Hacking Humans

A vishing competition and a Black Badge holder.

This week, Carole Theriault is interviewing DEFCON Black Badge holder Chris Kirsch from RunZero on the recent DEFCON 30 vishing competition. Dave and Joe share some listener follow up from 3 different listeners, who share stories on disposable email addresses, as well as a little insight on a Best Buy scam mentioned in a previous episode. Joe's story is on gaming companies and whether or not they have to stoop down to stemming growth in cheats, hacks, and other types of fraud to keep customers coming back. Dave's story comes from his father, he has two stories, one involving a gift card scam and an email compromise of a family member’s account. The other involves a fake invoice for tech support services. Our catch of the day comes from listener Felipe, who writes in asking Joe and Dave to make sense of the email he received saying that his refund was recalled from someone claiming to be the "Secretary for International Finance of United States Treasury Department."

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Ways to make fraud less lucrative.

Brett Johnson, Chief Criminal Officer at Arkose Labs, sits down with Dave to discuss his history & ways to make fraud efforts less lucrative for bad actors. Dave and Joe share some listener follow up from Graham about one way that helps him stay safe against fake URLs. Dave's story is about bomb email attacks, in which someones email is spammed with hundreds to thousands of emails in hopes of hiding important information contained in one of the thousands of emails, perhaps from a financial institute. Joe's story is on how the FBI is warning the public to beware of tech support scammers and how they are targeting financial accounts using remote desktop software. Our catch of the day comes from listener Norman, who shares a story about how his Steam account got hijacked and how a hacker impersonating a Steam employee was trying to help him.

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New laws and the effect on small businesses.

Kurtis Minder, CEO of GroupSense joins Dave to discuss how ransomware new laws leave small business behind. Dave and Joe share some follow up on Elon Musk after his big purchase and the changes that now follow. Joe's story follows Kalamazoo County residents and a new scam that is popping up, where they are being targeted by scammers through Facebook messenger video calls. Dave shares a story that hits home for him about an email that his father received from Best Buy claiming that he will be charged $500 for Geek Squad services. Our catch of the day comes from an anonymous listener who writes in to share an email they received from a Mrs. Phong Dung, who wants to send 1 million to the person who received the email. The receiver knows this email is a fake and writes into the show to ask Joe and Dave if these emails ever actually work on anyone.

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Protecting your identity.

Jameeka Green Aaron, CISO, Customer Identity at Okta, sits down with Dave to speak about their State of Secure Identity report. Dave and Joe share some listener follow up from Richard, who writes in to share his thoughts on the discussion of the phishing kit targeting WordPress sites in a previous episode, and also writes in about last episode’s discussion on how companies were turning on employees who are overworked with two remote jobs and shares how Equifax was one of these companies. Dave's story follows typosquatting, which is when a scammer registers a website that is very similar to the real one, but will have a typo in it (ex: amozon, homdepot, gougle) and how a large typosquatting campaign is delivering tech support scams. Joe's story follows a South Bay man who had the misfortune of accepting hundreds of open house offers, but the houses weren't for sale. Our catch of the day comes from listener Chris who writes in that he's never gotten a phishing email on his work email or personal email, but that he received his first phish from PayPal, which seemed to me a notification at first glance rather than a message telling him there is fraudulent activity happening in his account.

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Setting tech limits with a new tool.

Kim Allman from NortonLifeLock, and Carrie Neill from the National PTA, sit down with Dave to discuss the Smart Talk 2.0 tool. Joe and Dave share some follow up on an exciting new position Joe has accepted as the Director of Cyber Science at a company called Harbor Labs. This week, Joe's story comes from listener Beau, who writes in about an ATM scam he fell victim to, sharing how the scammers were spamming his phone with texts, emails, and calls before he figured out what was going on. Dave's story follows the growing new trend of overworking, or having two remote jobs at once and working at both. One company's CEO calls it a form of theft and deception. Our catch of the day comes from listener Rodney who writes in, sharing about his son's girlfriend who is looking for work and received an email pointing her in the direction of a new prospect. Sadly, Rodney had to share the news that the email seemed to be a scam.

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