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

December 26th, 2025  |  3 hrs 19 mins

ai, apt research, cyberespionage, nation-state, ransomware, zero-day

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

What's behind US gov push to 'privatize' offensive cyber operations?

December 20th, 2025  |  2 hrs 1 min

ai, apt research, cyberespionage, nation-state, ransomware, zero-day

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

Three Buddy Problem - Episode 77: New React2Shell data from Microsoft, fresh Apple and Cisco zero-days already in the wild, and state-linked campaigns from Russia and China that show a merging of espionage, crime, and infrastructure disruption.

Plus, the US government's push to enlist private firms in offensive hacking, letters of marque for cartels, new discovery of spyware used against journalists in Belarus, and Amazon catching North Koreans via keystroke latency.

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

Legal corruption, React2Shell exploitation, dual-use AI risks

December 11th, 2025  |  2 hrs 12 mins

ai, apt research, cyberespionage, nation-state, ransomware, zero-day

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

Three Buddy Problem - Episode 76: On the show this week, Costin walks through how a single Romanian documentary kick-started nationwide protests, exposing how corruption can be perfectly legal when the law itself is gamed, and why this moment feels different, darker, and more consequential than past flare-ups.

Plus, news on the React-to-Shell exploitation wave overwhelming the internet, why patching is structurally hard, and how APTs and criminals are converging on the same fragile dependency chain. Along the way, they take aim at Microsoft’s shrinking transparency, the limits of vendor trust, and what it really means when defenders are told (again) to just patch and pray.

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

APTs pounce on React2Shell; BRICKSTORM backdoors; .gov surveillance

December 6th, 2025  |  1 hr 41 mins

ai, apt research, cyberespionage, nation-state, ransomware, zero-day

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

Three Buddy Problem - Episode 75: We dig into a CVSS 10/10 unauthenticated RCE bug causing chaos across the internet and early signs that Chinese APTs are already launching exploits, the cascading patch chaos, and a long tail of malware intrusions to come.

Plus, commentary on Chrome’s telemetry collection, Microsoft and the "SFI success story," newest BRICKSTORM backdoor intrusions, the US national security strategy, Anthropic's AI popping smart-contract bugs, a secret FBI ransomware-hunting unit getting weird, and a pair of sad stories in the security community.

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

Shai-Hulud 2.0, Russia GRU Intrusions, and Microsoft’s Regulatory Capture

November 29th, 2025  |  1 hr 57 mins

ai, apt research, cyberespionage, nation-state, ransomware, spyware, zero-day

(Presented by Material Security: We protect your company’s most valuable materials -- the emails, files, and accounts that live in your Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 cloud offices).

Three Buddy Problem - Episode 74: We attempt to parse the rumor-fog around Microsoft’s CISO at CYBERWARCON and what it reveals about the company’s shifting posture on intel sharing, regulation, and its outsized grip on the security ecosystem. Plus, coverage of the Shai-Hulud npm supply-chain mess, CISA’s mobile spyware guidance, NSO’s legal contortions, a sharp new GRU-linked intrusion from Arctic Wolf.

We also discuss the FCC retreating on telco security rules, and the emerging AI arms race shaping how cloud giants hunt threats and how Washington misunderstands all of it.

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

Gemini 3 reactions, Fortinet/Chrome zero-days, a Cloudflare monoculture and a billion-dollar crypto twist

November 21st, 2025  |  2 hrs 19 mins

ai, apt research, cyberespionage, nation-state, ransomware, zero-day

(Presented by Material Security: We protect your company’s most valuable materials -- the emails, files, and accounts that live in your Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 cloud offices).

Three Buddy Problem - Episode 73: The buddies react to Google’s release of Gemini 3 and its early performance, new Chrome interface changes landing on users’ machines, and major highlights from CYBERWARCON. We revisit the long-running debate over APT naming conventions, examine Amazon’s latest threat-intel reporting on Iranian activity, and walk through the Cloudflare outage that briefly knocked chunks of the internet offline.

Plus, new APT reports from ESET, Positive Technologies, and SecurityScorecard, and China's CN-CERT (now validated claim) that the U.S. government seized billions in Bitcoin tied to the Lubian mining-pool hack.

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

Anthropic Claude Code automating APT hacks, KnownSec leak, Chinese buses with remote access

November 14th, 2025  |  2 hrs 12 mins

ai, apt research, cyberespionage, nation-state, ransomware, zero-day

Presented by Material Security: We protect your company’s most valuable materials -- the emails, files, and accounts that live in your Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 cloud offices.

Three Buddy Problem - Episode 72: We unpack Anthropic’s conflicting self-promotion around the “first AI-orchestrated cyberattack” using Claude Code and the future of automated APT attacks.

Plus, Chinese cyber vendor KnownSec falls victim to data breach, fresh accusations that the U.S. stole billions in Bitcoin, Amazon warning about Cisco/Citrix zero-days, Google’s new Private AI Compute and Microsoft kernel zero-day marked as "actively exploited."

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

LIVE from Ring0 COUNTERMEASURE: Google v FFmpeg, Ransomware Turncoats, Samsung 0days

November 10th, 2025  |  1 hr 9 mins

ai, apt research, cyberespionage, nation-state, ransomware, zero-day

Presented by Material Security: We protect your company’s most valuable materials -- the emails, files, and accounts that live in your Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 cloud offices.

Three Buddy Problem - Episode 71: The buddies travel to Canada for a live recording at the Countermeasure conference, discussing the Google v FFmpeg open-source patching brouhana, ransomware negotiators charged and linked to ransomware attacks, the looming TP-Link ban in the U.S., and the discovery of LANDFALL, an APT attack caught using a Samsung mobile zero-day.

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

OpenAI’s Dave Aitel talks Aardvark, economics of bug-hunting with LLMs

October 31st, 2025  |  2 hrs 10 mins

apt research, cyberespionage, nation-state, ransomware, zero-day

Three Buddy Problem - Episode 70: Dave Aitel from OpenAI's technical staff joins the buddies to discuss the just-launched Aardvark, OpenAI’s agentic “security researcher” that claims to read code, finds bugs, validates exploits, and ships patches. We press him on where LLMs beat fuzzers, privacy boundaries, human-in-the-loop realities, SDLC budgets, pen-test cadence, and the zero-day economy.

Plus, L3 Harris/Trenchant exec pleads guilty to selling exploits to Russian brokers, Kaspersky catches the return of HackingTeam using Chrome zero-day exploit chain, and news of a proposed law in Russia to force researchers to report vulnerabilities first to goverment agencies.

Cast: Dave Aitel (Technical Staff, OpenAI), Ryan Naraine, Costin Raiu and Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade.

Apple’s iOS forensics freeze, WhatsApp zero-click, China outs NSA

October 24th, 2025  |  2 hrs 11 mins

apt research, cyberespionage, nation-state, ransomware, zero-day

Three Buddy Problem - Episode 69: We dig into news that Apple's iOS 26 has quietly killed the shutdown.log forensic artifact used to spot signs of infections and what it means for threat hunters. Plus, whispers of a million-dollar WhatsApp zero-click exploit that never materialized at Pwn2Own, a surreal court case linking a Trenchant exploit developer to Russian buyers, and Chinese threat intel reports pointing fingers at the NSA.

We also discuss calls for the US government to build a structured, lawful ecosystem for private-sector offensive operations to address existing chaos and market gaps.

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