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We are living through an epidemic of ransomware. Last year alone, the amount paid to ransomware operators exceeded $1 billion, and the entities getting hit and seeing their operations disrupted by ransomware included hospitals, schools and libraries. Ransomware is both a public-health and national-security crisis, yet efforts to address the problem are not making a dent. Allan Liska is a senior intelligence analyst at Recorded Future and a leading analyst of the ransomware phenomenon, and on this episode of Safe Mode he sits down with host Elias Groll to discuss why it’s long past time to ban ransomware payments. CyberScoop reporter Derek Johnson also joins the show to discuss the U.S. intelligence community’s observations of information operations targeting the 2024 election.

When studying cyberoperations, it’s easy to become enamored with state-backed hackers. Russian and Chinese operations have done much to shape our understanding of how power is exercised online, but it’s not clear that the intense attention dedicated to such operations is well-placed. Amid the current epidemic of ransomware, criminal hacking groups are arguably having as much if not a greater impact on the lives of ordinary people. On this week’s episode of Safe Mode, Selena Larson, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Proofpoint, sits down with host Elias Groll to make the case for why e-crime groups should be afforded just as much attention as state-backed hackers, reframing how we think about the cybersecurity landscape. CyberScoop reporter Derek Johnson also joins the show to discuss the fallout of a major Supreme Court ruling on the fight against disinformation.

The proliferation of artificial intelligence is exposing teens to a new online threat: AI-generated sexual imagery. Heather Barnhart is a fellow at the SANS Institute and a digital forensic expert, and on this episode of Safe Mode she sits down with host Elias Groll to discuss how teenagers and their families can protect themselves against the scourge of sextortion. CyberScoop reporter Derek Johnson also joins the show to discuss how election administrators are leaving their posts due to widespread harassment.

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian power grid has come under sustained attack by Russian forces, and keeping it up and running has been a significant challenge. One of the major issues Ukrainian energy officials have had to confront is the way in which Russian electronic warfare systems have disrupted GPS, which is a key tool in running electrical distribution systems. Taras Vasyliv, the head of the Dispatching Control Systems Department at the Ukrainian energy utility Ukrenergo, and Joe Marshall, a security researcher at Cisco, collaborated on an innovative solution to address the vulnerabilities of GPS systems in the Ukrainian grid. And on this episode of Safe Mode, they sit down with host Elias Groll to discuss the novel tool they developed to maintain the delivery of electricity even in the face of Russian jamming. CyberScoop reporter AJ Vicens also joins the show to discuss a wide-ranging operation targeting customers of the data storage company Snowflake.

As many as 165 companies ‘potentially exposed’ in Snowflake-related attacks, Mandiant says | CyberScoop

To address AI risks, policymakers and technologists around the world have embraced the concept of AI red-teaming — the adversarial testing of AI models. But AI red-teaming is such a new concept that few people know how to conduct such tests. The discipline of AI red-teaming very much remains under development, but as AI systems are rolled out far and wide, this discipline is only going to become more important to make sure that AI tools work as intended. On this episode of Safe Mode, host Elias Groll sits down with Josh Harguess, the AI security chief at Cranium AI who is one of the few bona fide experts in the field, to dive deep on how to carry out AI red-teaming. CyberScoop reporter Derek Johnson also joins the show to discuss an Israeli information operation targeting audiences in the United States and Canada.

Joe Sullivan on his legal battle with the feds; the latest on Russian influence operations by Safe Mode Podcast