systems, and novel methods of hijacking AI systems like Google's Gemini.

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1. UK Legal Aid Program Faces Collapse Due to Cyber Attacks

Summary: The UK Legal Aid sector is teetering on the brink of collapse following cyber attacks that disrupted operations in May. These attacks have led to unpaid barristers, turned-away cases, and fears of a mass exodus from legal aid work. The inability to access data and receive compensation has placed immense financial and operational strain on legal firms.

Discussion: Rich introduces the severity of the situation, highlighting the long-term implications beyond the immediate data breaches. Montes emphasizes the broader consequences, stating, “Delay justice is injustice. We all, we all know that” (00:37). He underscores the disconnect between corporate understanding of cybersecurity, noting that many non-IT professionals view security narrowly, focusing only on confidentiality rather than the full CIA triad (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability).

Key Insights:

• Corporate Misunderstanding: A significant barrier is the lack of comprehensive understanding of cybersecurity's role beyond just data protection.
• Existential Risk: The collapse of essential services like legal aid illustrates the deep, systemic risks posed by cyber attacks.

Quotes:

• Montes Fitzpatrick: “...the availability and integrity and all that which, you know, of course there's the other two stool legs of the stool. For the CIA triad is actually a thing...” (04:10)

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2. Ohio's New Cybersecurity Rules: Public Approval of Ransomware Payments

Summary: Ohio has enacted groundbreaking cybersecurity regulations mandating local governments to implement formal policies and obtain public approval before making ransomware payments. This legislative move aims to increase transparency and bolster defenses against sophisticated cyber threats targeting municipal data and infrastructure.

Discussion: Rich probes the practicality and potential effectiveness of involving the public in ransomware payment decisions. Montes expresses skepticism regarding the genuine involvement of the public, stating, “...absolutely, absolutely we should. Absolutely” (04:54), yet questions the actual implementation of such transparency.

Key Insights:

• Transparency vs. Practicality: While the intent is to enhance transparency, the practical involvement of the public in decision-making remains questionable.
• Potential Backlash: Montes acknowledges concerns that mandatory transparency could inadvertently drive ransomware payments underground.

Quotes:

• Montes Fitzpatrick: “...officials should not be making, officiating and doing things in a dark room.” (09:36)
• Rich: “...from the individual businesses perspective, it's almost always worth it to pay the ransom.” (10:23)

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3. PBS Confirms Data Breach: Employee Information Leaked on Discord

Summary: PBS has confirmed a data breach where contact information of nearly 4,000 employees and affiliates was leaked on Discord servers associated with PBS Kids fan communities. The compromised data includes names, job titles, emails, departments, and supervisors. Unlike organized hacking groups, the breach appears to be the result of non-professional individuals sharing files out of curiosity or for notoriety.

Discussion: Montes reflects on the incident, likening it to past experiences with less sophisticated breaches. He highlights the persistent challenge of managing attack surfaces and being vigilant stewards of data. “[...] there is a lot of attack surface and there are a lot of elements that we just need to be very good stewards of and we just haven't solved that” (13:08).

Key Insights:

• Internal Vulnerabilities: Even non-professional breaches can have significant repercussions, emphasizing the need for robust internal security measures.
• Trust and Brand Impact: For a trusted brand like PBS, such breaches can undermine public confidence and require effective PR management.

Quotes:

• Montes Fitzpatrick: “This is pretty seriously, we have to protect what we have to protect and it's, it's very difficult to do so.” (13:08)

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4. Google’s Salesforce Breach: Shiny Hunters Group Involved

Summary: Google reports that hackers affiliated with the Shiny Hunters group breached one of its Salesforce databases, compromising small business contact information. The attack utilized voice phishing to gain access, mirroring a series of recent Salesforce-related breaches affecting prominent companies like Cisco, Qantas, and Pandora.

Discussion: Rich points out that the underlying issue isn't Salesforce itself but the prevalent use of voice phishing tactics. Montes advises the implementation of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) into service desks to mitigate such threats. “[...] organizations especially are going to just... work MFA into the service desk.” (16:08).

Key Insights:

• Voice Phishing Resurgence: Despite being considered outdated, voice phishing remains a potent method for attackers.
• MFA Implementation: Strengthening authentication processes is crucial in defending against such social engineering attacks.

Quotes:

• Montes Fitzpatrick: “This just sort of reminds me of that. And you know, the, it, what it really is tantamount, I think is the fact that there is a lot of attack surface...” (16:08)

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5. Luxembourg's Huawei Systems Attacked: Mobile Service Disruption

Summary: Luxembourg suffered a significant cyber attack targeting Huawei equipment within its national telecom infrastructure, resulting in a nationwide telecommunications outage. The disruption affected 4G and 5G mobile networks for over three hours, including access to emergency services. Attempts to revert to older 2G systems failed due to overload, highlighting the vulnerabilities of relying on legacy systems as backups.

Discussion: Montes discusses the convergence challenges between information technology (IT) security and operational technology (OT) security. He points out the conflicting priorities that often arise, where measures to enhance IT security might inadvertently compromise OT availability. “[...] the information technology security practices that we use... negatively affect the availability stool of the CIA triad...” (18:39).

Key Insights:

• IT vs. OT Security: Balancing security measures between IT and OT environments is critical to maintain both protection and operational availability.
• Legacy System Risks: Dependence on outdated systems like 2G as fallback options poses significant security and reliability risks.

Quotes:

• Montes Fitzpatrick: “There is a lot of data... and just a good inventory of it for, for the, the sake of security...” (20:49)

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6. Google’s Gemini AI Hijacked via Poison Calendar Invites

Summary: At Black Hat, security researchers demonstrated indirect prompt injection attacks on Google's Gemini AI by embedding malicious prompts within Google Calendar items. These prompts could commandeer AI actions such as raising smart blinds or initiating Zoom calls. Although Google has deployed mitigations since February, the incident underscores the vulnerabilities inherent in AI integrations with everyday tools.

Discussion: Montes elaborates on the dangers of executing data as code, comparing it to historical vulnerabilities like portable executable exploits. He stresses the importance of enforcing secure coding practices to mitigate such risks. “[...] there is a lot of attack surface... this is just another case of, here we've got data that should be data that's being executed as code.” (24:38)

Key Insights:

• AI Integration Risks: As AI becomes more embedded in daily operations, securing these interfaces becomes paramount.
• Prompt Injection Vulnerabilities: Ensuring that data inputs are sanitized and securely managed is critical to prevent AI misuse.

Quotes:

• Montes Fitzpatrick: “Calendars are getting, there's more interfaces, more proliferation...” (23:12)

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Conclusion

Montes Fitzpatrick concludes the episode by highlighting the PBS breach as a particularly noteworthy incident, reflecting on its nostalgic elements and the ongoing challenges in cybersecurity. Rich wraps up by encouraging listeners to follow Montes on LinkedIn and to join upcoming events hosted by the CISO Series.

Final Thoughts:

• Persistent Challenges: The episode underscores the evolving nature of cyber threats and the continuous need for robust, adaptive security measures.
• Community and Awareness: Building bridges within organizations and fostering a comprehensive understanding of cybersecurity's multifaceted role remain essential.

Closing Quote:

• Montes Fitzpatrick: “The one that I liked the most was the... PBS... really just brought back these, you know, nostalgic elements maybe...” (27:43)

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For further insights and daily updates, visit CISOseries.com.

Transcript

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

From the CISO series, it's cybersecurity headlines.

[Rich]

Cyber attacks threaten legal aid collapse. Ohio proposes public input on ransomware payments and PBS confirms a breach. These are some of the stories that my colleagues and I have selected from this past week's cybersecurity headlines. And now we're looking forward to some insight, opinion and expertise from our guest, Montes Fitzpatrick, CISO at Navis Montez, I got to ask, thank you. First of all, thank you so much for being on the Weekend Review. It's a truly a pleasure to have you here. I got to ask, how was your week in cybersecurity?

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

I am very glad that today is Friday and just like a good friend of mine always says, you know, only two more days till Monday.

[Rich]

That is. That is the grind set that we need to get us through the week in Review. I like it, Montez. All right, before we move on into the news, got to thank our sponsor very quickly today. Threat Locker Zero Trust, Endpoint Protection Platform. Remember, if you're listening to this show as a podcast, so not live next week, you too can join us and our loyal band of vocal experts. Just go to YouTube live and look for the CISO series. You can find the Cybersecurity Headlines Week in Review card there. We always preview who we're going to be having on there. Or you can also go to the events [e-mail] for those of you that are here with us right now. Right here, right now. As a Pepsi commercial from my youth said you could contribute in our chat. We have Kevin Farrell, we have CCL in there, so join them, have some fun with us. Let us know what you think about the news and our presentation of it. Always a good time. And if that's not your bag, feedbackisoseries.com is how you get in touch with us through email. We love getting your emails and helping make the show better. Just a quick reminder that these are in fact Montes's opinions, not necessarily those of his employer, friends, family or loved ones. We've got about 20 minutes, so let's jump right into the news. First up here on the existential front, UK legal aid program faces collapse due to cyber attacks. This is follow up on a story we covered last May. Lawyers in the UK are warning that cyber attacks that occurred in May have pushed the sector into chaos, with barristers going unpaid, cases being turned away and fears that a growing number of firms could desert legal aid work altogether following the attack. The inability for lawyers to access data or get compensated for their services had led to stress and a simple financial inability to maintain their legal aid practice, leading to a possible collapse of the entire system. So Montes, the media may report about the immediate story of a cyber attack. That's the sexy thing. That's the. We can say how many gigabytes were stolen and all that stuff. But the follow on effects people losing access to legal protections. Less visible but still extraordinarily critical. Can this type of story serve as a, I don't know, an effective case study for CISOs seeking greater corporate support for their departments? I mean this is the existential risk we're all dreading, right?

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

What a way to open Rich. I don't know if this is Chill.

[Rich]

Chill story. Yeah.

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

Gives us, gives us, you know, the precursor to what's, you know, what we're going to talk about today. But to delay justice is injustice. We all, we all know that. I find it really hard to believe that are everyone, every corporate member doesn't understand that information security is extremely important. So we got a problem. And I think the problem might stem from the fact that every non information security corporate person believes that security is just this really narrow thing that fits into this box that is just confidentiality and, and that is, you know, a problem. We, they have no idea that you know, the availability and integrity and all that which, you know, of course there's the other two stool legs of the stool. For the CIA triad is actually a thing and that's something that we're always fighting. I don't know how we get past that.

[Rich]

So is this, does this make it incumbent on CISOs and just security practitioners in general to be the, the crying out about this right to spread awareness for this. Is this a warning call for them to be like, we need to show that this isn't just something plunk a check. You're, you know, we lock the door, everything is secure. Is there, is there more that we can do as a community to kind of show these types of cases out here that, that this isn't. It isn't, you know, it isn't enough to think, oh the department does its job, it's not going to impact business.

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

Richard sounds like you're saying, you know, we should be building bridges.

[Rich]

That's, that's what I'm asking. Yeah.

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

And absolutely, absolutely we should. Absolutely. I think that we do. We're still missing it somehow. And oh man, I really wish that I had a much better answer. Like yes, here's how you solve it. I. A lot of CISOs, a lot of security practitioners Decry this very fact and then we get to the point of okay, well how do we solve this, this thing that we're decrying? And I just don't, just don't know.

[Rich]

We had a comment in our chat here. Mid Atlantic River Rat. Thank you for the spacing on that. Basically asking with the growing sophistication of vectors of attacks, will we see organizations revert to paper abandoned computers? I would say if you look at healthcare and other extraordinarily mission critical organizations like that, they already have those systems in place now. It's not the primary means of doing it. I don't know if we're going full Battlestar Galactica and you know, and you know, highly segment individual systems and that kind of stuff, but that option is on the table for some industries where, you know, especially healthcare, where there's, you know, potential damage and loss of life is an option there too. Montes, any, any thought on that?

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

This, this Pandora's box is open. There is no way we're going to go back to paper now. Never say never. Obviously is, but. And so you know, as I, you know, have done some work in healthcare that in some cases the emergency mode operations plans for some covered entities, right, People who are providing healthcare treatment, payment or other operations is actually paper in, in some cases as a, there's a fallback to a fallback to a fallback. So in some, in some ways, right, I, I think that is the case because of, you know, the, the nature of it. But I think increasingly as we become more reliant on these, on these digital boxes, right, and even in healthcare that doing it on paper will not be, you know, there just won't be enough there. Like it would be very difficult to give, you know, as we're talking about health care to, you know, to do health care without knowing, you know, having all the information that's available to the, to the providers, the physicians.

[Rich]

I mean, I just think of every Excel wizard that's out there and asking them to do, you know, run the, run the payroll off of a paper ledger. Like that's, that's. I mean, I mean maybe if it was, you know, existential you would have to. But no one's, no one's going to be choosing that anytime soon.

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

You see your controller, your comptroller there with the abacus there. Yeah, flip, flip, flip, flipping the beans back and forth.

[Rich]

I mean, threat actors might not give him a choice. I think that, you know, that's the anxiety that Mid Atlantic, Mid Atlantic river rat, by the way, phenomenal but yeah, no, thank you for the, thank you for the question. Really appreciate it. Next up here, Ohio's new cybersecurity rules include public approval of ransomware payments. The state of Ohio, heart of it all, has enacted new cybersecurity rules requiring all local governments to implement formal policies as and publicly approve any ransomware payments. The move was passed as part of the state's budget and follows a wave of cyber attacks on municipalities. Municipalities like Cleveland. Lawmakers say the new measures should increase transparency and improve defenses against increasingly sophisticated attacks that jeopardize constituent data and local infrastructure. This applies to local governments in Ohio, not the private sector. And on the surface, I don't know think it sounds like a decent idea. I'm curious, Montes, do you feel that in any state the public should be involved, though, in such a decision? It's one thing, transparency another kind of involved in the decision. Given the legal aid story we just covered, would it create more problems than it solves? Do taxpayers have a right to such a role?

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

So, Rich, you're a newsman, you know, so that anytime, you know, a question is asked in, in the title, right. What's in the headline, you know, the answer is always no. Right. And so anytime the, the public or, you know, the, you know, a government says that, well, this is going to increase transparency and do all these sorts of things that, that brings in the constituency, will it? And so no, my honest thought, I love this story and absolutely there are officials should not be making, officiating and doing things in a dark room.

[Rich]

Is there any danger with this of, for fear that public says no. Right. City government is all locked down stuff like that. Whenever there's these mandatory or more transparent. Right. Ransomware, the, the counter argument to it is always this will just drive these, they'll find a way to make these payments transparently because the cost of doing business is always worth it to, to pay the ransom, right. From the, from the individual businesses perspective, it's almost always worth it to pay the ransom. So this, will these kind of requirements just drive these kind of payments underground and out of transparency? Is there. I don't know. I always feel those are defeatist. Right. There's no, like, then there's no, there's no hope. Right. Nothing, nothing's ever going to happen. But like, is there any merit to those kind of arguments?

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

Well, I think you're saying that our representatives might do funny math. Never, never.

[Rich]

I know, crazy for public dollars. Yeah, right.

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

So when I did research this and I looked at it, what I thought was like, oh, so this, the public isn't really going to be involved in the decision. I, I think that really when you look at the details of this, that, oh, it's a, something that will be passed as a resolution or something like that, which basically says that we're going to let you know after we decide to do what we're going to do, which I think is a step forward. Right. And so I think that's good, you know, and, but yeah, just, you know, as far as them involving the public in the decision making, yeah, absolutely, that's not going to happen. I just can't see that.

[Rich]

And CCL points out in our chat, even if there's a slight chance that ransomware can't be paid, that might be enough for it leads to either fight for proving security or get burned from every side. I know CCL has some strong thoughts anytime these, you know, pay the ransom stories come up. So I always appreciate that perspective. Really great. And I got a shout out. Zachary Lewis wants you to have your own show, Montez. You know, that's right. So we'll, you know, we'll have Montez on as much as he wants to be. Because I, I'm in, I'm in agreement, Zachary. We will take advantage of Montez's expertise and velvety smooth voice Next up here. PBS confirms data breach after employee info leaked on Discord servers. The story is being brought to you by the letters P I and I. PBS has confirmed a data breach after a file containing contact info from nearly 4,000 employees and affiliates was leaked on Discord servers tied to PBS Kids fan communities. The data includes names, job titles, emails, departments and supervisors. PBS says the breach came from its internal MyPBS.org platform and that no other systems were impacted. This is not actually really a hacking story so much as it's a data leak story. Does not appear to be a theft of data by an organized threat group for exploitation purposes. Instead, as Believing computer puts it, the young adults, teenagers, kids sharing the file seem to be doing it out of a sense of novelty, rebellious curiosity, simply gain a little notoriety in their peer group. Hey, we're leaking PBS info. The fact remains that data was accessed by non professionals that these names and addresses may be even more dangerous in the wrong hands. Given that there is a large degree of trust built into the PBS brand, particularly the PBS Kids brand. A PBS spokesmuppet has alleged to have said Elmo doesn't like having Elmo's address stolen. I'm curious, Montes, what lessons can be Learned from a non professional breach like this.

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

Sorry, Rich. I was looking around for my sniffer of brandy because this reminds me of the good old days.

[Rich]

Okay.

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

You know, this is, you know, this sort of takes me back and you know, I, I would say this is like, this is a, you know, hacking. Right. Because this sort of reminds me of me in my youth. Not that I would have done anything like this. I certainly didn't. Right. I'm a upstanding citizen of these United States and. But, you know, may have hung around, you know, the shady, you know, IRC channel back in the early 2000s, you know, spend a little time there, trying to learn some stuff, you know and. Absolutely. This just sort of reminds me of that. And you know, the, it, what it really is tantamount, I think is the fact that there is a lot of attack surface and there are a lot of elements that we just need to be very good stewards of and we just haven't solved that. And just the fact that PBS sort of downplays it the way that they are is, you know, I guess that is, you know, part of, part of the, you know, part of the whole PR spin of it. But no, it's, it's pretty serious. Right? This is pretty seriously, we have to protect what we have to protect and it's, it's very difficult. It's very difficult to do so.

[Rich]

All right, before I move on to our next story, I have to spend a few moments and thank our sponsor for today, ThreatLocker. ThreatLocker is a global leader in zero trust endpoint security, offering cybersecurity controls to protect businesses from zero day attacks and ransomware. ThreatLocker operates with a default deny approach to reduce the attack surface and mitigate potential cyber vulnerabilities. To learn more and start your free trial, visit threatlocker.com CISO that's T H R E A T L O c k e r.com Next up here, Google says hackers stole its customers data by breaching its Salesforce database. Google says hackers linked to the Shiny Hunters group breached one of its Salesforce databases containing small business contact information. While only basic and largely public data was taken, the attackers used voice phishing to gain access. The breach is the latest in a string of Salesforce related incidents following attacks on Cisco, Qantas, Pandora and many others. But Montez, this seems to be the most recent, recent elephant in the room, a breach of Salesforce databases. Hey, look. A surface that threat actors could attack. Who knew? And we have covered many cases of it the past few weeks of high profile companies getting hit by the Shiny Hunters group. But really the elephant isn't necessarily Salesforce. I think it's voice phishing, which is the technique Shiny Hunters and others are using to get access to victims cloud based salesforce databases. I'm curious, as a ciso, what advice do you have to address this voice phishing threat that seems to be growing in popularity?

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

You see here I thought you were going to hit me with a supply chain attack question, but no, this, the voice one is good. And so this maybe, maybe does this bring back or breathe new life into the thing that we all thought was super dead now? You know, knowledge based authentication. You know, I, I think maybe, probably not, but maybe. I think organizations especially are going to just. We're going to have to work MFA into the service desk.

[Rich]

Yeah, I mean that, that seems, I don't want to say it seems table stakes, but it seems so obvious, right, that, that now is clearly where we're seeing a gap in whether you want to call it business logic or something like that. Right. Like the, the need to get this done fast. Right. The reason these are effective is because you can put a lot of social pressure on people to get past these. And if it sounds good enough and you can get through that way, it suddenly becomes very easy for a lot of groups to take advantage of that. All right, next up here, Luxembourg suffers attack on its Huawei systems knocking out mobile service. As posted in the record, Luxembourg's government announced on Thursday it was formally investigating a nationwide telecommunications outage caused last week by a cyberattack reportedly targeting Huawei equipment inside its national telecoms infrastructure. This attack impacted the country's 4G and 5G mobile networks, making them unavailable for more than three hours. And that included access to emergency services. So a big deal. And this is because the country's fallback 2G system became overloaded. Just reminded you of using AT&T network. When the iPhone launched, Internet access and electronic banking service were also inaccessible. Statements issued by the country's government said that the attack was intentionally disruptive rather than attempt to compromise the telecom network itself, and that this led to a system failure. But still, from an infrastructure perspective, the willingness for companies or countries to rely on older legacy systems as a fallback is laced with risk, as was the case here. No one ever likes to talk about backups, contingencies, redundancy. But I'm curious, what advice would you have for CISOs that face this type of scenario?

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

Richard, you pick this one because you.

[Rich]

Like saying Huawei I love saying Huawei. I love saying Luxembourg too and talking about 2G networks. Those are like my, those are my three love languages.

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

And so yeah, I knew it. I knew it. Okay, so this one is one that I'll have to farm out. As I was having, I had a conversation maybe a couple of months back with an acquaintance of mine who about reliability engineering and he is firmly over in the operational technology security space. And really as we really as I think about that conversation and what we really sort of met in the middle on is that the information technology security practices that we, that we use and what's basically accepted as industry accepted practice in a lot of ways negatively affect the availability stool of the CIA triad for those on the operational technology security side. And so there were some things that would, that he said that they had to do on his telecom side that I'll be quite frank with you Rich. Frank with you Rich. It made me clutch my pearls a little bit about some of the things that they, some of the concessions they had to make to ensure that the, the service was good. And so now you, as we talk about this, you know, the convergence of the two, right between information technology security and operational technology security, what really wins out and there's, there's a lot of shortcomings really. I think the one thing that we are, we preach and harp about on the information side is just the, you know, the explosion of the data and how much more data there is. And, and really it's very difficult to have a really good understanding of the data, where the data is and, and just a good inventory of it for, for the, the sake of security and maybe similar relief. On the operational side it is understanding the, you know, the control system aspects. I don't know that you know, the operational technology security folks really have a good complete understanding of that.

[Rich]

Yeah, and the, what stood out to me for this is the idea of, you know, this was an assault typhoon type of attack that had a knock on effect of knocking out service. Their, their whole thing was, you know, causing that chaos, right of knowing that that are probably strongly suspecting that, that you know, that 2G backstop wasn't going to hold up with a massive outage even in a small country with you know, with a, with a fairly limited population. But the, the idea of this was purely to knockout comms is kind of, you know, that, that to me one makes us feel almost like a test case right of hey, we have, you know, there's a very limited number of infrastructure providers for 5G, 4G services there's probably kind of on your hand, right. And so, hey, if we can, we can hit Luxembourg, you know, it's not like people are going to be spending up a ton of 2G capacity to kind of meet this threat as a backstop going forward. Right.

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

So you say this, you know, for future to come is what you're saying.

[Rich]

I'm just saying anytime a plot element reminds me of like Dark Angel, I get very, I get very scared and I'm, I just have to check if I can be a bike messenger in the dystopia. That's all I can hope for.

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

I mean, that's something of a deep cut these days. You're a dark angel.

[Rich]

All right, all right. And we're going to finish up today with hackers hijacking Google's Gemini AI with a poison calendar invite to take over a smart home. It's just all the, all the buzz. This is just, this has everything so has a little something for everybody. Wired has a new report on security researchers who are demonstrating indirect prompt injection attacks by hiding prompts for Gemini in Google Calendar items at Black Hat. They reported how these prompts could cause Gemini to do things like raise your smart blinds or start a zoom call. Every time you tell Gemini, thanks. This will teach you to be polite to the AI. The researchers informed Google of the methods in February and Google has since deployed mitigations. So Montez calendars are a regular target for prompt injection attacks. Why not everybody uses them. Few people think about the fact that an online calendar is really just a, just a data store database. While Black Hat hackers drew attention to it with cute stunts. Nation state groups have known about how to hide tools and command and control in them for a while for. And it's pretty easy to do. I'm curious, what are your thoughts about how to approach calendar security? A phrase I did not think I would be thinking about this week.

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

Right. Yeah, that's, that's a wild one. So, you know, calendars are getting, there's more interfaces, more proliferation. You know, we are an increasingly corporatized world. How many people, you know, bring in their corporate tools to their home life? I certainly know that, that I do. Right. We, you know, live and die by the, by the family calendar. Right. And one of the things that I think this is. And maybe you'll say rich, you'll say Montez, this is a, this is a cop out. And I'll take it. That's okay. But I think that we are essentially, this is a distillation of the same Old waveform of the things that we do when we're introducing new technologies, especially as like, it's allowing data to be executed as code. There is portable executables, which anybody who's ever dug into portable executables knows that the portable executable itself, the NT loader, does not follow the spec. It will basically run a web paper bag if you give it to it. Then of course, the java casting or JavaScript. JavaScript casting there. This is really just another case of, here we've got data that should be data that's being executed as code.

[Rich]

Yeah. Not to downplay the seriousness of this, because Lord knows the problem of portable executables have caused for decades in it. But the idea, I think it's a fairly simple idea, right. Anywhere that you're going to be deploying these AI agents, AI to LLM tools, chatbots, what have you, whatever they have access to that they're effectively going to be scraping is a surface area for these types of injection attacks. Now, does that make defending it easy? No. But I think conceptually there is an understanding of how these prompt injections get started. Right. That at least makes me encouraged to be like, all right, I can, I can wrap my head around that. I don't know exactly how you stop it everywhere or if there's any desire to, because we want to roll out every new AI feature immediately and every business wants to not be behind on the AI race. So Lord knows if we're actually checking any of this stuff. I'm somewhat encouraged that we, at least we're understanding what's causing the prompt injections. And it seems to me that, yes, we'll have cases like this that'll come up at Black Hat or get high a lot of press coverage because it's in some innocuous text field that you didn't think that your AI was scraping or looking at and stuff like that. But it gives me a little, not as much dread, I guess, in this story, although it is amazing that this could just open your blinds or something like that.

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

You said, you know, this will maybe turn out to be that this bad thing is going to be good for everybody, is going to, you know, have us enforce better secure coding practices and whatnot. You're saying, like, the Rules of Acquisition war is good for business kind of thing.

[Rich]

Yes. Well. And as we all know, peace is.

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

Good for business is also good for business. It's also another Rule of Acquisition.

[Rich]

But I'm always cautious because we all know the bigger the smile, the sharper the knife. So we know these AI companies love to smile at us. And so that makes me cautious again. We, we can know that these, that anything these things are going to be crawling is a potential surface for a prompt injection. Is that going to get us to secure them before we deploy it? Probably not. So that's, that's where I'm at.

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

Yeah, that's a reality.

[Rich]

Exactly. Exactly. All right, before we get out of here, just a big thank you to everyone in our chat here. We have some love for Mr. Robot. I know I'm behind in my dystopian near future Sci fi. Sorry about that ccl. But just thank you to everybody for making it fun in there, the 15 car. Glad you appreciate my creepy Elmo voice. Andrew Wilder watching us on the LinkedIn everybody that's watching us live, try and bring a friend next week. Let them know what fun it is in the week in review. We would love to grow the audience here, just have a little bit more fun, be a little sillier in the chat. We would love to have it. So make sure you tell them to join us next Friday at 3:30pm Eastern. Montez, before we get out of here, was there any story that was a thumbs up or a face palm for you this week, either in the rundown or just in the general news of the week?

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

The one that I liked the most was the, you know, the one about the pbs, you know, because that like again, that, again, you know, that really just brought back these, you know, nostalgic elements maybe, you know, made me think of 25 years ago.

[Rich]

So doing it for the lulls, man.

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

Doing it for the. That's right.

[Rich]

All right. Mine says where can people find you online if they are so inclined to follow you on the cyberspace?

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

If they would want to do that, they certainly, you know, reach out to me on LinkedIn.

[Rich]

Fantastic. We'll have a link to your LinkedIn in our show notes. Or you could copy it if you want to do pen and paper. You could copy that there. I don't know how with pen and paper you visit is LinkedIn, but you can figure that out after you write it down. Well, thank you so much. Montes Fitzpatrick, CISO over at Navis. Thank you so much for your time, for your expertise, for your good humor and knowledge of the Star Trek Deep Space Nine rules of acquisition. Truly appreciate it. Thank you so much.

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

Absolutely. Pleasure.

[Rich]

All right, thanks also to our sponsor for today, ThreadLocker Zero Trust Endpoint Protection Platform. Also thanks again to our audience. We can't always get everything up on the screen, but we love seeing you there and we're looking at it. We're having fun. I know our producer Steve Prentiss enjoys seeing those as well. Don't forget you can also send us email feedbackisoseries.com let us know what you think of the show. Remember to please join us next week. First up, we have Super Cyber Friday where our topic will be Hacking Burnout, an hour of critical thinking about how security teams get overwhelmed and how to manage it. That starts at 1pm Eastern. Then come on back for that week in Review starting at 3:30pm Eastern. Make sure you tell a friend to register for both. Just head over to the events [e-mail], we have the links that will get you to the places. In the meantime, you can still get your daily news fix every single day through cybersecurity headlines. Give us about six minutes, we'll get you all caught up. Until next time we meet. For myself, for Montez, for our glorious producer Steve Prentice for David Spark and the rest of the CISO series team, here's wishing you and yours to have a super Sparkly day.

[Montes Fitzpatrick]

Cybersecurity headlines are available every weekday. Head to cisoseries.com for the full stories. Behind the headlines.