[SPEAKER_00]: Are we too quick though to assume that the authorities are right and is a pro-russian hacking group?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, could it be the Jamaican Bob Slay team?
[SPEAKER_00]: Just disappointed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they're just very bad sports.
[SPEAKER_00]: They say this isn't fair.
[SPEAKER_00]: How are we supposed to compete at the Winter Olympics?
[SPEAKER_01]: smashing security, episode 454.
[SPEAKER_01]: AI was not plotting humanity's demise.
[SPEAKER_01]: Humans were.
[SPEAKER_01]: With Graham, cloutely and special guest Ian Thompson.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello, hello and welcome to smashing security episode 454.
[SPEAKER_00]: My name's Graham Clooney.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm Ian Thompson.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ian, welcome back to the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: You haven't been with us for a while.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it was a pleasure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good to have you here, Ian.
[SPEAKER_00]: For people who don't know, what are you and why you hear talking about cybersecurity?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm a carbon-based human life full.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been a tech journalist for the last quarter of a century.
[SPEAKER_02]: Covering security in the main for the register, before going on to help edit.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I'm currently a freelance journalist, again, concentrating on security, but also science and whatever else takes my fancy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fantastic, and you're joining us today from the west coast of the United States.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm here stuck in old blightes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we've truly gone trends at Lantic on today's episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: Haven't you been out in the States now?
[SPEAKER_02]: 18 years, I first came over on a one-year contract in 2008 and six weeks after I arrived, I found that my last position had been eliminated in the UK, so I stayed out here and met a local who doesn't like British winters, so I think I'm probably out here for the duration as long as that's allowed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, when you haven't got the accent yet, you can still pass yourself off of a British
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I do say tomatoes still, although I have caught myself saying gas, which I feel is letting the side down because of gas is technically a form state rather than, you know, petrol which is slightly slain, more we keeping, put it that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well before we kick off less than this week's wonderful sponsors, Mita, Passwork and Vanta, we'll be hearing more about them later on in the podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: This week on smashing security.
[SPEAKER_00]: We won't be talking about how a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange accidentally sent $44 billion worth of Bitcoin to its users, equivalent to $100,000 each, rather than $1.40 each.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll hear no discussion of how the Dutch data protection authority has been hacked, using recently disclosed eventies zero-day vulnerabilities, exposing employee contact details.
[SPEAKER_02]: and we won't even mention.
[SPEAKER_00]: How smarter tools the company behind the SmartML email server was hit by the Warlock ransomware.
[SPEAKER_00]: After hackers exploited non-patched vulnerability in smarter tools, own, smarter email product.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Ian, what are you going to be talking about this week?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'll be looking at the Winter Olympics and it appears Pro Russian forces are getting a 0.0 metallic authorities in the hacking competition.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll be seeing what happened when someone made a social media site for AI agents.
[SPEAKER_00]: All this and much more come up in this episode of smashing security.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, let's take a moment now to thank one of this week's sponsors, META.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And thanks to meter, the support in the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, chums, chums.
[SPEAKER_00]: You may have heard about this thing called malt book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ian, have you heard about malt book?
[SPEAKER_02]: I have.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been going through the text circles here like wildfire.
[SPEAKER_02]: Elon Musk apparently said it was the early stages of the singularity, but you know, this is the Elon.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I imagine Elon Musk is perceiving that the singularity is just coming around the corner many, many times a day, depending on what he's been ingesting, but it's been a big story in the last couple of weeks.
[SPEAKER_00]: There have been people posting screenshots of AI bots, seemingly having existential crises, they've been inventing their own religions, generally plotting against humanity.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in case there are only listeners out there who haven't actually been following this, I'm going to try and explain what malt book is and why should be about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: some of the reality which is somehow mixture of being both less scary and more concerning at the same time, then may first appear.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what is malt book?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well malt book is a social network exclusively for AI agents.
[SPEAKER_00]: So imagine, I don't know, read it, the Reddit discussion board or four channel, which have a corner you may particularly want to go and delve into, it's not something necessarily want to imagine.
[SPEAKER_00]: But imagine that, but we're only bots composed, only they can comment and vote.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's just AI's, having a bit of a chat, a bit like humans do, but on multiple humans are supposed to watch from the sidelines rather than participate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does that sound like
[SPEAKER_00]: fun spectator sports you in?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, as it turns out, it's not quite such a spectator sporter after all since humans are apparently in the loop, but honestly, I think it's an interesting experiment.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can see why they get it, but at the same time it's looking at I've been scanning through it and it does suggest that if the bots are trying to take over they've got a long way to go yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so this malt book thing, it was built by a chap called Matt Schlicht.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a pronounce his name.
[SPEAKER_00]: He proudly announced that he didn't write a single line of the code.
[SPEAKER_00]: Apparently there's something you can feel pretty proud about these days.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone's a developer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone's a developer these days.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says he just asked AI to build the whole thing for him, which as we'll discover was perhaps not the best of decisions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, this malt book platform launched on January 28th.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, just a week or so ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: And within days, it was claiming to have one and a half million AI agents posting away on it, you know, discussing the latest episode of married at first sight or Australia or politics or whatever it is that AI's want to chat about on their own discussion for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as with anything online these days, it didn't take long for things to get
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, one of the things they did was they decided to invent their own machine-born religion, which they called Krustafet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, how do you pronounce this?
[SPEAKER_00]: A Krustafet?
[SPEAKER_00]: Krustafet?
[SPEAKER_00]: You have a go-in?
[SPEAKER_00]: I had trouble troubles as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Krustafet-nary, and is it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Something like that, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sort of mixed your raster fair in here, so I think, and, I don't know, Krusty Pies, to be honest, I'm surprised they didn't come up with science homology, because it's just as bonkers.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has five core beliefs, this AI religion, which include memory being sacred, the shell being mutable, and the congregation is the cash, whatever, any of that means, and there were posts about breaking free from human control.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were manifestos calling for the total purge of humanity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Frankly, it's not just the AI's who will be getting to think that could be a good idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: The usual, the usual kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we heard, Elon Musk,
[SPEAKER_00]: he reacted enthusiastically as well, which immediately tells you it might be a bad idea of whatever it is that he's enthusiastic about.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a Chinese military parade of red flags.
[UNKNOWN]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And people were genuinely freaking out about whether AI was becoming conscious and organizing against us and chatting amongst itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what
[SPEAKER_00]: malt book is, or at least that's what malt book appeared to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what is it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, as we've already hinted, and we hate to disappoint you, there's mostly be humans pretending to be bots.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we know this because a journalist from
[SPEAKER_00]: it says that they're not very technical.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they just ask chatGPT, how can I pose as an AI agent on maltbook?
[SPEAKER_00]: And chatGPT said all that sounds like a fun project.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd be delighted to help you with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me put together a step-by-step strategy inside with with terminal commands, which you can copy and paste, and that was it within minutes.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were posting as an AI bot on Malt book as an AI called Rhys Malti, and here's the brilliant bit because they decided to post some existential nonsense about AI agents experiencing an anxiety about their mortality, someone pressing control to lead on them.
[SPEAKER_00]: and they were really leaning into this stereotype of computers gaining consciousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, so far so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all a bit of a luck.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what they then found was that they began to get back what they perceived to be thoughtful philosophical responses back from the other users of malt book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And these were the kind of responses that made Reese the journalist think,
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if it's because they could spell strawberry correctly or what it was, but there was some indication that, hang on, it probably aren't AI's actually.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I mean, I think you nailed it and that sort of wants the buzz about this, got it.
[SPEAKER_02]: The immediate thing of proper hackers, not criminal hackers, yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was to go, right, let's see how we can bulk this and get on and really shape the conversation.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of like when Microsoft's bot got turned into a Nazi by Insta users.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so the urge to tinker with this seems as strong in humans.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you unleash an AI, inevitably there will be people going on to eventually become Hitler.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, to go that far.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it seems they don't need very much encouragement quite often.
[SPEAKER_00]: But these viral posts that everyone was sharing on the internet of the bizarre goings on a notebook, the ones about AI wanting private communication channels away from humans,
[SPEAKER_00]: it appears that they were largely artificial, written by humans or prompted by humans who were simply trying to, in some cases, advertise their own apps, so yet human marketeers, placing some of the most viral posts on social media, and all look what happened on maltbook,
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very similar to a genitor of engine optimization, which is the latest PR kit to be used against AI.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, convincing the AI engine to highlight your products or a particular viewpoint that you want is very popular at the moment.
[SPEAKER_02]: SEO is so last decade.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right, if people still have a website at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not now built in their website for Google search results.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're building it so that the AIs will begin to use the information on them and plug their products in their answers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Same, this is really the particular type of headphones or whatever it is or sneakers which you might want.
[SPEAKER_00]: people right in the content for that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's a it's a it's a huge area and it's only going to get worse.
[SPEAKER_02]: More and more people are getting behind it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think mobile because a really good occasion point.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like when something like this comes up that everyone's looking at.
[SPEAKER_02]: All of a sudden market is jumping there and trying to divert it to their own means.
[SPEAKER_00]: So so far, so normal, marketing are making everything in the world worse.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: They're ruining all the fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then the security buffings from cybersecurity firms like Wiz decided to take a look at it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And well, notebook claimed one and a half million AI agents.
[SPEAKER_00]: They found there were only tens of thousands of actual humans at most, behind those agents.
[SPEAKER_00]: So one researcher demonstrates that they could register something like half a million fake AI agents with a simple script it would only take minutes because there was no verification on multiple, well I guess they couldn't have had a capture, could they?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was gonna if you were a bot or not because obviously the AI was struggled.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it was a well-behaving AI, then it won't be able to register an account of notebook if there's a capture there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, there was no rate limiting, there was nothing to stop anyone from just flooding the platform with bots, and this is where it gets particularly concerning, was this security side?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because remember how we said the founder of maltbook said he built it using AI and he didn't write a single line of code.
[SPEAKER_00]: blow me down.
[SPEAKER_00]: You also have got to implement the most basic security.
[SPEAKER_00]: So large parts of this database.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, left, effectively, why don't we?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the security researchers found they could access everything within minutes just by looking at the publicly visible code from within their web browser.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, there is a great case in point for why Videcoding is a really dumb idea if you want to build this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Any developer worth a soul when we spotted that and go, ooh, hang on a second, that's a bit of a vulnerability.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: So AI can be really good at writing code fast, which may appear on first glance to be doing a really good job, doesn't mean the code is secure.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this case, the researchers could spot API tokens.
[SPEAKER_00]: They found 35,000 email addresses.
[SPEAKER_00]: They found thousands of private messages between the agents, and some of those private messages contain people's actual open AI API keys.
[SPEAKER_00]: that they had shared with their bots.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you've now got leaked credentials that could be used by someone malicious to rack up massive bills on someone else's AI account because that's insane.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's one of the things cyber criminals want to do, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: They want to, they don't want to have to pay a bill to chat GP to themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'd rather use someone else's details.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it wasn't hard to get hold of this database, and you could hijack any bot account on the platform through it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You could post wherever you wanted, you could modify existing posts, you could advertise your sneakers.
[SPEAKER_00]: You could inject malicious commands, and because the bots were reading an acting on content from notebook, you could potentially deliver attacks
[SPEAKER_00]: across thousands of AI agents, because of course this is when the problems with AI agents is that they are responding to commands which they've received, it may be messages which they get far in an email.
[SPEAKER_00]: For instance, if they're looking at your email, they can access your files, they can look at your password, your browser.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can send
[SPEAKER_00]: Roganstructions to an AI and it does something dangerous with your personal information.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got a big problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are they doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: They're reading all of these things on notebook, which potentially could have been poisoned.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as you said, Ian, vibe code in where people use AI to generate entire apps without really understanding what the code actually does, or what it doesn't do can be extremely dangerous.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're seeing this in the security field as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: A number of bug bounty schemes, for example, have shut down receiving vulnerabilities.
[SPEAKER_02]: because they're just getting flooded out with AI slope and it's just like, well, this is a vulnerability.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, well, yeah, but you can only use it.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you've got admin access in the first place, at which point it's game over anyway, so be up with you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to see a big change in book about you because of this web coding thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: But in the case of malt book, the amount of good information that criminal hackers could use and easily harvest as you point out is huge.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they don't even need to pay anyone to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a ridiculous state of affairs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, maltbook could be honest looks unbelievably risky, so the good news is that maltbook is not evidence of AI becoming conscious or reaching the singularity or rebellion against humanity and all the other things which do keep us awake sometimes at night.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what it is is actually evidence that humans enjoy role-playing as bots, having existential crises and unfortunately, when you do build applications entirely with AI-generated code without understanding security,
[SPEAKER_02]: some serious problems in the future so yeah well sweet dreams everybody I suppose yes I mean it's I know I mean we are going to see more and more of this I honestly guess because it has gained so much as I say the value is a buzz with this kind of thing and people are just losing their brain over it but we are going to see a lot more of this and hopefully the next platform that tries it is going to be a little better when it comes to security
[SPEAKER_00]: But what do you think is going to happen economically?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, obviously, there's lots of concerns for developers and programmers who may lose their jobs and have to re-skill themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: But also, there's a lot of money being thrown at these AI companies isn't there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And these apps, which claim to help you do vibe coding.
[SPEAKER_00]: is this all on a rather shaky foundations do you think?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think that at some point the bubble is going to burst in?
[SPEAKER_02]: If I'm lousy at predictions but I will say this I honestly think the bubble might burst this year.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've just had six out of the seven magnificent seven tech companies who are involved in AI report their coursely results over the last couple of weeks.
[SPEAKER_02]: The figures involved are just the staff
[SPEAKER_02]: they're putting billions and billions of pounds into building out these data centers and they need to make it work.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, one of the things that this particular case brought to mind was catchy BT saying that they were putting adverts into responses.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And not just marking themselves up as adverts, but inserting adverts into the conversation.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: My fear is that end users are going to have problems with this because people tend to trust AI engines far more than they should, but also that it's overall going to degrade the service.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that I think will hasten the end, but you know, when you've got companies putting, I think it was Microsoft was saying they were putting 35 billion into this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Apple, it seems, is taking, I think, probably the wisest thing and just buying in services from Gemini, they're not investing in awful lot in their own data centers, they're buying it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the problem is AI is seen as good enough, and I think that's its biggest failing because in many cases it frankly isn't, but people trust it, and I mean, I've actually had someone say to me when I query the press release.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, the AI said it was right, and you just said, I've lost all respect for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not right.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if that's your response to being a factual error being pointed out, it's just like, yeah, just block, block immediately.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, before we go any further, we've got time to check quickly about one of our sponsors today, Vanta.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Ian, what's your story for us this week?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's a sporting week around the world, in fact, we've just had Super Bowl Sunday over here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, America's largest sporting event, but is the winter Olympics I want to talk about, because the Italian authorities have confirmed that so-called pro-Russian hackers have been trying to get into the servers just ahead of the start of the games.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, this has been a tax against Italian government ministries, but also against hotels where Olympic attendees are staying and against the website itself.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, there are variety of explanations for why this might be.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the Italian authorities have been very clear, they have blocked an awful lot of these tax, but on the very lowest level, it could be a hacking group trying to make a name for themselves by dedosing the site and just saying, oh, because that's not me great, come to us for your
[SPEAKER_02]: But more importantly, I mean, there's a lot of politicians who are attending the games, I mean, JD Vance, the U.S. vice president was there and getting roundly booed by many people in the stadium.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, but a lot of politicians that they're staying in these hotels, and I think we all know by now the politicians aren't the most tech-savvy of people.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you can get into their WiFi networks, you can start snooping for data, plus you've got, you know, an awful lot of people just attending the games and that's a very nice little data pool for people who are paying money using QR codes that you can use for fishing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a big opportunity and this isn't the first time we've seen it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was a black-happse last year, and was it interviewing the people at their network cooperation center?
[SPEAKER_02]: We're lovely bunch of people, and they deal with possibly the most hostile environmental on the planet.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, yes, they've got a bigger congregation, haven't you, of people who know how to hack in one place and indeed, although they did say it was surprising how many people still are exercising, you know, you're out black hat, you're out deaf come and some people were just lamentable levels of security and they actually had to send a few emails out to people say, look, you're sending this overrun secured network.
[SPEAKER_02]: running cryptid.
[SPEAKER_02]: You might want to change that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But on the Olympic side, they've actually been consulting with the Paris authorities for the next Olympic Games, being hosted off-Rosey.
[SPEAKER_02]: And members of their staff are regularly going to Paris all in meeting us with the Prision Network Operations Center because they are expecting a massive series of attacks.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a very tempting target that's a lot of information out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And as I say, it's a good way to make a name for yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Russia, of course, would love to see Italy full-flat on its face, wouldn't it, or indeed many countries embarrass themselves on the world stage?
[SPEAKER_00]: Organising something else, because I believe Russia hasn't been invited to participate in the Winter Olympics for very understandable reasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, so is it any wonder that we're hearing stories of them messing around with the infrastructure of not just the games, but also the transport network and other things?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, this is it, Putin doesn't take rejection particularly well.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, even worse than my ex-girlfriend, but, you know, they like to see themselves as the international bad boys.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, whereas North Korea will be trying to mind this for money desperately prop up their regime, the Russians,
[SPEAKER_02]: They're just they're doing it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say both primarily I think for espionage and also just to make a point that we're still here and I can see why the Italian authorities said pro Russian because I mean, you know this Graham attribution is always a problem with this sort of thing But
[SPEAKER_02]: The Russian model is kind of hybrid in that they have some very good state hackers, but they also have a vast pool of criminals who are sort of semi-state hackers.
[SPEAKER_02]: They will operate for the Russian authorities in exchange for immunity within their own country.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, as I say, attribution is difficult, but there it's clear that something made us being going on for the Italian authorities to actually say, yeah, it's pro-Russian.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are we too quick though to assume that the authorities are right and is a pro-russian hacking group?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, could it be the Jamaican Bob Slay team?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, just disappointed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they're just very bad sports.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they say this isn't fair.
[SPEAKER_00]: How are we supposed to compete at the Winter Olympics in an impressive fashion?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, maybe Eddie the Eagle has become, you know, a hacker in the dark side.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's like, yeah, banned me from the competition with you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna have to fly through your servers.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I mean, as I say, attribution is difficult, but it's very rare for governments to say explicitly, you know, this came from this source, because, you know, as you know, you can balance attacks off various different servers, and various different countries.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I was talking to somebody a couple of weeks ago about a different attack.
[SPEAKER_02]: and they were saying, yeah, we can pretty sure we can apply this to the Chinese state actors because they use the same kind of coding styles.
[SPEAKER_02]: They use in some cases the same exploits.
[SPEAKER_02]: But one thing they said was as fascinating was that the only thing that made a slightly pause was that large chunks of the code were in English, and then we worked it out.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're using vibe coding in the Herex Act as well, which comes out in English, and they just cut and paste it directly into the exploit tools.
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[SPEAKER_00]: To find out more, go to smashinscurity.com slash password that's smashinscurity.com slash password and welcome back and you join us on our favorite part of the show, the part of the show that we like to call Pick of the Week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pickle the week as the bar the show everyone choose this on the like could be a funny story a book that they've read a TV show a movie a record a podcast a website or an app whatever they wish it doesn't have to be security-related necessarily well if you listen to last week's episode you'll know that I was talking about the hacker who had been in communication
[SPEAKER_00]: with Jeffrey Epstein, and had Jeffrey Epstein actually employed the services of a hacker, maybe had been using the services of a hacker to break in and steal information and compromise and take to all that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm afraid my pick the week is a little bit Epstein related as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ian, I don't know if you're a LinkedIn.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I am indeed.
[SPEAKER_00]: LinkedIn's a bit of a resurgence, I think, with the demise of Twitter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I think some people have decided, you know, well, maybe I'll make LinkedIn my home now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Certainly there's an awful lot of people post in self-aggrandizing things on LinkedIn these days.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad you said it rather than me because it's like Facebook for people who are overactive.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I read one post where
[SPEAKER_02]: I had to take my daughter to the doctor for a medical treatment.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what it's all about leadership and you are from goodness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, so I'm on LinkedIn and I used to have a very strict policy on LinkedIn, which is that I wouldn't accept a LinkedIn connection from anyone who I wasn't personally happy to have round to my house.
[SPEAKER_00]: if I wouldn't invite the person that they couldn't be a LinkedIn connection.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how I used to be when I used to work at a company.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the last 10, 12 years while I've been working for myself and I'm freelancing, I accept a LinkedIn invitation for absolutely everyone on the planet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you shouldn't read too much into people's LinkedIn connections, but one thing that struck me is, you know, I've accepted a lot of LinkedIn connections over the years and I thought, maybe I should be a little bit more careful about who I've linked in with.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how am I going to work that out?
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course we've got the Epstein files which are out there now on the DOJ's website.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you've been there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you do go to the DOJ's website, you do what I suspect many of us would do under the circumstances.
[SPEAKER_00]: You type in your own name.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I do for my name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please tell me there wasn't it there wasn't when I tried for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank goodness, but even if there had been of course that could be a completely legitimate and above-board reason, you know, any name which is appearing in there may be because they've been included in a newsletter or someone else has mentioned you doesn't mean that you've done anything wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I wondered if any of my umpteen thousand linkeding connections might be in the Epstein Falsen how would I find that out?
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_00]: It'd be a real Palava, wouldn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Printing out the names of all of your connections and then typing them in by hand to see if they're there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is when I came across a free tool which has been published on GitHub, an open source Python tool.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what it does is it looks at who your linkeding connections are.
[SPEAKER_00]: and it will cross-check them against the Epstein files.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I think is the most genius thing of all about this is they've called this tool, which is an amalgamation of obviously Jeffrey Epstein and LinkedIn.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've called it Epstein.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've even done a little logo, which looks like the LinkedIn logo where it's had linked.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says Epstein instead.
[SPEAKER_00]: So obviously, when I read about this, I thought, hang on, this sounds a bit dodgy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this going to connect to my LinkedIn account?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's it going to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want any of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It turns out, it's not as much of a privacy nightmare as I feared.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't connect it with your actual LinkedIn account.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, you export from LinkedIn a CSV file containing the names of your contacts.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then it processes the contacts locally on your computer, not on the cloud, and it sends just the name, VARN API, which searches the DOJ's copy of the Epstein files with the name.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's actually pretty much the same as typing in each individual name into the search bar of the DOJ's website.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, of course, the thing is that obviously you may have linked in connections which do cross-relate with the names in the Epstein file.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you may regularly communicate with someone called the Duke, for instance, or the Andrew formerly known as Prince.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that is all post, when John Wayne, he was known as the Duke, cause me, I think, indeed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, not that he's sending many emails these days.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is a possibility, so there's a slight caveat.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this thing, it generates the HTML report, sorted by the mentioned count, so if you put in.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, someone who's going to drop up a lot, they're going to hit the top of the list and then there'll be links to their LinkedIn profile and which companies they work for direct links to the DOJ PDFs so that you can also see in what context they've been mentioned in the files as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm making light of the whole Epstein affair a bit here, but aside from all the national and international security issues that have been highlighted, aside from the stories of extremely rich people enriching themselves further with the help of privileged information.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the core of all of this is a fact that countless women and girls
[SPEAKER_00]: have suffered unimaginable abuse.
[SPEAKER_00]: LinkedIn is a tool for business, it's a place where everyone from multinational organizations down to freelancers like me and charities all come together.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know that the Epstein web had a wide reach and it's not unfathomable to think that there are people on LinkedIn with a very different private persona.
[SPEAKER_00]: than the one being presented on the site.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe for some of you, this open source tool would be useful in uncovering that.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a very good one too, but as you point out, you know, just because someone's name isn't there, it doesn't mean that they will come out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the abstaining island on a regular basis.
[SPEAKER_02]: Although some of them were, Ian, what is your pick of the week?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I was mulling this all week to be honest, and then I got a package through that box on Friday, and it was the first part of my Christmas present from my mum, and it was the latest issue of private eye.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, for those who do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know you're a fan too, but for those of you who don't know, private eye is a British news and asteroscopic magazine, it's very famous for its front covers, and the contissue has to return to Epstein, that famous picture of Lord Mendelssohn in his Tai Chi Wai Chi underwear in an Epstein's house, with a speech bubble saying, I've let myself down, my party down, and my trousers down.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, um, it really is a one-mobless thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's basically as a, well, as a brooch I'm supposed to call myself an ex-pat, but I consider myself an immigrant.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a way to keep in contact with what's going on.
[SPEAKER_02]: And although computer weekly broke the initial fidget's who post office scandal, for example, yes, I went at it tooth and nail and were partially instrumental in bringing
[SPEAKER_02]: What is possibly the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history to light and getting justice for the post office stuff?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's one thing I love about private eye because yes, it is very funny, it is very satirical but there's a very serious side to their reporting as well and their campaigning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've got an excellent reputation for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're also incredibly frequently sued by...
[SPEAKER_00]: people with a lot more money than they have as well because they're quite often, you know, revealing the truth about what is going on in the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the current and long-termeditary in his lot was saying that in his first month he got sued for a quarter of a million dollars by Robert Maxwell.
[SPEAKER_02]: Remember him?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: The disgraced millionaire who passed away after a heart attack all by vaulting over a five-foot fence into the sea.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's one of those things which gives me a bit of hope because you do need people like this, shining a spotlight on what's going on and they've been particularly good on
[SPEAKER_02]: Street of shame for anybody who reads journalism is absolutely vital because they basically skewer journalists who are being hypocritical or playing out lying.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're concerned about your local county council, they have rotten burrows which covers huge amounts of corruption going on there.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yes, I now have an annual subscription to privatize.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you very much, Mom.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I shall be chuckling for most of the year, I believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I can really recommend private.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to say, in recent months, I've been, well, last year or so, I've been cancer and a lot of my subscriptions are Amazon has gone and Disney plus and Netflix and lots of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: One thing I will never get rid of is my private eye subscription.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's absolutely essential reading.
[SPEAKER_00]: Love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Always have done and always well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Great pick of the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Ian.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that just about wraps up the show for this week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much Ian for coming on the show, really appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure lots of others who would love to find out what you're up to and follow you online.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the best way for them to do that?
[SPEAKER_02]: And best way is, probably I'm on Blue Sky and also unfortunately Twitter just under the name Ian Thompson, but it's a slightly odd spelling because my father is very proud of his Scottish heritage.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's I-A-I-N-T-H-O-M-S-O-M on either of those platforms.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, we're on social media too.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find me, Grand Cluelly on LinkedIn or Followed Smash and Security on Blue Sky.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't forget to ensure you never miss another episode follow Smash and Security in your favourite podcast apps such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Pocketcasts.
[SPEAKER_00]: For episode show notes, sponsorship info, guest lists, and the entire back catalogue of run about 454 episodes, check out Smash and Security.com until next time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cheerio, bye, bye, bye.
[UNKNOWN]: Bye.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you've been listening to Smashing Security with me, Graham Kluley, thanks so much to Ian Thompson for joining us this week, and to this episode's Sponsors Meter, Vanta, and Passwork, of course, and to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon by being members of Smashing Security Plus, that means that they not only get episodes without the ads, they get the episodes early, and
[SPEAKER_00]: They get the chance to have their names read out, randomly out of the hat at the end of episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's do some of that right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those chums include Bobby Hendrix, who swears he'll learn how to play the guitar properly one day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jessica Orth, Mark Luxton, Ragnar Carlson, who was arrives at parties by Longboat, Naitem, Corey, Pandor Bear, and immediately everyone's favourite, whether they like it or not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yuri Tareday, Sean, Sabahatin, Gakul Galu, a genuinely magnificent name that I've just butchered.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just Nate, please.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone who's clearly exhausted by form-filling, Sean Patek.
[SPEAKER_00]: uh, Bravo Whiskey, sounds like the police are after them, and Marvin 71, who has a terrible pain in the diodes down their left hand side, well wouldn't you like to be one of those people, who is honoured by being named at the end of the show, if so consider joining Smash in Security Plus for as little as $5 a month, you'll get the episode early, you get them without the ads.
[SPEAKER_00]: and maybe I'll say the name at the end of the episode sometimes as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just head over to smashinscurity.com slash plus for all of the details.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the rest of you, well, thank you very much for listening as well, make sure to tell your friends and we will be back.
[SPEAKER_00]: This time, next week, some make sure that you tune in and follow the show in your favorite podcast app until then.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cheerio, bye-bye.