MH-17 Disinformation Tweets

Episode 155: Disinformation is a Cyber Weapon and APTs warm to Mobile Malware

In this week’s episode of the Podcast (#155): Jerome Segura of Malwarebytes joins us to talk about how disinformation campaigns and cyber crime are part of the same toxic cocktail in the world’s trouble spots, like Ukraine. Also: Adam Meyers of CrowdStrike joins us to talk about that company’s first ever report on mobile malware, which is gaining currency with advanced persistent threat (APT) groups.


What MH-17 tell us about our Future

Online rumors, conspiracy theories, disinformation campaigns: these are the tools of modern information warfare and they can be used to devastating effect: sowing distrust of institutions and making it difficult if not impossible for casual observers to ascertain the truth about important and consequential events.

Jerome Segura is the Director of Threat Intelligence at the firm Malwarebytes.

But as the researchers at Malwarebytes noted recently, disinformation campaigns don’t exist in a vacuum. Increasingly, rumors and disinformation campaigns are part of a global cocktail of instability that also includes cyber attacks and even kinetic attacks and conflict. 

In our first segment, we speak with Jerome Segura, the director of threat intelligence at Malwarebytes, about Russian efforts to shape public understanding of the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 which was shot down over Eastern Ukraine in July 2014 by rebels armed by the Russian military.

In this conversation, Segura talks about how Ukraine has become a theater on which the future of conflict is playing out – a future that includes the intersection of military, paramilitary and criminal actors, including cyber criminal groups operating beyond the reach of the law. 

The Growing Threat of Mobile Malware

The information security industry has been raising red flags about mobile malware for more than a decade. Most of those warnings however turned out to be (way) premature. To date, mobile malware represents just a sliver of all the malware detected in a given year.

But that may be changing. As mobile devices become the go to platform for billions of Internet users, mobile threats are finally gaining traction, not only with cyber criminals but by Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) and nation-state groups. 

Adam Meyers CrowdStrike
Adam Meyers is the Vice President of Threat intelligence at the firm CrowdStrike.

In our second segment, we welcome Adam Meyers, the Vice President of Intelligence at CrowdStrike into the Security Ledger studio to talk about the growing threat posed by mobile malware, as everyone from repressive governments to run of the mill thieves look to gain a foothold on mobile devices. 


As always,  you can check our full conversation in our latest Security Ledger podcast at Blubrry. You can also listen to it on iTunes and check us out on SoundCloudStitcherRadio Public and more. Also: if you enjoy this podcast, consider signing up to receive it in your email. Just point your web browser to securityledger.com/subscribe to get notified whenever a new podcast is posted.