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About Malicious Life Podcast

Malicious Life Podcast

The Malicious Life Podcast by Cybereason examines the human and technical factors behind the scenes that make the threat from cyberattacks so prevalent today.

Malicious Life explores the insider stories about the people and events shaping the cybersecurity industry and its evolution.

Host Ran Levi interviews hackers, researchers, practitioners and other security industry experts about everything from hacking culture to the most significant cyberattacks that define today’s threat landscape.

The show has a monthly audience of over 250,000 and growing, and is consistently in the Top 20 iTunes Technology Podcasts.

All posts by Malicious Life Podcast

Malicious Life Podcast: Kevin Mitnick, Part 2

In 2008, The 12 million PCs strong Mariposa Botnet infected almost half of Fortune 100 company - but the three men who ran it were basically script kiddies who didn't even knew how to code.

March 1, 2024 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Kevin Mitnick, Part 1

In 2008, The 12 million PCs strong Mariposa Botnet infected almost half of Fortune 100 company - but the three men who ran it were basically script kiddies who didn't even knew how to code.

February 19, 2024 /

Malicious Life Podcast: SIM Registration: Security, or Surveillance?

In 2008, The 12 million PCs strong Mariposa Botnet infected almost half of Fortune 100 company - but the three men who ran it were basically script kiddies who didn't even knew how to code.

February 5, 2024 /

Malicious Life Podcast: The Mariposa Botnet

In 2008, The 12 million PCs strong Mariposa Botnet infected almost half of Fortune 100 company - but the three men who ran it were basically script kiddies who didn't even knew how to code.

January 22, 2024 /

Malicious Life Podcast: The Real Story of Citibank’s $10M Hack

Valdimir Levin is often presented as "the first online bank robber," and appeares on many lists of the "Top 10 Greatest Hackers." But a few veteran Russian hackers cliam that Levin's infamous hack had been mangled by the journlists who wrote about it. What's the truth behind the 1994 $10.7 million Citibank hack?…

January 9, 2024 /

Malicious Life Podcast: How to Hack Into Satellites

About a year ago, six academics from Ruhr University Bochum and the CISPA  Helmholtz Center for Information Security set out to survey engineers and developers on the subject of satellite cybersecurity. But most of these engineers were very reluctant to share any details about their satellites and their security aspects. Why were satellite engineers so reticent to talk about cybersecurity? What was so secretive, so wrong with it, that they didn’t feel they could answer even general questions, anonymously? Because let’s be clear: if there’s something wrong with the security of satellites, that’d be a serious problem.

December 27, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Moonlight Maze

When investigators discovered in 1996 that US military networks were being extensively hacked, they didn't realize they were witnessing the birth of what would become Russia's formidable Turla APT espionage group. We uncover the 20-year metamorphosis of this original group of hackers into one of the most sophisticated and dangerous state-sponsored threats that's still active today.

December 11, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Volt Typhoon

In August 2021, a port in Houston, Texas, was attacked. Over the following months, a series of attacks occurred in various locations, reminiscent of a serial killer's pattern. Targets included telecommunications companies, government agencies, power plants, and water treatment facilities. How did Volt Typhoon manage to evade authorities and analysts for such an extended period?

November 28, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Is NSO Evil? Part 2

By the time Forbidden Stories published its “Pegasus Project” in 2021, NSO was already knee deep in what was probably the worst PR disaster ever suffered by a cybersecurity company - and then, in November 2021, came the fateful blow: the US Dept. of Commerce added NSO to its “Entity List.” Is NSO to blame for its troubles? Could the company have acted differently to prevent its downfall?

November 13, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Is NSO Evil? Part 1

NSO Group, creator of the infamous Pegasus spyware, is widely regarded as a vile, immoral company: a sort of 21st century soldier of fortune, a mercenary in the service of corrupt and evil regimes. Yet among its many clients are many liberal democracies, including the US, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, to name but a few. So, is NSO really as evil as many think it is?

October 30, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Should You Pay Ransomware Attackers? A Game Theory Approach

The FBI explicitly advises companies against paying ransomware attackers - but itself payed 4.4 million dollars worth of Bitcoin after the Colonial Pipeline attack. So, should you listen to what the experts say, or follow what they occasionally do? It’s complicated, but we can model this problem.

October 17, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Silent Firewalls: The Underrepresentation of Women in Cyber

In the vast landscape of STEM, women constitute a mere 28% of the workforce. Yet, when we zoom into the realm of cybersecurity, the number dwindles even further to a startling 20 to 24 percent. What are the underlying reasons behind this disparity?

October 2, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Operation Kudo

In 1981, during the G7 Summit in Quebec, French president Francois Mitterand handed President Raegan a top secret collection of documents, called Farewell Dossier. The information found in the dossier allowed the US to devise a cunning plan - the very first supply chain attack, if you will - to bring a firey end to one of largest industrial espionage campaigns in history.

September 20, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Can We Stop the AI Cyber Threat?

Much of the cybersecurity software in use today utilizes AI, especially things like spam filters and network traffic monitors. But will all those tools be enough to stop the proliferation of malware that will come from generative AI-driven cyber attacks? The potential of AI to disrupt cyberspace is far greater than any solutions we’ve come up with thus far, which is why some researchers are looking beyond the traditional answers, towards more aggressive measures.

September 4, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Is Generative AI Dangerous?

Every so often, the entire landscape of cybersecurity shifts, all at once: The latest seismic shift in the field occurred just last year. So in this episode of Malicious Life we’re going to take a look into the future of cybersecurity: at how generative AI like ChatGPT will change cyberspace, through the eyes of five research teams breaking ground in the field. We’ll start off simple, and gradually build to increasingly more complex, more futuristic examples of how this technology might well turn against us, forcing us to solve problems we’d never considered before. – check it out...

August 22, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Why aren't there more bug bounty programs?

On the face of it, there's an obvious economic incentive for both vendors and security researchers to collaborate on disclosing vulnerabilities safely and privately. Yet bug bounty programs have gained prominence only in the past decade or so, and even today only a relatively small portion of vendors have such programs at place. Why is that? – check it out...

August 8, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: The Voynich Manuscript

The constant battle between those who wish to encrypt data and those who wish to break these ciphers has made modern encryption schemes extremely powerful. Subsequently, the tools and methods to break them became equivalently sophisticated. Yet, could it be that someone in the 15th century created a cipher that even today’s most brilliant codebreakers and most sophisticated and advanced tools - cannot break?...

July 25, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Roman Seleznev: Did the Punishment Fit the Crime?

In 2019, Roman Seleznev, a 34 years-old Russian national, was sentenced to 27 years in prison: A sentence that’d make any criminal quiver. Seleznev's deeds had a horrendous effect on the 2.9 million individuals whose credit cards he stole and sold to cyber criminals for identity theft and financial crimes. On one hand, it’s hard to imagine any nonviolent computer crime worth 27 years in prison. But then what is an appropriate sentence for such a man as Seleznev? – check it out...

July 10, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Sony BMG's Rootkit Fiasco

"We made a mistake and Sony paid a terrible price.” A terrible price indeed: an arrogant and ill-advised decision to include a rootkit in its music CDs cost Sony BMG a lot of money - and painted it as a self-centered, self-serving company that cares more about its bottom line than its customers. Why did Sony BMG make such a poor decision? – check it out...

June 27, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Ad Fraud, Part 2

"What makes ad fraud so successful, and so prevalent, and why can’t we stop it? The answer isn’t technical at all. It’s not hard to understand. But it’s a harsh reality that many people are simply not willing to face. – check it out...

June 9, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Ad Fraud, Part 1

Right now, a man named Aleksandr Zhukov is sitting in jail for one of the most financially ruinous schemes ever invented for the internet. Zhukov is guilty. He was caught and convicted under a mountain of evidence against him. Except the deeper you look into it, the deeper the well goes. In this episode, we’ll learn how Aleksandr Zhukov defrauded some of the biggest American corporations for millions of dollars. And we’ll ask the question that hardly anyone else is willing to acknowledge: Was this clever, successful, guilty cybercriminal merely a fall guy for everybody else playing his twisted game?. – check it out...

May 30, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: The Economics Of Cybersecurity

The numbers can’t be any clearer: a DDoS attack costs less than a hundred dollars, while the price tag for mitigating it might reach tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. A single well crafted phishing email can easily circumvent cyber defenses which cost millions of dollars to set up. How can we change the extreame cost asymmetry between attackers and defenders in cyberspace?. – check it out...

May 15, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: The Reason You Don’t Have Data Privacy

We’ve all experienced the creepiness of modern data trafficking, but that kind of daily annoyance is the surface of a much bigger issue: Big Tech companies such as Amazon & Microsoft are lobbying policymakers to veto laws that harm their business, and often hide their lobbying behind industry coalitions or organizations with names that are vague and seemingly harmless. Will current and future privacy laws actually protect your information, or will they protect the companies collecting your information? – check it out...

May 1, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: How Entire Countries Can Lose the Internet

Disruptions to the world’s internet cables happen more often than you think: Whether it be ship anchors or animals or saboteurs, cut a few wires in the right places and at nearly the speed of light you can disrupt or shut off the internet for broad populations of people at a time. It is an immense power that runs through these lines -- a power that can be sabotaged or, in the right hands, weaponized. – check it out...

April 17, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Olympic Destroyer

In the midst of 35,000 exhilarated spectators eagerly chanting the time-honored countdown to kick off the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, a sinister malware crept through the games' network, threatening to disrupt the highly-anticipated event. The obvious question in everyone’s minds was - who was responsible for the attack? Who was vile enough to launch such a potentially destructive attack against an event which, more than anything, symbolizes peace and global cooperation? – check it out...

April 3, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: The Lawerence Berkeley Hack, Part 2

On May 23rd, 1989, Karl Koch - a 23 years old West German hacker who worked for the KGB - took a drive, from which he would never return: Nine days later his charred remains were found by the police in a remote forest. Was Koch assasinated by the US or the Sovient Union, or is there another, more 'mystical' explanation for his death? – check it out...

March 20, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: The Lawerence Berkeley Hack, Part 1

Four decades ago, three quarters would’ve gone a lot further than they do today. With that kind of loose change you could’ve picked up some milk from the grocery store, or over half a gallon of gas, or a bus ticket. But that doesn’t explain why, on one fateful day in 1986, a systems administrator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California made such an issue over 75 missing cents. – check it out...

March 8, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Russian Propaganda, Explained [ML B-Side]

In this B-Side episode, our Senior Producer Nate Nelson interviewed Dr. Bilyana Lilly - CISSP, a leader in cybersecurity and information warfare with over fifteen years of managerial, technical, and research experience, and author of "Russian Information Warfare" - about the Russian use of instant messaging and social media platforms such as Telegram and Twitter in their war efforts. Dr. Lilly discusses who they are targeting and the real-world impact their propaganda has on various populations. – check it out...

February 28, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Operation Ivy Bells

In the early 1970's, US intelligence pointed at the possibility that the Russians have laid an underwater communication cable between two important naval bases in the Far East. The dangerous mission of installing a listening device on that cable was given to the navy most secretive and unusual submarine. – check it out...

February 20, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Why Do NFTs Disappear? [ML BSide]

What happens when an NFT marketplace goes under, and disappears? You would imagine that the users’ NFTs are perfectly safe: after all, the blockchain itself is still there, right? But that’s not how things work in the real world. 

February 13, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: The (Other) Problem with NFTs

Financial markets make good targets for criminals - after all, that's where the big money is. Surprisingly, many of these criminals are not your run-of-the-mill black hat hacker, but brokers registered with the SEC: genuine finance industry professionals – check it out...

February 6, 2023 /

You Should Be Afraid of SIM Swaps

If SIM swap stories ever make the news, almost uniformly, they focus on people who lost a lot of money. But SIM swaps also take a psychological toll...

January 31, 2023 /

FBI vs. REvil [ML BSide]

Nate Nelson speaks with Rich Murray, who leads the FBI’s North Texas Cyber unit, about how the Federal Bureau of Investigations dealt with dealt with another attack by REvil

January 24, 2023 /

Cyberbunker, Part 2

Spamhaus's decision to add Cyberbunker to its list of Spam sources led the Stophaus coalition to initiate a DDoS attack later dubbed “The attack that almost broke the Internet.”

January 20, 2023 /

Cyberbunker, Part 1

Sven Kamphuis and Herman Johan Xennt are quite dissimilar... and in 1996, their unlikely partnership coalesced around a mutual deep hatred towards authority...

January 11, 2023 /

How Netflix Learned Cloud Security [ML B-Side]

2011 was a pivotal year for Netflix: the now hugely successful company was then in the midst of a formidable transformation, changing from a mail-based DVD rental service to the modern streaming service that it is today

January 3, 2023 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Fred Cohen, The Godfather of Computer Viruses [ML B-Side]

Dr. Fred Cohen not only introduced the name ‘computer virus’, a term invented by his mentor, Leonard Adelman, but was also the first to analyze computer viruses in a rigorous mathematical way...

December 19, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Thamar Reservoir

How does it feel to live for years with a virtual target mark on your back?… Malicious Life discusses the story of Thamar Gindin.

December 13, 2022 /

The Problem With Kernel-Mode Anti-Cheat Software [ML B-Side]

Nobody likes cheaters, especially in video games. That's why EA and other publishers are implementing kernel-mode anti-cheat software in their games. Yet some people warn that installing such kernel-level systems is extremely dangerous. In this episode of Malicious Life, we examine why.

December 8, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: How to NOT Build a Cybersecurity Startup

When it was founded in 2011, Norse Corp. had everything going for it, but the startup blew up in smoke less than six years later. Malicious Life explores what went so horribly wrong.

November 29, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Jailbreaking Tractors

An Australian white hat hacker demonstrated how easily hackers can take over farming equipment and the risks this creates for global food supplies.

November 28, 2022 /

The Russian Business Network

Find out how the Russian Business Network, a once legitimate ISP, became the largest player in the Russian cybercrime world and a key component of Putin's attacks on democracy and misinformation campaigns in this episode of the Malicious Life podcast.

November 25, 2022 /

What Can Chess Grandmasters Teach Us About Cyber

Find out what cybersecurity professionals can learn from MMA wrestlers and Chess Grand Champions about peak performance in this episode of Malicious Life, featuring Chris Cochran and Ron Eddings, the co-founders of Hacker Valley Media.

November 24, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: What Would Happen If CBS Got Hacked?

Information security executives explain how media companies can be hacked and why we, as consumers, should care in this Malicious Life BSide podcast.

November 22, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: LabMD vs. The FTC

One day in 2008, Michael Daugherty got a call from cybersecurity company TiVera, saying private medical data of some 9000 LabMD patients had been discovered online. When Michael refused to pay for TiVersa's hefty "consultation fee", a ten-year legal battle began that led to the demise of LabMD, but also cost the FTC dearly.

November 18, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Hacking Stock Markets Part 2

Financial markets make good targets for criminals - after all, that's where the big money is. Surprisingly, many of these criminals are not your run-of-the-mill black hat hacker, but brokers registered with the SEC: genuine finance industry professionals – check it out...

October 18, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Vishing Voice Scams

Rachel Tobac is a hacker and CEO of SocialProof Security, where she helps people and companies keep their data safe by training and pentesting them on social engineering threats like Vishing and the many psychological tricks attackers employ to hack people – check it out...

October 11, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Hacking Stock Markets Part 1

Some stock traders are willing to go to great lengths to get information before anyone else, even hacking into trading technologies to gain an unfair advantage and make a fortune along the way–check it out...

October 4, 2022 /

Malicious Life Wins Big at the 17th Annual People's Choice Podcast Awards

The Malicious Life Podcast Team is excited to announce that we won the This Week in Tech Technology Category honor at the 17th Annual People's Choice Podcast Awards...

October 3, 2022 / 1 minute read

Malicious Life Podcast: What It’s Like to Fight LulzSec

As their name implies, LulzSec was known for trolling their victims:, and while their childish behavior might have fooled some people into thinking that LulzSec was harmless, the story you’re about to hear will show they were anything but – check it out...

September 28, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: King Kimble - Kim DotCom

The US government says that Kim Schmitz, better known as Kim DotCom, is the leader of a file sharing crime ring. He sees himself as an internet freedom fighter: a fugitive on the run from vindictive overly-powerful governments. Can King Kimble escape the wrath of the USA? Check it out...

September 19, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Hacking Multi-Factor Authentication

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is usually considered a better solution for authentication – but Roger Grimes, a veteran security professional and a Data-Driven Defense Evangelist claims that the sense of security current MFA solutions provide us is false - check it out...

September 13, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Hacking Language Models

Language models are everywhere today, and most interestingly they are available via several experiential projects trying to emulate natural conversations such as OpenAI’s GPT-3 and Google’s LaMDA. Can these models be hacked to gain access to the sensitive information they learned from their training data? Check it out...

September 6, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Software Bill of Materials (SBOM)

In May 2021, following the SolarWinds and the Colonial Pipeline attacks, the Biden administration published a presidential Executive Order mandating the use of SBOMs - Software Bill of Materials - in all government agencies. What are SBOMs and how useful are they in cybersecurity? Nate Nelson talks to two experts: Allan Friedman (CISA) and Chris Blask (Cybeats) - check it out...

August 31, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Leo Kuvayev– The Czar of Spammers

A ruthless person for whom the end truly justifies the means, Leo Kuvayev was very successful as a cybercriminal. But even a genius criminal can go just one step too far - check it out...

August 22, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: A CISO's Nightmare - Israel Baron on Railway Security

Railway systems are a mess of old systems built on top of older systems, running ancient operating systems. Why are railway systems so difficult to defend, and what are the most probable attack vectors against them? Israel Railway's first ever CISO discusses why - check it out...

August 15, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Operation Trojan Shield - Designed by Criminals for Criminals

The Anom was the holy grail of dark, illegal communication: a mobile phone that could send encrypted messages that even included a secret Kill-Switch to foil attempts by law enforcement agents to get to its contents. Thousands of criminals used the Anom, certain that they were completely safe from the police - they were wrong - check it out...

August 8, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Andrew Ginter - A 40-Year-Old Backdoor

Ken Thompson is a legendary computer scientist who also made a seminal contribution to computer security in 1983 when he described a nifty hack that could allow an attacker to plant almost undetectable malicious code inside a C compiler. Surprisingly, it turns out a very similar hack was also used in the SolarWinds attack - check it out...

August 1, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Silk Road - The Amazon of Drugs Part 2

Silk Road’s success did more than bring the site more sellers and buyers, it also brought it more attention from law enforcement agencies as well as malicious hackers and other shady characters. Some of these shady characters, it turns out, were part of the task force aiming to shut down Silk Road - check it out...

July 25, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Kurtis Minder - Ransomware Negotiations

Your organization was hit by ransomware, and it is now time to negotiate the terms of a deal that will bring back your data and (hopefully) won’t leave the company’s coffers empty. But are you sure you know what you’re doing? Are you certain that you won’t screw up the negotiations and do more harm than good? Check it out...

July 18, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Silk Road - The Amazon of Drugs Part 1

Ross Ulbricht always had a thing with testing his limits. He was also an avid libertarian who wanted to change the world. So, in 2010, he came up with the idea to build a truly free market: a website where anybody can buy and sell anything anonymously - including illegal drugs - check it out...

July 12, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Jacob Goldstein on the Future Of BitCoin

Will Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies be able to replace money as we know it today? Will governments embrace a future where they have no control over their currencies? Jacob Goldstein (Planet Money, What's Your Problem) talks to Nate Nelson about what the future holds for Bitcoin - check it out...

July 5, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: The Cypherpunks Who Invented Private Digital Money

Years before credit card transactions gave banks and data-brokers free access to our private financial information, a man named David Chaum became the first person to really, materially grapple with the problem of privacy in money. His ideas inspired a movement of "Crypto Anarchists" who aspired to change money forever - check it out...

June 27, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Celebrating Five Years of Malicious Life

This special Malicious Live Ask Us Anything event celebrates the 5 year anniversary of the show: How did Malicious Life come to be? How do we choose the stories we tell? Who was Ran's most memorable guest? And why does Nate keep inserting weird names into the scripts? Check it out…

June 21, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Hackers vs. Spies - The Stratfor Leaks Part 2

Hector - better known as Sabu, the ringleader of the LulzSec hacking group - knew the FBI was on to him. But it turned out that of all the people who broke or disregarded the law in this particular story, only one man had a reason to be worried: Jeremy Hammond - check it out…

June 17, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Hackers vs. Spies - The Stratfor Leaks Part 1

George Friedman and Jeremy Hammond are two very different people: the former is a capitalist middleman, the latter an anarchist-communist hacker. A spy and a hacker; but in certain respects, they’re actually quite similar in what lines they are willing to cross to get to their goal - check it out…

June 13, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Catching A Cybercriminal

AbdelKader Cornelius, a German Threat Researcher and an expert on the cybercrime ecosystem, shares a story about how he helped German police put a sophisticated cybercriminal behind bars by uncovering tiny mistakes the hacker made in the past. - check it out…

May 31, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: What The LinkedIn Hack Taught Us About Storing Passwords

An anonymous hacker posted a list of 6.5 Million encrypted passwords for LinkedIn users on a Russian forum. These passwords were hashed using an outdated and vulnerable hashing algorithm and were also unsalted. Lawsuits followed shortly… can we trust big organizations to keep our secrets safe? Check it out…

May 24, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Inside Operation CuckooBees

We delve into a recently discovered cyber-espionage campaign targeting the Defense, Energy, Aerospace, Biotech and Pharma industries conducted by the Winnti Group (APT 41, BARIUM, and Blackfly) - a Chinese state-sponsored APT group known for its stealth and sophistication...

May 17, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: How to Russia-Proof Your Democracy

In 2007, Estonia suffered a large-scale DDoS attack which crippled many organizations and digital services. Joseph Carson, a Security Scientist and adviser to several governments discusses the lessons learned from that event and how Estonia became 'A Cloud Country' - check it out…

May 9, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Operation Sundevil and the Birth of the EFF

In May 1990, a massive operation carried out by hundreds of Secret Service and FBI agents was focused on a new type of crime: Hacking. But every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and the reaction to Operation Sundevil was the birth of a new power in the cybersphere: the Electronic Frontier Foundation - check it out…

May 2, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: MITRE Attack Flow Project

The MITRE Attack Flow Project is a new way to visualize, analyze and share knowledge about sequences of adversary behavior. Ingrid Skoog, Ass. Director of R&D at the Center for Threat-Informed Defense, and Cybereason CISO Israel Barak discuss the benefits of the MITRE Attack Flow project to Defenders and executives alike - check it out…

April 25, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: The Aaron Swartz Story

When 24-year-old Aaron Swartz was caught scraping millions of science articles off of JSTOR, he faced up to 35 years in prison plus a fine of up to 1 million dollars. Did Aaron's crime justify such a harsh punishment? Check it out…

April 19, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: The Russia-Ukraine Cyberwar

Several weeks after the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, and the lights are still on and other important infrastructure is still operating. Cybereason CEO Lior Div, CTO Yonatan Striem-Amit, and CSO Sam Curry examine what we know so far about the cyber aspect of the conflict...

April 11, 2022 /

No Airplane Hacking Episode

Due to some controversy in the community over the airplane hacking episode, we have decided to remove it from the playlist...

April 5, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: DIE - A New Paradigm for Cybersecurity

DIE, an acronym for Distributed, Immutable and Ephemeral, is a framework for designing secure systems where we should treat our precious data less like pets and more like cattle. Sound confusing? New paradigms always are - check it out…

March 28, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Cyber PTSD

We usually count the damage from a cyberattack in Dollars and Euros, but the psychological damage to the victims is rarely discussed. Can scams, hacks, and breaches lead to Cyber Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Check it out…

March 22, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: How Resilient Is Our Banking System?

What is the most critical of all critical infrastructure? According to Jeff Engles, it's our Banking and Finance systems - Jeff joins us to discuss the resilience of our financial system and potential worst-case scenarios - check it out…

March 16, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Crypto AG Part 3 - The Truth is Revealed

This final episode of the series is going to explore how the Crypto AG spying operation was kept secret for over 70 years from governments, military and intelligence services, and even the company’s own personnel - check it out…

March 10, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Quantum Cybersecurity

Quantum Computing is a revolutionary technology, but what's the threat posed by Quantum attacks on encryption, and is the first major attack even closer than most of us think? Check it out…

March 7, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Crypto AG Part 2 - The Death of Bo Jr.

How did Boris Hagelin succeed in selling compromised cipher machines to half the world over more than 50 years? Was there some kind of backdoor - or it was more clever than that? Check it out…

February 28, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Why Do APTs Use Ransomware?

Threat Research lead Assaf Dahan discusses new discoveries about Iranian APTs Moses Staff and Phosphorus that blur the line between state-sponsored attacks and criminal activity - check it out…

February 22, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Crypto AG - The Greatest Espionage Operation Ever Part 1

General McArthur, Egypt's Anwar Sadat, and Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini: these are just a few of the dozens (likely hundreds) of targets in the biggest, most ambitious hacking operation ever - check it out…

February 14, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Why Aren't SMBs Investing in Cybersecurity?

Attacks against Small-to-Medium size businesses (SMBs) accounts for 40% to 50% of all data breaches. Josh Ablett, founder and CISO of Adelia Risk, discusses security for SMBs - spoiler: it's not a pretty picture - check it out…

February 7, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: The Bloody Origins of Israel's Cybersecurity Industry

In this episode, we go back to the Yom Kippur War of 1973 to discover how a national trauma and an intelligence failure paved the way for Israel to become a cybersecurity mini-empire - check it out…

January 31, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Hacker Highschool

Pete Herzog, co-founder of ISECOM and Hacker Highschool, wants our kids to learn about cybersecurity - especially the more advanced stuff like security analysis and hacking - check it out...

January 24, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: The Mystery of Cicada 3301

A cryptic message posted on 4Chan in January 2012 started thousands of crypto-lovers competing to be the first to crack the puzzles created by the mysterious Cicada 3301. Who is Cicada3301, and what are their goals? Check it out...

January 18, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: How the Internet Changed the NSA

Jeff Man was one of the first people at the NSA to make the transition from hardware to software, and he shares with us his experiences from that period - check it out…

January 10, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Does Code === Free Speech?

When the FBI asked Apple to write code that would give the FBI access to a suspect's iPhone, Apple refused, arguing it violates the First Amendment - check it out…

January 4, 2022 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Logout4Shell - A Digital Vaccine for Log4Shell

Yonatan Striem-Amit, CTO & Co-Founder of Cybereason discusses the Log4j vulnerability and the unusual vaccine dubbed Logout4Shell that uses the the Log4Shell exploit to close the vulnerability - check it out…

December 27, 2021 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Shawn Carpenter - A Cyber Vigilante

Shawn Carpenter - an employee of Sandia National Laboratory - was at a crossroads: should he ignore a Chinese attack against U.S. targets as his superiors ordered him to do, or continue investigating the case on his own? Check it out…

December 20, 2021 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Ransomware Attackers Don’t Take Holidays

Ken Westin, Director of Security Strategy, discusses the findings in recent report "Organizations at Risk: Ransomware Attackers Don’t Take Holidays" - including why ransomware attacks today are so effective and dangerous - check it out...

December 13, 2021 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Tay: A Teenage Bot Gone Rogue

Microsoft Tay could tweet, answer questions and even make its own memes - but within mere hours of going live, Tay began outputting racist, anti-Semitic and misogynist tweets - check it out...

December 6, 2021 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Wild West Hackin' Fest

Black Hills Infosec founder John Strand discusses The Wild West Hackin’ Fest - a unique security conference that emphasizes diversity and lowering the barriers to entering the world of security...

November 29, 2021 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Inside Operation Flyhook Part 2

To capture Alexey Ivanov and his business partner and bring them to justice, the FBI created an elaborate ruse: a fake company named Invita, complete with a fake website and a fake office building - check it out...

November 22, 2021 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Inside IP/BGP Hijacking

In 2016 communications between Canada and Korea were hijacked, and in 2017 traffic from Sweden and Norway was also hijacked - all routed to China. What is IP/BGP Hijacking and what are its security implications? Check it out...

November 15, 2021 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Inside Operation Flyhook Part 1

Alexey Ivanov thought he had a brilliant idea: hack American corporations and then blackmail them to force them to contract his services as a security consultant - so what could go wrong? Check it out...

November 8, 2021 /

Malicious Life Podcast: In Defense of the NSA

The NSA is one of the world's most formidable intelligence operations. We spoke at length with Ira Winkler, CISO, Skyline Technology Solutions, who started his career at the NSA - check it out...

November 1, 2021 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Marcus Hutchins - A Controversial Hero

Marcus Hutchins became a hero for stopping the WannaCry attacks despite his troubled past as the teenage hacker who created the dangerous rootkit KRONOS - should a criminal-turned-hero be punished for past crimes? Check it out...

October 25, 2021 /

Malicious Life Podcast: Operation GhostShell - An Iranian Espionage Campaign

Newly identified Iranian threat actor MalKamak that has been leveraging a new and sophisticated RAT (remote access trojan) dubbed ShellClient that abuses Dropbox for C2 (command and control)...

October 18, 2021 /