Hello friend 👋
I hope you are well. The weather is improving slightly in Edinburgh and I'm desperate to get back into the garden! Can't wait to crack open the BBQ and soak my kid with a water gun.
"Hey Siri, remind me to buy a water gun."
This week's cyber news:
ALPHV ransomware claims Ring doorbell hack
The ALPHV ransomware gang are trying to extort Ring—the Amazon-owned doorbell company—by threatening to leak stolen data. It appears that Ring themselves weren't compromised and that it might have been a third party. Take this as a friendly reminder to turn on end-to-end encryption on your cameras if you can. Read more.
SVB phishing begins
Unsurprisingly, bad actors are using the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank to their advantage. They're sending good old phishing emails! And let's be real: some people will fall for these emails, resulting in financial loss. Phishing emails work. Don't get caught out. Read more.
Cancer patients sue hospital for breach
Last week I mentioned that the ALPHV ransomware gang were trying to extort a healthcare network in Pennsylvania by publishing photographs of breast cancer patients. Well, the healthcare network is now being sued by the people whose photos were leaked! Fast turnaround and I can absolutely understand why they're doing it. It's not very often I read a lawsuit, but this one was genuinely interesting. Read it here.
You can get in touch with me by simply hitting reply. I respond to every email that hits my inbox.
Until next week,
Gary ✌️
P.S. I'm starting to use Twitter more, if you're on there, you can find my profile here.
Fun Things This Week
📽️ My latest article
I've been hacking for almost a decade at this point. Thankfully, the ways in which you can learn to hack have changed drastically from when I started. If I was starting over, this is exactly how I'd do it! Read now.
👾 Cool Tools
Normally I list two useful tools I've seen here. But today is a little different. OffSec just released Kali Linux 2023.1! And it's HUGE. It's their 10th-anniversary release and has some whopping changes and upgrades. Here's a few to tease you:
- Kali Purple: Kali for Blue and Purple teams. This is going to be incredible as it matures.
- Updates to Python: this is an important one to read on their blog. You'll run into errors if you don't.
- Some cool new wallpapers.
- New tools: CyberChef and RedEye are the two notable ones, but there's a bunch more!
- An unbelievable amount of desktop updates. My favourite? In GNOME, you just hit F4 to open a File Manager window based on the current directory that your terminal is in. At last!
Read the whole release on their blog and don't forget to take a snapshot of your VM when you get set up!
