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 k…

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 a…

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

In recent weeks, a series of troubling operations targeting open source software libraries have been uncovered in which bad actors — likely tied to nation states — have attempted to use social engineering to be designated as maintainers of security critical libraries. Operations such as these have the potential to insert backdoors in widely used so…

In recent years, the persona known as LockbitSupp has emerged as a notorious figure in the cybercrime underground. The primary administrator of the LockBit ransomware, LockbitSupp has become fantastically wealthy operating the world’s most prolific ransomware. Last week, the FBI and a coalition of international law enforcement agencies unmasked Loc…

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022, it was immediately apparent that the conflict would in part be waged in cyberspace. As Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Russian forces also launched a cyberattack against satellite modems that impacted the Ukrainian military’s ability to communicate. Since then, Russian cyberattacks have been a reg…

At last August’s DEF CON computer security conference, more than 2,000 people tried their hands at breaking some of the world’s most advanced AI models. That event was the largest-ever public red-teaming event of large language models, and since then policymakers are continuing to look to red-teaming as a key tool in responsibly deploying AI system…

Amid the endless hype about AI — how it will either revolutionize the world or end it as we know it — Sayash Kapoor is a rare voice of reason. A PhD candidate at Princeton University and a researcher at the Center for Information Technology and Policy, he is also the author of the newsletter AI Snake Oil, an essential resource to understand AI, its…

In order to deliver major improvement in the security of the digital systems we all rely on, the Biden administration has embarked on a major initiative known as secure by design. That initiative aims to build more secure hardware and software by prioritizing security in the design process and asks developers to rethink how they approach building p…

Journalist Byron Tau sits down with host Elias Groll to discuss his eye-opening book about commercially available data. CyberScoop reporter Derek B. Johnson joins the show to discuss recent indictments and sanctions targeting Chinese hackers accused of surveilling politicians and dissidents.Por Safe Mode Podcast

When ChatGPT debuted in the fall of 2022, it set the internet ablaze and opened many people’s eyes to the capabilities of a new generation of machine learning technology. It also caught the attention of some of the world’s most sophisticated hackers. For the companies developing leading edge AI models, preventing hackers from misusing them now repr…

Kiersten Todt has worked on just about every hot-button cybersecurity issue you can imagine. Currently the CEO of Liberty Group Ventures, her most recent role in government was as the chief of staff at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. As a Senate staffer, she drafted key parts of the legislation that created the Department of H…

Every day, AI models are being deployed in new places, and that is creating demand for a new industry: companies that secure AI systems. Whether it’s preventing models from being used to write malicious code or creating spearphishing emails or keeping safe the data that companies are using to train AI systems, large language models raise a host of …

In recent months, U.S. security officials have issued a series of dire warnings about the hacking threat to American critical infrastructure. According to a chorus of intelligence officials, Chinese hacking groups have infiltrated U.S. critical infrastructure entities like ports and power grids, prepositioning themselves in the event of a conflict.…

When Hamas fighters crossed into Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping hundreds more, it marked a new era of the conflict between Israel and an array of militant groups. Most of that conflict has played out in the form of brutal, bloody fighting, but it has also taken place online in the form of cyber operations. Adam Meyers,…

Whether you call it hacking or legitimate security research, getting computers to do things that they shouldn’t is an activity that exists in a legal gray area. Sometimes, hackers acting in good faith will find themselves on the other end of a cease-and-desist letter, a lawsuit, or even a prosecution. A new initiative called the Security Research L…

Everyone seems to agree that AI is going to revolutionize warfare, but exactly how is very much up for debate. Jack Shanahan has worked at the center of the U.S. military’s attempt to integrate AI into how wars are fought. In 2020, he retired as a Lieutenant General from the U.S. Air Force after a 36-year career. He was the inaugural director of th…

Founded in 1995, Craigslist helped shape the modern web as we know it today, reshaping online economies and how people bought and sold goods. Today, its founder Craig Newmark is perhaps better known for his philanthropy than the classifieds site he founded. Newmark’s philanthropy spans issues of cybersecurity, technology and journalism, and he join…

In the year 2024, elections will take place around the world affecting some 4 billion people — an election year unlike any other. Besides the United States, voters will go to the polls in the European Union, the United Kingdom, India, Mexico and Indonesia, just to name a few. The next time we’ll see this many elections in one year will be in 2048. …

The upcoming year will feature an unprecedented number of democratic elections. In addition to the United States’s pivotal federal elections, countries that collectively make up more than half of the world’s populations will head to the polls. These elections are taking place against the backdrop of pervasive security vulnerabilities and come on th…

In our first episode of the year, we begin by looking back at 2023. The NSA’s Rob Joyce and Morgan Adamski sit down with host Elias Groll to examine the major cybersecurity trends of the year, the evolution of Russian hacking operations, how China is targeting U.S. critical infrastructure and how AI is changing the cybersecurity business. FedScoop …

In our final episode of the year, host Elias Groll sits down with reporters from CyberScoop, FedScoop and Defense Scoop to discuss the biggest stories of the year. Christian Vasquez and AJ Vicens join the show to talk through the biggest breaches of the year and how the cybersecurity landscape changed in 2023. Madison Alder and Rebecca Heilweil com…

It was WikiLeaks that pioneered the publishing and hosting of sensitive information, and while Julian Assange’s whistleblowing project has withered away, groups like Distributed Denial of Secrets are carrying on the work of trying to make public interest material more widely available — and to do so more responsibly. Emma Best is the founder of DDO…

To be a person in the world today is to have your data collected. Whether it’s your internet browsing history, your location history as you walk around with your phone in your pocket, or the purchases you make online, there’s few human activities today that aren’t in one way or another tracked. So what happens with all that data once it’s collected…

A growing industry exists today that provides governments with highly advanced tools to surveil their opponents. While this industry has become personified by Israel’s NSO Group, it in fact goes far beyond this one firm. The commercial spyware industry is growing rapidly, posing major human rights concerns and exposing dissidents, journalists and m…

Just as behavioral psychology revolutionized economics by integrating human behavior into the study of financial decisions — creating the field of behavioral economics — the study of cyberpsychology tries to put the human being at the center of conversations about cybersecurity. Dr. Mary Aiken is one of its foremost practitioners and also happens t…

Russia’s cyberattacks against Ukraine’s electrical grid occupy a canonical place in the history of cyber warfare. By turning out the lights in Ukraine in 2016 and 2017, Russia demonstrated the reach of digital weapons. Now researchers have revealed that Moscow’s hackers struck the Ukrainian grid in 2022. CyberScoop reporters AJ Vicens and Christian…

President Joe Biden’s sprawling executive order on artificial intelligence has finally arrived. The sprawling document contains a long list of new requirements. Leading AI companies have to report training runs and the results of red team tests. A slew of agencies are tasked with developing new standards and rules to address AI risks. And a long li…

Over the past 15 years, Twitter — now X — has become pivotal to how we understand crises. From the Arab Spring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and, now, the conflict between Israel and Hamas, X is the first platform to which many people turn to understand and report on rapidly unfolding events.Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform has fundamental…

Distributed denial of service attacks are one of the great nuisances of online life today, but they can also have more serious impact on the internet, disrupting access to crucial services and information at critical moments. FBI Special Agent Elliott Peterson is one of the bureau’s most seasoned investigators of the networks responsible for launch…

Cybersecurity firms have pioneered the use of artificial intelligence in their products, but the latest generation of AI technology offers hope that a greater share of the work to secure computer systems could be automated. A new competition at the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency aims to jump start efforts to build open source AI tools to…

When Will Hurd served in the House of Representatives he quickly made a name for himself as one of the Congress’s leading voices on cybersecurity. The Texas Republican helped pass a series of key technology modernization bills and gained a reputation as a sensible bipartisan dealmaker. A former CIA operations officer, Hurd was once billed as the fu…

When journalist Kashmir Hill first revealed the facial recognition technology built by Clearview AI it served as a wake up call for what a group of renegade technologists with few ethical foibles could do to society. By amassing a huge trove of facial images and training an algorithm on that data, Clearview built a product with an unprecedented abi…

A slowing U.S. economy has taken a brutal toll on cybersecurity companies. A deteriorating economic environment has resulted in cutbacks in security spending, rising interest rates have placed pressure on venture-backed start-ups and many cybersecurity firms have conducted lay-offs. On this episode of Safe Mode, Roger Thornton, a cybersecurity-focu…

Josh Corman and Beau Woods, the founders of I Am the Cavalry, join CyberScoop Senior Editor to discuss the ten-year anniversary of their grassroots hacking group and their efforts to address the crisis in computer security. CyberScoop reporter AJ Vicens joins the podcast to talk about sanctions against the Trickbot hacking gang. And a mystery will …

It’s been called the cybersecurity poverty line. Many organizations just don’t have the money to afford a skilled cybersecurity team to protect themselves from hackers. But there’s a movement afoot to change that dynamic through cybersecurity clinics that can support organizations in need. The Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity at the University of…

A string of breaches involving Microsoft infrastructure has left many within the security community frustrated with the company’s approach to securing its systems. CyberScoop Senior Editor Elias Groll sat down at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas with Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade, a principal threat researcher at SentinelOne, to discuss …

Chris Inglis led the Office of the National Cyber Director until February of this year and helped steer national policy on some of the most pressing national security issues. He talks with CyberScoop senior editor Elias Groll from Black Hat in Las Vegas. CyberScoop reporter Tonya Riley joins the show to discuss how the White House may attempt to cu…

Sean Vitka, senior policy counsel at the tech advocacy group Demand Progress, joins the show to discuss the debate over Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and how law enforcement can use the controversial tool to spy on Americans. CyberScoop senior editor Elias Groll talks about two big cybersecurity conferences this week in L…

Writer and researcher Bilyana Lilly breaks down how private sector and government assistance to Ukraine has helped stop many Russian cyberattacks targeting Ukraine. CyberScoop reporter Tonya Riley and Safe Mode host Mike Farrell discuss kids online safety legislation moving forward in the U.S. Congress.…

Thinking like a hacker means finding creative solutions to big problems, discovering flaws in order to make improvements and often subverting conventional thinking. Bruce Schneier, a cryptographer, security professional and author, talks about the benefits for society when people apply that kind of logic to issues other than computers. In an interv…

Cyberattacks have played a significant role in the war in Ukraine. Officials in Washington and Kyiv have blamed Russian hackers for targeting satellite systems and using digital assaults to execute disinformation and psychological warfare campaigns. Victor Zhora, the deputy chairman of the State Service of Special Communications and Information Pro…

There’s growing concern about the existential dangers of AI. At the same time, there’s boundless optimism about its potential for good. Anne Neuberger, White House deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, sits down with Elias Groll, CyberScoop senior editor, to talk about how the administration thinks about the best appro…

When the FBI seized the website earlier this year operated by the Hive ransomware group, it was the result of the bureau's efforts to infiltrate the infrastructure that cybercrime groups rely on to carry out their attacks. The bureau has set out to get inside these group’s networks, destroy them from the inside, help victims and prevent ransomware.…

Pig butchering has become an all-too-common online con that costs victims millions of dollars annually. And there’s little remedy for a growing number of victims. But Erin West, a California prosecutor, has made it her mission to fight back against these scams and the people executing them. She talks with CyberScoop Editor-in-Chief Mike Farrell abo…

You've probably noticed that hackers are changing the world. Everday, data breaches are putting you at risk. Privacy invading apps are chasing your attention. Spies are treating the online world as their playground.Safe Mode is your guide to the murky, often bizarre, always fascinating world of cyberspace. Every week we break down the most pressing…