Lock and Code

Online scammers were seen this August stooping to a new low—abusing local funerals to steal from bereaved family and friends.

Cybercrime has never been a job of morals (calling it a “job” is already lending it too much credit), but, for many years, scams wavered between clever and brusque. Take the “Nigerian prince” email scam which has plagued victims for close to two decades. In it, would-be victims would receive a mysterious, unwanted message from alleged royalty, and, in exchange for a little help in moving funds across international borders, would be handsomely rewarded.

The scam was preposterous but effective—in fact, in 2019, CNBC reported that this very same “Nigerian prince” scam campaign resulted in $700,000 in losses for victims in the United States.

Since then, scams have evolved dramatically.

Cybercriminals today willl send deceptive emails claiming to come from Netflix, or Google, or Uber, tricking victims into “resetting” their passwords. Cybercriminals will leverage global crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic, and send fraudulent requests for donations to nonprofits and hospital funds. And, time and again, cybercriminals will find a way to play on our emotions—be they fear, or urgency, or even affection—to lure us into unsafe places online.

This summer, Malwarebytes social media manager Zach Hinkle encountered one such scam, and it happened while attending a funeral for a friend. In a campaign that Malwarebytes Labs is calling the “Facebook funeral live stream scam,” attendees at real funerals are being tricked into potentially signing up for a “live stream” service of the funerals they just attended.

Today on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Hinkle and Malwarebytes security researcher Pieter Arntz about the Facebook funeral live stream scam, what potential victims have to watch out for, and how cybercriminals are targeting actual, grieving family members with such foul deceit. Hinkle also describes what he felt in the moment of trying to not only take the scam down, but to protect his friends from falling for it.

“You’re grieving… and you go through a service and you’re feeling all these emotions, and then the emotion you feel is anger because someone is trying to take advantage of friends and loved ones, of somebody who has just died. That’s so appalling”

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

On August 15, the city of San Francisco launched an entirely new fight against the world of deepfake porn—it sued the websites that make the abusive material so easy to create.

“Deepfakes,” as they’re often called, are fake images and videos that utilize artificial intelligence to swap the face of one person onto the body of another. The technology went viral in the late 2010s, as independent film editors would swap the actors of one film for another—replacing, say, Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future with Tom Holland.

But very soon into the technology’s debut, it began being used to create pornographic images of actresses, celebrities, and, more recently, everyday high schoolers and college students. Similar to the threat of “revenge porn,” in which abusive exes extort their past partners with the potential release of sexually explicit photos and videos, “deepfake porn” is sometimes used to tarnish someone’s reputation or to embarrass them amongst friends and family.

But deepfake porn is slightly different from the traditional understanding of “revenge porn” in that it can be created without any real relationship to the victim. Entire groups of strangers can take the image of one person and put it onto the body of a sex worker, or an adult film star, or another person who was filmed having sex or posing nude.

The technology to create deepfake porn is more accessible than ever, and it’s led to a global crisis for teenage girls.

In October of 2023, a reported group of more than 30 girls at a high school in New Jersey had their likenesses used by classmates to make sexually explicit and pornographic deepfakes. In March of this year, two teenage boys were arrested in Miami, Florida for allegedly creating deepfake nudes of male and female classmates who were between the ages of 12 and 13. And at the start of September, this month, the BBC reported that police in South Korea were investigating deepfake pornography rings at two major universities.

While individual schools and local police departments in the United States are tackling deepfake porn harassment as it arises—with suspensions, expulsions, and arrests—the process is slow and reactive.

Which is partly why San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu and his team took aim at not the individuals who create and spread deepfake porn, but at the websites that make it so easy to do so.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu about his team’s lawsuit against 16 deepfake porn websites, the city’s history in protecting Californians, and the severity of abuse that these websites offer as a paid service.

“At least one of these websites specifically promotes the non-consensual nature of this. I’ll just quote: ‘Imagine wasting time taking her out on dates when you can just use website X to get her nudes.’”

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

On August 24, at an airport just outside of Paris, a man named Pavel Durov was detained for questioning by French investigators. Just days later, the same man was charged in crimes related to the distribution of child pornography and illicit transactions, such as drug trafficking and fraud.

Durov is the CEO and founder of the messaging and communications app Telegram. Though Durov holds citizenship in France and the United Arab Emirates—where Telegram is based—he was born and lived for many years in Russia, where he started his first social media company, Vkontakte. The Facebook-esque platform gained popularity in Russia, not just amongst users, but also the watchful eye of the government.

Following a prolonged battle regarding the control of Vkontake—which included government demands to deliver user information and to shut down accounts that helped organize protests against Vladimir Putin in 2012—Durov eventually left the company and the country all together.

But more than 10 years later, Durov is once again finding himself a person of interest for government affairs, facing several charges now in France where, while he is not in jail, he has been ordered to stay.

After Durov’s arrest, the X account for Telegram responded, saying:

“Telegram abides by EU laws, including the Digital Services Act—its moderation is within industry standards and constantly improving. Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe. It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of the platform.”

But how true is that?

In the United States, companies themselves, such as YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook often respond to violations of “copyright”—the protection that gets violated when a random user posts clips or full versions of movies, television shows, and music. And the same companies get involved when certain types of harassment, hate speech, and violent threats are posted on public channels for users to see.

This work, called “content moderation,” is standard practice for many technology and social media platforms today, but there’s a chance that Durov’s arrest isn’t related to content moderation at all. Instead, it may be related to the things that Telegram users say in private to one another over end-to-end encrypted chats.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Electronic Frontier Foundation Director of Cybersecurity Eva Galperin about Telegram, its features, and whether Durov’s arrest is an escalation of content moderation gone wrong or the latest skirmish in government efforts to break end-to-end encryption.

“Chances are that these are requests around content that Telegram can see, but if [the requests] touch end-to-end encrypted content, then I have to flip tables.”

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

Every age group uses the internet a little bit differently, and it turns out for at least one Gen Z teen in the Bay Area, the classic approach to cyberecurity—defending against viruses, ransomware, worms, and more—is the least of her concerns. Of far more importance is Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Today, the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz revisits a prior episode from 2023 about what teenagers fear the most about going online. The conversation is a strong reminder that when America’s youngest generations experience online is far from the same experience that Millennials, Gen X’ers, and Baby Boomers had with their own introduction to the internet.

Even stronger proof of this is found in recent research that Malwarebytes debuted this summer about how people in committed relationships share their locations, passwords, and devices with one another. As detailed in the larger report, “What’s mine is yours: How couples share an all-access pass to their digital lives,” Gen Z respondents were the most likely to say that they got a feeling of safety when sharing their locations with significant others.

But a wrinkle appeared in that behavior, according to the same research: Gen Z was also the most likely to say that they only shared their locations because their partners forced them to do so.

In our full conversation from last year, we speak with Nitya Sharma about how her “favorite app” to use with friends is “Find My” on iPhone, the dangers are of AI “sneak attacks,” and why she simply cannot be bothered about malware. 

“I know that there’s a threat of sharing information with bad people and then abusing it, but I just don’t know what you would do with it. Show up to my house and try to kill me?” 

Tune in today to listen to the full conversation.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

Somewhere out there is a romantic AI chatbot that wants to know everything about you. But in a revealing overlap, other AI tools—which are developed and popularized by far larger companies in technology—could crave the very same thing.

For AI tools of any type, our data is key.

In the nearly two years since OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT to the public, the biggest names in technology have raced to compete. Meta announced Llama. Google revealed Gemini. And Microsoft debuted Copilot.

All these AI features function in similar ways: After having been trained on mountains of text, videos, images, and more, these tools answer users’ questions in immediate and contextually relevant ways. Perhaps that means taking a popular recipe and making it vegetarian friendly. Or maybe that involves developing a workout routine for someone who is recovering from a new knee injury.

Whatever the ask, the more data that an AI tool has already digested, the better it can deliver answers.

Interestingly, romantic AI chatbots operate in almost the same way, as the more information that a user gives about themselves, the more intimate and personal the AI chatbot’s responses can appear.

But where any part of our online world demands more data, questions around privacy arise.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Zoë MacDonald, content creator for Privacy Not Included at Mozilla about romantic AI tools and how users can protect their privacy from ChatGPT and other AI chatbots.

When in doubt, MacDonald said, stick to a simple rule:

“I would suggest that people don’t share their personal information with an AI chatbot.”

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

In the world of business cybersecurity, the powerful technology known as “Security Information and Event Management” is sometimes thwarted by the most unexpected actors—the very people setting it up.

Security Information and Event Management—or SIEM—is a term used to describe data-collecting products that businesses rely on to make sense of everything going on inside their network, in the hopes of catching and stopping cyberattacks. SIEM systems can log events and information across an entire organization and its networks. When properly set up, SIEMs can collect activity data from work-issued devices, vital servers, and even the software that an organization rolls out to its workforce. The purpose of all this collection is to catch what might easily be missed.

For instance, SIEMs can collect information about repeated login attempts occurring at 2:00 am from a set of login credentials that belong to an employee who doesn’t typically start their day until 8:00 am. SIEMs can also collect whether the login credentials of an employee with typically low access privileges are being used to attempt to log into security systems far beyond their job scope. SIEMs must also take in the data from an Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tool, and they can hoover up nearly anything that a security team wants—from printer logs, to firewall logs, to individual uses of PowerShell.

But just because a SIEM can collect something, doesn’t necessarily mean that it should.

Log activity for an organization of 1,000 employees is tremendous, and the collection of frequent activity could bog down a SIEM with noise, slow down a security team with useless data, and rack up serious expenses for a company.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Microsoft cloud solution architect Jess Dodson about how companies and organizations can set up, manage, and maintain their SIEMs, along with what advertising pitfalls to avoid when doing their shopping. Plus, Dodson warns about one of the simplest mistakes in trying to save budget—setting up arbitrary data caps on collection that could leave an organization blind.

“A small SMB organization … were trying to save costs, so they went and looked at what they were collecting and they found their biggest ingestion point,” Dodson said. “And what their biggest ingestion point was was their Windows security events, and then they looked further and looked for the event IDs that were costing them the most, and so they got rid of those.”

Dodson continued:

“Problem was the ones they got rid of were their Log On/Log Off events, which I think most people would agree is kind of important from a security perspective.”

Tune in today to listen to the full conversation.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

Full-time software engineer and part-time Twitch streamer Ali Diamond is used to seeing herself on screen, probably because she’s the one who turns the camera on.

But when Diamond received a Direct Message (DM) on Twitter earlier this year, she learned that her likeness had been recreated across a sample of AI-generated images, entirely without her consent.

On the AI art sharing platform Civitai, Diamond discovered that a stranger had created an “AI image model” that was fashioned after her. The model was available for download so that, conceivably, other members of the community could generate their own images of Diamond—or, at least, the AI version of her. To show just what the AI model was capable of, its creator shared a few examples of what he’d made: There was AI Diamond standing what looked at a music festival, AI Diamond with her head tilted up and smiling, and AI Diamond wearing, what the real Diamond would later describe, as an “ugly ass ****ing hat.”

AI image generation is seemingly lawless right now.

Popular AI image generators, like Stable Diffusion, Dall-E, and Midjourney, have faced valid criticisms from human artists that these generators are copying their labor to output derivative works, a sort of AI plagiarism. AI image moderation, on the other hand, has posed a problem not only for AI art communities, but for major social media networks, too, as anyone can seemingly create AI-generated images of someone else—without that person’s consent—and distribute those images online. It happened earlier this year when AI-generated, sexually explicit images of Taylor Swift were seen by millions of people on Twitter before the company took those images down.

In that instance, Swift had the support of countless fans who reported each post they found on Twitter that shared the images.

But what happens when someone has to defend themselves against an AI model made of their likeness, without their consent?

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Ali Diamond about finding an AI model of herself, what the creator had to say about making the model, and what the privacy and security implications are for everyday people whose likenesses have been stolen against their will.

For Diamond, the experience was unwelcome and new, as she’d never experimented using AI image generation on herself.

“I’ve never put my face into any of those AI services. As someone who has a love of cybersecurity and an interest in it… you’re collecting faces to do what?”

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

More than 20 years ago, a law that the United States would eventually use to justify the warrantless collection of Americans’ phone call records actually started out as a warning sign against an entirely different target: Libraries.

Not two months after terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, Congress responded with the passage of The USA Patriot Act. Originally championed as a tool to fight terrorism, The Patriot Act, as introduced, allowed the FBI to request “any tangible things” from businesses, organizations, and people during investigations into alleged terrorist activity. Those “tangible things,” the law said, included “books, records, papers, documents, and other items.”

Or, to put it a different way: things you’d find in a library and records of the things you’d check out from a library. The concern around this language was so strong that this section of the USA Patriot Act got a new moniker amongst the public: “The library provision.”

The Patriot Act passed, and years later, the public was told that, all along, the US government wasn’t interested in library records.

But those government assurances are old.

What remains true is that libraries and librarians want to maintain the privacy of your records. And what also remains true is that the government looks anywhere it can for information to aid investigations into national security, terrorism, human trafficking, illegal immigration, and more.

What’s changed, however, is that companies that libraries have relied on for published materials and collections—Thomson Reuters, Reed Elsevier, Lexis Nexis—have reimagined themselves as big data companies. And they’ve lined up to provide newly collected data to the government, particularly to agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

There are many layers to this data web, and libraries are seemingly stuck in the middle.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Sarah Lamdan, deputy director Office of Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association, about library privacy in the digital age, whether police are legitimately interested in what the public is reading, and how a small number of major publishing companies suddenly started aiding the work of government surveillance:

“Because to me, these companies were information providers. These companies were library vendors. They’re companies that we work with because they published science journals and they published court reporters. I did not know them as surveillance companies.”

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

🎶 Ready to know what Malwarebytes knows?

Ask us your questions and get some answers.

What is a passphrase and what makes it—what’s the word?

Strong? 🎶

Every day, countless readers, listeners, posters, and users ask us questions about some of the most commonly cited topics and terminology in cybersecurity. What are passkeys? Is it safer to use a website or an app? How can I stay safe from a ransomware attack? What is the dark web? And why can’t cybercriminals simply be caught and stopped?

For some cybersecurity experts, these questions may sound too “basic”—easily researched online and not worth the time or patience to answer. But those experts would be wrong.

In cybersecurity, so much of the work involves helping people take personal actions to stay safe online. That means it’s on cybersecurity companies and practitioners to provide clarity when the public is asking for it. it’s on us to provide clarity. Without this type of guidance, people are less secure, scammers are more successful, and clumsy, fixable mistakes are rarely addressed.

This is why, this summer, Malwarebytes is working harder on meeting people where they are. For weeks, we’ve been collecting questions from our users about WiFi security, data privacy, app settings, device passcodes, and identity protection.

All of these questions—no matter their level of understanding—are appreciated, as they help the team at Malwarebytes understand where to improve its communication. In cybersecurity, it is critical to create an environment where, for every single person seeking help, it’s safe to ask. It’s safe to ask what’s on their mind, safe to ask what confuses them, and safe to ask what they might even find embarrassing.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Malwarebytes Product Marketing Manager Tjitske de Vries about the modern rules around passwords, the difficulties of stopping criminals on the dark web, and why online scams hurt people far beyond their financial repercussions.

“We had [an] 83-year-old man who was afraid to talk to his wife for three days because he had received… a sextortion scam… This is how they get people, and it’s horrible.”

Tune in today

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

This is a story about how the FBI got everything it wanted.

For decades, law enforcement and intelligence agencies across the world have lamented the availability of modern technology that allows suspected criminals to hide their communications from legal scrutiny. This long-standing debate has sometimes spilled into the public view, as it did in 2016, when the FBI demanded that Apple unlock an iPhone used during a terrorist attack in the California city of San Bernardino. Apple pushed back on the FBI’s request, arguing that the company could only retrieve data from the iPhone in question by writing new software with global consequences for security and privacy.

“The only way to get information—at least currently, the only way we know,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook, “would be to write a piece of software that we view as sort of the equivalent of cancer.”

The standoff held the public’s attention for months, until the FBI relied on a third party to crack into the device.

But just a couple of years later, the FBI had obtained an even bigger backdoor into the communication channels of underground crime networks around the world, and they did it almost entirely off the radar.

It all happened with the help of Anom, a budding company behind an allegedly “secure” phone that promised users a bevvy of secretive technological features, like end-to-end encrypted messaging, remote data wiping, secure storage vaults, and even voice scrambling. But, unbeknownst to Anom’s users, the entire company was a front for law enforcement. On Anom phones, every message, every photo, every piece of incriminating evidence, and every order to kill someone, was collected and delivered, in full view, to the FBI.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with 404 Media cofounder and investigative reporter Joseph Cox about the wild, true story of Anom. How did it work, was it “legal,” where did the FBI learn to run a tech startup, and why, amidst decades of debate, are some people ignoring the one real-life example of global forces successfully installing a backdoor into a company?

The public…and law enforcement, as well, [have] had to speculate about what a backdoor in a tech product would actually look like. Well, here’s the answer. This is literally what happens when there is a backdoor, and I find it crazy that not more people are paying attention to it.

Joseph Cox, author, Dark Wire, and 404 Media cofounder

Tune in today.

Cox’s investigation into Anom, presented in his book titled Dark Wire, publishes June 4.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

The irrigation of the internet is coming.

For decades, we’ve accessed the internet much like how we, so long ago, accessed water—by traveling to it. We connected (quite literally), we logged on, and we zipped to addresses and sites to read, learn, shop, and scroll. 

Over the years, the internet was accessible from increasingly more devices, like smartphones, smartwatches, and even smart fridges. But still, it had to be accessed, like a well dug into the ground to pull up the water below.

Moving forward, that could all change.

This year, several companies debuted their vision of a future that incorporates Artificial Intelligence to deliver the internet directly to you, with less searching, less typing, and less decision fatigue. 

For the startup Humane, that vision includes the use of the company’s AI-powered, voice-operated wearable pin that clips to your clothes. By simply speaking to the AI pin, users can text a friend, discover the nutritional facts about food that sits directly in front of them, and even compare the prices of an item found in stores with the price online.

For a separate startup, Rabbit, that vision similarly relies on a small, attractive smart-concierge gadget, the R1. With the bright-orange slab designed in coordination by the company Teenage Engineering, users can hail an Uber to take them to the airport, play an album on Spotify, and put in a delivery order for dinner.

Away from physical devices, The Browser Company of New York is also experimenting with AI in its own web browser, Arc. In February, the company debuted its endeavor to create a “browser that browses for you” with a snazzy video that showed off Arc’s AI capabilities to create unique, individualized web pages in response to questions about recipes, dinner reservations, and more.

But all these small-scale projects, announced in the first month or so of 2024, had to make room a few months later for big-money interest from the first ever internet conglomerate of the world—Google. At the company’s annual Google I/O conference on May 14, VP and Head of Google Search Liz Reid pitched the audience on an AI-powered version of search in which “Google will do the Googling for you.”

Now, Reid said, even complex, multi-part questions can be answered directly within Google, with no need to click a website, evaluate its accuracy, or flip through its many pages to find the relevant information within.

This, it appears, could be the next phase of the internet… and our host David Ruiz has a lot to say about it.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast, we bring back Director of Content Anna Brading and Cybersecurity Evangelist Mark Stockley to discuss AI-powered concierges, the value of human choice when so many small decisions could be taken away by AI, and, as explained by Stockley, whether the appeal of AI is not in finding the “best” vacation, recipe, or dinner reservation, but rather the best of anything for its user.

“It’s not there to tell you what the best chocolate chip cookie in the world is for everyone. It’s there to help you figure out what the best chocolate chip cookie is for you, on a Monday evening, when the weather’s hot, and you’re hungry.”

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

You’ve likely felt it: The dull pull downwards of a smartphone scroll. The “five more minutes” just before bed. The sleep still there after waking. The edges of your calm slowly fraying.

After more than a decade of our most recent technological experiment, in turns out that having the entirety of the internet in the palm of your hands could be … not so great. Obviously, the effects of this are compounded by the fact that the internet that was built after the invention of the smartphone is a very different internet than the one before—supercharged with algorithms that get you to click more, watch more, buy more, and rest so much less.

But for one group, in particular, across the world, the impact of smartphones and constant social media may be causing an unprecedented mental health crisis: Young people.

According to the American College Health Association, the percentage of undergraduates in the US—so, mainly young adults in college—who were diagnosed with anxiety increased 134% since 2010. In the same time period for the same group, there was in increase in diagnoses of depression by 106%, ADHD by 72%, bipolar by 57%, and anorexia by 100%.

That’s not all. According to a US National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the prevalence of anxiety in America increased for every age group except those over 50, again, since 2010. Those aged 35 – 49 experienced a 52% increase, those aged 26 – 34 experienced a 103% increase, and those aged 18 – 25 experienced a 139% increase.

This data, and much more, was cited by the social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt, in debuting his latest book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” In the book, Haidt examines what he believes is a mental health crisis unique amongst today’s youth, and he proposes that much of the crisis has been brought about by a change in childhood—away from a “play-based” childhood and into a “phone-based” one.

This shift, Haidt argues, is largely to blame for the increased rates of anxiety, depression, suicidality, and more.

And rather than just naming the problem, Haidt also proposes five solutions to turn things around:

But while Haidt’s proposals may feel right—his book has spent five weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list—some psychologists disagree.

Writing for the outlet Platformer, reporter Zoe Schiffer spoke with multiple behavioral psychologists who alleged that Haidt’s book cherry-picks survey data, ignores mental health crises amongst adults, and over-simplifies a complex problem with a blunt solution.  

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Dr. Jean Twenge to get more clarity on the situation: Is there a mental health crisis amongst today’s teens? Is it unique to their generation? And can it really be traced to the use of smartphones and social media?

According to Dr. Twenge, the answer to all those questions is, pretty much, “Yes.” But, she said, there’s still some hope to be found.

“This is where the argument around smartphones and social media being behind the adolescent mental health crisis actually has, kind of paradoxically, some optimism to it. Because if that’s the cause, that means we can do something about it.”

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

Our Lock and Code host, David Ruiz, has a bit of an apology to make:

“Sorry for all the depressing episodes.”

When the Lock and Code podcast explored online harassment and abuse this year, our guest provided several guidelines and tips for individuals to lock down their accounts and remove their sensitive information from the internet, but larger problems remained. Content moderation is failing nearly everywhere, and data protection laws are unequal across the world.

When we told the true tale of a virtual kidnapping scam in Utah, though the teenaged victim at the center of the scam was eventually found, his family still lost nearly $80,000.

And when we asked Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included team about what types of information modern cars can collect about their owners, we were entirely blindsided by the policies from Nissan and Kia, which claimed the companies can collect data about their customers’ “sexual activity” and “sex life.”

(Let’s also not forget about that Roomba that took a photo of someone on a toilet and how that photo ended up on Facebook.)

In looking at these stories collectively, it can feel like the everyday consumer is hopelessly outmatched against modern companies. What good does it do to utilize personal cybersecurity best practices, when the companies we rely on can still leak our most sensitive information and suffer few consequences? What’s the point of using a privacy-forward browser to better obscure my online behavior from advertisers when the machinery that powers the internet finds new ways to surveil our every move?

These are entirely relatable, if fatalistic, feelings. But we are here to tell you that nihilism is not the answer.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast, we speak with Justin Brookman, director of technology policy at Consumer Reports, about some of the most recent, major consumer wins in the tech world, what it took to achieve those wins, and what levers consumers can pull on today to have their voices heard.

Brookman also speaks candidly about the shifting priorities in today's legislative landscape.

“One thing we did make the decision about is to focus less on Congress because, man, I’ll meet with those folks so we can work on bills, [and] there’ll be a big hearing, but they’ve just failed to do so much.”

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

A digital form of protest could become the go-to response for the world’s largest porn website as it faces increased regulations: Not letting people access the site.

In March, PornHub blocked access to visitors connecting to its website from Texas. It marked the second time in the past 12 months that the porn giant shut off its website to protest new requirements in online age verification.

The Texas law, which was signed in June 2023, requires several types of adult websites to verify the age of their visitors by either collecting visitors’ information from a government ID or relying on a third party to verify age through the collection of multiple streams of data, such as education and employment status.

PornHub has long argued that these age verification methods do not keep minors safer and that they place undue onus on websites to collect and secure sensitive information.

The fact remains, however, that these types of laws are growing in popularity.

Today, Lock and Code revisits a prior episode from 2023 with guest Alec Muffett, discussing online age verification proposals, how they could weaken security and privacy on the internet, and whether these efforts are oafishly trying to solve a societal problem with a technological solution.

“The battle cry of these people have has always been—either directly or mocked as being—’Could somebody think of the children?’” Muffett said. “And I’m thinking about the children because I want my daughter to grow up with an untracked, secure private internet when she’s an adult. I want her to be able to have a private conversation. I want her to be able to browse sites without giving over any information or linking it to her identity.”

Muffett continued:

“I’m trying to protect that for her. I’d like to see more people grasping for that.”

Alec Muffett

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

Few words apply as broadly to the public—yet mean as little—as “home network security.”

For many, a “home network” is an amorphous thing. It exists somewhere between a router, a modem, an outlet, and whatever cable it is that plugs into the wall. But the idea of a “home network” doesn’t need to intimidate, and securing that home network could be simpler than many folks realize.

For starters, a home network can be simply understood as a router—which is the device that provides access to the internet in a home—and the other devices that connect to that router. That includes obvious devices like phones, laptops, and tablets, and it includes “Internet of Things” devices, like a Ring doorbell, a Nest thermostat, and any Amazon Echo device that come pre-packaged with the company’s voice assistant, Alexa. There are also myriad “smart” devices to consider: smartwatches, smart speakers, smart light bulbs, don’t forget the smart fridges.

If it sounds like we’re describing a home network as nothing more than a “list,” that’s because a home network is pretty much just a list. But where securing that list becomes complicated is in all the updates, hardware issues, settings changes, and even scandals that relate to every single device on that list.

Routers, for instance, provide their own security, but over many years, they can lose the support of their manufacturers. IoT devices, depending on the brand, can be made from cheap parts with little concern for user security or privacy. And some devices have scandals plaguing their past—smart doorbells have been hacked and fitness trackers have revealed running routes to the public online.

This shouldn’t be cause for fear. Instead, it should help prove why home network security is so important.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we’re speaking with cybersecurity and privacy advocate Carey Parker about securing your home network.

Author of the book Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons and host to the podcast of the same name, Parker chronicled the typical home network security journey last year and distilled the long process into four simple categories: Scan, simplify, assess, remediate.

In joining the Lock and Code podcast yet again, Parker explains how everyone can begin their home network security path—where to start, what to prioritize, and the risks of putting this work off, while also emphasizing the importance of every home’s router:

Your router is kind of the threshold that protects all the devices inside your house. But, like a vampire, once you invite the vampire across the threshold, all the things inside the house are now up for grabs.

Carey Parker

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

A disappointing meal at a restaurant. An ugly breakup between two partners. A popular TV show that kills off a beloved, main character.

In a perfect world, these are irritations and moments of vulnerability. But online today, these same events can sometimes be the catalyst for hate. That disappointing meal can produce a frighteningly invasive Yelp review that exposes a restaurant owner’s home address for all to see. That ugly breakup can lead to an abusive ex posting a video of revenge porn. And even a movie or videogame can enrage some individuals into such a fury that they begin sending death threats to the actors and cast mates involved.

Online hate and harassment campaigns are well-known and widely studied. Sadly, they’re also becoming more frequent.

In 2023, the Anti-Defamation League revealed that 52% of American adults reported being harassed online at least some time in their life—the highest rate ever recorded by the organization and a dramatic climb from the 40% who responded similarly just one year earlier. When asking teens about recent harm, 51% said they’d suffered from online harassment in strictly the 12 months prior to taking the survey itself—a radical 15% increase from what teens said the year prior.

The proposed solutions, so far, have been difficult to implement.

Social media platforms often deflect blame—and are frequently shielded from legal liability—and many efforts to moderate and remove hateful content have either been slow or entirely absent in the past. Popular accounts with millions of followers will, without explicitly inciting violence, sometimes draw undue attention to everyday people. And the increasing need to have an online presence for teens—even classwork is done online now—makes it near impossible to simply “log off.”

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Tall Poppy CEO and co-founder Leigh Honeywell, about the evolution of online hate, personal defense strategies that mirror many of the best practices in cybersecurity, and the modern risks of accidentally becoming viral in a world with little privacy.

“It's not just that your content can go viral, it's that when your content goes viral, five people might be motivated enough to call in a fake bomb threat at your house.”

Leigh Honeywell, CEO and co-founder of Tall Poppy

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

For decades, fake IDs had roughly three purposes: Buying booze before legally allowed, getting into age-restricted clubs, and, we can only assume, completing nation-state spycraft for embedded informants and double agents.

In 2024, that’s changed, as the uses for fake IDs have become enmeshed with the internet.

Want to sign up for a cryptocurrency exchange where you’ll use traditional funds to purchase and exchange digital currency? You’ll likely need to submit a photo of your real ID so that the cryptocurrency platform can ensure you’re a real user. What about if you want to watch porn online in the US state of Louisiana? It’s a niche example, but because of a law passed in 2022, you will likely need to submit, again, a photo of your state driver’s license to a separate ID verification mobile app that then connects with porn sites to authorize your request.

The discrepancies in these end-uses are stark; cryptocurrency and porn don’t have too much in common with Red Bull vodkas and, to pick just one example, a Guatemalan coup. But there’s something else happening here that reveals the subtle differences between yesteryear’s fake IDs and today’s, which is that modern ID verification doesn’t need a physical ID card or passport to work—it can sometimes function only with an image.

Last month, the technology reporting outfit 404 Media investigated an online service called OnlyFake that claimed to use artificial intelligence to pump out images of fake IDs. By filling out some bogus personal information, like a made-up birthdate, height, and weight, OnlyFake would provide convincing images of real forms of ID, be they driver’s licenses in California or passports from the US, the UK, Mexico, Canada, Japan, and more. Those images, in turn, could then be used to fraudulently pass identification checks on certain websites.

When 404 Media co-founder and reporter Joseph Cox learned about OnlyFake, he tested whether an image of a fake passport he generated could be used to authenticate his identity with an online cryptocurrency exchange.

In short, it did.

By creating a fraudulent British passport through OnlyFake, Joseph Cox—or as his fake ID said, “David Creeks”—managed to verify his false identity when creating an account with the cryptocurrency market OKX.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Cox about the believability of his fake IDs, the capabilities and limitations of OnlyFake, what’s in store for the future of the site— which went dark after Cox’s report—and what other types of fraud are now dangerously within reach for countless threat actors.

Making fake IDs, even photos of fake IDs, is a very particular skill set—it’s like a trade in the criminal underground. You don’t need that anymore.

Joseph Cox, 404 Media co-founder

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

If your IT and security teams think malware is bad, wait until they learn about everything else.

In 2024, the modern cyberattack is a segmented, prolonged, and professional effort, in which specialists create strictly financial alliances to plant malware on unsuspecting employees, steal corporate credentials, slip into business networks, and, for a period of days if not weeks, simply sit and watch and test and prod, escalating their privileges while refraining from installing any noisy hacking tools that could be flagged by detection-based antivirus scans.

In fact, some attacks have gone so "quiet" that they involve no malware at all. Last year, some ransomware gangs refrained from deploying ransomware in their own attacks, opting to steal sensitive data and then threaten to publish it online if their victims refused to pay up—a method of extracting a ransom that is entirely without ransomware.

Understandably, security teams are outflanked. Defending against sophisticated, multifaceted attacks takes resources, technologies, and human expertise. But not every organization has that at hand.

What, then, are IT-constrained businesses to do?

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Jason Haddix, the former Chief Information Security Officer at the videogame developer Ubisoft, about how he and his colleagues from other companies faced off against modern adversaries who, during a prolonged crime spree, plundered employee credentials from the dark web, subverted corporate 2FA protections, and leaned heavily on internal web access to steal sensitive documentation.

Haddix, who launched his own cybersecurity training and consulting firm Arcanum Information Security this year, said he learned so much during his time at Ubisoft that he and his peers in the industry coined a new, humorous term for attacks that abuse internet-connected platforms: "A browser and a dream."

"When you first hear that, you're like, 'Okay, what could a browser give you inside of an organization?'"

But Haddix made it clear:

"On the internal LAN, you have knowledge bases like SharePoint, Confluence, MediaWiki. You have dev and project management sites like Trello, local Jira, local Redmine. You have source code managers, which are managed via websites—Git, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Subversion. You have repo management, build servers, dev platforms, configuration, management platforms, operations, front ends. These are all websites."

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

LLM Prompt Injection Game: https://gandalf.lakera.ai/

Overwhelmed by modern cyberthreats? ThreatDown can help.

The 2024 ThreatDown State of Malware report is a comprehensive analysis of six pressing cyberthreats this year—including Big Game ransomware, Living Off The Land (LOTL) attacks, and malvertising—with strategies on how IT and security teams can protect against them.

Read the report here.

If the internet helped create the era of mass surveillance, then artificial intelligence will bring about an era of mass spying.

That’s the latest prediction from noted cryptographer and computer security professional Bruce Schneier, who, in December, shared a vision of the near future where artificial intelligence—AI—will be able to comb through reams of surveillance data to answer the types of questions that, previously, only humans could.  

“Spying is limited by the need for human labor,” Schneier wrote. “AI is about to change that.”

As theorized by Schneier, if fed enough conversations, AI tools could spot who first started a rumor online, identify who is planning to attend a political protest (or unionize a workforce), and even who is plotting a crime.

But “there’s so much more,” Schneier said.

“To uncover an organizational structure, look for someone who gives similar instructions to a group of people, then all the people they have relayed those instructions to. To find people’s confidants, look at whom they tell secrets to. You can track friendships and alliances as they form and break, in minute detail. In short, you can know everything about what everybody is talking about.”

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Bruce Schneier about artificial intelligence, Soviet era government surveillance, personal spyware, and why companies will likely leap at the opportunity to use AI on their customers.

“Surveillance-based manipulation is the business model [of the internet] and anything that gives a company an advantage, they’re going to do.”

Tune in today to listen to the full conversation.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

On Thursday, December 28, at 8:30 pm in the Utah town of Riverdale, the city police began investigating what they believed was a kidnapping.

17-year-old foreign exchange student Kai Zhuang was missing, and according to Riverdale Police Chief Casey Warren, Zhuang was believed to be “forcefully taken” from his home, and “being held against his will.”

The evidence leaned in police’s favor. That night, Zhuang’s parents in China reportedly received a photo of Zhuang in distress. They’d also received a ransom demand.

But as police in Riverdale and across the state of Utah would soon learn, the alleged kidnapping had a few wrinkles.

For starters, there was no sign that Zhuang had been forcefully removed from his home in Riverdale, where he’d been living with his host family. In fact, Zhuang’s disappearance was so quiet that his host family was entirely unaware that he’d been missing until police came and questioned them. Additionally, investigators learned that Zhuang had experienced a recent run-in with police officers nearly 75 miles away in the city of Provo. Just eight days before his disappearance in Riverdale, Zhuang caught the attention of Provo residents because of what they deemed strange behavior for a teenager: Buying camping gear in the middle of a freezing winter season. Police officers who intervened at the residents’ requests asked Zhuang if he was okay, he assured them he was, and a ride was arranged for the teenager back home.

But what Zhuang didn’t tell Provo police at the time was that, already, he was being targeted in an extortion scam. But when Zhuang started to push back against his scammers, it was his parents who became the next target.

Zhuang—and his family—had become victims of what is known as “virtual kidnapping.”

For years, virtual kidnapping scams happened most frequently in Mexico and the Southwestern United States, in cities like Los Angeles and Houston. But in 2015, the scams began reaching farther into the US.

The scams themselves are simple yet cruel attempts at extortion. Virtual kidnappers will call phone numbers belonging to affluent neighborhoods in the US and make bogus threats about a holding a family member hostage.

As explained by the FBI in 2017, virtual kidnappers do not often know the person they are calling, their name, their occupation, or even the name of the family member they have pretended to abduct:

“When an unsuspecting person answered the phone, they would hear a female screaming, ‘Help me!’ The screamer’s voice was likely a recording. Instinctively, the victim might blurt out his or her child’s name: ‘Mary, are you okay?’ And then a man’s voice would say something like, ‘We have Mary. She’s in a truck. We are holding her hostage. You need to pay a ransom and you need to do it now or we are going to cut off her fingers.’”

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we are presenting a short, true story from December about virtual kidnapping. Today’s episode cites reporting and public statements from the Associated Press, the FBI, ABC4.com, Fox 6 Milwaukee, and the Riverdale Police Department.

Tune in today

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Hackers want to know everything about you: Your credit card number, your ID and passport info, and now, your DNA.

On October 1 2023, on a hacking website called BreachForums, a group of cybercriminals claimed that they had stolen—and would soon sell—individual profiles for users of the genetic testing company 23andMe.

23andMe offers direct-to-consumer genetic testing kits that provide customers with different types of information, including potential indicators of health risks along with reports that detail a person’s heritage, their DNA’s geographical footprint, and, if they opt in, a service to connect with relatives who have also used 23andMe’s DNA testing service.

The data that 23andMe and similar companies collect is often seen as some of the most sensitive, personal information that exists about people today, as it can expose health risks, family connections, and medical diagnoses. This type of data has also been used to exonerate the wrongfully accused and to finally apprehend long-hidden fugitives.

In 2018, deputies from the Sacramento County Sherriff’s department arrested a serial killer known as the Golden State Killer, after investigators took DNA left at decades-old crime scenes and compared it to a then-growing database of genetic information, finding the Golden State Killer’s relatives, and then zeroing in from there.

And while the story of the Golden State Killer involves the use of genetic data to solve a crime, what happens when genetic data is part of a crime? What law enforcement agency, if any, gets involved? What rights do consumers have? And how likely is it that consumer complaints will get heard?

For customers of 23andMe, those are particularly relevant questions. After an internal investigation from the genetic testing company, it was revealed that 6.9 million customers were impacted by the October breach.

What do they do?

Today on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Suzanne Bernstein, a law fellow at Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) to understand the value of genetic data, the risks of its exposure, and the unfortunate reality that consumers face in having to protect themselves while also trusting private corporations to secure their most sensitive data.

“We live our lives online and there's certain risks that are unavoidable or that are manageable relative to the benefit that a consumer might get from it,” Bernstein said.

“Ultimately, while it's not the consumer's responsibility, an informed consumer can make the best choices about what kind of risks to take online.”

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

It talks, it squawks, it even blocks! The stocking-stuffer on every hobby hacker’s wish list this year is the Flipper Zero.

“Talk” across low-frequency radio to surreptitiously change TV channels, emulate garage door openers, or even pop open your friend’s Tesla charging port without their knowing! “Squawk” with the Flipper Zero’s mascot and user-interface tour guide, a “cyber-dolphin” who can “read” the minds of office key fobs and insecure hotel entry cards. And, introducing in 2023, block iPhones running iOS 17!

No, really, for a couple of months near the end of 2023, this consumer-friendly device could crash iPhones (a vulnerability that Apple fixed in a software update in mid-December), and in the United States, it is entirely legal to own.

The Flipper Zero is advertised as a “multi-tool device for geeks.” It’s an open-source tool that can be used to hack into radio protocols, access control systems, hardware, and more. It can emulate keycards, serve as a universal remote for TVs, and make attempts to brute force garage door openers.

But for security researcher Jeroen van der Ham, the Flipper Zero also served as a real pain in the butt one day in October, when, aboard a train in the Netherlands, he got a popup on his iPhone about a supposed Bluetooth pairing request with a nearby Apple TV. Strange as that may be on a train, van der Ham soon got another request. And then another, and another, and another.

In explaining the problem to the outlet Ars Technica, van der Ham wrote:

“My phone was getting these popups every few minutes and then my phone would reboot. I tried putting it in lock down mode, but it didn’t help.”

Later that same day, on his way back home, once again aboard the train, van der Ham noticed something odd: the iPhone popups came back, and this time, he noticed that his fellow passengers were also getting hit.

What van der Ham soon learned is that he—and the other passengers on the train—were being subjected to a Denial-of-Service attack, which weaponized the way that iPhones receive Bluetooth pairing requests. A Denial-of-Service attack is simple. Essentially, a hacker, or more commonly, an army of bots, will flood a device or a website with requests. The target in these attacks cannot keep up with the requests, so it often locks up and becomes inaccessible. That can be a major issue for a company that is suffering from having its website attacked, but it’s also dangerous for everyday people who may need to use their phones to, say, document something important, or reach out to someone when in need.

In van der Ham’s case, the Denial-of-Service attack was likely coming from one passenger on the train, who was aided by the small, handheld device, the Flipper Zero.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast, with host David Ruiz, we speak with Cooper Quintin, senior public interest technologist with Electronic Frontier Foundation—and Flipper Zero owner—about what the Flipper Zero can do, what it can’t do, and whether governments should get involved in the regulation of the device (that’s a hard “No,” Quintin said).

“Governments should be welcoming this device,” Quintin said. “Every government right now is saying, ‘We need more cyber security capacity. We need more cyber security researchers. We got cyber wars to fight, blah, blah, blah,’ right?”

Quintin continued:

“Then, when you make this amazing tool that is, I think, a really great way for people to start interacting with cybersecurity and getting really interested in it—then you ban that?”

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Like the grade-school dweeb who reminds their teacher to assign tonight’s homework, or the power-tripping homeowner who threatens every neighbor with an HOA citation, the ransomware group ALPHV can now add itself to a shameful roster of pathetic, little tattle-tales.

In November, the ransomware gang ALPHV, which also goes by the name Black Cat, notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission about the Costa Mesa-based software company MeridianLink, alleging that the company had failed to notify the government about a data breach. Under newly announced rules by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), public companies will be expected to notify the government agency about “material cybersecurity incidents” within four days of determining whether such an incident could have impacted the company’s stock prices or any investment decisions from the public.

According to ALPHV, MeridianLink had violated that rule. But how did ALPHV know about this alleged breach?

Simple. They claimed to have done it.

“It has come to our attention that MeridianLink, in light of a significant breach compromising customer data and operational information, has failed to file the requisite disclosure under Item 1.05 of Form 8-K within the stipulated four business days, as mandated by the new SEC rules,” wrote ALPHV in a complaint that the group claimed to have filed with the US government.

The victim, MeridianLink, refuted the claims. According to a MeridianLink spokesperson, while the company confirmed a cybersecurity incident, it denied the severity of the incident.

“Based on our investigation to date, we have identified no evidence of unauthorized access to our production platforms, and the incident has caused minimal business interruption,” a MeridianLink spokesperson said at the time. “If we determine that any consumer personal information was involved in this incident, we will provide notifications as required by law.”

This week on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak to Recorded Future intelligence analyst Allan Liska about what ALPHV could hope to accomplish with its SEC complaint, whether similar threats have been made in the past under other regulatory regime, and what organizations everywhere should know about ransomware attacks going into the new year. One big takeaway, Liska said, is that attacks are getting bigger, bolder, and brasher.

“There are no protections anymore,” Liska said. “For a while, some ransomware actors were like, ‘No, we won’t go after hospitals, or we won’t do this, or we won’t do that.’ Those protections all seem to have flown out the window, and they’ll go after anything and anyone that will make them money. It doesn’t matter how small they are or how big they are.”

Liska continued:

“We’ve seen ransomware actors go after food banks. You’re not going to get a ransom from a food bank. Don’t do that.”

Tune in today to listen to the full conversation.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

A worrying trend is cropping up amongst Americans, particularly within Generation Z—they're spying on each other more.

Whether reading someone's DMs, rifling through a partner's text messages, or even rummaging through the bags and belongings of someone else, Americans enjoy keeping tabs on one another, especially when they're in a relationship. According to recent research from Malwarebytes, a shocking 49% of Gen Zers agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: “Being able to track my spouse's/significant other's location when they are away is extremely important to me.”

On the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we've repeatedly tackled the issue of surveillance, from the NSA's mass communications surveillance program exposed by Edward Snowden, to the targeted use of Pegasus spyware against human rights dissidents and political activists, to the purchase of privately-collected location data by state law enforcement agencies across the country. But the type of surveillance we're talking about today is different. It isn't so much "Big Brother"—a concept introduced in the socio-dystopian novel 1984 by author George Orwell. It's "Little Brother."

As far back as 2010, in a piece titled “Little Brother is Watching,” author Walter Kirn wrote for the New York Times:

 “As the Internet proves every day, it isn’t some stern and monolithic Big Brother that we have to reckon with as we go about our daily lives, it’s a vast cohort of prankish Little Brothers equipped with devices that Orwell, writing 60 years ago, never dreamed of and who are loyal to no organized authority. The invasion of privacy — of others’ privacy but also our own, as we turn our lenses on ourselves in the quest for attention by any means — has been democratized.”

Little Brother is us, recording someone else on our phones and then posting it on social media. Little Brother is us, years ago, Facebook stalking someone because they’re a college crush. Little Brother is us, watching a Ring webcam of a delivery driver, including when they are mishandling a package but also when they are doing a stupid little dance that we requested so we could post it online and get little dopamine hits from the Likes. Little Brother is our anxieties being soothed by watching the shiny blue GPS dots that represent our husbands and our wives, driving back from work.

Little Brother isn't just surveillance. It is increasingly popular, normalized, and accessible surveillance. And it's creeping its way into more and more relationships every day. 

So, what can stop it? 

Today, we speak with our guests, Malwarebytes security evangelist Mark Stockley and Malwarebytes Labs editor-in-chief Anna Brading, about the apparent "appeal" of Little Brother surveillance, whether the tenets of privacy can ever fully defeat that surveillance, and what the possible merits of this surveillance could be, including, as Stockley suggested, in revealing government abuses of power. 

"My question to you is, as with all forms of technology, there are two very different sides for this. So is it bad? Is it good? Or is it just oxygen now?" 

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

In September, the Las Vegas casino and hotel operator MGM Resorts became a trending topic on social media... but for all the wrong reasons. A TikTok user posted a video taken from inside the casino floor of the MGM Grand—the company's flagship hotel complex near the southern end of the Las Vegas strip—that didn't involve the whirring of slot machines or the sirens and buzzers of sweepstake earnings, but, instead, row after row of digital gambling machines with blank, non-functional screens. That same TikTok user commented on their own post that it wasn't just errored-out gambling machines that were causing problems—hotel guests were also having trouble getting into their own rooms.

As the user said online about their own experience: “Digital keys weren’t working. Had to get physical keys printed. They doubled booked our room so we walked in on someone.”

The trouble didn't stop there.

A separate photo shared online allegedly showed what looked like a Walkie-Talkie affixed to an elevator's handrail. Above the device was a piece of paper and a message written by hand: “For any elevator issues, please use the radio for support.”  

As the public would soon learn, MGM Resorts was the victim of a cyberattack, reportedly carried out by a group of criminals called Scattered Spider, which used the ALPHV ransomware.

It was one of the most publicly-exposed cyberattacks in recent history. But just a few days before the public saw the end result, the same cybercriminal group received a reported $15 million ransom payment from a separate victim situated just one and a half miles away.

On September 14, Caesar’s Entertainment reported in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it, too, had suffered a cyber breach, and according to reporting from CNBC, it received a $30 million ransom demand, which it then negotiated down by about 50 percent.

The social media flurry, the TikTok videos, the comments and confusion from customers, the ghost-town casino floors captured in photographs—it all added up to something strange and new: Vegas was breached. 

But how? 

Though follow-on reporting suggests a particularly effective social engineering scam, the attacks themselves revealed a more troubling, potential vulnerability for businesses everywhere, which is that a company's budget—and its relative ability to devote resources to cybersecurity—doesn't necessarily insulate it from attacks. 

Today on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with James Fair, senior vice president of IT Services at the managed IT services company Executech, about whether businesses are taking cybersecurity seriously enough, which industries he's seen pushback from for initial cybersecurity recommendations (and why), and the frustration of seeing some companies only take cybersecurity seriously after a major attack. 

"How many do we have to see? MGM got hit, you guys. Some of the biggest targets out there—people who have more cybersecurity budget than people can imagine—got hit. So, what are you waiting for?"

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

What are you most worried about online? And what are you doing to stay safe? 

Depending on who you are, those could be very different answers, but for teenagers and members of Generation Z, the internet isn't so scary because of traditional threats like malware and viruses. Instead, the internet is scary because of what it can expose. To Gen Z, a feared internet is one that is vindictive and cruel—an internet that reveals private information that Gen Z fears could harm their relationships with family and friends, damage their reputations, and even lead to their being bullied and physically harmed. 

Those are some of the findings from Malwarebytes' latest research into the cybersecurity and online privacy beliefs and behaviors of people across the United States and Canada this year.

Titled "Everyone's afraid of the internet and no one's sure what to do about it," Malwarebytes' new report shows that 81 percent of Gen Z worries about having personal, private information exposed—like their sexual orientations, personal struggles, medical history, and relationship issues (compared to 75 percent of non-Gen Zers). And 61 percent of Gen Zers worry about having embarrassing or compromising photos or videos shared online (compared to 55% of non Gen Zers). Not only that, 36 percent worry about being bullied because of that info being exposed, while 34 percent worry about being physically harmed. For those outside of Gen Z, those numbers are a lot lower—only 22 percent worry about bullying, and 27 percent worry about being physically harmed.

Does this mean Gen Z is uniquely careful to prevent just that type of information from being exposed online? Not exactly. They talk more frequently to strangers online, they more frequently share personal information on social media, and they share photos and videos on public forums more than anyone—all things that leave a trail of information that could be gathered against them.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we drill down into what, specifically, a Bay Area teenager is afraid of when using the internet, and what she does to stay safe. Visiting the Lock and Code podcast for the second year in the row is Nitya Sharma, discussing AI "sneak attacks," political disinformation campaigns, the unannounced location tracking of Snapchat, and why she simply cannot be bothered about malware. 

"I know that there's a threat of sharing information with bad people and then abusing it, but I just don't know what you would do with it. Show up to my house and try to kill me?" 

Tune in today for the full conversation.

You can read our full report here: "Everyone's afraid of the internet and no one's sure what to do about it."

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

When you think of the modern tools that most invade your privacy, what do you picture?

There's the obvious answers, like social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram. There's email and "everything" platforms like Google that can track your locations, your contacts, and, of course, your search history. There's even the modern web itself, rife with third-party cookies that track your browsing activity across websites so your information can be bundled together into an ad-friendly profile. 

But here's a surprise answer with just as much validity: Cars. 

A team of researchers at Mozilla which has reviewed the privacy and data collection policies of various product categories for several years now, named "Privacy Not Included," recently turned their attention to modern-day vehicles, and what they found shocked them. Cars are, to put it shortly, a privacy nightmare. 

According to the team's research, Nissan says it can collect “sexual activity” information about consumers. Kia says it can collect information about a consumer's “sex life.” Subaru passengers allegedly consent to the collection of their data by simply being in the vehicle. Volkswagen says it collects data like a person's age and gender and whether they're using your seatbelt, and it can use that information for targeted marketing purposes. 

But those are just some of the highlights from the Privacy Not Included team. Explains Zoë MacDonald, content creator for the research team: 

"We were pretty surprised by the data points that the car companies say they can collect... including social security number, information about your religion, your marital status, genetic information, disability status... immigration status, race. And of course, as you said.. one of the most surprising ones for a lot of people who read our research is the sexual activity data."

Today on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with MacDonald and Jen Caltrider, Privacy Not Included team lead, about the data that cars can collect, how that data can be shared, how it can be used, and whether consumers have any choice in the matter.

We also explore the booming revenue stream that car manufacturers are tapping into by not only collecting people's data, but also packaging it together for targeted advertising. With so many data pipelines being threaded together, Caltrider says the auto manufacturers can even make "inferences" about you.  

"What really creeps me out [is] they go on to say that they can take all the information they collect about you from the cars, the apps, the connected services, and everything they can gather about you from these third party sources," Caltrider said, "and they can combine it into these things they call 'inferences' about you about things like your intelligence, your abilities, your predispositions, your characteristics." 

Caltrider continued:

"And that's where it gets really creepy because I just imagine a car company knowing so much about me that they've determined how smart I am."

Tune in today. 

In 2022, Malwarebytes investigated the blurry, shifting idea of “identity” on the internet, and how online identities are not only shaped by the people behind them, but also inherited by the internet’s youngest users, children. Children have always inherited some of their identities from their parents—consider that two of the largest indicators for political and religious affiliation in the US are, no surprise, the political and religious affiliations of someone’s parents—but the transfer of online identity poses unique risks. 

When parents create email accounts for their kids, do they also teach their children about strong passwords? When parents post photos of their children online, do they also teach their children about the safest ways to post photos of themselves and others? When parents create a Netflix viewing profile on a child's iPad, are they prepared for what else a child might see online? Are parents certain that a kid is ready to watch before they can walk?

Those types of questions drove a joint report that Malwarebytes published last year, based on a survey of 2,000 people in North America. That research showed that, broadly, not enough children and teenagers trust their parents to support them online, and not enough parents know exactly how to give the support their children need.

But stats and figures can only tell so much of the story, which is why last year, Lock and Code host David Ruiz spoke with a Bay Area high school graduate about her own thoughts on the difficulties of growing up online. Lock and Code is re-airing that episode this week because, in less than one month, Malwarebytes is releasing a follow-on report about behaviors, beliefs, and blunders in online privacy and cybersecurity. And as part of that report, Lock and Code is bringing back the same guest as last year, Nitya Sharma. 

Before then, we are sharing with listeners our prior episode that aired in 2022 about the difficulties that an everyday teenager faces online, including managing her time online, trying to meet friends and complete homework, the traps of trading online interaction with in-person socializing, and what she would do differently with her children, if she ever started a family, in preparing them for the Internet.

Tune in today. 

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Becky Holmes is a big deal online. 

Hugh Jackman has invited her to dinner. Prince William has told her she has "such a beautiful name." Once, Ricky Gervais simply needed her photos ("I want you to take a snap of yourself and then send it to me on here...Send it to me on here!" he messaged on Twitter), and even Tom Cruise slipped into her DMs (though he was a tad boring, twice asking about her health and more often showing a core misunderstanding of grammar). 

Becky has played it cool, mostly, but there's no denying the "One That Got Away"—Official Keanu Reeves. 

After repeatedly speaking to Becky online, convincing her to download the Cash app, and even promising to send her $20,000 (which Becky said she could use for a new tea towel), Official Keanu Reeves had a change of heart earlier this year: "I hate you," he said. "We are not in any damn relationship." 

Official Keanu Reeves, of course, is not Keanu Reeves. And hughjackman373—as he labeled himself on Twitter—is not really Hugh Jackman. Neither is "Prince William," or "Ricky Gervais," or "Tom Cruise." All of these "celebrities" online are fake, and that isn't commentary on celebrity culture. It's simply a fact, because all of the personas online who have reached out to Becky Holmes are romance scammers. 

Romance scams are serious crimes that follow similar plots. 

Online, an attractive stranger or celebrity—coupled with an appealing profile picture—will send a message to a complete stranger, often on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. They will flood the stranger with affectionate messages and promises of a perfect life together, sometimes building trust and emotional connection for weeks or even months. As time continues, they will also try to remove the conversation away from the social media platform where it started, instead moving it to WhatsApp, Telegram, Messages, or simple text. 

Here, the scam has already started. Away from the major social media and networking platforms, the scammers persistent messages cannot be flagged for abuse or harassment, and the scammer is free to press on. Once an emotional connection is built, the scammer will suddenly be in trouble, and the best way out, is money—the victim’s money.

These crimes target vulnerable people, like recently divorced individuals, widows, and the elderly. But when these same scammers reach out to Becky Holmes, Becky Holmes turns the tables.

Becky once tricked a scammer into thinking she was visiting him in the far-off Antarctic. She has led one to believe that she had accidentally murdered someone and she needed help hiding the body. She has given fake, lewd addresses, wasted their time, and even shut them down when she can by coordinating with local law enforcement.

And today on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, Becky Holmes returns to talk about romance scammer "education" and the potential involvement in pyramid schemes, a disappointing lack of government response to protect victims, and the threat of Twitter removing its block function, along with some of the most recent romance scams that Becky has encountered online.

“There’s suddenly been this kind of influx of Elons. Absolutely tons of those have come about… I think I get probably at least one, maybe two a day.”

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

"Freedom" is a big word, and for many parents today, it's a word that includes location tracking. 

Across America, parents are snapping up Apple AirTags, the inexpensive location tracking devices that can help owners find lost luggage, misplaced keys, and—increasingly so—roving toddlers setting out on mini-adventures. 

The parental fear right now, according to The Washington Post technology reporter Heather Kelly, is that "anybody who can walk, therefore can walk away." 

Parents wanting to know what their children are up to is nothing new. Before the advent of the Internet—and before the creation of search history—parents read through diaries. Before GPS location tracking, parents called the houses that their children were allegedly staying at. And before nearly every child had a smart phone that they could receive calls on, parents relied on a much simpler set of tools for coordination: Going to the mall, giving them a watch, and saying "Be at the food court at noon." 

But, as so much parental monitoring has moved to the digital sphere, there's a new problem: Children become physically mobile far faster than they become responsible enough to own a mobile. Enter the AirTag: a small, convenient device for parents to affix to toddlers' wrists, place into their backpacks, even sew into their clothes, as Kelly reported in her piece for The Washington Post. 

In speaking with parents, families, and childcare experts, Kelly also uncovered an interesting dynamic. Parents, she reported, have started relying on Apple AirTags as a means to provide freedom, not restrictions, to their children. 

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Kelly about why parents are using AirTags, how childcare experts are reacting to the recent trend, and whether the devices can actually provide a balm to increasingly stressed parents who may need a moment to sit back and relax. Or, as Kelly said:

"In the end, parents need to chill—and if this lets them chill, and if it doesn't impact the kids too much, and it lets them go do silly things like jumping in some puddles with their friends or light, really inconsequential shoplifting, good for them."

Tune in today. 

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Earlier this month, a group of hackers was spotted using a set of malicious tools—that originally gained popularity with online video game cheaters—to hide their Windows-based malware from being detected.

Sounds unique, right? 

Frustratingly, it isn't, as the specific security loophole that was abused by the hackers has been around for years, and Microsoft's response, or lack thereof, is actually a telling illustration of the competing security environments within Windows and macOS. Even more perplexing is the fact that Apple dealt with a similar issue nearly 10 years ago, locking down the way that certain external tools are given permission to run alongside the operating system's critical, core internals. 

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Malwarebytes' own Director of Core Tech Thomas Reed about everyone's favorite topic: Windows vs. Mac. But this isn't a conversation about the original iPod vs. Microsoft's Zune (we're sure you can find countless, 4-hour diatribes on YouTube for that), but instead about how the companies behind these operating systems can respond to security issues in their own products. Because it isn't fair to say that Apple or Microsoft are wholesale "better" or "worse" about security. Instead, they're hampered by their users and their core market segments—Apple excels in the consumer market, whereas Microsoft excels with enterprises. And when your customers include hospitals, government agencies, and pretty much any business over a certain headcount, well, it comes with complications in deciding how to address security problems that won't leave those same customers behind. 

Still, there's little excuse in leaving open the type of loophole that Windows has, said Reed:

"Apple has done something that was pretty inconvenient for developers, but it really secured their customers because it basically meant we saw a complete stop in all kernel-level malware. It just shows you [that] it can be done. You're gonna break some eggs in the process, and Microsoft has not done that yet... They're gonna have to."

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

The language of a data breach, no matter what company gets hit, is largely the same. There's the stolen data—be it email addresses, credit card numbers, or even medical records. There are the users—unsuspecting, everyday people who, through no fault of their own, mistakenly put their trust into a company, platform, or service to keep their information safe. And there are, of course, the criminals. Some operate in groups. Some act alone. Some steal data as a means of extortion. Others steal it as a point of pride. All of them, it appears, take something that isn't theirs. 

But what happens if a cybercriminal takes something that may have already been stolen? 

In late June, a mobile app that can, without consent, pry into text messages, monitor call logs, and track GPS location history, warned its users that its services had been hacked. Email addresses, telephone numbers, and the content of messages were swiped, but how they were originally collected requires scrutiny. That's because the app itself, called LetMeSpy, is advertised as a parental and employer monitoring app, to be installed on the devices of other people that LetMeSpy users want to track. 

Want to read your child's text messages? LetMeSpy says it can help. Want to see where they are? LetMeSpy says it can do that, too. What about employers who are interested in the vague idea of "control and safety" of their business? Look no further than LetMeSpy, of course.  

While LetMeSpy's website tells users that "phone control without your knowledge and consent may be illegal in your country," (it is in the US and many, many others) the app also claims that it can hide itself from view from the person being tracked. And that feature, in particular, is one of the more tell-tale signs of "stalkerware." 

Stalkerware is a term used by the cybersecurity industry to describe mobile apps, primarily on Android, that can access a device's text messages, photos, videos, call records, and GPS locations without the device owner knowing about said surveillance. These types of apps can also automatically record every phone call made and received by a device, turn off a device's WiFi, and take control of the device's camera and microphone to snap photos or record audio—all without the victim knowing that their phone has been compromised. 

Stalkerware poses a serious threat—particularly to survivors of domestic abuse—and Malwarebytes has defended users against these types of apps for years. But the hacking of an app with similar functionality raises questions. 

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with the hacktivist and security blogger maia arson crimew about the data that was revealed in LetMeSpy's hack, the almost-clumsy efforts by developers to make and market these apps online, and whether this hack—and others in the past—are "good." 

"I'm the person on the podcast who can say 'We should hack things,' because I don't work for Malwarebytes. But the thing is, I don't think there really is any other way to get info in this industry."

Tune in today. 

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

In the United States, when the police want to conduct a search on a suspected criminal, they must first obtain a search warrant. It is one of the foundational rights given to US persons under the Constitution, and a concept that has helped create the very idea of a right to privacy at home and online. 

But sometimes, individualized warrants are never issued, never asked for, never really needed, depending on which government agency is conducting the surveillance, and for what reason. Every year, countless emails, social media DMs, and likely mobile messages are swept up by the US National Security Agency—even if those communications involve a US person—without any significant warrant requirement. Those digital communications can be searched by the FBI. The information the FBI gleans from those searches can be used can be used to prosecute Americans for crimes. And when the NSA or FBI make mistakes—which they do—there is little oversight. 

This is surveillance under a law and authority called Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. 

The law and the regime it has enabled are opaque. There are definitions for "collection" of digital communications, for "queries" and "batch queries," rules for which government agency can ask for what type of intelligence, references to types of searches that were allegedly ended several years ago, "programs" that determine how the NSA grabs digital communications—by requesting them from companies or by directly tapping into the very cables that carry the Internet across the globe—and an entire, secret court that, only has rarely released its opinions to the public. 

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast, with host David Ruiz, we speak with Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Policy Analyst Matthew Guariglia about what the NSA can grab online, whether its agents can read that information and who they can share it with, and how a database that was ostensibly created to monitor foreign intelligence operations became a tool for investigating Americans at home. 

As Guariglia explains:

"In the United States, if you collect any amount of data, eventually law enforcement will come for it, and this includes data that is collected by intelligence communities."

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

When you think about the word "cyberthreat," what first comes to mind? Is it ransomware? Is it spyware? Maybe it's any collection of the infamous viruses, worms, Trojans, and botnets that have crippled countless companies throughout modern history. 

In the future, though, what many businesses might first think of is something new: Disinformation. 

Back in 2021, in speaking about threats to businesses, the former director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Chris Krebs, told news outlet Axios: “You’ve either been the target of a disinformation attack or you are about to be.”

That same year, the consulting and professional services firm Price Waterhouse Coopers released a report on disinformation attacks against companies and organizations, and it found that these types of attacks were far more common than most of the public realized. From the report: 

“In one notable instance of disinformation, a forged US Department of Defense memo stated that a semiconductor giant’s planned acquisition of another tech company had prompted national security concerns, causing the stocks of both companies to fall. In other incidents, widely publicized unfounded attacks on a businessman caused him to lose a bidding war, a false news story reported that a bottled water company’s products had been contaminated, and a foreign state’s TV network falsely linked 5G to adverse health effects in America, giving the adversary’s companies more time to develop their own 5G network to compete with US businesses.”

Disinformation is here, and as much of it happens online—through coordinated social media posts and fast-made websites—it can truly be considered a "cyberthreat." 

But what does that mean for businesses? 

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Lisa Kaplan, founder and CEO of Alethea, about how organizations can prepare for a disinformation attack, and what they should be thinking about in the intersection between disinformation, malware, and cybersecurity. Kaplan said:

"When you think about disinformation in its purest form, what we're really talking about is people telling lies and hiding who they are in order to achieve objectives and doing so in a deliberate and malicious life. I think that this is more insidious than malware. I think it's more pervasive than traditional cyber attacks, but I don't think that you can separate disinformation from cybersecurity."

Tune in today. 

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

In May, a lawyer who was defending their client in a lawsuit against Columbia's biggest airline, Avianca, submitted a legal filing before a court in Manhattan, New York, that listed several previous cases as support for their main argument to continue the lawsuit.

But when the court reviewed the lawyer's citations, it found something curious: Several were entirely fabricated. 

The lawyer in question had gotten the help of another attorney who, in scrounging around for legal precedent to cite, utilized the "services" of ChatGPT. 

ChatGPT was wrong. So why do so many people believe it's always right? 

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Malwarebytes security evangelist Mark Stockley and Malwarebytes Labs editor-in-chief Anna Brading to discuss the potential consequences of companies and individuals embracing natural language processing tools—like ChatGPT and Google's Bard—as arbiters of truth. Far from being understood simply as chatbots that can produce remarkable mimicries of human speech and dialogue, these tools are becoming sources of truth for countless individuals, while also gaining attraction amongst companies that see artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLM) as the future, no matter what industry they operate in. 

The future could look eerily similar to an earlier change in translation services, said Stockley, who witnessed the rapid displacement of human workers in favor of basic AI tools. The tools were far, far cheaper, but the quality of the translations—of the truth, Stockley said—was worse. 

"That is an example of exactly this technology coming in and being treated as the arbiter of truth in the sense that there is a cost to how much truth we want."

Tune in today. 

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

On January 1, 2023, the Internet in Louisiana looked a little different than the Internet in Texas, Mississippi, and Arkansas—its next-door state neighbors. And on May 1, the Internet in Utah looked quite different, depending on where you looked, than the Internet in Arizona, or Idaho, or Nevada, or California or Oregon or Washington or, really, much of the rest of the United States. 

The changes are, ostensibly, over pornography. 

In Louisiana, today, visitors to the online porn site PornHub are asked to verify their age before they can access the site, and that age verification process hinges on a state-approved digital ID app called LA Wallet. In the United Kingdom, sweeping changes to the Internet are being proposed that would similarly require porn sites to verify the ages of their users to keep kids from seeing sexually explicit material. And in Australia, similar efforts to require age verification for adult websites might come hand-in-hand with the deployment of a government-issued digital ID. 

But the large problem with all these proposals is not that they would make a new Internet only for children, but a new Internet for everyone.

Look no further than Utah. 

On May 1, after new rules came into effect to make porn sites verify the ages of their users, the site PornHub decided to refuse to comply with the law and instead, to block access to the site for anyone visiting from an IP address based in Utah. If you’re in Utah, right now, and connecting to the Internet with an IP address located in Utah, you cannot access PornHub. Instead, you’re presented with a message from adult film star Cheri Deville who explains that:

“As you may know, your elected officials have required us to verify your age before granting you access to our website. While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.”

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with longtime security researcher Alec Muffett (who has joined us before to talk about Tor) to understand what is behind these requests to change the Internet, what flaws he's seen in studying past age verification proposals, and whether many members of the public are worrying about the wrong thing in trying to solve a social issue with technology. 

"The battle cry of these people have has always been—either directly or mocked as being—'Could somebody think of the children?' And I'm thinking about the children because I want my daughter to grow up with an untracked, secure private internet when she's an adult. I want her to be able to have a private conversation. I want her to be able to browse sites without giving over any information or linking it to her identity."

Muffett continued:

"I'm trying to protect that for her. I'd like to see more people grasping for that."

Tune in today.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Additional Resources and Links for today's episode:

"A Sequence of Spankingly Bad Ideas." - An analysis of age verification technology presentations from 2016. Alec Muffett.

"Adults might have to buy £10 ‘porn passes’ from newsagents to prove their age online." - The United Kingdom proposes an "adult pass" for purchase in 2018 to comply with earlier efforts for online age verification. Metro. 

"Age verification won't block porn. But it will spell the end of ethical porn." - An independent porn producer explains how compliance costs for age verification could shut down small outfits that make, film, and sell ethical pornography. The Guardian. 

"Minnesota’s Attempt to Copy California’s Constitutionally Defective Age Appropriate Design Code is an Utter Fail." - Age verification creeps into US proposals. Technology and Marketing Law Blog, run by Eric Goldman. 

"Nationwide push to require social media age verification raises questions about privacy, industry standards." - Cyberscoop.

"The Fundamental Problems with Social Media Age Verification Legislation." - R Street Institute.

YouTube's age verification in action. - Various methods and requirements shown in Google's Support center for ID verification across the globe. 

"When You Try to Watch Pornhub in Utah, You See Me Instead. Here’s Why." - Cheri Deville's call for specialized phones for minors. Rolling Stone. 

Ransomware is becoming bespoke, and that could mean trouble for businesses and law enforcement investigators. 

It wasn't always like this. 

For a few years now, ransomware operators have congregated around a relatively new model of crime called "Ransomware-as-a-Service." In the Ransomware-as-a-Service model, or RaaS model, ransomware itself is not delivered to victims by the same criminals that make the ransomware. Instead, it is used almost "on loan" by criminal groups called "affiliates" who carry out attacks with the ransomware and, if successful, pay a share of their ill-gotten gains back to the ransomware’s creators.

This model allows ransomware developers to significantly increase their reach and their illegal hauls. By essentially leasing out their malicious code to smaller groups of cybercriminals around the world, the ransomware developers can carry out more attacks, steal more money from victims, and avoid any isolated law enforcement action that would put their business in the ground, as the arrest of one affiliate group won't stop the work of dozens of others. 

And not only do ransomware developers lean on other cybercriminals to carry out attacks, they also rely on an entire network of criminals to carry out smaller, specialized tasks. There are "Initial Access Brokers" who break into company networks and then sell that illegal method of access online. "You also have coders that you can contract out to," Liska said. "You have pen testers that you can contract out to. You can contract negotiators if you want. You can contract translators if you want."

But as Liska explained, as the ransomware "business" spreads out, so do new weak points: disgruntled criminals. 

"This whole underground marketplace that exists to serve ransomware means that your small group can do a lot," Liska said. "But that also means that you are entrusting the keys to your kingdom to these random contractors that you're paying in Bitcoin every now and then. And that, for example, is why the LockBit code got leaked—dude didn't pay his contractor."

With plenty of leaked code now circulating online, some smaller cybercriminals gangs have taken to making minor alterations and then sending that new variant of ransomware out into the world—no affiliate model needed. 

"Most of what we see is just repurposed code and we see a lot of what I call 'Franken-ransomware.'" 

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, Liska explains why Franken-ransomware poses unique challenges to future victims, cybersecurity companies, and law enforcement investigators. 

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

In January, a mental health nonprofit admitted that it had used Artificial Intelligence to help talk to people in distress. 

Prompted first by a user's longing for personal improvement—and the difficulties involved in that journey—the AI tool generated a reply, which, with human intervention, could be sent verbatim in a chat box, or edited and fine-tuned to better fit the situation. The AI said:

“I hear you. You’re trying to become a better person and it’s not easy. It’s hard to make changes in our lives, especially when we’re trying to do it alone. But you’re not alone. There are people here who care about you and want to help you. I’m proud of you for making the decision to try to improve your life. It takes a lot of courage and strength. I send you love and support as you go through this journey.”

This was experimental work from Koko, a mental health nonprofit that integrated the GPT-3 large language model into its product for a short period of time that is now over. In a video demonstration posted on Twitter earlier this year, Koko co-founder Rob Morris revealed that the nonprofit had used AI to provide "mental health support to about 4,000 people" across "about 30,000 messages." Though Koko pulled GPT-3 from its system after a reportedly short period of time, Morris said on Twitter that there are several questions left from the experience. 

"The implications here are poorly understood," Morris said. "Would people eventually seek emotional support from machines, rather than friends and family?"

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Courtney Brown, a social services administrator with a history in research and suicidology, to dig into the ethics, feasibility, and potential consequences of relying increasingly on AI tools to help people in distress. For Brown, the immediate implications draw up several concerns. 

"It disturbed me to see AI using 'I care about you,' or 'I'm concerned,' or 'I'm proud of you.' That made me feel sick to my stomach. And I think it was partially because these are the things that I say, and it's partially because I think that they're going to lose power as a form of connecting to another human."

But, importantly, Brown is not the only voice in today's podcast with experience in crisis support. For six years and across 1,000 hours, Ruiz volunteered on his local suicide prevention hotline. He, too, has a background to share. 

Tune in today as Ruiz and Brown explore the boundaries for deploying AI on people suffering from emotional distress, whether the "support" offered by any AI will be as helpful and genuine as that of a human, and, importantly, whether they are simply afraid of having AI encroach on the most human experiences. 

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Becky Holmes knows how to throw a romance scammer off script—simply bring up cannibalism. 

In January, Holmes shared on Twitter that an account with the name "Thomas Smith" had started up a random chat with her that sounded an awful lot like the beginnins stages of a romance scam. But rather than instantly ignoring and blocking the advances—as Holmes recommends everyone do in these types of situations—she first had a little fun. 

"I was hoping that you'd let me eat a small part of you when we meet," Holmes said. "No major organs or anything obviously. I'm not weird lol." 

By just a few messages later, "Thomas Smith" had run off, refusing to respond to Holmes' follow-up requests about what body part she fancied, along with her preferred seasoning (paprika). 

Romance scams are a serious topic. In 2022, the US Federal Trade Commission reported that, in the five years prior, victims of romance scams had reported losing a collective $1.3 billion. In just 2021, that number was $547 million, and the average amount of money reported stolen per person was $2,400. Worse, romance scammers themselves often target vulnerable people, including seniors, widows, and the recently divorced, and they show no remorse when developing long-lasting online relationships, all bit on lies, so that they can emotionally manipulate their victims into handing over hundreds or thousands of dollars. 

But what would you do if you knew a romance scammer had contacted you and you, like our guest on today's Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, had simply had enough? If you were Becky Holmes, you'd push back. 

For a couple of years now, Holmes has teased, mocked, strung along, and shut down online romance scammers, much of her work in public view as she shares some of her more exciting stories on Twitter. There's the romance scammer who she scared by not only accepting an invitation to meet, but ratcheting up the pressure by pretending to pack her bags, buy a ticket to Stockholm, and research venues for a perhaps too-soon wedding. There's the scammer she scared off by asking to eat part of his body. And, there's the story of the fake Brad Pitt:

" My favorite story is Brad Pitt and the the dead tumble dryer repairman. And I honestly have to say, I don't think I'm ever going to top that. Every time ...I put a new tweet up, I think, oh, if only it was Brad Pitt and the dead body. I'm just never gonna get better."

Tune in today to hear about Holmes' best stories, her first ever effort to push back, her insight into why she does what she does, and what you can do to spot a romance scam—and how to safely respond to one. 

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog. And you can read our most recent report, the 2023 State of Malware, which reveals the top five cyberthreats targeting businesses this year, along with important data on how cybercriminals have responded to our industry’s increasing capabilities to keep them out. Download the report at malwarebytes.com/SoM.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)