On this week’s show, Patrick Gray and James Wilson are joined by special guest-host Dmitri Alperovitch. They discuss the week’s cybersecurity news, including:
The US government is mad as hell about Chinese firms stealing American AI technology
Dmitri has an opinion or two about the US selling Nvidia chips to China
Speaking of Chinese AI, Kimi’s new 2.6 is very interesting
The US sanctions a Cambodian senator for earning mega bucks through scam compounds
And a ransomware family is promoting itself as being … quantum-safe?
This week’s show is sponsored by Trail of Bits. CEO and co-founder Dan Guido chats to Pat about how private inference works and Trail of Bits’ audit of WhatsApp’s private AI setup.
This episode is also available on Youtube.
Show notes
Exclusive: US State Dept orders global warning about alleged AI thefts by DeepSeek, other Chinese firms | Reuters
moonshotai/Kimi-K2.6 · Hugging Face
Discord Sleuths Gained Unauthorized Access to Anthropic’s Mythos | WIRED
Newly Deciphered Sabotage Malware May Have Targeted Iran’s Nuclear Program—and Predates Stuxnet | WIRED
Hackers deployed wiper malware in destructive attacks on Venezuela’s energy sector | The Record from Recorded Future News
Mystery Around Venezuelan Cyberattack Deepens, with New Discovery of "Highly Destructive" Wiper
Risky Business #819 -- Venezuela (credibly?!) blames USA for wiper attack - Risky Business Media
AI Tools Are Helping Mediocre North Korean Hackers Steal Millions | WIRED
CISA: US agency breached through Cisco vulnerability, FIRESTARTER backdoor allowed access through March | The Record from Recorded Future News
US, UK authorities warn that Firestarter backdoor malware survives patching | Cybersecurity Dive
Surveillance campaigns use commercial surveillance tools to exploit long-known telecom vulnerabilities | CyberScoop
UK regulator closes loophole that allowed rogue companies to track phone users' location | Reuters
US sanctions Cambodian senator for millions earned through scam compounds | The Record from Recorded Future News
Vercel says some of its customers' data was stolen prior to its recent hack | TechCrunch
Supply Chain Security Incident Update
Apple fixes bug that cops used to extract deleted chat messages from iPhones | TechCrunch
Kyle Daigle on X: "Wanted to provide more clarity about this. Yesterday, we had a regression in merge queue behavior where, in some cases, squash or rebase commits were generated from the wrong base state, making earlier changes appear reverted in branch history. 2,804 pull requests out of over 4M" / X
Securing the git push pipeline: Responding to a critical remote code execution vulnerability - The GitHub Blog
One ransomware crew now drives half of all cyber claims: At-Bay | Insurance Business
In a first, a ransomware family is confirmed to be quantum-safe - Ars Technica
What we learned about TEE security from auditing WhatsApp's Private Inference
Today on Equity, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Crowdstrike co-founder and former CTO, Dmitri Alperovitch, to talk about the evolving cybersecurity landscape, the role of startups, and why he says we’re living in a World on the Brink.
Listen to the full episode to hear about:
What early-stage secure-by-design startup founders are missing when it comes to maintaining security while building quickly and crisis management.
How AI export controls and global rivalries are reshaping innovation.
What investors are really looking for when backing cybersecurity startups today.
Equity will be back Friday with a behind-the-scenes look at TC Sessions: AI, so don’t miss it!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes here.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. We’d also like to thank TechCrunch’s audience development team. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
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In this week’s edition of Risky Business Dmitri Alperovitch and Adam Boileau join Patrick Gray to talk through the week’s news, including:
EXCLUSIVE: A Scattered Spider-style crew is hijacking DNS MX entries and compromising enterprises within minutes
The SVG format brings the all horrors of HTML+JS to image files, and attackers have noticed
Brian Krebs eats a 6.3Tbps DDoS … ‘cause that’s how you demo your packet cannon
Law enforcement takes out Lumma Stealer, Qakbot, Danabot and some dark web drug traffickers
Iranian behind 2019 Baltimore ransomware mysteriously appears in North Carolina and pleads guilty
CISA’s leadership is fleeing in droves, even though the US needs them more than ever.
This week’s episode is sponsored by Thinkst Canary. Long time friend of the show Haroon Meer joins and talks through where he feels the industry is at, having just returned home from the AI-fueled hype at this year’s RSA conference.
This episode is also available on Youtube.
Show notes
China-linked ‘Silk Typhoon’ hackers accessed Commvault cloud environments, person familiar says - Nextgov/FCW
Risky Bulletin: SVG use for phishing explodes in 2025 - Risky Business Media
KrebsOnSecurity Hit With Near-Record 6.3 Tbps DDoS – Krebs on Security
Midwestern telco Cellcom confirms cyber incident after days of service outages | The Record from Recorded Future News
Microsoft leads international takedown of Lumma Stealer | Cybersecurity Dive
Who said what? on X: "Message from the administrator of Lumma Stealer on the forums about the recent events🕊️👀 https://t.co/MOjCSMMErK" / X
Ransomware hackers charged, infrastructure dismantled in international law enforcement operation | The Record from Recorded Future News
Oops: DanaBot Malware Devs Infected Their Own PCs – Krebs on Security
DOJ charges man allegedly behind Qakbot malware | The Record from Recorded Future News
US, Europol arrest 270 dark web drug traffickers in Operation RapTor | The Record from Recorded Future News
Iranian pleads guilty to launching Baltimore ransomware attack, faces 30 years behind bars | The Record from Recorded Future News
Decentralized crypto platform Cetus hit with $223 million hack | The Record from Recorded Future News
Nearly 70,000 impacted by Coinbase breach involving $20 million ransom demand | The Record from Recorded Future News
USA: Crypto investor charged with kidnapping, torturing man in an NYC apartment
Vietnam orders ban on Telegram messaging app over security concerns | The Record from Recorded Future News
Exclusive: Hacker who breached communications app used by Trump aide stole data from across US government | Reuters
CISA loses nearly all top officials as purge continues | Cybersecurity Dive
White House dismisses scores of National Security Council staff - The Washington Post
Kara discusses the “pacing threat” that is China – from TikTok to cyberattacks to semiconductors and Taiwan – with two cybersecurity experts: Dimitri Alperovitch, co-founder and former CTO of CrowdStrike and author of the new book World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century, and Chris Krebs, Chief Intelligence Officer at SentinelOne and former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency under President Trump (until he was fired in a tweet for batting down Trump’s election lies).
The episode features an expert question from a previous On guest: former Congressman Mike Gallagher, the Republican from Wisconsin who chaired the Select Committee on the CCP. If you like this episode, make sure you go back to listen to that conversation as well.
This conversation was taped live at American University on April 19, 2024.
Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find Kara on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher
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Meta's Year of Efficiency continues with 10,000 more layoffs. Apple gets into the savings game with a competitive interest rate. Florida's Ron DeSantis is losing his war on Disney, while Fox News agrees to pay Dominion a hefty sum in a defamation settlement. Pretty good week, all in all.
Crowdstrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch joins to discuss Discord Leaks and Starlink's role in the Ukraine war.
Hear more from Dmitri on Geopolitics Decanted.
Send us your questions! Call 855-51-PIVOT or go to nymag.com/pivot.
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