2024-12-16 - ChickenSec News Part 3

Summary

Talkin' About [Infosec] News, Powered by Black Hills Information Security
Episode: 2024-12-16 - ChickenSec News Part 3
Release Date: December 18, 2024
Hosts: Black Hills Information Security Team (John, Jerry, Ryan, Tim, Kelly, Joff, Bronwyn, Corey, Alex)

---

1. Introduction and Awards Recognition

The episode kicks off with a light-hearted banter among the hosts, quickly transitioning to celebratory news. The team proudly announces their victory at the 2024 Sans Difference Maker Awards, securing the Podcast of the Year title.

Ryan (13:28): "We were able to narrowly pull it off. My wife was there. Ryan and Ralph were in the audience. We spent some time together and definitely appreciate it."

Jerry humorously refers to Ryan as "the key master," adding to the camaraderie.

Jerry (14:13): "Are you the key master?"

2. Major News Stories

a. $50 Million Radiant Heist Blamed on North Korean Hackers

The team delves into a significant cyber heist attributed to North Korean actors, highlighting the evolving sophistication of nation-state cyber threats.

Kelly (14:48): "So the next story that I want to talk about, if it's okay, is, and I hate this going into politics, but I think that there's a lot to talk about. But Trump administration wants to go on cyber offensive against China."

The discussion touches on the complexities of attributing cyberattacks to state actors, considering the possibility of North Korean operations being conducted from Russia or in collaboration with other cybercrime syndicates.

John (16:30): "The North Korea thing, I was, it always, it amazes me because it's, it traditionally skipping them. But your nation state actor and your, your cybercrime actor have very different goals."

b. Ohio's Boneless Chicken Wings Lawsuit

A quirky yet impactful story revolves around a lawsuit in Ohio where a court ruled that boneless chicken wings could contain actual bones, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court in a narrow 4-3 vote.

Jerry (00:55): "A while ago, a court in Ohio actually ruled that boneless chicken wings don't have to be boneless. And now their Supreme Court just upheld that in a 4, 3 vote."

The hosts humorously speculate on future legal battles over mislabeling meat products.

John (01:25): "I also want to know if the boneless chicken wings do not have to contain. If the whole thing is just. They're all just suggestion."

c. BlackBerry's Acquisition of Silence and Arctic Wolf's Purchase

A significant discussion about BlackBerry selling its cybersecurity division, Silence, to Arctic Wolf for a fraction of its original value. The hosts analyze the implications of this acquisition on the cybersecurity market and service offerings.

Ryan (48:56): "BlackBerry bought Silence in 2019 for $1.4 billion. So somebody is absolutely taking a bath on this. I mean, like five years ago they spent 1.4 billion, and now it's on like the front lawn at a yard sale and they're like, ah, what do you. 160. You'll take it."

The conversation also touches on Arctic Wolf's strategy to strengthen their position in the market by integrating Silence's technologies.

d. Europol's Takedown of a Major DDoS-for-Hire Network

Celebrating a positive stride in cybersecurity, the team discusses Europol's successful shutdown of the RideX cybercrime marketplace, which catered to 300 users across 15 countries.

Corey (52:28): "DDoS, I will say, has become kind of like the default way of getting hacked. It seems like if anyone stuff goes down, they just assume it's a DDoS."

The collaboration between international law enforcement agencies is commended as a model for future operations.

Ryan (53:09): "I love the cross collaboration because I don't know if you guys have ever read or listened to the audiobook of Andy Greenberg's Tracers in the Dark, where he talks about cryptocurrency. It's a phenomenal book."

3. Financial Impacts of Data Breaches

A deep dive into how data breaches affect companies differently based on their size and resources. The discussion highlights that while large corporations might recover swiftly from incidents, small and medium-sized businesses often face existential threats.

Bronwyn (40:48): "Small and medium sized companies that have any type of an incident, especially a breach, 60 something percent of them go under, usually within a year."

The team reflects on incident fatigue in the industry, noting the normalization of breaches and the varying degrees of financial repercussions.

Ryan (37:00): "It's like a bitcoin. It looks like one year. It was like their all time high. Today they're at 388. So yeah, we're like, seriously, you know, Jerry, if you were, if you were playing that game of selling them like right at the bottom, you would have made out like a freaking bandit."

4. Intelligence Sharing and Cyber Offensives

Kelly and Tim engage in a critical discussion about the United States' stance on cyber offensives, particularly against China. They examine the bureaucratic challenges within the U.S. intelligence community that hinder effective information sharing and proactive cyber strategies.

Kelly (21:34): "One of the problems with Chinese, whenever we're talking about Chinese hackers is a lot of the different regions, political factions within China have their own hacking groups."

Tim elaborates on the internal silos within U.S. intelligence agencies, which impede the dissemination and utilization of critical cyber intelligence.

Tim (23:02): "What end up with is you end up with all of these different hacking operations that are going in the NSA and the CIA in particular, and they're doing all of this stuff, but the data doesn't ever get shared, it never gets acted upon."

The conversation underscores the importance of inter-agency collaboration to bolster national cybersecurity defenses.

5. Light-Hearted Segments and Community Engagement

Amidst the serious discussions, the episode features jovial interactions, including jokes about cyber-related merchandise, the introduction of a new card game, and playful debates about data breach impacts.

Corey (36:42): "It's a normal engineering issue. Solar winds, maybe I'm cherry picking a black swan event, but Solar Winds never fully recovered their value and they were penetrated super deep."

The hosts encourage community participation by promoting their cybersecurity-themed card game, Backdoors and Breaches, and welcoming listeners to join future events like the upcoming Board Game Geek Conference.

Kelly (67:16): "We should give out awards. So if we have BHIS breach of the year award, that would be kind."

6. Closing Remarks and Future Outlook

As the episode wraps up, Kelly extends heartfelt holiday wishes to the listeners, emphasizing the importance of community and education in improving cybersecurity practices.

Kelly (69:08): "One of the things I, I, like I said I won on my tombstone, is his competitors were his best friends. And when I'm looking at Jerry and, you know, you, you've got your own podcast that's been wildly successful. I'm looking at Tim and Red Siege and just everything that you guys do. I think it's an absolute honor to be able to hang out with people like you and of course, other people that we work with all the time and collaborate with."

The hosts sign off with plans to return in 2025, setting the stage for future discussions and initiatives.

---

Notable Quotes

• Jerry (14:13): "Are you the key master?"
• John (16:30): "The North Korea thing, I was, it always, it amazes me because it's, it traditionally skipping them. But your nation state actor and your, your cybercrime actor have very different goals."
• Kelly (14:48): "So the next story that I want to talk about, if it's okay, is, and I hate this going into politics, but I think that there's a lot to talk about. But Trump administration wants to go on cyber offensive against China."
• Corey (52:28): "DDoS, I will say, has become kind of like the default way of getting hacked. It seems like if anyone stuff goes down, they just assume it's a DDoS."
• Bronwyn (40:48): "Small and medium sized companies that have any type of an incident, especially a breach, 60 something percent of them go under, usually within a year."
• Kelly (67:16): "We should give out awards. So if we have BHIS breach of the year award, that would be kind."

---

This episode of Talkin' About [Infosec] News navigates through a blend of serious cybersecurity discussions and light-hearted interactions, delivering insightful analysis on major cyber events of 2024 while fostering a sense of community among listeners. From high-profile cyber heists to the nuances of intelligence sharing, the hosts provide a comprehensive overview of the current infosec landscape, underscored by their characteristic humor and camaraderie.

Transcript

[John]

Yeah. And that's how we got into the nsa. That was awesome. So.

[Jerry]

Oh, my God, that's so crazy. Who knew? Who knew who knit donut dough was that stretchy? Just. No way.

[Ryan]

Let us know when we go live. Ryan. Yeah.

[John]

I got some jerky here, so I don't want to eat camera. Dang it.

[Jerry]

I don't. I don't. Not all of the news crew is here. When we did an article about chicken wings, I don't know if you guys.

[John]

Yeah.

[Tim]

Did you ever hear about that one?

[John]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

There was a lady who stole, like, I think it was around $6 million worth of wings. Yeah. So I have a. I don't have a follow up, but I have kind of a, like, side note for another chicken wing related article that I did want to talk about. It's not in there. Ryan will bring it up right now.

[Kelly]

I got it. I've got it.

[Tim]

So I saw it when I was. When I was adding my name to the. To the host list. I'm like, this is gonna be a fun one.

[Jerry]

So the. A while ago, a court in Ohio actually ruled that boneless chicken wings don't have to be boneless. And now their Supreme Court just upheld that in a 4, 3 vote. So I want you guys to know if you're ever eating chicken. Boneless chicken wings in Ohio, they may have bones.

[John]

He got a bone in it and he choked. And the. The lawsuit was over. It's like, well, you said there was no bones in it. And they're like, well, we all know there should be. And I'm like, it's in the name, right?

[Jerry]

Oh, my God.

[John]

I also want to know. I want to know if the boneless chicken wings do not have to contain.

[Jerry]

Chicken, then they're just bone.

[John]

If the whole thing is just. They're all just suggestion.

[Kelly]

That's going to be a new lawsuit.

[John]

Yeah. There's pork in there, right? You can't eat pork. And then you screw them over.

[Ryan]

It always throws me when, like, McDonald's has, like, the Mc Crispy. Like, the term chicken is not used at all in the name of the sandwich. Or it's just like the McCrispy or the McRib. Like, it's like, it's not a chicken sandwich. It's a MC Crispy. Like, good luck.

[Tim]

Yeah. You can't expect ribs to be in the McRib. Like, it's just. It's just meat. There's no ribs in it at all. So that set precedent, I guess. I wonder if they cited that.

[Bronwyn]

Just nasty.

[Jerry]

I Was okay with it.

[Kelly]

What's nasty McRib sandwich.

[Bronwyn]

It's just nasty.

[Kelly]

Not a fan?

[Ryan]

Nope. Take it a stand on the McRib I like.

[John]

Yeah, I work at McDonald's and we love to miss some McRibs. That sauce would end up everywhere in the back of that McDonald's because you, you take those, those boneless chicken or whatever and you throw it in the. The little vat. It's pork or something, I'm sure. Right. And it would sit there in the barbecue sauce like all day. And then she would like you slap em in, you slap em out. And it was.

[Jerry]

That's why they were so good.

[John]

Blood splatter of this terrible barbecue sauce that was just everywhere.

[Corey]

Crime scene.

[Jerry]

I love them.

[Tim]

The tip I heard is that if you're in the Midwest and you're craving a McRib, go to Quick trip. They have rib sandwiches that are much better.

[John]

Quick trips are really good. Now I tell you my love of the McRib because I grew up in the mid Midwest and we did not have good barbecue.

[Jerry]

Yeah.

[Joff]

Brace yourself.

[Tim]

Coming around here.

[Jerry]

Oh my God.

[Kelly]

Coming in hot.

[Jerry]

This is truly a unicorn episode.

[John]

Buddy.

[Joff]

How's it going? I'm. I thought I'd come for the final show because getting on the plane, going to Australia to see the family on Friday. So.

[Jerry]

Wait, is today the final show? We're not doing a show next week?

[Kelly]

No, we're BHS holiday next week and the week after.

[Jerry]

Oh, well, I didn't know that. I'm not on that calendar. So.

[Bronwyn]

Yeah. No, Friday is our last day of. Of official business as a blue teamer.

[Jerry]

I don't get those days off. You know, just you guys. You red team.

[Ryan]

You can come do the panel on Friday with us.

[Jerry]

I will be.

[John]

I'll join.

[Joff]

It's freaking cold up here in North Carolina.

[Kelly]

I'm done.

[Joff]

I'm going to go to Australia.

[Kelly]

Hey.

[Tim]

Up here in North Carolina. Then I'm like Wisconsin. So it's like, oh yeah, this is. This is worse. And then I have rel. I have relatives out in North Dakota and they're. They. They beat me for the.

[Joff]

Yeah, that's. That's in the inhumane living parts of the country.

[Tim]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[John]

So the weird part is like I can't like I want to go to Australia or someplace. Anywhere in the south. Have the south hemisphere. But it weirds me out to have Christmas and it be like hot. A hot time of the year. Like if you live at the equator and it's always hot. That doesn't mean anything, Right?

[Joff]

You know, Tim, it weirded me out for years growing up in Adelaide, right? I grew up in Australia, South Australia. And it was, you know, it's a desert state. It's always dry as can be. It never rains. And then I finally had my first Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere, and it was like a light bulb went on because I was like, oh, my God. All these traditions make sense now.

[Jerry]

How do you feel about every, like, Christmas. Christmas movie just being, like, snow and cold, right? Like, why isn't there any summer Christmas movies? I feel like this is a market.

[John]

It's a huge, giant, heavy Christmas dinner. You're like, can I just get something really light?

[Joff]

Yeah.

[Kelly]

Yeah.

[Joff]

Because I. I bet you when I sit down, I'm going to a Christmas Eve dinner with my mother, my dad, I'll be at a big Christmas dinner. Bet you when I sit down to those meals, is going to be like this giant meal, and it will be 115 degrees outside.

[Kelly]

It's like.

[Joff]

Yeah, it's a.

[Kelly]

It's a lot rough.

[Jerry]

We're almost full. Yeah. Oh, look, I can.

[Ryan]

Crinkle's here.

[Jerry]

I cannot host, so someone else will have to host because I. I have to. Peace out. Like, wait, where's.

[Kelly]

Where's.

[Joff]

Where's Strand? Isn't he coming in to host?

[Kelly]

Who's.

[Joff]

Who's supposed to.

[Tim]

Don't put me up.

[Joff]

It's fine.

[Tim]

I'm not ready to host.

[Jerry]

You're. Technically. You're not. Well, I guess you or Bronwyn.

[Kelly]

Kelly.

[Jerry]

Would be a great host. I don't know why she.

[Joff]

I'll host if I have to. Where's. Where's the agenda for today?

[John]

Ryan?

[Corey]

Are we getting you?

[Jerry]

Have you never done the news? There's no agenda.

[John]

I drive up the island just saying. I'm not even one of you Black Hills folks, but clearly.

[Jerry]

How dare he request an agenda? This is straight blasphemy.

[Kelly]

He's been in too many meetings today.

[Jerry]

It's like saying the. The S word.

[Joff]

I'm looking at this dimension.

[Jerry]

Oh, here he is.

[Joff]

I'm going to. I'm going to try to look at.

[Bronwyn]

What you say one time or three times.

[Jerry]

Only once it was I said S word, but he didn't come.

[Kelly]

All it takes is not reporting as you go once.

[Jerry]

That's. Let's. Let's talk about the elephant in the room real quick. We lost, guys.

[Kelly]

Who lost? We did win. Did Jerry win?

[Jerry]

Jerry did win. Jerry did win.

[John]

Wait, what was the competition?

[Kelly]

That's so awesome. Congratulations.

[Ryan]

Thank you. Thank you. To all of Black Hills Information Security for voting for us and the simply Cyber community. We were the 2024 sans difference maker Awards Podcast of the Year award winner awarded last night. Thank you very much.

[Kelly]

That's so good. Congratulations. Very well deserved as well, you know. All joking aside. Yeah, thank you.

[Joff]

Hey, John Strand. I told you I'd come along more often. This is my more often before.

[Kelly]

This is the more often. And we got. Tim is on too, so.

[Joff]

Tim Z.

[Kelly]

Good. See, Tim, we need to do this on Monday and your thing on Wednesday. Right? You know, the Wednesday.

[John]

Yeah, we had Chris last week. Speaking of, if you guys want to be on, we'd love to have any and. Or all of you.

[Joff]

Seeing as I'm going to be like packing a suitcase to go way far south and won't be thinking about much else, I'll come along.

[Jerry]

We'll get you.

[John]

We'll get your schedule. We'll get you a scheduling link.

[Jerry]

I don't know what it is, but I'll go. I just show up at all these weird things and wait.

[John]

I'll send you an invite.

[Jerry]

All right.

[John]

Pick a topic. Easiest presentation you've ever done. Nothing.

[Ryan]

I gotta do a presentation carefully sign up for.

[Jerry]

So here's how it is to work at In N Out Burger. That. That'd be a presentation I could give.

[Joff]

Any day when this worked.

[Corey]

Done.

[Joff]

Crap.

[John]

Wait. Puts the animal in animal style.

[Jerry]

Oh, yeah. There you go. Yeah, that's. This is a huge in and out name tag right there. That's a one bow. You can't barely read. If I turn all the lights off, it's like. Goes like. Like that. Spent probably. I did the hours. I think I spent over like 12,000 hours inside of it. In and out. Oh, yeah. It wasn't. Wasn't the best.

[Joff]

I had to throw the coat and shit off the keyboard because I want to look more musical. Just wanted to point. So actually, I've actually been doing that. Me and. Me and. Me and John Bev is in Poland. We've got a little thing going on where. Where sending tracks to each other now. So I'm gonna try to get on a Jon Bevis track.

[Kelly]

You gotta send him a track of you just doing the chord progression of Pachelbel and be like, dude, I think this is a hit.

[Joff]

That'd be awesome. Let me Google that real quick.

[Kelly]

I love that Pachobel Cannon in D.

[Joff]

Oh, yes, yes, that would be. Actually, no, we'll do that as like this funky, modulated, like Moog synth lead track. As in. In canon D. Okay.

[Kelly]

Now, more importantly, Joff, I don't know if I've ever talked to you about.

[Joff]

This, and now's the time.

[Kelly]

Yeah, I think now is the time. Hold on. I gotta see if I can find this so we can share it.

[Bronwyn]

Oh, my.

[Kelly]

All right, all right, all right. Crap.

[Jerry]

Oh.

[Joff]

It wasn't anything to do with that time we got on that ride in Costa Rica.

[Kelly]

Billy Joel had a band. It's a heavy metal organ band. He did, yes. The name of the band is Attila. All right, okay, so this. Let me see if I can find. They're actually. I actually think it's pretty. Pretty good. The entire album is out on YouTube.

[Joff]

Oh, my God. And I thought you were full of shit, but it's really here.

[Kelly]

No, no, I'm going to share the link and people can share this out. So Attila is. Is a band with him and a drummer. All right? So it's just him and the drummer, and it's heavy metal organization. You look at the picture, and it's them in, like, barbarian costumes surrounded by raw meat. Right. Like, it's pretty fabulous.

[Joff]

Oh, wow. That is cool.

[Kelly]

But. But the wife of the drummer was the lady that he wrote more than a woman to me. Uptown Girl. All of his hit songs, like, in his early career, who he eventually married. That's what drove the band apart. She divorced the drummer because he stole the drummer's girl. That just the first time that's ever happened.

[John]

Right.

[Kelly]

Like, it goes the other direction where the drummer steals the girl, but you've got to listen to it because, you know, he's trying to do a whole heavy metal, and it sounds kind of like a purple type vibe to it.

[Joff]

Yeah.

[Kelly]

Damn. If some of the stuff ain't catchy, like, super catchy. Wow. And apparently, if you do an interview with Billy Joel, you're not allowed. Or at least for a period of time, you were not allowed to mention Attila.

[Joff]

So now.

[Kelly]

Now, that's.

[Joff]

That's an. A second radically interesting thing that I know about Billy Joel. The first one that I knew that was a more of a personal thing was my cousin Dave. Wait, everybody say hi to Dave. He's there.

[Kelly]

Hi, Dave.

[Jerry]

Hi, Dave.

[Joff]

Dave lives in Seattle and Dave bought his.

[Kelly]

Dave's not here.

[John]

Dave's not here, man.

[Joff]

Dave's not here.

[John]

Dave's not here, man.

[Joff]

Dave bought himself a boat. And when I went to visit Dave in Seattle, he showed me the boat. And the boat's a very, very nice boat. I said, dave, where'd you buy this boat from? He Goes, I bought it from Billy Joel.

[Kelly]

Oh, my God.

[Joff]

And he wasn't kidding.

[Kelly]

That's so awesome. So there's the connections to Billy Joel.

[Joff]

The connections.

[Kelly]

Are we ready to kick this off? I think we are. Let's do it. Do it. Hello, and welcome to another edition of Black Hills Information Security and Red Siege. Apparently talking about news. Today, December 16th, we got a number of stories. We got a $50 million heist blamed on North Korea. Krispy Kreme donuts are hacked, which suc. Because Krispy Kreme is awful, and it's still a thing. Europol announces a Takedown. A major DoD DDoS network, and police shut down the Ride X cybercrime market, which is weird because I didn't know they were touring together again. But we have a number of people that are here joining us for this. We also have Jerry. Jerry, show us the key, man. The key. This, Jerry, is the key to the Internet. That's.

[Ryan]

Welcome to the part of the elders upon me. This is the 2024 PODC of the year. CN Stiffo Awards brought it home.

[Kelly]

Did Stephen Hawking de Gosset.

[Ryan]

I'm sorry, what?

[Kelly]

Did Stephen Hawking de Gosset.

[Ryan]

Yes. Yeah, yeah. No, it was good. It was. It was a. It was a tight competition. A lot of. A lot of great finalists, including this show itself. Black Hills Infosec talking news. But, yeah, we were able to narrowly pull it off. My wife was there. Ryan and Ralph were in the audience. We spent some time together and definitely appreciate it. And, you know, thank you to Black Hills and really, everybody who's tuning into this show right now is probably voted and part of the community. So it's absolutely a team win. It's. It's. It's cool. It's cool to see that we're making an impact, honestly.

[Joff]

Yeah, we get to call him Jerry, the key master. Or.

[Kelly]

Are you the key master? And now this is awkward. So. All right, Corey, did you get your. Did you get your mic working? So, Corey, the whole thing from here on out. So turn him up. He wants us to turn him up. Turn him up. He's gonna leave and go mountain biking. He's gonna go up the mountain. Up the mountain and ski. He is done. That's it. He's. Just leave the camera on and just go. He's now fired with a.

[Jerry]

We should see a cat pretty soon.

[Ryan]

Yeah.

[Kelly]

All right. So do we want to jump? Jump straight into the $50 million radiant heist blamed on North Korean hackers.

[Joff]

That sounds brilliant to me.

[Kelly]

Oh, my gosh. It sounds radiant. This happened I guess on October 16th after three developers got infected with malware and it was used to sign fraudulent transactions, multi signature and they say it emissions adjustment process. But yeah, $50 million from core markets. We had North Korea. I kind of want to throw this out there. Is North Korea like getting this legit or do you think that they're just hitting lots of low hanging fruit or are they working with other organized crime syndicates to do their dirty work for them? Like we're talking about hackers from North Korea. That that network has got to be like the most monitored and intercepted packet captured. Intercepted like network link on from like a dial up perspective in the world. Right. So. Oh, there's a cat. We got a kitty.

[Joff]

Well you gotta remember that, that, that you know that they're coming from Russia anyway because most of them are over there right now. First of all.

[Kelly]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

Oh my God.

[Bronwyn]

No, they well have to be just one. Why can't it be all of the above?

[Kelly]

You know they attribute it directly to North Korea. Right. That's one of the things that's interesting. I know that a lot of the different attacks, like you know, working with law enforcement and DoD, whenever they're like, yes, this was North Korea, it's usually because our groups were watching them as they were launching the attack because we're on their network, which I always think is kind of interesting.

[Joff]

I mean they've got a slash 20. I think if I've looked it up, their allocation in V4 is this big.

[Corey]

Right.

[John]

The North Korea thing, I was, it always, it amazes me because it's, it traditionally skipping them. But your nation state actor and your, your cybercrime actor have very different goals. Where your nation state super, super advanced, your, your crime syndicate's pretty advanced, but they're trying to steal money. But now when you get this Nexus, this combination of we have tons of capabilities and we're trying to steal money, it's just as bad as to say it's a thing to behold.

[Jerry]

It's definitely getting there too. Right. And the thing about Russia as well, because you could almost classify a lot of the Russian ransomware operators pretty much nation state actors because Russia just lets them go free game. And it seems that Russia doesn't get ransomed that often either. So at least we don't hear about it. I would say almost all the top way. Yeah, that's true too. Roblox is more than a rugal.

[Kelly]

Yeah. We're quickly having the point where Russia is becoming a barter society. It's hard to ransomware a barter society. I want 42 goats sent to this address.

[Corey]

That's why.

[Joff]

Is that your language to Russian EV4 subnets. I was wrong. It's only actually equivalent to a slash 22.

[John]

No way.

[Kelly]

Really not much.

[Joff]

That's allocation. Yeah.

[Tim]

I mean for this one. One of the things that I noticed both in the original article and in the postmortem are the things that are missing whenever you hear like developers got compromised is that it doesn't say whether it was their corporate device or personal device. And even in the post mortem, they're like the multiple devices, at least three, maybe more. They don't know how many more were compromised and they don't know how they were compromised either, which really does kind of point to. Yeah, these may have been personal devices that had critical credentials on them. And I bring that up because we're seeing that more and more with developers getting compromised off of personal devices.

[Jerry]

Another interesting point of this is have you guys. Has anyone ever heard of radiant capital? Or am I just crazy?

[Kelly]

Because I'd never up until this. I have not heard.

[Jerry]

Okay, all right. I'm just crazy.

[Joff]

He said we have and you're just crazy. Is that.

[Jerry]

And I'm. Yeah, that's true too. Right. The mustache is really the sane one out of the pair of us. But it is, I think these tiny fintech companies, right, we're, we've. This is like a second one we've seen get attacked recently. Finstra was also hit, which we did talk about, but they're kind of, this is a scary part. They're kind of a gold mine because they're moving around tons of money. They're usually not as big as say like your big name banking or even I would say some like cryptocurrencies. But they hold tons of money and usually you can easily transfer it out and they're, they're easy money. I would think they're going to be to start targeted more, especially after two in a row now.

[Kelly]

Yeah. Wow.

[Corey]

Hard disagree with everything. I didn't hear.

[Kelly]

Thanks.

[Joff]

Thanks, Dave.

[Kelly]

This sucks because I'm just distracted by the kitty on your shoulder and I want.

[Corey]

Listen, this is how you get engagement on the Internet, okay. And you have them on your shoulder.

[Kelly]

Hi, Corey. I just like, can you die so I can eat you? Because that's what all cats think.

[Joff]

Ever since I met Corey, I just keep thinking I've been doing my whole life wrong. I mean, that's what Corey has taught me.

[Kelly]

Yeah, he's teaching you how Your life could have been.

[Corey]

Yeah, yeah. If you need any cats, just let me know.

[Kelly]

I actually might need some cats here shortly. So.

[Corey]

So, I mean, what's even happened in the Internet like North Korea? I'm here for you.

[Kelly]

Miss.

[Jerry]

You missed the chicken.

[Kelly]

Yeah, we were, we were talking about Russia.

[Corey]

Wait, there's a follow up to chicken news. Is it chicken wing related?

[Kelly]

We're getting chicken wing news. We will get to that.

[Corey]

Oh my God, I'm so ready.

[Kelly]

So the next story that I want to talk about, if it's okay, is, and I hate this going into politics, but I think that there's a lot to talk about. But Trump administration wants to go on cyber offensive against China.

[Jerry]

What does that mean?

[Kelly]

I mean, normally I try to avoid these types of stories, right. But so Margaret Brennan said, we have been over the years trying to play better and better defense when it comes to cyber. We need to start going on our offense and start imposing, I think higher costs and consequences to private sector and nation state attackers. And God damn if that doesn't make some sense. But it's also insane. Well, I want to, I want to start out with, with kind of my hot take, I guess, because, you know, that's hey, privileges. But. So I agree with the sentiment of we need to impose a higher cost, but I think it's incredibly shortsighted to think that the United States is not being offensive. And this gets back to. Tim, I want to get your opinion on this here in just a second. To say that the United States is not on the offensive is not right. It's not true at all. And what I mean by that is the United States is on the offense, but we aren't doing offense in China and offense in Russia. From the perspective of trying to create chaos in their networks, we're there to observe. Right. We have, we have the nsa, of course, and also CIA to a lesser extent. But they're in these networks. They have compromised these networks. And their goal and objective is to dwell for as long as possible and if they want to create an impact, be ready to do so. But the goal is not just to go in and start taking over Chinese networks and then doing ransomware. That's just not what the US maybe says.

[Corey]

You, you don't know that.

[Kelly]

Yeah, right.

[Jerry]

As Corey and I stand up a anti Chinese apt group right now.

[John]

Yeah, yeah, listen, I'm completely with you, John. I think it's, you're saying the quiet part out loud and there's no benefit to it. Like we all know this is happening. We Just don't talk about it. And now we're talking about it and now it, it, it changes the game.

[Corey]

I, well, hold on. Do we know what's happening? Do we know what's happening? Like, is there any public sources that say it's. Because I will say like I will.

[Kelly]

Be, I will be a public source. Yes, it's happening.

[John]

Yeah, but.

[Corey]

Okay, but not to the same level. Like Wade brought it up of like we know Russia basically has ransomware as a service running against US companies all the time, which has a huge impact to like US businesses. Not really political, but still kind of a nation state on nation state thing just done indirectly. Maybe he's talking about that. Not that like I don't know what businesses you would go after in Russia necessarily, but I don't know. I don't. I guess I'm curious to see. I mean with China specifically though, I don't think there's, I mean there's so much companies, so many companies I guess that could go after Space Force can go after. Or whoever he's going to have do this.

[Kelly]

Whoever's going to have do it.

[John]

The difference is though, like with, with like China, because there's. Everything's run by the state. If they get the information, they give it to their, one of their companies and they, they're both better off where if the US gets some sort of tactical information, cool stuff. Here's how to make a better iPhone. Making stuff up here like there's no good way to hand that off. Whereas China's got that.

[Kelly]

So they do and they don't. Tim. Like one of the problems with Chinese, whenever we're talking about Chinese hackers is a lot of the different regions, political factions within China have their own hacking groups, right? And a lot of times their goals and objectives are different from each other. And it's kind of unfortunate because like whenever you're in like the IC community, right, and DoD is different, I can talk about that. But what sucks about the intelligence community is the different ints and the different towers, they all treat each other as hostile. So anything the NSA collects or the NRO collects and then hands it over to the NSA or they hand it over to the CIA, a lot of that classified information gets completely siloed and locked off. This is one of those things that sucks deeply about the way the United States intelligence apparatus works because they're like, well, we're getting all of these signs, we're getting humans, we're getting ozone from various very obscure sources. And then it just tends to Stay in those silos, right? And it doesn't make its way over to dod, to the troops that are downrange. It doesn't make it to the people that are operatives in the CIA and actually doing actual spying things. And you have this hoarding that happens with the CIA and the NSA in particular those two where they just hoard a shit ton of data. And a lot of times they don't want that data to go to another agency that maybe has the exact same level clearances or higher, because they're afraid that once that source or once that data is acted upon, then that source is removed. And that is something that's been kind of endemic in the United States intelligence apparatus for a really, really long time. So what end up with is you end up with all of these different hacking operations that are going in the NSA and the CIA in particular, and they're doing all of this stuff, but the data doesn't ever get shared, it never gets acted upon. And China has that same problem, kind of. But usually the regions and the different groups, they're actually doing a full chain, right, where they're doing the attacking. And they have a specific goal and objective that they're working towards. And a lot of times it becomes a, it becomes a competition with different political factions. And Jerry brought up 911 intel sharing. Absolutely. The name of the program that was basically put out to deal with that intelligence sharing dilemma. And it changed a number of names. But right after 9 11, it was called the Intelligence Community Multi Acquisition Program to try to share that information across multiple different intelligence sources. So you know, when we're talking about this as a problem, the way that that data is actually collected and then how it's disseminated is really, really weird in the United States. Unless there's a specific military objective or there's something that comes directly from the White House all of a sudden that happens really, really, really fast. But it only is whenever the attention span is on like very specific high people in the government that have a specific mission objective that they're trying to achieve.

[Corey]

So.

[Joff]

Okay, I have one, one comment.

[Corey]

Go ahead.

[Joff]

But I feel like the public statement like, like that that was made by the President Elect is really, it appears to be aimed at just shaking the bushes of the worldwide intelligence community and see what rattles that. That's what it feels like to me.

[Corey]

Okay, so I have a couple takes on this. Number one is Baloo's hilarious comment that the people who make the APT lists won't be put themselves on them. Well, yeah, Alex, Yeah, because if you.

[Tim]

Ask different countries, because like, the US isn't on an APT list. You're like, the US isn't on Miter's.

[Kelly]

List of APT actors.

[Tim]

Yeah, we may be.

[Jerry]

Let me check that. We check.

[Corey]

What is it an Eagle? Are we Eagle, Typhoon, what's going on?

[Tim]

Yeah, but I think if you ask like the source country, because like, if you ask China if they do hacking, they're going to be like, no, we don't do hacking. Here's a list of all the US companies that do it. Here's all. List of all, like the Germans that do it. Here's the list of all these other countries that do it. If you ask, you know, if you.

[Corey]

Ask Germany if they do it by other countries.

[Tim]

No, here. Yeah, you'll be called out by other countries.

[Kelly]

They're not, yeah, the ns.

[Corey]

They're not doing, I mean, okay, so here's, that's where exactly where I was going with this. So in the US there's a public news article that says Chinese threat actors are in our ISPs. This is a, this is, I mean, Joff's right about the political thing. Like, I mean, Joe Biden literally went to Russia and was like, hey, can you guys stop ransomwaring us, please? And he was like, respectfully declined, comrade. But basically, you know, like, that's being played on the political, you know, spectrum of like, hey, can you guys stop hacking us? Why is no one coming to the US and saying, hey, can you stop hacking us? Like, they are, are they? And we're just like, not stories.

[Kelly]

I, I, I read one earlier today where China was basically accusing the NSA of breaking into one of their networks. So those stories do exist, right?

[Corey]

Recently.

[John]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Kelly]

Like literally this week. Let's see if I can find it.

[John]

There was one like three or four months ago where they had exactly that. I think the big difference though is what China does with it. I'm just picking China here versus what we do with it. Like, they'll take it immediately, monetize it, where we'll take it, and just like John said, sit on it. And they're like, yeah, they're taking our data. What are they doing with it? Analyzing it. Like, it's not an interesting news story, right?

[Jerry]

Yeah, the Equation Group is on Mitre Tech.

[Corey]

Yeah, but that's, yeah, but I'm going.

[Jerry]

To tell you from an intelligence standpoint, there is no good data in there.

[Kelly]

So here's one. China is accusing the United States of fabricating Volt Typhoon to hide its own Hacking campaigns.

[Corey]

So we hacked the ISPs. I mean, that's a good.

[Kelly]

ISP is, which I think this is great.

[Corey]

No, no, we subpoenaed the ISPs. It's a different word.

[Kelly]

No, no, no. If you go to like the telco providers, like if you go to New York, you go downtown for like Verizon's Data Center AT&T's data center. A lot of the major, major ISPs in the United States have skiffs in the middle of their main ISP facilities that you have to go up and you have to badge and you have to get into. So I would think it's funny if like the NSA is like, yeah, we hacked this network, which we already had a skip, which we already had taps to absolutely everything.

[Corey]

Okay, fair.

[Kelly]

That's insane.

[Ryan]

The FBI and the insistent just came out last week and advised businesses to start using end to end encryption messaging over email, which is not going to happen ever. But like, I mean, they're out there. So I mean, if the federal law enforcement in federal SecOps is trying to advise people to use, you know, encrypted messaging because of this Chinese telecom situation, they'd be shooting themselves in the own, in their own foot if like that was the, the game.

[Corey]

Right?

[Ryan]

So I agree, I agree with you 100. I didn't know they had skiffs in the eye in the, in the data centers though.

[Kelly]

No, they do, they do. And it's specifically why they're there. And it depends on the law enforcement agency that you're working with. It makes sense because there's FISA warrants, right? And if any of those communications leave the United States and it's someone that they're communicating with, a person of interest on the other side, you can get a FISA warrant. We don't, let's not get into that too much, but you can get a FISA warrant and that data immediately has to get dropped into a SCIF or it has to get pulled off. So if you think about it, it starts to make sense why we have skiffs in these telco a little bit. I can't speak to the FBI because I haven't done much on that side of it. But I'm assuming the FBI has similar type capabilities whenever they have warrants that need to be executed to get certain data sets that they have those facilities to be able to process that as well.

[Corey]

Okay, so I'm, I'm like confused here. So the, the FBI has access to everything and why would like, why would they publish that. That's. To me, Jerry's point. That's basically proof that China's actually in the ISPs.

[Ryan]

Yeah, that's right. That's what I'm saying. Like, it's bad. It's bad. Yeah.

[Kelly]

I want to clarify. They don't. They can request it from the ISPs, but the FBI just can't sit there willy nilly and be like, you know what we're going to do? So we're going to start intercepting Alex's communications. You have to have a warrant. You have to actually have that exercised appropriately by the ISPs that are out there.

[Corey]

Right. Whereas China is doing that.

[Kelly]

Well, China, which. You know what, Maybe that's what's going on, is the United States allowed China to hack into our networks because once that data leaves our networks and China steals it and it goes over to China, we're hacking China so we can get that intelligence without having to get a warrant on that data. Because once it's there, we don't need to get a warrant for it because China's going to. They've already hacked it for us. So there's a conspiracy wrapping that makes perfect sense. It's like a tur. Duncan of a conspiracy.

[Corey]

Oh, my God. All right, let's talk about Krispy Kreme.

[Kelly]

Krispy Kreme.

[Corey]

Does Krispy Kreme have a little light? They turn on that when they get hacked. That says recently compromised.

[Kelly]

I. I think that would be great.

[Joff]

And discounted.

[Kelly]

Why is this light blinking, Tim?

[Ryan]

Krispy Kreme manufacturer, right? I mean, manufacturers get hit, they manufacture donuts, knock them out. You know, it's a ridiculously sweet. But, you know, I think it's more insidious than that.

[Alex]

They're really trying to demoralize America right before Christmas and our big consumer season.

[Corey]

No, no, hold on, Kelly. If they were going to do that, they would take down Domino's Pizza, which we know is the intelligence backbone of America. If they're order. If Washington D.C. can't order pizzas, then we know the entire country grinds to a halt.

[Kelly]

This is.

[Joff]

What about, you know, that maybe a coordinated attack on all three. Right? Take down Krispy Kreme, Domino's and Starbucks at the same time.

[Kelly]

Oh.

[Jerry]

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Why did you mention.

[Kelly]

Gosh, why are you helping evil people do evil things.

[Corey]

You just upped the threat model. Space Force is going to kick down your door and say, why'd you just leak this is.

[Joff]

Okay, so pays me to think evil thoughts.

[Kelly]

Let's be honest, last week's show sucked. I thought it was a great show from perspective. A lot of different things. Last week show.

[Corey]

Thanks John.

[Kelly]

Last week's show was like everything sucks. It's all burning down. Computer security is a myth. Fu. We're going away.

[Jerry]

It was about. All right, you were definitely putting off that energy.

[Corey]

So only positive articles then.

[Kelly]

No, no, no, but I want to, I want to. We were talking about there's no financial impact to companies that get compromised and they're like there's going to be a 2% hit on stock price. I don't know where they're at now. Let me open that up. But this also gets into something that we talked about like last week where you don't, you don't see a financial impact to these companies getting compromised. Is this just another example of like how that holds true? Like hack happens. Like stock dips a percent for a day or two and then it's back up 5.

[Corey]

I mean I think for a company like Krispy Kreme, what, what sensitive information could they possibly have? Like whoever ordered the most donuts, the.

[Bronwyn]

Secret recipe, credit cards and, and you know, the standard financial stuff.

[Joff]

Yeah, the standard financial stuff and the.

[Corey]

Secret recipe, that's all intend encrypted. Says the security administrator. Cat, you don't need to worry about that. Verisign took care of that.

[John]

Yeah, but okay, so go back to John's point. Like what's the biggest cyber security related event of the entire year? Right? Without question, it was the blue screen of death with crowdstrike above the previous set price.

[Jerry]

Like are they really, they made it.

[John]

All the way back and now they're ahead of what they were.

[Joff]

Well, you know, I think that just shows you just how myopic and short, short memory people are. I mean they just, you know, they're just like ah, you know what's next week's news is going to be something else. And they just move on.

[John]

And I thought it was going to.

[Kelly]

Be a little bit longer.

[John]

I thought they would miss projections.

[Jerry]

You could have made up here. We could have made a lot of money.

[Ryan]

Okay, I would agree with that.

[Bronwyn]

Honestly, how much of this is incident fatigue? I mean 10 years ago, 15 years ago, a breach was a big deal because it wasn't happening all the time or if it was, it wasn't getting anywhere near as much pr. Now every time you open a stream, a magazine, newspaper, whatever your preferred mode of news assimilation is, you're going to see at least three to 10 mentions of a breach by Someone against someone.

[Corey]

It wasn't a breach. It was a normalized cybersecurity incident.

[Joff]

So one of our listeners made the comment. Can't. Can't never would just made the comment. We should give out awards. So if we have BHIS breach of the year award, that would be kind.

[Corey]

Of a breach they do not accept.

[Jerry]

Jerry, what were you gonna say?

[Kelly]

Jerry, it is the ponies.

[Ryan]

I mean, I put it, I put it in chat. I'm fully on board with this tribe's idea that the stocks bounce back. Like target set the tone and then it took three years and then there was like shorter periods of time between the, the waves of when you would recover. But with CrowdStrike, it was like a developer issue. And you know, it sucked, obviously, but, but it was, it was like a normal engineering issue. Solar winds, maybe I'm cherry picking a black swan event, but Solar Winds never fully recovered their value and they were penetrated super deep. It was a Russian target. It was, it was deliberate mission and, and, you know, so it's not always the case. Again, I hate, I hate to like, I don't know if I'm cherry picking or not. I don't have a big enough data set to say, but it isn't always the case. And I know specifically because I was like, when Solar Winds happen, I'm like, all right, finally I'm jumping on this like, get rich quick scheme. And like, you know, it's like. I know.

[Kelly]

Yeah. But just for the record, if you would have done that with CrowdStrike, here, can someone post this?

[Tim]

Yeah.

[Joff]

If you, if you'd shorted CrowdStrike those.

[Kelly]

Two days, if you went CrowdStrike, Ryan's going to share this here in a second. And I think that this really articulates it. So I just posted the link.

[Ryan]

Oh, yeah, it's like a bitcoin.

[Kelly]

Now switch it over to one year.

[Ryan]

It looks like one year.

[Kelly]

There you go. That's real interesting, isn't it? So if you're looking at it at its peak, it was about 200 and what was it? 389. And today they closed at 392. Today they're at 388.

[Corey]

Close to their all time high. Yeah.

[Kelly]

So yeah, we're like, seriously, you know, Jerry, if you were, if you were playing that game of selling them like right at the bottom, you would have made out like a freaking bandit.

[Ryan]

Oh, yeah.

[Corey]

I think this is just survivorship bias. A little bit of like the companies, like, you know, we, we talk about companies a lot that get breached on the show and how many of them actually end up surviving? I don't know. Maybe not huge publicly traded companies which are just big enough to make it through almost anything. But um, well, yeah, I mean, I think, I think we're, I think. If. Okay, here's a great pitch. Are you a current intern or are you looking for an internship? Maybe email us and say I want to do research on the public impacts of breaches. And like, if you're a grad student, make that happen for yourself. Publish a paper about it. Like someone needs to research this and like look at like the impacts of different types of breaches on different companies, whether they're publicly traded, private, how much is covered up, Solar winds. Like it could be super interesting to see like a meta analysis of all the data, all that.

[Tim]

I mentioned that in chat because I swear somebody had done that, that built a, like a portfolio. Just kind of tracking like if you bought like post, post breach, like this company had announced a breach, you buy right away and that that's your portfolio, that they built that portfolio or simulated that and they're like, yeah, you would just make piles of money doing that. I thought somebody did that. People in chat are like, that's fascinating. So you should research that. And I'm like, I thought somebody did. But if not, that'd be an excellent thing to, to check out.

[Joff]

Even better if they publish the average percentage downturn because then you could just pick the top cybersecurity companies in the industry, set up your buys on, on a, on the downturn and wait till it triggers and it's automatic trades.

[Corey]

All right, let's talk about silence.

[Alex]

Oh, Kelly, one more quick thing here. Let me just remind everyone here, gently of course, that we're talking about material impact and that's really what's reflected in the stock price. And we really didn't evaluate material impact until the SEC started us, started asking us to disclose that. So we're dealing with, can I say, baby data. We really don't know.

[Kelly]

No. Agreed.

[Bronwyn]

Although one thing that we do know though, and 12rza posted it a while ago, is that the small and medium sized companies that have any type of an incident, especially a breach, 60 something percent of them go under, usually within a year. So it's, it. This is where we're, we're getting a disparity. The incidents that make the big headlines are usually large multinational conglomerates, but the vast majority of the real incidents are on much smaller players who aren't going to get the press.

[Kelly]

So Bronwyn, I kind of want to pick on that just a little bit. So do you think that we're honestly looking at things in terms of first nation, second first world, second world, and third world infosec, where if you're a Fortune 100 company, you're going to weather it it right, you're going to make it through. If you're small mom and pop, you're in that third world country status, you ain't going to survive it.

[Bronwyn]

I'd say that's the rare analogy. I mean, it's, it's, it certainly matches the, the behaviors and what happens because.

[Joff]

Probably even put them into market capitalization buckets and.

[Bronwyn]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've seen small mom and pop organizations and they don't have the bandwidth, they don't have the resources, they don't have the expertise to be able to do anything other than trust that their ISP is somehow going to have the appropriate filters. That's what they're paying for the, the AI network protection for. They don't have an understanding and they're never going to have the resources because they're resource poor. Whereas cream, they have more resources.

[John]

I think you're spot on. I mean, like the small, small business, let's say a big company, giant company, this isn't even good numbers. Loses 10 of revenue to an incident versus a small mom and pop, right? Giant company, they lose money all the time. Like, I'm amazed that Twitter was able to lose billions for years and they keep on chugging. Right? Whereas a small mom and pop, they don't have infinite money glitch to fix that.

[Corey]

So they called Venture Capital 100.

[John]

You're right.

[Kelly]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, let's go to something fun.

[Corey]

Talk about silence, huh? So, John, are you, Are you gonna make silence? Is, Is someone gonna make silence great again? Does that happen?

[Kelly]

So good night, Joff. Silent. So, okay, so BlackBerry is gonna sell silence to Arctic Wolf.

[Bronwyn]

Oh, what?

[Corey]

No vendor bashing. Okay, now, does anyone have anything nice to say? Does anyone have anything nice to say?

[Kelly]

Hey now. Hey now. Hey, hey. Keep it cordial, Joff.

[Corey]

Do not unleash.

[Jerry]

But what does BlackBerry have?

[Kelly]

A little free to rip on BlackBerry. What the hell?

[Corey]

BlackBerry messenger, dude. That's what FBI still uses.

[Jerry]

That was like the first messenger that had read receipts and my managers used to make me install it so they could see when I read their messages.

[Corey]

Oh, my God.

[Kelly]

Oh, my God.

[Ryan]

Awful.

[Jerry]

Yeah, that was like.

[Joff]

All I can think of is, is the, the weird beers that arrived at John's.

[Kelly]

Oh, my God.

[John]

That's Right.

[Kelly]

I didn't. I didn't. I think I can. I think I can find those beers.

[Corey]

Don't worry. They're getting acquired, so it's safe.

[Kelly]

We had that thing with silence. I think it was in 2017 where I was trying to get sued by silence.

[Corey]

We should have acquired them. Let's be honest.

[Kelly]

Probably, you know what? We might have that option. But it worked. Didn't work out. They didn't sue us. But they wanted to. But they realized that if someone is super excited about being sued, it's probably a trap. Crap. Which it was. But after that whole entire thing went down, all of a sudden I received this case full of beer and it was like dark. Abbey Brewing, I think was the name of the company. I can't remember.

[Corey]

Lost Brewing.

[Kelly]

Lost Abby.

[Jerry]

Yeah, Lost Abby as a beer company.

[Kelly]

Let me see if I can go to their website.

[Corey]

I didn't drink it, but I remember I had it.

[Kelly]

So they had these beers and it was like Judgment Day was one of the beers was the other one.

[Corey]

It's all like apocalypse themed beers.

[Kelly]

There was Judgment Day. There was a Liar beer. I can't remember, but they looks like they have different beers now. So, like, if you looked at all like, you know, like Lying Bastard Ale, I think was one of them. Joff, I'm not sure.

[Bronwyn]

That's actually pretty good stuff.

[Joff]

John Cole, maybe. I just remember John saying, I'm like.

[Kelly]

This is your beer.

[Joff]

John's like, I think they're trying to tell us something.

[Ryan]

Chop.

[Kelly]

Yeah.

[Corey]

So do you think that's what Arctic Wolf paid for? Is it some. They just sent some beers over.

[Kelly]

Maybe they did. Maybe they did, but it was. It was. We actually had a fantastic meeting with them. And I won't get into the details, but it was a. It was a good meeting. But boy, have we like, what other security companies have fallen as far as silence. Like silence rocketed in ransomware and you saw them everywhere. And it just seems like CrowdStrike and it seems like Crowd Strike and Defender just destroyed Silence.

[Corey]

Maybe something had some brain drain. I don't know. I. It's. Oh, no, they know the full history because I feel like it was. They were really good. Then all the cash cow tipping happened. Then they had. Then they kind of recovered from that. Then they had like bad brain drain. And I think they've never really recovered. Then they got acquired by BlackBerry, tried to recover. Now apparently blackberries selling it to Arctic Wolf. I mean, I feel like the moral of the story here is, congrats, Arctic Wolf on Being big enough to acquire an edr, that's pretty cool, right? Like that's a big deal.

[Kelly]

And it's good, it's good thing for Arctic Wolf. Right? Like, like and, and our fun times.

[Joff]

With them happen to intersect with a period of time they were about to go public, which we didn't know.

[Kelly]

What do you mean? What do you mean? We chuff.

[John]

Like, I mean, I just.

[Corey]

Which is good that you didn't know that because that would have been insider trading.

[Kelly]

Right.

[John]

If you're a sock vendor and you use, you use Silence, do you swap it? Because now you've got a competitor and be like, well, we could integrate with Silence better because we own them.

[Kelly]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

What did Kaspersky switch into? That's what you'd switch to really?

[Kelly]

Arctic Wolf. Arctic Wolf is going after that S1 market, the Sentinel One market. Really? Yeah, because you don't see our, like, I know someone from Arctic Wolf is going to get pissed, but you don't see Arctic Wolf and like the very large corporations of the corporations that want best of breed, like they're very much a cost conscious vendor in this Space and Sentinel 1 and the SMB space has just crushed it. Huntress I think has come up quite a bit. But seriously, that's where Arctic Wolf, like, that's where they play. And like Sentinel 1 is an EDR and Huntress has their own product and things like that. But, but holy hell, like if you're, if you're Arctic Wolf and you can keep the price point that they've been at and you're running Silence, but honestly I don't. When's the last time we saw Silence in a test, guys? Like we saw it all the time, constantly. And then it was just like overnight. It's like crowdstrike everywhere. So I don't know if they're running at the same like quality that they were back in the day. And I would check the MITRE evaluations, but screw that, I don't trust anything from them. But it's just, once again, I think it's a great acquisition for Arctic Wolf. But you're right, what Arctic Wolf is going to do is going to push people to using Silence as their edr. And it further makes sense because a lot of different MSSPs or Sox, they, they have to buy another EDR and they're paying for that EDR to deploy on their customers. So really it's going to make Arctic Wolf's position in the market much, much, much more strong if they can provide the EDR and the SoC services on top of it.

[Ryan]

So can I just comment really quickly, like, something that I had to fact check before I did this. Something that blows my mind. Arctic Wolf is acquiring it for $160 million, which is not, you know, cheap. Right. That would be life altering for everybody.

[Kelly]

But it's not what you think it would be.

[Ryan]

Well, but BlackBerry bought Silence in 2019 for $1.4 billion. So somebody is absolutely taking a bath on this. I mean, like, five years ago they spent 1.4 billion, and now it's on like the front lawn at a yard sale and they're like, ah, what do you. 160. You'll take it. Just, you know, like back your pickup up, I'll help you load it. Like, it's crazy to me how, how. How discounted it is. I. I didn't do the math. It's like 80 or whatever. It's. It's insane. It's probably more than that.

[Kelly]

See, this is the dark side of like, VC funding and stuff. Like, everyone's like, oh, well, you know, someone made a billion dollars off of CrowdStrike or whatever. They just lost. Like, like, let's just round up a billion dollars.

[Ryan]

Yeah, yeah.

[John]

And round down the stock.

[Corey]

No, the, the round down.

[Ryan]

Yeah, 1.2 billion.

[Corey]

Yeah, it was about 200 mil. Because the stock was worth about 6.

[Kelly]

Was it? So, okay, so they lost 5.5 million.

[Corey]

Shares of Arctic Wolf at 8 bucks a share.

[Jerry]

Oh, my God.

[Alex]

So what's left at BlackBerry now?

[Ryan]

Well, yeah, I mean, that was like their big play to like, reinvent themselves cyber. Right? I mean, I don't know. I actually saw like, on a, on a, like a stuff or list, there's an attachment you can get for your iPhone now that puts a QWERTY keyboard on it. Like, I don't know if anyone else saw this, but it plugs into the USBC and you can get a BlackBerry keyboard. Now, I would totally.

[Kelly]

BlackBerry devices.

[John]

I don't know what the stat is, but the, the ECC crypto. My understanding is maybe this is old. BlackBerry owns that. So, like, they got the patents and stuff like that. So I'm trying to remember the exact details on some of those pieces, but that's not exactly the cheapest. I need, I need. I need a Jerry do Gerald to fact check for me.

[Ryan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I'm gonna pull it up. I saw it in, like, who. Maybe. Maybe it was like on TIMU or something where they don't give a damn about rules. But let me, Let me. Give me a second. Tim, I'll. I'll see what I can pull.

[Corey]

Yeah, I have no idea what.

[Ryan]

Expired.

[John]

Expired, like a decade ago. Not quite, but. Okay.

[Corey]

I'm reading their wiki now and I still have no idea what they're doing these days. It looks like they're just acquiring companies and selling them at a great loss.

[Joff]

Well, you know, to quote Elon Musk, patents are for the week, so.

[Kelly]

Patents are for the week? Yeah, BlackBerry owns a bunch of IP. It's kind of like Nokia. Like, it was like, Nokia is dead. Nope. They're making a ton of money off their patents. Like, they're doing just fine. Which is a weird business model as well. Was BlackBerry in the auto industry? I'm not sure.

[Corey]

God, I hope not.

[Ryan]

In the what industry? Audit.

[Kelly]

Audio Auto.

[John]

I don't recall that.

[Jerry]

I really like that keyboard.

[Ryan]

There you go. I mean, this is a Wired article. The whole. It's the whole case.

[Bronwyn]

Yes.

[John]

Okay.

[Bronwyn]

Interesting.

[Corey]

I talk about this takedown of Adidas.

[Kelly]

There we go.

[Corey]

Net. That's an uplifting article.

[Joff]

Jerry just fished us. I clicked on it immediately.

[Ryan]

Oh, yeah, yeah, Excellent. Just put your creds in, Jeff. It'll be fine.

[Joff]

All right, man, thanks.

[Corey]

So this is. Ryan will find the article for us. But. Takedown of a DDoS for hire provider by Europol, which is. I think that's pretty cool. I mean, that's just an uplifting thing for everyone, right? Grandma's computer gets removed from a botnet number one.

[Ryan]

I'm sorry.

[Jerry]

You should have been hitting buttons earlier.

[Ryan]

Sorry about that.

[Corey]

No, you're good. Okay, you guys lost me.

[Alex]

What are we talking about?

[Corey]

DDoS takedown. So Ryan will find the original. He's. He's good at that. He's. I see him here in the. In the. The.

[Alex]

Did somebody spell that for me?

[John]

DDoS.

[Corey]

No. So DDoS, I will say, has become kind of like the. I don't know, just the default way of getting hacked. It seems like if anyone stuff goes down, they just assume it's a DDoS. Yeah, I mean, it's just a normal takedown of a DDoS network. But it says they have two people in PR that are being four suspects between the age of 22 and 26. And it was up to 15 countries, law enforcement involved. There was 300 users on this site. So 300 people were paying to DDoS. Other people.

[Ryan]

I love it. I love it. I wanna. Dude, I wanna like pants off baby oil. Interpol, Europole. I love this international cross collaboration. The United States just worked with the like Slovakians to take Down a bunch of people. It, like, just raiding all over the place. People need to be worried about it. Dude, People in Eastern Europe are just operating carte blanche. And it's. It's like, enough. We're done. We're done.

[Kelly]

I just want everyone to know that I too, am very happy, but I'm happy in a way where I keep my pants on and say, I'm gonna keep. No baby oil is involved.

[Corey]

Baby oil party. Sounds like you need to learn how.

[Kelly]

To party for later.

[Tim]

This is why he wins.

[Ryan]

Independent thoughts. Those are two independent thoughts. You got to be able to, like, move quickly. Like, it's just so exciting that you want to, like, party. It's so someone's trying to grab you.

[Corey]

If someone's trying to grab you and you're covered in baby oil, it's going to be hard. So that's good.

[Alex]

We need the Ranch Awards, because that was pretty good.

[Kelly]

I'm feeling every one of those.

[Joff]

I'm over 50 years right now.

[Corey]

That's because you aren't using enough baby oil.

[Kelly]

Still exists.

[John]

Like, doesn't everybody use Cloudflare? Like. Like, Cloudflare is the Internet these days. Doesn't everybody run it through there? Like, I just. It's weird.

[Corey]

Like, yes, definitely, everyone is using Cloudflare, including Red Siege dot com.

[Ryan]

Well, and I know that we're talking about this, but another interesting thing, because we mentioned it earlier about how Russia doesn't necessarily do anything to Eastern European threat actors. Russia just took down. I think his name was Wazawaka or Waka Waka, kind of like Fozzie Bear type thing. And he was like, a prolific ransomware threat actor operating with kind of different. Different actors. So, like, everybody's getting in on it. Although I suspect that that guy didn't play.

[John]

Yeah. Did he fall out of second story window?

[Ryan]

Well, he's been arrested. He may have had an update to his current health.

[Kelly]

He fell out twice. It was scary. He didn't learn the first time.

[Ryan]

Yeah. So I just. I just love it. I love the cross collaboration because I don't know if you guys have ever read or listened to the audiobook of Andy Greenberg's Tracers in the Dark, where he talks about cryptocurrency. It's a phenomenal book.

[Kelly]

If you.

[Ryan]

But. But he covers AlphaBay and he covers Silk Road, and when you. When you read the AlphaBay story, and it took. The takedown was in Thailand, but it was the IRS and the Department of Justice. This, like, when you're dealing with all these different entities, there's a lot of like, territorial pissings and a lot of like, flexing on each other and who has the right to do what and sharing and.

[Kelly]

I have no idea. Jerry, tell us more.

[Ryan]

So seeing what they do now, it's just. I love, I love. I don't know if people are just collectively fed up with threat actors doing what they're doing, but the, the collaboration and integration, it's just. It's just awesome. It's like they're all in the same Slack channel and they're able to like, quickly pivot and move. It's like, it's phenomenal.

[Kelly]

But that's so rare. And I. And I think that when it does happen, like you said, it's something to celebrate, but it's always for like a specific thing. Right. It's not like continuous collaboration where they're keeping those modes of communication open with each other constantly and, and you know, going back to what I was talking about with the intelligence community and kind of a different approach, it's like, same problem. Right. And I think a lot of it boils down to like, who's. Whose iron rice bowl is it? Who's going to get credit for this? And it's great whenever organizations get together and they put those egos aside and they just focus on getting things done.

[Ryan]

Yeah. I hope it's the beginning of a trend. Start trending in the right direction.

[Kelly]

Got looming. Tower is another good book about agencies not working together. Yes, I know that one well. So. Well, do we have a last story for the, for the week to close out?

[Corey]

I mean, I. All my stories are just bad jokes about data breaches. I was going to joke that, you know, it's a positive story that there was a senior dating website that had 765,000 users breached. I mean, kudos to the old people for getting out there. That's good for them. Like the fact that there's near a million users on a senior focused dating site, like that is a sign of the times.

[Joff]

Not in the data.

[Alex]

So all of us might be on there.

[Bronwyn]

Corey.

[Kelly]

All of those people now have lifelock for life.

[Corey]

There's like, it is kind of a such a, like, visual into the person who wrote this article calling it a senior dating website. And it's just 40 and over. Like, oh, no, that's kind of. That tells you. That tells you what the average age of a threat actor is.

[Kelly]

What?

[Joff]

Now I'm offended.

[John]

Damn kids these days.

[Corey]

But the website was just ladies.com, which I love that too. That's such a good name.

[Kelly]

For dating, actually. Are you sure it's a dating site that sounds like it's tv like the.

[John]

Biggest catfish site of all time, right?

[Kelly]

No, no, no.

[Corey]

The word ladies. Listen, the word ladies is untar tarnished. Okay. That is a. That is a classy word.

[Kelly]

Yeah. As a 46 year old man, that's your heart. What the hell, man. What the hell?

[Corey]

I will say though, if you like adjust, if you like gray down a curve based on who's in the dating pool, it is kind of like, it makes sense.

[Kelly]

I like Michael. Michael Robertson's. You mean Facebook got breached that comment? That comment hits hard.

[Joff]

My daughter tells me Facebook's for old people all the time.

[Kelly]

Yeah, she's like, Facebook sucks. No one likes Facebook here. Check out Instagram. It's so awesome.

[Corey]

It's so different. It's definitely not the same.

[Joff]

Tick tock in your life, Dan.

[Corey]

Oh, by the way, did we talk about. I know, like follow up. I know, but like apparently. Did we talk about this? They actually sanctioned U. S. A Chinese company, the US treasury did, for the whole like ISB stuff. I don't know if we covered that, but it seems that's a big deal in my opinion.

[Kelly]

I. What was the company and it was.

[Corey]

Called Sichuan Silence, which I do love.

[Kelly]

Good name.

[Corey]

Were they. Were they all about numbing the network?

[Kelly]

Now I can't remember the article that was talking about the Chinese hacking groups where there are legit quote unquote, like pen testing style companies, man. They basically get roped into doing offense cyber offensive operations for the Chinese government. And, and I'd have to find that article again.

[Corey]

Yeah, I guess I'm just like. I'm still thinking back to like why are no US companies being sanctioned by.

[Kelly]

And. And I think a lot of it that people don't understand is that there's very little like, like daylight between corporations in China and the Chinese government. Like it's not like like yeah, at any point any of these Chinese organizations can be leveraged. So I could totally see why they're sanctioning this specific company. Yeah. Because it's very, very, very strong possibility that they're actually involved directly in the, in the attacks. But yeah, their government and their, their corporate infrastructures are pretty much the same thing. They're very much tied into each other.

[Corey]

Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, we talked about it, so I thought it was an interesting follow up.

[Kelly]

I love how they had that. Can you put that picture back up? How they had the. Had. They had the picture of one of the hackers Serif just had a quote. It was basically like every time they talk about some hacking criminal mastermind, it always is some like 21 year old scrawny kid or 19 year old scrawny kid.

[Corey]

How did they find him? Probably from ladies.com.

[Kelly]

Probably on ladies.com. here's a quote from.

[Ryan]

He has certain taste.

[Kelly]

It really wasn't a joke. It's always great to see the news. Criminal mastermind caught. And it's a picture of the scrawniest 19 year old you've ever seen. Is the person that does the thing.

[Bronwyn]

They don't have a life yet. So of course it's a scrawny teenagers.

[Kelly]

Yeah.

[Corey]

Are you telling me that people without fully developed brains tend to make bad decisions sometimes.

[Kelly]

Really?

[Jerry]

Yeah.

[Kelly]

Does that ever get better?

[Corey]

Life.

[John]

Now that at 47.

[Kelly]

What? Let me get back. It's like Tim, whenever we have people that are young and impressionable, they're like, I want to start a pen testing company. And I think Tim's giving the same advice I gave years ago. First thing is, don't you know that.

[John]

Was John's opening line. Hey, I'm starting. You're not gonna listen.

[Kelly]

So here you go. Here's all our templates and everything.

[John]

So 100.

[Corey]

So, okay, if we're. We have a few minutes left. Let's talk about some other notable events that happen because this is gonna be our last show for 2024. We're not going to be back until 2025. So what else happened? Crowdstroke happened. Jerry won the Difference maker award. Congrats. What else happened in 2024? I can't remember.

[Alex]

The national data broke.

[Kelly]

Something about snowflakes.

[Corey]

Oh, yeah. Snowflake happened. That was a big deal. We're still seeing the fallout from that. I talked about info stealers 4274 times.

[Kelly]

I ranted. I ranted at least twice. I remember.

[Corey]

Only twice? No, you made more.

[Kelly]

That's all I can remember.

[Corey]

He ran in twice for everyone at Wild West Best.

[Kelly]

I wanna, I wanna clarify something. Every time that someone says that Jerry won, you're wrong. Jerry earned it.

[Ryan]

Thank you.

[Kelly]

And there's a difference between those two things, so.

[Ryan]

That's very kind of you, Sean. Yeah, but it was good. You know what Was weird about 2024? I don't know if anyone else had a hot take on this, but it seemed like in the first half of the year, like mortgage companies were getting hit. Like there was.

[Kelly]

It was big.

[Tim]

Yeah.

[Ryan]

Multiple mortgage companies. And I was thinking, like, what?

[John]

What? Why?

[Ryan]

Like, you know, I Could get like, law firms or tax accountants and stuff like that because of the client base. But mortgage companies just seem, like, odd, and then it just stopped. Like, I don't know if you guys noticed that, but, like, it just. They stopped. So I don't know if anyone had, like, a hot take on. On the motivation behind that.

[Joff]

I think people are just pissed off on interest rates.

[Kelly]

There you go.

[Joff]

Okay, we're gonna do a hack.

[Kelly]

I defend something. I don't know.

[Corey]

That's a different industry that you're talking about, the healthcare industry, which is definitely heavily targeted in 2024.

[Kelly]

Yeah.

[Corey]

The change healthcare thing happened this year. That was big, right?

[Ryan]

Yeah, that was.

[Corey]

Or was that this year? Or was. I don't even know when that was.

[Bronwyn]

Don't forget. Move it.

[Kelly]

Move it.

[Corey]

That was 2021.

[Kelly]

Well, that kept lingering.

[Ryan]

And 23. Right? That was the progress one with clop ransomware.

[Kelly]

Yeah.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Kelly]

Can you all start prepping for the show where we come back in 2025 and instead of predictions. I hate infosec. Predict predictions. Episodes, they just. Because it's always. It's AI.

[Ryan]

That is true.

[Corey]

AI was a big thing.

[Kelly]

It was.

[John]

It was.

[Kelly]

But here's what I want you all to do. We're not going to do predictions for 2025. I want us to predict what's going to be ignored and continue to be ignored in computer security. Like, what are they done? Like, I, you know, I can just throw some things out there. Cell phone security, like, gonna connect. Continue to ignore that shit as long as we possibly can. So. But what other things in computer security have we ignored? And are we going to continue to ignore moving. Moving forward? So what are the things we're not talking about in computer security? So that's your homework, everybody. So while you're drinking that eggnog, can I say, yeah, grc. Absolutely, Kelly. That's. That's Evergreen. Like, you know, everyone ignores grc. It's just we're.

[Ryan]

We're making it cool. Kelly and I are, like, pushing it.

[Kelly]

To the front guys. And then we got the shirts and the hats from Zach. Like, we're trying to make it cool because, you know, we always talk about how security is a continuous process and then promptly on grc, people, right? It's like, oh, it's a process. Yeah. You know, you got to do it. It's not. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Hey, screw the guys over in GRC that are literally, I don't know, lubing up for a sprint or lubing up for a. A Marathon.

[Corey]

I feel I have so much hat FOMO right now.

[Ryan]

Look at the GRC mafia fully engaged right now.

[Kelly]

By the way, you can totally get these run GRC hats at Spearfish General Store. Check them out at Spearfish General Store. The preferred hat by the winner of the Difference Makers award, Cherry Auger.

[Joff]

Helped Kelly enough in the in recent history that I, I deserve one of those hats now.

[Jerry]

I agree.

[Kelly]

I. I would agree with that. Usually I'd be like, I don't know, Joff, but after the past couple of weeks, I say you've earned that hat, sir.

[Joff]

I think I've earned that.

[Corey]

This might surprise you, but here at Black Hills we don't really gatekeep who wears the hats. We just let everyone do whatever they want.

[Joff]

That is a revelation.

[Ryan]

I'll wear my one of one hipster hat here. There we go.

[Corey]

Oh, I heard you paid good money for that.

[Kelly]

That.

[Ryan]

That hat is donated to a worthy cause for this.

[Corey]

Oh.

[Kelly]

So I gotta send you. I got something for you. Just give me a second.

[Corey]

Is it. Is it a case of beer?

[Joff]

Just gonna go get it right now.

[Corey]

Okay. I. Here's a prediction while John's gone and we can do predictions while he's not here because he hates them. My prediction is 2025 will be the first year any company fails PCI compliance ever.

[Kelly]

So, Jerry, this is the first play test set of the new Backdoors and breaches expansion cards.

[Ryan]

Oh, right on. Cool.

[Kelly]

For competitive. I was going to if offline, send me your address. I'm going to send this to you and I think it would be really cool if we can after we release the game, I'll sign them and stuff and send them to you. We can auction them off. Like I would like to find something simply cyber B H I s anti siphon. We find a good cause and we'll auction these off.

[Ryan]

Oh, that'd be phenomenal. John.

[Kelly]

The highest bidder. So. But, but yeah, we got the new version of Back Doors and breaches is. We're play testing it tomorrow again so. Nice.

[Ryan]

Yeah, I'd love to do that. Maybe we get them like framed up or something. Make it, make it like that.

[Kelly]

It's I think it's like six pages of cards. So we could do, you know, we. I can sign them and like number them and everything. We can do them as like, like six separate ones. Yeah.

[Ryan]

Yeah. No, that's awesome. That's phenomenal. Yeah. And definitely people would love that. So. Yeah, let's do it.

[Kelly]

Also, I want to do a shout out before the End of the year, I can't remember the dude's name, but I found this really cool card game called Advanced Persistent Threat. You can get [e-mail] I think you can get it on Amazon as well, so please check this out. But it's basically using servers, software malware exploits in zero days to defend your network while you're trying to hack your friends. I saw it at Board Game Geek Conference in Dallas and talked to the author, who was a real, real hacker. Seriously awesome dude. But you need, you need things for people on, on Christmas, for those other geeks. Go get Advanced Persistent Threat.

[John]

You went to BGG Con? Yeah, I have gone a bunch of times. I didn't go this year.

[Kelly]

No. So I was supposed to. I'll call you after this and tell you the whole story.

[John]

Yeah, yeah, okay.

[Kelly]

No, if you want to go. Yeah, I've gone a bunch of times. Yeah, no, it's an awesome conference and we're going to be renting booth space. It's stupid cheap, but we're going to be doing a booth and we're going to be bringing games down there next year.

[Ryan]

Where's the location?

[Kelly]

Physical Dallas.

[Ryan]

Okay. Okay.

[John]

It's by the airport, which is a weird spot, but it works for me.

[Corey]

Just go when you're in the morning.

[Kelly]

And I came back at night, so.

[Corey]

All right. Is it time to see everyone in 2026? What?

[John]

He wants it.

[Corey]

What? What is that?

[Kelly]

Is there a child attached to that arm?

[John]

Get over here.

[Joff]

All right, little mate.

[Kelly]

There we go. Happy. Hi, everybody.

[Ryan]

Little Tim, let's wrap it up.

[Kelly]

And by the way, I do just want to say happy holidays. Merry Christmas to all of you. It's been, it's been a crazy year, and it's been a really, really great year. It's been a hard year. But I, I, you know, I think it helps when we have community and we have communities that we can work with and groups that we can work with. And one of the things I, I, like I said I won on my tombstone, is his competitors were his best friends. And when I'm looking at Jerry and, you know, you, you've got your own podcast that's been wildly successful. I'm looking at Tim and Red Siege and just everything that you guys do. I think it's an absolute honor to be able to hang out with people like you and of course, other people that we work with all the time and collaborate with. Because the number one goal that we all have in mind is making security better, everyone better. Because remember, at the end of the day, all of our problems in computer security can be solved through education. And always be looking for the people that are educating and training. And I'm just incredibly honored to be surrounded by the group of people at BHIS and the wider tribe of businesses that are making the world a better place. So I'll see you all in 2025. Take care.