The Host Unknown Podcast

Episode 38 - Oh No He's Back

Episode Summary

Jav is back. We were disappointed too. This week in Infosec Tweet of the Week Billy Big Balls Rant of the week Industry News Will we have a Little people today?

Episode Notes

The boys are back in town. Jav's return has also reduced the average age of this podcast by roughly twenty years. The good news though is that we not only have a full program, but also new jingles too!

This week in Infosec

Liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account:

16th January 2007: Jeffrey Goodin became the first person convicted under the US CAN-SPAM Act. He sent emails pretending to be AOL's billing department. He could have faced...wait for it...wait for it...101 years in prison! Instead, he was sentenced to 70 months. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/technology/17spam.html

https://www.lawdonut.co.uk/business/marketing-and-selling/marketing-and-advertising/your-email-marketing-and-anti-spam-law

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1217962482909626368

12th January 1984: The first issue of 2600 was mailed to several dozen people. At the time, it was a 3 page monthly newsletter. 2600: The Hacker Quarterly is still published today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2600:_The_Hacker_Quarterly

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1216431003721293825?s=20

 

Rant of the Week

Tech companies have grown a pair of balls in Trump’s last days in office.  Host Unknown remembers.

Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Shopify are just some of the companies finally taking a stand. 

AirBnB have cancelled reservations in DC during the week of Biden’s inauguration

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump-ban-facebook-twitter-parler-first-amendment-b1785631.html

 

Tweet of the Week

WhatsApp clarifies it’s not giving all your data to Facebook after surge in Signal and Telegram users

The company is trying to contain fallout over a privacy policy update

“We want to be clear that the policy update does not affect the privacy of your messages with friends or family in any way. Instead, this update includes changes related to messaging a business on WhatsApp, which is optional, and provides further transparency about how we collect and use data,” the company writes on the new FAQ page.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/12/22226792/whatsapp-privacy-policy-response-signal-telegram-controversy-clarification

https://twitter.com/nickstatt/status/1349029486734565380

 

Industry News

CEO Refutes Reports of Involvement in SolarWinds Campaign

Ryuk Ransomware Attackers Have Made $150m

Jav: Emotet Tops Malware Charts in December After Reboot

High Court Rules Against Government Bulk Hacking

Over 100,000 UN Employee Records Accessed by Researchers

US Announces Controversial State Department Cyber-Bureau

Chinese Startup Leaks Social Profiles of 214 Million Users

New Malware Implant Discovered as Part of SolarWinds Attack

New Zealand Central Bank Breach Hit Other Companies

Healthcare Hit by 187 Million Monthly Web App Attacks in 2020

Microsoft Fixes Windows Defender Zero-Day Bug

Mimecast Cert Abused to Target Inboxes in “Sophisticated” Attack

European Regulator: #COVID19 Vaccine Data Leaked Online

CISA Warns of Cloud Attacks Exploiting Poor Cyber-Hygiene

Ring Rolls-Out End-to-End Encryption to Bolster Privacy

 

Javvad’s Weekly Stories

Vulnerable Database Exposed UN Employees' Data

Will the National Cyber Force make the UK safer? Industry responds

United Nations suffers potential data breach

Best practices for building a security culture program

Five Key Cybersecurity Themes from 2020

 

Billy Big Balls

Dark Market taken offline

DarkMarket, the world's largest illegal marketplace on the dark web, has been taken offline in an international operation involving Germany, Australia, Denmark, Moldova, Ukraine, the United Kingdom (the National Crime Agency), and the USA (DEA, FBI, and IRS). Europol supported the takedown with specialist operational analysis and coordinated the cross-gender collaborative effort of the Host Unknown countries involved.

DarkMarket in figures:

At the current rate, this corresponds to a sum of more than €140 million. The vendors on the marketplace mainly traded all kinds of drugs and sold counterfeit money, stolen or counterfeit credit card details, anonymous SIM cards and malware.

https://gizmodo.com/the-internets-biggest-darknet-just-got-taken-down-1846044148

https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/darkmarket-worlds-largest-illegal-dark-web-marketplace-taken-down

 

Will we have a Little people today?

No

 

Sticky Pickle of the week

Imagine the year is 2009 and you’re sitting at home eating your lunch over your laptop as you always do and you spill your drink.

Laptop stops working due to the spillage, you salvage the parts you can and over time you forget about them and they get thrown out with the household rubbish.

Thinking nothing of it, you hear that this particular thing you threw out is now worth money.  Over time, you watch it’s value increase phenomenally.  You attempt to follow the trail and realise that what you threw out is sitting in the council landfill site.

There are no guarantees that you’ll find it but you know in your heart it’s in there and if you can rummage through the landfill, you are sure you can find it.

What would you do in this situation?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-55658942