How to lose friends and DDoS people

How to lose friends and DDoS people

When the mysterious operator of an internet archiving-service decided to silence a curious Finnish blogger, they didn’t just send a stroppy email - they allegedly weaponised their own CAPTCHA page to launch a DDoS attack, threatened to invent an entirely new genre of AI porn, and tampered with parts of their own archive to smear the blogger's name.

In this episode, we unravel how a website designed to preserve history may have trashed its own credibility - and how Wikipedia responded when trust went out the window.

Plus a ransomware gang shoots itself in the foot with a classic case of buffoonery, accidentally corrupting the very keys victims would need to decrypt their data. When even the criminals can’t unlock your files, what happens next?

All this, a surprisingly zen Pick of the Week, and a gloriously splenetic rant against web forms, on episode 456 of the award-winning "Smashing Security" podcast, with cybersecurity veteran Graham Cluley and special guest Paul Ducklin.

EPISODE LINKS:




SPONSORS:

  • Coreview - Download "Total Tenant Takeover", a white paper about the Microsoft 365 Disaster No One Is Ready For.
  • Vanta - Expand the scope of your security program with market-leading compliance automation… while saving time and money. Smashing Security listeners get $1000 off!
  • ThreatLocker - Start your free trial and book a demo of ThreatLocker today to see how you can implement Zero Trust in your environment.


SUPPORT THE SHOW:

Tell your friends and colleagues about “Smashing Security”, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser.

Become a supporter! Join Smashing Security PLUS via Patreon or Apple Podcasts for ad-free episodes on our early-release feed!


FOLLOW THE SHOW:

Follow us on Bluesky or Mastodon, or on the Smashing Security subreddit, and visit our website for more episodes.


THANKS:

Theme tune: "Vinyl Memories" by Mikael Manvelyan.

Assorted sound effects: AudioBlocks.





Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(479)

How 14 orders of chicken McNuggets helped nail a suspected Russian hacker

How 14 orders of chicken McNuggets helped nail a suspected Russian hacker

A Russian intelligence-linked hacker is arrested in Thailand while enjoying a beach holiday - and the trail of evidence that nailed him to the Russian government includes 14 separate orders of chicken...

22 Heinä 0s

Remote-control rickshaws and rogue book marketers

Remote-control rickshaws and rogue book marketers

An app has appeared in India that lets anyone with a smartphone stop a passing e-rickshaw dead in its tracks - no login, no passwords, no permissions needed. Meanwhile, Geoff - swimming in money and L...

15 Heinä 38min

JadePuffer - the AI that ran a ransomware attack all by itself

JadePuffer - the AI that ran a ransomware attack all by itself

A 15-year-old boy asked a chatbot for help - and cancelled nearly 47,000 anime streaming subscriptions in under four hours. Meanwhile, researchers have documented the first fully autonomous, agentic A...

8 Heinä 46min

Polymarket can predict the future. So how did it miss this hack?

Polymarket can predict the future. So how did it miss this hack?

Polymarket has built an entire business on predicting the future. So how did it manage to spectacularly fail to predict its own hack? Plus, the Google engineer with a million-dollar secret, and the cu...

1 Heinä 42min

How a hacker could have Rickrolled the entire World Cup

How a hacker could have Rickrolled the entire World Cup

A polite caller from your bank says there is a problem with your account. Don't worry - they'll send someone round to help. They'll even take your cards away to keep them safe. The scam has run rampan...

24 Kesä 1h

AI gets hacked, and BitLocker gets bypassed

AI gets hacked, and BitLocker gets bypassed

What if your AI coding assistant could be tricked into stealing your own company's secrets - by reading a single booby-trapped bug report? No phishing email. No malware. No password ever stolen. Just ...

17 Kesä 1h 12min

This AI worm just rewrote its own rules

This AI worm just rewrote its own rules

Researchers at the University of Toronto have built a worm that thinks for itself. Using free off-the-shelf AI models it works out how to break into each new computer it encounters, and hijacks the po...

10 Kesä 46min

This AI security flaw might be impossible to fix

This AI security flaw might be impossible to fix

A website called "UK visa portal" has been quietly collecting passport scans, selfies, and personal data from thousands of travellers who thought they were applying through official channels. They wer...

3 Kesä 57min

Suosittua kategoriassa Politiikka ja uutiset

aikalisa
uutiscast
ootsa-kuullut-tasta-2
rss-ootsa-kuullut-tasta
rss-seksicast
otetaan-yhdet
rss-podme-livebox
rss-vaalirankkurit-podcast
aihe
politiikan-puskaradio
rikosmyytit
rss-girls-finish-f1rst
rss-mina-ukkola
rss-raha-talous-ja-politiikka
rss-asiastudio
rss-varsinaista-puhetta