Jan 6

Aaron Bateman. "Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative" (MIT Press, 2024)

A new and provocative take on the formerly classified history of accelerating superpower military competition in space in the late Cold War and beyond. In March 1983, President Ronald Reagan shocked the world when he announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively kn ... Show More

20m 48s

Jan 5

Florentine Koppenborg, "Japan's Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance" (Cornell UP, 2023)

Florentine Koppenborg’s Japan’s Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance (Cornell UP, 2023) begins with the understated observation that the triple disaster of March 2011 “exposed severe deficiencies in Japan’s nuclear safety governance.” This is the starting point ... Show More

42m 56s

Dec 31

Jordan Frith, "Barcode" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

Barcodes are about as ordinary as an object can be. Billions of them are scanned each day and they impact everything from how we shop to how we travel to how the global economy is managed. But few people likely give them more than a second thought. In a way, the barcode's ordinar ... Show More

1h 17m

Feb 2021

Nicole Perlroth, "This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

For years, cybersecurity experts have debated whether cyber-weapons represent a destabilizing new military technology or merely the newest tool in the spies’ arsenal. In This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends (Bloomsbury, 2021), Nicole Perlroth makes a compelling case that cyber ... Show More

1 h

Nov 2023

Cybercriminals at the service of the state, and an array of new underworld tools.

Data brokers offer information on active US military personnel. Current BlueNoroff activity. A new Gootloader variant is active in the wild. Atlassian vulnerabilities actively exploited. The prevalence of breaches. Update on a Barracuda vulnerability. Hacktivism and the cyber cou ... Show More

28m 16s

May 2022

A new loader variant for wiper campaigns. Sanctions, hacktivism, and disinformation. Conti’s toxic branding. Happy birthday, US Cyber Command.

There’s a new loader identified in wiper campaigns. President Putin complains of sanctions and cyberattacks, and vows to increase Russia's cybersecurity. Coordinated inauthenticity at scale. Killnet crows large over Italian operations. Conti's dissolution doesn't mean its operato ... Show More

23m 25s

Dec 2021

Espionage phishbait in South and Southwest Asia. A utility recovers from a cyber incident. GAO tells the US Congress cyber strategy is wanting. Investigations, Moscow and Missouri style.

SideCopy, a Pakistani APT, is phishing for information in both India and Afghanistan. A Colorado electrical utility continues to recover from a cyber incident it sustained early last month. The GAO tells the US Congress that the nation still lacks a comprehensive cybersecurity st ... Show More

25m 27s

Feb 2023

How the C2C market sustains ransomware gangs. In Russia’s war, intelligence services deploy wipers, and hacktivist auxiliaries handle the DDoS. And a look into other corners of the cyber underworld.

Microsoft tallies more than a hundred ransomware gangs. Sandworm's NikoWiper hits Ukraine's energy sector. Mobilizing cybercriminals in a hybrid war. Firebrick Ostrich and business email compromise. Telegram is used for sharing stolen data and selling malware. Crypto scams find t ... Show More

31m 34s

Apr 2020

Cybersecurity notes during the pandemic emergency. Twitter bots. Ransomware attack on a biotech firm. WHO updates. And how are the cyber gangs doing these days?

Geolocation in support of social distancing. Fixing vulnerabilities in a popular teleconferencing service. Twitter bots running an influence campaign against the Turkish government are taken down. A biotech firm reports a ransomware attack. More on attempts to compromise the Worl ... Show More

26m 21s

Sep 2020

The difference between a breach and, well, a public record. Pioneer Kitten’s lucrative bycatch. Malware gets past Gatekeeper. A gamer’s bandit economy. And happy birthday, Cyber Branch.

An election hack that wasn’t. More DDoS in New Zealand’s stock exchange. A look at how Iranian cyber contractors make money as a byproduct of cyberespionage. Malware sneeks past Apple’s notarization process. The bandit economy that’s grown up around Fortnite. Ben Yelin looks at h ... Show More

22m 56s

Jul 2019

Capital One breach update. CISA warns of avionics CAN bus vulnerabilities. More attacks on local Louisiana governments. Change at the SEC. Cyber summer school for NATO, EU diplomats.

Capital One takes a market hit from its data loss. Observers see the incident as a reminder that cloud users need to pay attention to their configurations. CISA warns of vulnerabilities in small, general aviation aircraft. Another parish in Louisiana is hit with a cyberattack. Th ... Show More

21m 7s

Nicole Perlroth, "This Is How They Tell ...