This week’s wrap cuts through the noise. We break down North Korea’s multi-billion-dollar crypto theft problem, the Salesforce-adjacent extortion wave targeting customer exports, and active exploitation against Oracle E-Business Suite. We also cover a critical Redis flaw with app-wide blast radius, Cisco edge firewall abuse with public exploit code, Zimbra’s KEV-listed email bug, GoAnywhere MFT ransomware activity, mass scanning of Palo Alto VPN portals, and a UnityVSA bug that threatens backups.

In plain English, you’ll hear why these stories matter for the business, who’s most exposed, the single action to take next, and what to watch next week. Perfect for leaders who need decisions, and defenders who need a checklist.

Subscribe for the daily brief and share this episode with your incident lead before Monday’s stand-up.

In this episode, we take on the fatigue that often comes with Zero Trust—those endless logins, rigid rules, and culture-draining compliance routines. Listeners will discover how to simplify security without weakening defenses, turn routine practices into engaging challenges, and humanize policies with humor and empathy. Through vivid examples and practical strategies, the episode shows how Zero Trust can shift from being seen as a burden to becoming a shared, sustainable approach that builds trust and enthusiasm across teams.

You’ll come away with skills that improve both leadership and everyday practice: designing policies that people actually follow, creating security habits that last, and using gamification and communication to increase engagement. We also cover strategies to prevent burnout, foster psychological safety, and build a positive culture where vigilance thrives. These are actionable takeaways for anyone leading security programs or participating on the front lines.

Produced by BareMetalCyber.com.

This is the Friday Rollup for September 29th through October 3rd, 2025. It was a week of edge-device pressure, identity weak spots, and evolving email tradecraft. We cover Red Hat’s internal GitLab intrusion, Outlook’s move to block inline SVG lures, and a critical DrayTek router RCE. We track Allianz Life’s SSN breach and CERT-UA’s CABINETRAT via Excel XLLs, plus a broader pivot from Office macros to ZIP-packed LNK files. You’ll hear why a federal shutdown slowed CISA’s KEV cadence, how OpenShift AI, OpenSSL, and OneLogin issues landed, and where Windows 10’s October 14th end-of-life raises stakes. From DNS hijacks and Exchange espionage to Cisco exposure and a long-running VMware zero-day, the signals were clear.

Ransomware is no longer just about malicious code—it’s about business models, negotiation tactics, and the psychology of fear. In this episode, we break down how ransomware gangs operate like startups, with affiliates, commissions, customer service desks, and even loyalty programs. You’ll learn how they choose victims, manipulate negotiations with countdown clocks and empathy language, and sustain their criminal economy through double extortion and crypto laundering.

By listening, you’ll sharpen your ability to recognize the psychological games attackers play, improve your response strategies under pressure, and strengthen your team’s readiness to disrupt the ransomware cycle. You’ll gain insight into building resilience through backups, playbooks, and cultural readiness while learning how to turn ransomware defense from panic-driven reaction into disciplined preparation.

Produced by BareMetalCyber.com.

In this episode, we expose the illusion of security created by SMS-based multi-factor authentication. Listeners will learn why text-message codes fail to deliver true two-factor protection, how attackers exploit SIM swaps, phishing kits, and MFA fatigue, and why compliance checkboxes don’t equal resilience. The episode unpacks the vulnerabilities in telecom infrastructure, the psychology attackers weaponize, and the step-by-step path toward phishing-resistant authentication that organizations can trust.

Beyond awareness, this episode sharpens critical security skills. Listeners will come away better equipped to evaluate MFA options, spot weak fallback mechanisms, and design identity systems that prioritize phishing resistance over convenience. Leaders and practitioners alike will gain practical insights on segmenting users, strengthening recovery processes, and guiding organizations up the maturity ladder from SMS toward cryptographic passkeys. It’s not just a story about what’s broken—it’s a roadmap to building authentication that actually holds. Produced by BareMetalCyber.com.

In this episode, we explore the strange yet critical world of adversarial machine learning—where tiny, unseen manipulations can fool AI systems into making dangerous and bizarre mistakes. From autonomous cars misinterpreting road signs to AI-driven medical devices misdiagnosing patients, we uncover real-world scenarios illustrating how subtle digital tweaks can create major real-life consequences.

We’ll also discuss how cybersecurity experts and AI professionals fight back, detailing the essential strategies, red-team testing practices, and educational initiatives necessary to build resilient and trustworthy AI systems. Tune in to discover how adversarial threats could reshape our future, and why securing AI is more important than ever.

Will AI trigger the first white-collar recession—or just change what those jobs look like? This episode follows the quiet early tells—executive hiring freezes, six-figure postings sliding, silent software seat cuts, and a surge of offboarding tickets—to explain how task-level automation can thin openings, flatten wages, and hollow out the rungs juniors used to climb. We separate headline panic from real indicators and show how experience, not just efficiency, keeps organizations resilient when the economy cools.

Then we get practical for security teams. Even if your job survives, your attack surface won’t: agents, connectors, machine identities, and poisoned inputs expand risk while separation of duties quietly erodes. We lay out the guardrails—least privilege for agents, dual control on irreversible changes, auditable prompts and outputs, drift monitoring—and the career moats that make you hard to replace: incident command under uncertainty, adversary thinking, clear risk communication, and a toolsmith mindset that makes AI safer for everyone else.

In this episode of BareMetalCyber, we delve into the shadowy world of state-sponsored cyber sabotage, examining how nations increasingly leverage digital attacks for espionage, economic disruption, and geopolitical advantage. We explore sophisticated hacking tactics—from zero-day exploits and psychological warfare to supply chain infiltration—and reveal why attribution remains so notoriously difficult in today's digital conflicts.

Along the way, we discuss practical defensive strategies that organizations can adopt to protect themselves against nation-state cyber threats, emphasizing proactive defense, incident response preparedness, and strategic alignment with national cybersecurity efforts. Join us to uncover how nation-states conduct covert digital operations and what your organization can do to defend itself in this rapidly evolving threat landscape.