Risky Business (835): Why the Fast16 malware is badass

On this week’s show, Patrick Gray and James Wilson are joined by special guest-host Dmitri Alperovitch. They discuss the week’s cybersecurity news, including: * The US government is mad as hell about Chinese firms stealing American AI technology * Dmitri has an opinion or two about the US selling Nvidia chips to China * Speaking of Chinese AI, Kimi’s new 2.6 is very interesting * The US sanctions a Cambodian senator for earning mega bucks through scam compounds * And a ransomware family is promoting itself as being … quantum-safe? This week’s show is sponsored by Trail of Bits. CEO and co-founder Dan Guido chats to Pat about how private inference works and Trail of Bits' audit of WhatsApp's private AI setup. Show notes: Exclusive: US State Dept orders global warning about alleged AI thefts by DeepSeek, other Chinese firms | Reuters https://www.reuters.com/world/china/us-state-dept-orders-global-warning-about-alleged-china-ai-thefts-by-deepseek-2026-04-24/ moonshotai/Kimi-K2.6 · Hugging Face https://huggingface.co/moonshotai/Kimi-K2.6 Discord Sleuths Gained Unauthorized Access to Anthropic’s Mythos | WIRED https://www.wired.com/story/security-news-this-week-discord-sleuths-gained-unauthorized-access-to-anthropics-mythos/ Newly Deciphered Sabotage Malware May Have Targeted Iran’s Nuclear Program—and Predates Stuxnet | WIRED https://www.wired.com/story/fast16-malware-stuxnet-precursor-iran-nuclear-attack/ Hackers deployed wiper malware in destructive attacks on Venezuela’s energy sector | The Record from Recorded Future News https://therecord.media/hackers-venezuela-wiper-malware-oil Mystery Around Venezuelan Cyberattack Deepens, with New Discovery of "Highly Destructive" Wiper https://www.zetter-zeroday.com/hwiper-targeting-venezuelas-state-oil-company-discovered/?ref=zero-day-newsletter Risky Business #819 -- Venezuela (credibly?!) blames USA for wiper attack - Risky Business Media https://risky.biz/RB819/ AI Tools Are Helping Mediocre North Korean Hackers Steal Millions | WIRED https://www.wired.com/story/ai-tools-are-helping-mediocre-north-korean-hackers-steal-millions/ CISA: US agency breached through Cisco vulnerability, FIRESTARTER backdoor allowed access through March | The Record from Recorded Future News https://therecord.media/cisa-us-agency-breached-cisco-vulnerability-backdoor US, UK authorities warn that Firestarter backdoor malware survives patching | Cybersecurity Dive https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/us-uk-authorities-firestarter-backdoor-malware-patching/818531/ Surveillance campaigns use commercial surveillance tools to exploit long-known telecom vulnerabilities | CyberScoop https://cyberscoop.com/surveillance-campaigns-use-commercial-surveillance-tools-to-exploit-long-known-telecom-vulnerabilities/ UK regulator closes loophole that allowed rogue companies to track phone users' location | Reuters https://www.reuters.com/world/uk-regulator-closes-loophole-that-allowed-rogue-companies-track-phone-users-2026-04-23/ US sanctions Cambodian senator for millions earned through scam compounds | The Record from Recorded Future News https://therecord.media/us-sanctions-cambodian-senator-scam-compounds Vercel says some of its customers' data was stolen prior to its recent hack | TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/23/vercel-says-some-of-its-customers-data-was-stolen-prior-to-its-recent-hack/ Supply Chain Security Incident Update https://checkmarx.com/blog/supply-chain-security-incident-update/ Apple fixes bug that cops used to extract deleted chat messages from iPhones | TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/22/apple-fixes-bug-that-cops-used-to-extract-deleted-chat-messages-from-iphones/ Kyle Daigle on X: "Wanted to provide more clarity about this. Yesterday, we had a regression in merge queue behavior where, in some cases, squash or rebase commits were generated from the wrong base state, making earlier changes appear reverted in branch history. 2,804 pull requests out of over 4M" / X https://x.com/kdaigle/status/2047803291988590609 Securing the git push pipeline: Responding to a critical remote code execution vulnerability - The GitHub Blog https://github.blog/security/securing-the-git-push-pipeline-responding-to-a-critical-remote-code-execution-vulnerability/ One ransomware crew now drives half of all cyber claims: At-Bay | Insurance Business https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/us/news/cyber/one-ransomware-crew-now-drives-half-of-all-cyber-claims-atbay-573139.aspx In a first, a ransomware family is confirmed to be quantum-safe - Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/04/now-even-ransomware-is-using-post-quantum-cryptography/ What we learned about TEE security from auditing WhatsApp's Private Inference https://blog.trailofbits.com/2026/04/07/what-we-learned-about-tee-security-from-auditing-whatsapps-private-inference/