On this week’s Cyber Security Brief, Brigid O Gorman and Dick O’Brien discuss how the UK and the U.S. are planning to increase their efforts to tackle cyber crime, ransomware being blamed in court for the death of a baby, and the arrests of some ransomware criminals in Ukraine. Also, the Conti ransomware gang makes some threats, evidence of the Pegasus spyware allegedly found on the phones of French cabinet ministers, and an interesting targeted phishing campaign.

We are back for Season 4 after our summer break, and on this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast Dick O’Brien and Brigid O Gorman spend a lot of time discussing the subject that also dominated the last season of the podcast - ransomware. We discuss some of the ransomware stories we missed while we were off air, as well as a ransomware whitepaper we recently worked on and made available to our customers. Apart from ransomware, we also discuss Mēris - a huge botnet that emerged over the summer...

On this week’s Cyber Security Brief, we discuss some recent ransomware stories, as well as giving a sneak peek into some research we have been doing into ransomware. We also talk about recent announcements from U.S. authorities that attributed some recent cyber attacks, including the Microsoft Exchange Server campaign, to Chinese actors, and we also discuss the rising cost of data breaches. This is the last podcast of season 3, we will be taking a short break and will return with new episodes...

On this week’s Cyber Security Brief, Gavin O’Gorman joins us to discuss the Kaseya ransomware supply chain attack that occurred over the July 4 holiday weekend in the U.S. The REvil/Sodinokibi ransomware gang were behind this attack, and Gavin and Dick O’Brien discuss whether this is a sign that we now need to be aware of ransomware actors targeting victims through supply chain attacks, which would more traditionally be associated with state-sponsored hackers, as well as some of the other...

On this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast, Dick O’Brien fills us in on the latest research we have published on our blog about how a growing number of ransomware attackers are using virtual machines in their attacks. We also discuss a few other ransomware-related stories, including REvil introducing a new Linux version of its ransomware, a Babuk ransomware builder being leaked online, and a couple of stories showing the amount of money that can be involved in ransomware operations....

In this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast, Dick O’Brien and Brigid O Gorman discuss some of the biggest cyber security stories of the last two weeks. Ransomware has once again dominated the news headlines, with news about huge ransom payments and ransom recovery operations being reported. Meanwhile, cyber security comes to the fore in the political sphere following pronouncements from the G7 and NATO summits. Elsewhere, attackers leveraged Slack to attack one of the world’s biggest gaming...

On this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast, Dick O’Brien and Brigid O’Gorman are joined by Symantec threat researcher Gavin O’Gorman to discuss the Conti ransomware attack on Ireland’s national health service, how the response to this attack is going, and what the likely consequences of it may be. Elsewhere, another ransomware attack, this time on the world’s largest meat producer, JBS Foods, and Sweden’s Public Health Agency is also hit with some hack attempts. Meanwhile, the alleged leader...

In this week’s Cyber Security Brief, Dick O’Brien and Brigid O’Gorman discuss the implications of the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack and the activities of the group behind it, Darkside. We also talk about what appears to be a reasonably new ransomware - Avaddon - that has been used in a string of attacks recently, while we also discuss an idea Brian Krebs wrote about that could potentially help deter ransomware actors from infecting your network. Away from the world of ransomware we talk...

On this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast, Brigid O Gorman and Dick O’Brien discuss some research we have recently been working on at Symantec. First, we discuss a blog we published this week, which looks at multi-factor authentication and how it has become a headache for malicious actors, leading them to adopt new attack techniques in an attempt to bypass or avoid it completely. We also discuss a report that we shared with customers recently looking at living off the land attack techniques...

On this week’s Cyber Security Brief, Alan Neville joins Brigid O Gorman and Dick O’Brien to discuss the recent discovery of a zero-day vulnerability in popular VPN product Pulse Secure. We also discuss some recent developments in the SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange Server stories. Finally, we discuss a recent potential data breach at software testing company Codecov, and look at why UK authorities are warning government employees about potential approaches from foreign spies on social media.

On this week’s Cyber Security Brief, Brigid O Gorman and Dick O’Brien discuss the big Facebook data leak that has made headlines around the world this week, as well as a cyber attack aimed at European Union institutions, and a cyber incident impacting Australia’s parliament. We also discuss warnings from authorities in the U.S. about attackers attempting to exploit vulnerabilities in Fortinet FortiOS, while authorities in the UK have issued warnings about an increased risk of ransomware...

On this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast, Brigid O Gorman and Dick O’Brien discuss how ransomware attackers are now attempting to leverage the vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server. We also talk about an interesting interview given by one of the ReEvil ransomware gang to Recorded Future, evidence that ransomware payments increased over the last year, and the users of WeLeakInfo falling victim to their own data breach. Also, we warn U.S. taxpayers to be on the lookout for phishing...

On this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast, Brigid O Gorman and Dick O’Brien are joined by Symantec threat researcher Alan Neville to discuss the biggest cyber security story of the last couple of weeks - the vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server. Alan gives a comprehensive overview of the vulnerabilities, what’s happened since they became public knowledge last week, and the steps you can take to keep your organization’s network safe. He also talks about some of the post-compromise...

On this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast, Dick O’Brien and Brigid O’Gorman discuss some of the biggest cyber security stories of the last few weeks. Among the stories up for discussion are the bugs in Accellion’s 20-year-old FTA product, which led to multiple companies worldwide reporting breaches related to it. We also talk about the reports saying the Sandworm group has been carrying out a long-running spying campaign against multiple French IT services providers by compromising an...

On this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast, Dick O’Brien and Brigid O’Gorman round up some of the biggest cyber security stories of the last two weeks. We bring you the latest developments in the SolarWinds hack investigation, and chat about the significance of the disruption to the Emotet botnet. We also discuss some other recent takedowns and arrests, as well as some of the biggest ransomware stories of the last couple of weeks. We also talk about the recently reported cyber attack on a...

Old threats and new feature in this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast. Dick O’Brien and Gavin O’Gorman discuss the latest developments in the Solarwinds hack investigation, including how Symantec investigators found Raindrop, an additional piece of malware used in the SolarWinds attacks against a select number of victims that were of interest to the attackers. We published a blog about Raindrop last week, and Dick and Gavin discuss how this new malware was discovered. Also, romance scams...

On this week’s Cyber Security Brief, the first of 2021, Dick O’Brien brings us a comprehensive update about some of the developments in the SolarWinds hack story, with a lot having happened since our last podcast. We also discuss some recent ransomware attacks, and how the healthcare sector is having a hard time with cyber attacks at the moment.

In this week’s Cyber Security Brief, the last one of 2020, find out all you need to know about the biggest news story of the week - the Sunburst supply chain attack targeting customers of software company SolarWinds. This is one of the biggest cyber security stories of the year, with thousands of organizations affected. Dick O’Brien and Symantec threat analyst Gavin O’Gorman give a comprehensive rundown of everything we know about this attack so far. Also, Twitter is handed a big fine by the...

On this week’s Cyber Security Brief podcast, we discuss what card skimmers are up to during the busiest shopping time of the year, while also bringing some good news about how EU authorities prevented almost $50 million in card fraud this year. Also on the agenda, are botnets abandoning banking Trojans in favour of ransomware? It looks like they might be. We also take a look at some COVID-19 related cyber security stories that are making the headlines, as well as the reemergence of the...

In this week’s Cyber Security Brief, Dick O’Brien and Brigid O’Gorman talk about some of the biggest cyber security stories of the last couple of weeks. There are multiple stories about APT groups to cover this week, including our own Threat Intel blog detailing a wide-ranging attack campaign that targeted Japan-linked companies in multiple sectors in 17 regions worldwide. We also discuss other public reports about a Chinese APT targeting governments in South East Asia, and nation-state...

In this week’s Cyber Security Brief, Dick O’Brien and Brigid O’Gorman talk about some of the biggest cyber security stories of the last couple of weeks. Of course, this week’s U.S. Presidential Election gets a mention, while we also discuss the recently announced ‘retirement’ of the Maze ransomware gang, as well as a threat alert issued last week by authorities in the U.S. about Trickbot and the Ryuk ransomware. Elsewhere, a Russian man was jailed this week for his involvement with a...

On this week’s Cyber Security Brief, Dick O’Brien and Brigid O’Gorman are joined by Symantec threat researchers Vikram Thakur and Alan Neville. Vikram discusses Symantec’s role in the cross-industry initiative to disrupt the Trickbot botnet. Symantec was part of a global partnership that secured a court order directing hosting providers to take down Trickbot’s infrastructure. Trickbot had spread prolifically across the internet for years and became one of the most commonly blocked types of...

We are back! Welcome to Season 3 of the Cyber Security Brief podcast, recording now from home. We will be with you every fortnight going forward and we are delighted to be back to tell you all about what is happening in the world of cyber security. In this episode, Dick O’Brien and Brigid O’Gorman discuss some of the projects they have been working on while the podcast was off air - threats against the financial sector, North Korean threat actors’ activity, the WastedLocker ransomware, and an...

In this week's Cyber Security Brief podcast, Brigid O'Gorman and Dick O'Brien discuss some of the biggest infosec news stories of the last week, including, new vulnerabilities in Intel chips, and the Microsoft SMB protocol, as well as the Rowhammer vulnerability being back in the headlines. As well as this, there is an intricate phishing scam targeting Russian speakers that uses a chatbot to help you hand over your information, a mysterious Vietnam-based group is releasing Trojanized hacking...

In this week's Cyber Security Brief podcast, Brigid O'Gorman and Dick O'Brien discuss some of the biggest infosec news stories of the last week, including, new vulnerabilities in Intel chips, and the Microsoft SMB protocol, as well as the Rowhammer vulnerability being back in the headlines. As well as this, there is an intricate phishing scam targeting Russian speakers that uses a chatbot to help you hand over your information, a mysterious Vietnam-based group is releasing Trojanized hacking...