Transatlantic Cable podcast, episode 219

This week on the Kaspersky podcast, Ahmed, Dave, and Jeff discuss a fake press release that led to a spike in Litecoin,  a data breach at McDonald’s, and more.

This week on the Kaspersky podcast, Ahmed, Dave, and Jeff discuss a fake press release that led to a spike in Litecoin,  a data breach at McDonald’s, and more.

This week on the Kaspersky Transatlantic Cable podcast, Ahmed, Dave, and I head to Australia.

Turns out the app our friends down under use for their COVID passports is spoofable — and the researcher who found it has been ghosted by government officials he reached out to. From there, we jump into the world of gangs using Instagram for a variety of illicit activities — spoiler: Many involve guns that would make a Warzone player envious.

After a brief quiz intermission, we get back to the stories, one of which involves an interesting mix of crypto and a press release. In this segment, we look at a press release noting Walmart’s new policy of accepting Litecoin as a payment method. The news set Litecoin’s price soaring, but the news was fake. Seems that press release company will need to enlist Mystery, Inc., to learn how it got onto their wires.  Our fourth story heads back to Texas for the second week in a row, where it seems the Texas Right to Life website has inadvertently leaked the résumés of job applicants.

Sticking with the theme of information leaks, we jump into the world of fast food in the United Kingdom. You see, McDonald’s seems to have accidentally exposed a database password to its Monopoly contest winners. Surprisingly, no interns were hurt in their statement on what went wrong. Naturally, we then close out the podcast debating the toys in Happy Meals.

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