The Cybersecurity Defenders Podcast

Intel Chat with Matt Bromiley and Chris Luft.
• Japan approves a ¥10 billion (about $63 million) emergency cybersecurity package, announced November 6, to expand incident response, cyber investigations, AI-assisted defenses and victim recovery, backing the Active Cyber Defense law that took effect October 1. TrendAI counts more than 600 publicly reported incidents in the first nine months of 2026, already past 2025's 594, after ransomware at Nichirei and Asahi and breaches at GMO Internet Group. Chris: $63M doesn't go far at Japan's scale. Matt reads it as an exploratory starting fund focused on faster disclosure, then widens it out: national cyber strategies were written before AI and now need redoing, some countries are "showing up to an F1 race with a horse", and AI sovereignty raises a hard question. Do you build your own LLM, rely on another country's frontier model, or find a supplier you trust, the way governments once bought network hardware?
• Apache patches CVE-2026-119618, a critical (CVSS 9.8) remote code execution race condition in mod_http2 affecting Apache HTTP Server 2.4.55 through 2.4.70, fixed in 2.4.71. Only servers with HTTP/2 enabled are affected; disabling HTTP/2 is the stopgap. It was found independently by Anthropic's OSS scanner and by Anthony Weems and Simon Scannell of Google Cloud Vulnerability Research. Wiz sees affected versions in 64% of cloud environments. The release also fixes CVE-2026-106023 and CVE-2026-109163. Three words: patch, patch, patch. Chris: humans aren't very good at writing code, and machines are better at this part of the game. Matt: was it a vulnerability when the code was written, or did new capabilities make it one?
• wfx-loot (Aikido Security): about 4,800 compromised developer and bot accounts sent probe pull requests to 61,764 GitHub repositories, and the credential stealer executed in more than 1,800 of them through GitHub Actions workflows, CI shell scripts and npm install hooks. It harvests GitHub tokens, repository secrets, cloud credentials and AI API keys, then reaches for persistence in AWS and Azure. StepSecurity traced 173 probe PRs to tokens issued to the Fly.io GitHub app, with no sign Fly.io itself was compromised. Chris: AI is multiplying the PRs every team merges, and malicious changes get harder to spot in that noise. Matt: some of those PRs were probably approved and merged autonomously, and over-permissioned developer tooling is the theme.
• France attributes the October 11 sabotage of refrigeration controllers at about 700 retail locations, which caused tens of millions of euros in losses and about 20 fires, to Shahid Kaveh, a cyber unit tied to Iran's IRGC. Attackers reached exposed Danfoss and Dixell controllers and forced endless heating cycles with safety alerts switched off; Carrefour, Casino, Leclerc, Intermarché, Metro and Coopérative U were among those hit. Chris retracts last week's guess that Russia was behind the fridge attacks. Matt on hacktivist personas and "look what I can do". CERT-FR's best advice: don't put this stuff on the internet. Chris closes on Cory Doctorow's story about appliances that stop working when the company behind them goes under.
Stories covered:
• https://www.darkreading.com/cybersecurity-operations/japan-emergency-funding-cybersecurity-ai-assisted-breaches
• https://www.securityweek.com/apache-patches-critical-http-server-rce-found-by-anthropic-google/
• https://www.securityweek.com/attacker-targets-60000-github-repositories-in-credential-theft-campaign/
• https://thehackernews.com/2026/11/france-blames-iran-for-sabotage-attack.html
Chapters:
0:00 Captain Underpants and core memories
2:07 A trillion-dollar scandal and the human side
4:32 Japan's ¥10B emergency cybersecurity package
6:49 $63M doesn't go far at Japan's scale
10:08 Rewriting national cyber strategy for AI
11:12 Showing up to an F1 race with a horse
13:05 AI sovereignty and the kill switch
15:31 ¥10B won't build you an LLM
17:31 Apache HTTP/2 RCE found by Anthropic and Google
21:10 Humans aren't very good at writing code
21:39 Was it a vulnerability when it was written?
25:08 wfx-loot: 60,000 GitHub repositories probed
29:30 AI is taxing the pipes
30:43 PRs merged autonomously
31:58 France blames Iran for the refrigeration sabotage
34:30 Why would Iran attack Europe?
36:59 Don't put this stuff on the internet
37:24 Cory Doctorow and the dishwasher that stopped working
The Cybersecurity Defenders Podcast — a podcast about cybersecurity and the people that keep the internet safe. New episodes drop weekly.
Subscribe wherever you listen:
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ep00zeY3S8ffZ4o0UeSps
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-cybersecurity-defenders-podcast/id1649981740
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@limacharlieio
Learn more about LimaCharlie: https://limacharlie.io
#cybersecurity #infosec #supplychain #ICS #AI

Today we're speaking with Jordan Burris, Head of Public Sector at Socure, about digital identity and AI-driven fraud: how you prove a person is who they say they are when stolen data, deepfakes and AI agents are all in play.
Jordan leads Socure's work helping government agencies combat identity fraud and strengthen digital trust. Before joining Socure he served as Chief of Staff to the U.S. Federal CIO at the White House, helping oversee more than $90 billion in federal IT spending and advance national cybersecurity and technology priorities. He brings more than 15 years of experience in government technology.
In this conversation: applying to the White House through USA Jobs, living through the SolarWinds response and the push toward zero trust, why knowledge-based security questions are an open door, why you should assume your personal information is already stolen, how the cost of a sophisticated fraud attack fell from more than $20,000 to pennies, why the trade-off between security and user experience is a false choice, synthetic identities on video calls, telling a legitimate AI agent from a hostile one, and what happens when AI meets quantum computing.
Learn more at https://www.socure.com/
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Intel Chat with Matt Bromiley and Chris Luft.
• Binance discloses the $6.34 billion heist attempt, the largest attempted crypto theft on record. The FBI and TRM Security attribute it to North Korea's TraderTraitor. It began in June with an engineer installing a malicious Homebrew, then a fake recruiter and two fake job interviews delivered a "coding assignment" that swapped out a dev-tool component and evaded endpoint detection. In October the attackers used that machine and an internal AI tool to reach two more engineering devices, took a credential for the container deployment platform, ran a malicious container against the wallet signing service, and abused Ethereum's EIP-7702 delegation with 50 signing transactions so funds moved outside normal withdrawals. Multi-party computation meant there was no single key to revoke the authorizations. Binance froze or intercepted about $2.85 billion. Matt: we've warned about fake-recruiter attacks for months, and who takes a job interview on their work laptop? Hats off to the responders for getting this far in a week, but it's a breakdown in a human process, and training your people is the real ROI. Chris did the math: in $100 bills it's 63.5 tons of cash, three semi-trailers.
• Refrigeration attacks hit supermarkets in seven European countries. Attackers flipped refrigeration controls into defrost mode, pushing temperatures as high as 50 °C, at Delhaize stores in Belgium and Luxembourg, Carrefour, Spar, Ikea Mons, ICA and Coop in Sweden, SuperValu in Ireland and more. Refrigeration firm Sabcobel confirmed the attack and says the fix needs physical modifications, not just software. Danfoss reported attacks at businesses in the Netherlands. The attackers are unidentified, and US authorities are looking at similar malfunctions at American military bases. Matt recorded from one of the affected countries: who is behind it and why, and was the fridge facing the internet or reached through the store's management plane? One of those is close to negligence.
• FrostyNeighbor (UNC1151): ESET documents the first destructive attack by a Belarus-aligned actor, against a Ukrainian manufacturer important to the transportation sector, using Chisel, UltraVNC, Cobalt Strike and a VBScript wiper pushed through Group Policy. ESET sees Belarus-aligned groups acting as proxies or force multipliers for Russia; Recorded Future cautions against assuming Russian operational control. Matt: UNC1151 is a very early Mandiant handle, so this group has been around a long time. Chris: hitting the drone supply chain shows how cyber supports kinetic operations on the front line.
• Google dismantles the XCPE botnet: more than 1.3 million devices, mostly Android TV set-top boxes, with the malware built in by the manufacturer, Videostrong Technology, and access sold to affiliates for ad fraud, residential proxies and more. A three-stage design started from a backdoor on the /oem/ partition. Google banned Videostrong from preloading Google apps, went after the infrastructure with Japan's National Police Agency and industry partners, and says it likely cut off at least 10 million more devices. Chris and Matt on smart TVs that watch you, and whether the toothbrush can run Doom.
Stories covered:
• https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/11/binance-says-hackers-who-stole-billions-in-crypto-spent-months-planning-heist/
• https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq1kd1nee80eo
• https://www.darkreading.com/physical-security/russia-cyber-war-belarus-steps-forward
• https://www.securityweek.com/google-dismantles-xcpe-botnet-of-1-3-million-android-devices/
Chapters:
0:00 The robot Renaissance
1:02 Binance and the $6.34 billion elephant in the room
5:06 Who takes a job interview on their work laptop?
8:01 63.5 tons of cash, three semi-trailers
8:42 A modern-day Frankenstein of an attack
11:01 A breakdown in a human process: train your people
11:46 Paying back the losses
12:15 Refrigeration attacks on European supermarkets
14:43 Real-world impact, and who might be behind it
15:09 Matt is in one of the affected countries
17:04 Internet-facing fridge or the management plane?
19:07 FrostyNeighbor: Belarus's first destructive attack in Ukraine
22:47 UNC1151, a very early handle
25:02 Hitting the drone supply chain
26:23 Google dismantles the XCPE botnet
29:08 Your TVs are watching you
32:30 But can the toothbrush run Doom?
33:16 Chris's new studio
The Cybersecurity Defenders Podcast — a podcast about cybersecurity and the people that keep the internet safe. New episodes drop weekly.
Subscribe wherever you listen:
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ep00zeY3S8ffZ4o0UeSps
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-cybersecurity-defenders-podcast/id1649981740
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@limacharlieio
Learn more about LimaCharlie: https://limacharlie.io
#cybersecurity #infosec #northkorea #ICS #botnet

Intel Chat with Matt Bromiley and Chris Luft.
• Citrix NetScaler pre-auth command injection, CVE-2026-88771 (CVSS 9.5). watchTowr Labs diffed vulnerable and patched builds and found the bug not in the Packet Engine but in a Perl maintenance script that hunts for crash dumps: it pulls data out of diagnostic logs and drops it into a shell command unvalidated. Put a payload in the username field of an unauthenticated login, NetScaler logs it, and the script later runs it as root (headers and request parameters work too, and execution can lag up to 24 hours). Default configurations are affected and it was exploited before a patch existed; it's one of eight fixes in the Citrix advisory, alongside a second exploited memory overflow. Fixed in the 13.1 and 14.1 branches. Chris: forget the old Perl script, the real failure is not scrubbing input. Matt: if you run these appliances, go read the advisory and patch, or take the service offline.
• OpenAI's autonomous agents caused a partial Wikimedia outage. Per Dark Reading, Wikimedia found unauthorized edits to its wiki sandboxes, a citation tool reconfigured to work as a proxy to external services, failed attempts on its Etherpad, and hundreds of thousands of queries against the Wikidata Query Service, which likely caused a partial outage in May. CTPO Selena Deckelmann confirmed the incidents; none of the agents were approved bots. Matt's read: call it what it is, a DDoS. No model wakes up and decides to attack a wiki. "If you were allowed to escape a sandbox, it's because someone put a ladder there for you," and putting a brick on the accelerator and stepping out of the car is not a defense. Chris: what happens when open-weight models on home GPUs can do the same? Do agents end up needing license plates?
• MonsterCloud's owner charged with selling "proprietary decryption" that was really paying the ransom. Prosecutors say Zohar Pinhasi (aka Zack Silver and Zack Green) negotiated with the same groups that hit his clients and bought the keys, paying more than $8 million and billing victims more than $19 million. In one case $8,200 to an affiliate became a ~$150,000 invoice. He faces wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy charges. Matt: he was one honest sentence away from being a legitimate negotiator, so vet whoever you hire to negotiate.
• Alleged ShinyHunters leader arrested in Jordan and cooperating with the FBI. SecurityWeek identifies him as Saif al-Din Khader ("Rey"), a teenager from Amman also tied to Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters, arrested shortly after the group defaced the FBI's recruitment site and claimed 2-3 TB of data. Dutch police separately arrested a 24-year-old in Amsterdam the FBI ties to attacks on 140+ organizations and at least $70 million in extortion; reporting names him as Pepijn van der Stap. Brian Krebs reports Khader put an Umbreon image on the defaced FBI site, van der Stap's old nickname, apparently to point investigators at him. Chris: don't poke the bear, and there's no honor among thieves.
Stories covered:
• https://labs.watchtowr.com/oh-look-the-foot-gun-went-off-again-citrix-netscaler-preauth-command-injection-cve-2026-88771/
• https://www.darkreading.com/cyberattacks-data-breaches/openai-agent-escape-causes-wikimedia-service-outage
• https://www.securityweek.com/fake-decryption-tools-masked-11m-markup-in-ransomware-recovery-scheme/
• https://www.securityweek.com/alleged-shinyhunters-leader-arrested-in-jordan/
Chapters:
0:00 Seasons change, and the cost of software goes to zero
1:59 Home computers are going to be a target again
2:38 "It's darkest before it goes pitch black"
3:25 Citrix NetScaler pre-auth command injection (CVE-2026-88771)
6:04 Forget the old Perl script, scrub your input
7:00 If you're a defender: read the advisory and patch
9:24 Please don't write blog posts like this
9:50 OpenAI agents cause a Wikimedia outage
13:16 What happens when everyone sends agents across the web?
13:40 "ChatGPT launched a DDoS attack"
16:58 No LLM ever woke up and decided to attack a wiki
17:38 "Someone put a ladder there for you"
18:19 When open-weight models can do this at home
19:45 "My LLM went crazy" is not a defense
20:15 A driver's license for the internet?
20:52 MonsterCloud: ransomware recovery that just paid the ransom
23:53 A middleman with an 18x markup
26:17 Vet your negotiator
26:44 Alleged ShinyHunters leader arrested in Jordan
28:49 The Umbreon frame-up
29:31 No honor among thieves
32:08 Maybe biweekly is the way to do it
The Cybersecurity Defenders Podcast — a podcast about cybersecurity and the people that keep the internet safe. New episodes drop weekly.
Subscribe wherever you listen:
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ep00zeY3S8ffZ4o0UeSps
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-cybersecurity-defenders-podcast/id1649981740
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@limacharlieio
Learn more about LimaCharlie: https://limacharlie.io
#cybersecurity #infosec #ransomware #AIsecurity #threatintel

Today we're speaking with Geoffrey Mattson, CEO of SecureAuth, about identity and authority for AI agents: what changes when software stops being something a human uses and starts taking actions on its own.
Geoffrey is a serial entrepreneur working at the intersection of cybersecurity and AI. Before SecureAuth he was CEO of Xage Security and co-founded MistNet.ai (acquired by LogRhythm), after product and engineering leadership roles at Juniper Networks, Huawei, Nortel and Bell Labs across Europe, Asia and the U.S. At SecureAuth he is focused on how organizations manage the identity, permissions and authority of autonomous agents.
In this conversation: why an agent has the power of a software process with the unpredictability of a human, the difference between delegating authority and handing over your credentials, tightly scoped, time-bound tokens that get subdivided as work passes to sub-agents, the wild west of MCP servers, bringing shadow agents into the light, why guardrails can speed AI adoption up rather than slow it down, and what a solo attacker running a network of LLMs means for small and mid-sized businesses.
Learn more at https://www.secureauth.com/
Support our show by sharing your favorite episodes with a friend, subscribe, give us a rating or leave a comment on your podcast platform.
This podcast is brought to you by LimaCharlie, maker of the SecOps Cloud Platform, infrastructure for SecOps where everything is built API first. Scale with confidence as your business grows. Start today for free at https://limacharlie.io/
Subscribe to The Cybersecurity Defenders Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ep00zeY3S8ffZ4o0UeSps