Transatlantic Cable podcast, episode 218

With David on holiday, Ahmed and I are holding down the fort for this week’s Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast.   We open the show with a pair of stories about Apple. In the first, the company is holding off on the rollout of its controversial CSAM — for now. Then, we look at the aftermarket for iPhone chargers, which includes the OMG Cable, a charger with a built in hotspot that steals credentials, and Ahmed continues his habit of making me look dumb with his obscure trivia.   Getting back to our slate of stories, we discuss a new vulnerability in Confluence that further bolsters our “updates are important” stance. (Despite the patch being available, criminals are exploiting this PoC for those who have yet to update their servers.)   From there we head to the infosec drama story of the week, with the ransomware-as-a-service gang. In this story, a former member of the group has leaked the source code for Babuk Locker on a criminal forum. The note attached to the leak is one for the ages, including terminal cancer and the phrase “I will have time to live like a human.”   From there, it’s over to Latin America, where El Salvador has become the first country to embrace Bitcoin, including issuing $30 in the cryptocurrency to users who install the government-backed wallet.   To close out the podcast, we discuss NFTs and a fraudulent Banksy NFT that sold for more than $330,000. In a happy turn of events, the buyer was refunded most of the money.