This week, hosts of N2K CyberWire Maria Varmazis and Dave Bittner alongside Joe Carrigan are discussing the latest in social engineering scams, phishing schemes, and criminal exploits that are making headlines. Maria’s story covers a BBC experiment by Thomas Germain showing how easily major AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini repeated a completely fabricated claim he posted online, highlighting what experts call a “renaissance for spam” as SEO-style manipulation resurfaces in the age of AI. Dave’s story examines Elizabeth Chamblee Burch’s book The Pain Brokers, which details how women with pelvic mesh implants were allegedly cold-called and steered into surgeries as part of a $40 million mass-tort recruitment scheme fueled by litigation finance and regulatory gaps. Joe’s story reports on an alleged decade-long ticket fraud ring at the Louvre in Paris, where tour guides and museum employees are accused of reusing tickets and bribery, costing more than €10 million before French authorities made multiple arrests. Our catch of the day comes from Reddit, where a user tested the limits of a land developer.
Resources and links to stories:
Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at [email protected].
Please enjoy this encore of Word Notes.
An IT governance framework developed by ISACA.
CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/cobit
Audio reference link: isacappc. “How Do You Explain Cobit to Your Dad – or Your CEO?” YouTube, YouTube, 24 Aug. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYATVkddIyw.
This week, hosts Maria Varmazis (also host of the T-Minus Space Daily show), Dave Bittner and Joe Carrigan are discussing the latest in social engineering scams, phishing schemes, and criminal exploits that are making headlines. We have some follow up where Joe shares a scam call he received. Dave’s got the story on a sophisticated phishing campaign targeting Apple Pay users through fake emails and voice calls impersonating customer support, as well as Australia’s ClickFit initiative warning that romance scammers are exploiting trust online for emotional and financial gain. Joe’s story is about a former Ohio bank employee who used his insider access to steal identities and siphon roughly $2 million from elderly customers, ultimately leading to his arrest in Chicago and federal conviction. Maria’s story is about a daughter who discovers her 84-year-old mother has been financially exploited by trusted professionals and even family members, underscoring how elder fraud often comes from familiar faces. It highlights the rapid rise in elder financial abuse and the urgent need for families to step in early—before cognitive decline makes the losses irreversible. Our catch of the day come's from the "Australian Government" on a tax document being floated around.
Resources and links to stories:
Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at [email protected].
Please enjoy this encore of Word Notes.
A security architecture that incorporates the cloud shared responsibility model, a vendor provided security stack, and network peering with one or more of the big content providers and their associated fiber networks.
CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/security-service-edge
Audio reference link: Netskope (2022). What is Security Service Edge (SSE). YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9H84nvgBqw [Accessed 21 Oct. 2022].
This week, hosts Maria Varmazis (also host of the T-Minus Space Daily show), Dave Bittner and Joe Carrigan are discussing the latest in social engineering scams, phishing schemes, and criminal exploits that are making headlines. Dave sits down with Simon Horswell, a Senior Fraud Specialist at Entrust discussing evolving romance scams for Valentine's Day. We have some follow up on chickens and a listener write-in, with a quick note on the backyard chicken trend and a closer look at a Bank of America fraud text that looked like a phish. Maria’s story follows an alleged “Dubai Crown Prince” scam that drained nearly €3 million from a Romanian businesswoman using fake banks and humanitarian appeals. Joe’s story tells of a handyman-turned-boyfriend who ran multiple dating scams and stole from his partner and her family, now featured on Amazon Prime. Dave’s story features Simon Horswell from Entrust explaining why romance scams hit $4.5 billion in 2024 and how scammers use psychological tricks, AI tools, and celebrity impersonation to manipulate victims. We have two catches of the day this week, one a physical letter from the DOJ and the other is an email from Microsoft.
Resources and links to stories:
Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at [email protected].
Please enjoy this encore of Word Notes.
A social engineering tactic in which hackers build a malicious domain to mimic a legitimate one.
CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/domain-spoofing
Audio reference link: “Mission Impossible Fallout - Hospital Scene.” YouTube, YouTube, 8 Oct. 2018,
This week, while Maria Varmazis (also host of the T-Minus Space Daily show) is out at a conference, hosts Dave Bittner and Joe Carrigan are joined by friend of the show Michele Kellerman, as they are sharing the latest in social engineering scams, phishing schemes, and criminal exploits that are making headlines. Our hosts start with some follow-up on Joe’s egg story, including his latest update and a brief detour into unexpected “big chicken news.” Joe’s story is on a massive USDA loan fraud scheme where Nikesh Patel fabricated fake government-backed farm loans, duped investment firms out of hundreds of millions of dollars, and continued running similar scams under aliases and even from prison, ultimately earning decades more in sentencing. Michele’s story is on a breaking report about the ShinyHunters group using targeted voice phishing and custom phishing kits to abuse Okta SSO, steal MFA credentials, and gain privileged access for data theft and extortion. Dave’s story is on LastPass warning users about an active phishing campaign impersonating the company, designed to steal master passwords and potentially expose all credentials stored in affected vaults. Our catch of the day comes from the Reddit, where two people we're approached by scammers through text messaging and both dealt with their scammers in different ways.
Resources and links to stories:
Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at [email protected].
Welcome in! You’ve entered, Only Malware in the Building. Join us each month to sip tea and solve mysteries about today’s most interesting threats. Your host is Selena Larson, Proofpoint intelligence analyst and host of their podcast DISCARDED. Inspired by the residents of a building in New York’s exclusive upper west side, Selena is joined by her co-hosts N2K Networks Dave Bittner and Keith Mularski, former FBI cybercrime investigator and now Chief Global Ambassador at Qintel.
Being a security researcher is a bit like being a detective: you gather clues, analyze the evidence, and consult the experts to solve the cyber puzzle. On this episode, our hosts discuss how attackers are increasingly abusing legitimate, trusted Microsoft workflows to make phishing campaigns more convincing and harder to spot. In device code phishing, victims are socially engineered into completing a real Microsoft OAuth login flow, inadvertently granting attackers valid access tokens without ever sharing a password. They also examined abuse of Microsoft 365 Direct Send, which allows threat actors to send phishing emails that appear to originate from inside an organization, reinforcing a broader shift toward weaponizing built-in cloud services rather than relying on obviously malicious infrastructure.
Please enjoy this encore of Word Notes.
A layer seven firewall that sits in line at the boundary between the internet and an organization's network perimeter that allows security policy enforcement and can perform certain prevention and detection tasks.
CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/secure-web-gateway
Audio reference link: Vintage Computer Federation (2015). VCF East 9.1 - Ches’ Computer Security Adventures - Bill Cheswick. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trR1cuBtcPs.
This week, hosts Dave Bittner, Joe Carrigan, and Maria Varmazis (also host of the T-Minus Space Daily show) are sharing the latest in social engineering scams, phishing schemes, and criminal exploits that are making headlines. Joe has two stories this week, starting with scammers cashing in on a Verizon outage by luring customers with fake credits, and ending with a rare cybercrime comeback as a woman who lost nearly $1 million gets her money back and then some. Dave’s story looks at scammers cashing in on the Ozempic and GLP-1 craze, as Wisconsin consumers lose hundreds of dollars to fake weight loss drugs, deepfake ads, and shady online pharmacies exploiting high demand and high prices. Maria’s story warns that scammers are impersonating electric, gas, and water companies this winter, using urgent threats, fake refunds, and unusual payment demands to steal money and personal information, while officials remind customers to hang up and verify any contacts through official channels. Our catch of the day comes from Reddit where the chief of police is reaching out via text.
Resources and links to stories:
Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at [email protected].
Please enjoy this encore of Word Notes.
Digital evidence that a system or network has been breached.
CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/indicator-of-compromise
Audio reference link: ”Suicide or Murder? | The Blind Banker | Sherlock,” uploaded by Sherlock, 18 October 2015