Quiet Wins, Loud Failures: A Year-End Cybersecurity Reckoning

(Presented by ThreatLocker: Allow what you need. Block everything else by default, including ransomware and rogue code.)

Three Buddy Problem - Episode 78: We close out the year with a no-budget, no-permission awards show, spotlighting the cybersecurity stories that actually mattered.

Plus, a bizarre polygraph scandal at CISA, Chinese APT research dumps, ransomware pre-notification hiccups, foreign drone bans, and the growing gap between cyber theater and real operational value.

Cast: Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade, Ryan Naraine and Costin Raiu.

Links:

• Transcript (unedited, AI-generated)
• ThreatLocker Solutions
• Acting CISA director failed a polygraph
• LANDFALL: New Commercial-Grade Android Spyware in Exploit Chain Targeting Samsung Devices
• Qianxin’s research on the CSDN watering hole attack
• ViciousTrap - Turning edge devices into honeypots en masse
• AyySSHush: Tradecraft of an emergent ASUS botnet
• Intellexa’s Global Corporate Web (Recorded Future)
• Frozen in transit: Secret Blizzard’s AiTM hits embassies in Russia
• GitHub - KittenBusters/CharmingKitten
• Bunnie Huang Black Hat keynote (YouTube)
• How I used o3 to find CVE-2025-37899, a remote zeroday vulnerability in the Linux kernel’s SMB implementation
• DeepSeek Debates: Chinese Leadership On Cost, True Training Cost, Closed Model Margin Impacts
• Behind the Dismantling of Hezbollah
• Israel Secretly Recruited Iranian Dissidents to Attack Iran From Within
• Follow the Smoke | China-nexus Threat Actors Hammer At the Doors of Top Tier Targets
• Code Orange: Cloudflare resilience plan following recent incidents
• Apple SEAR: Memory Integrity Enforcement