Displaying Episode 11 - 18 of 18 in total of Three Buddy Problem with the tag “cyberespionage”.
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Live at LABScon: Visi Stark shares memories of creating the APT1 report
September 24th, 2025 | 28 mins 50 secs
apt research, cyberespionage, nation-state, ransomware, zero-day
Three Buddy Problem - Episode 63: Co-founder of the Vertex Project Visi Stark joins the buddies to reminisce about his work writing Mandiant's famous APT1 report, the China-nexus threat landscape, the value of cyber threat intelligence, APT-naming schemes, and more... (Recorded at LABScon 2025).
Cast: Visi Stark, Ryan Naraine and Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade.
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Live at LABScon: Lindsay Freeman on tracking Wagner Group war crimes
September 24th, 2025 | 31 mins 52 secs
apt research, cyberespionage, military contractors, nation-state, zero-day
Three Buddy Problem - Episode 62: Lindsay Freeman, Director of the Technology, Law & Policy program at the Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law, joins the show to discuss her team's meticulous work to document the Wagner Group's chain of command, military operations in parts of Africa, and the broadcasting of war crimes on social media platforms like Telegram. (Recorded at LABScon 2025)
Cast: Lindsay Freeman, Ryan Naraine and Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade.
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Can Apple's New Anti-Exploit Tech Stop iPhone Spyware Attacks?
September 9th, 2025 | 2 hrs 45 mins
apt research, cyberespionage, nation-state, spyware, surveillance, zero-day
Three Buddy Problem - Episode 61: We cover a pair of software supply chain breaches (Salesforce Salesloft Drift and NPM/GitHub) that raises big questions about SaaS integrations and the ripple effects across major security vendors.
Plus, Apple’s new Memory Integrity Enforcement in iPhone 17 and discussion on commercial spyware infections and the value of Apple notifications; concerns around Chinese hardware and surveillance equipment in US infrastructure; Silicon Valley profiting from China’s surveillance ecosystem; and controversy around a Huntress disclosure of an attacker’s operations after an EDR agent was mistakenly installed.
Cast: Ryan Naraine, Costin Raiu and Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade.
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Zero-day reality check: iOS exploits, MAPP in China and the hack-back temptation
August 22nd, 2025 | 2 hrs 32 mins
apt research, cyberespionage, nation-state, ransomware, zero-day
Three Buddy Problem - Episode 59: Apple drops another emergency iOS patch and we unpack what that “may have been exploited” language really means: zero-click chains, why notifications help but forensics don’t, and the uncomfortable truth that Lockdown Mode is increasingly the default for high-risk users. We connect the dots from ImageIO bugs to geopolitics, discuss who’s likely using these exploits, why Apple’s guidance stops short, and the practical playbook (ADP on, reboot often, reduce attack surface) that actually works.
Plus, we debate Microsoft throttling MAPP access for Chinese vendors, the idea of “letters of marque” for cyber (outsourced offense: smart deterrent or Pandora’s box?), and dissect two case studies that blur APT and crimeware: PipeMagic’s CLFS zero-day and Russia-linked “Static Tundra” riding seven-year-old Cisco bugs.
Cast: Ryan Naraine, Costin Raiu and Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade.
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Rethinking APT Attribution: Dakota Cary on Chinese Contractors and Espionage-as-a-Service
August 1st, 2025 | 1 hr 51 mins
apt research, cyberespionage, nation-state, ransomware, zero-day
Three Buddy Problem - Episode 56: China-focused researcher Dakota Cary joins the buddies to dig into China’s sprawling cyber ecosystem, from the HAFNIUM indictments and MSS tasking pipelines to the murky world of APT contractors and the ransomware hustle. We break down China’s “entrepreneurial” model of intelligence collection, why public visibility into these threat actors is so hard to get right, and how companies like Microsoft get caught in the geopolitical crossfire.
Plus: a deep dive on suspected MAPP leaks and Sharepoint zero-days, Singapore targeted by extremely sophisticated China-nexus hacking group, soft censorship in corporate threat-intel, and whether the U.S. should rethink how it fills its intelligence gaps.
Cast: Dakota Cary, Ryan Naraine, Costin Raiu and Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade.
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How did China get Microsoft's zero-day exploits?
July 10th, 2025 | 1 hr 49 mins
apt research, cyberespionage, drone, nation-state, ransomware, zero-day
Three Buddy Problem - Episode 53: We dig into news of the first-ever arrest of a Chinese intelligence-linked hacker in Italy, unpack the mystery behind HAFNIUM and how they somehow got their hands on the same Microsoft Exchange zero-days that researcher Orange Tsai discovered - was it coincidence, inside access, or something more sinister?
Plus, China's massive cyber capabilities pipeline, ‘theCom’ teenagers arrested in the UK after ransomware binge, and spyware attacks against Russian organizations.
Cast: Ryan Naraine, Costin Raiu and Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade.
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The dark hole of 'friendlies' and Western APTs
May 30th, 2025 | 2 hrs 11 mins
apt research, cyberespionage, nation-state, ransomware, zero-day
Three Buddy Problem - Episode 48: We unpack a Dutch intelligence agencies report on ‘Laundry Bear’ and Microsoft’s parallel ‘Void Blizzard’ write-up, finding major gaps and bemoaning the absence of IOCs. Plus, discussion on why threat-intel naming is so messy, how initial-access brokers are powering even nation-state break-ins, and whether customers (or vendors) are to blame for the confusion.
Plus, thoughts on an academic paper on the vanishing art of Western companies exposing Western (friendly) APT operations, debate whether stealth or self-censorship is to blame, and the long-tail effects on cyber paleontology.
We also dig into Sean Heelan’s proof that OpenAI’s new reasoning model can spot a Linux kernel 0-day and the implications for humans in the bug-hunting chain.
Cast: Costin Raiu, Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade and Ryan Naraine.
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JAG-S on big-game malware hunting and a very mysterious APT
October 17th, 2022 | 52 mins 40 secs
apts, cyberespionage, exploits, zero-day
- Episode sponsors: Binarly and FwHunt - Protecting devices from emerging firmware and hardware threats using modern artificial intelligence.
SentinelLabs malware hunter Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade (JAG-S) returns to the show to discuss how big-game attribution has changed over the years, the nation-state APT landscape, Mudge and the nightmares facing CISOs, and a mysterious actor named Metador.