
Ransomware attackers have got hurt feelings, what does Netflix know about you, and why are schoolkids stealing lavatory seats?
All this and much more is discussed in the latest edition of the award-winning “Smashing Security” podcast by cybersecurity veterans Graham Cluley and Carole Theriault, joined this week by 1Password’s Matt Davey from the “Random but Memorable” podcast.
Show full transcript ▼
This transcript was generated automatically, probably contains mistakes, and has not been manually verified.
And they're saying, look, can you stop hurling insults at us and swearing at us? We're just trying to make a crust. We're hungry. Because it's interrupting our negotiations.
Smashing Security, episode 249, Devious Licks, Netflix and sensitive hackers with Carole Theriault and Graham Cluley. Hello, hello, and welcome to Smashing Security, episode 249.
My name's Graham Cluley. And I'm Carole Theriault.
And Carole, we're joined this week by a special guest, someone who hasn't been on the show before, but he is no stranger to podcasts because he is in many ways the main fella on the Random But Memorable podcast from 1Password.
It's Matt Davey. Hello, Matt.
I've got hurt feelings.
And be a bit more sensitive on this podcast than maybe we've been in the past, because it's easy to imagine that the typical cybercriminals are just hard-nosed crooks.
The ransomware gangs don't give a monkey's about hacking hospitals and, as we heard, causing newborn babies to die, or they don't give a darn about people losing their jobs because the company they've been working for has been nearly bankrupted by an attack.
But I think maybe that isn't true. I think maybe the cybercriminals do have a heart of sorts and maybe can be hurt. What do you think?
So they don't want medical equipment to go down, they just want the moolah.
Well, new reports suggest that ransomware operators are in fact much more in touch with their emotions than we ever imagined.
Because the gangs, the ransomware gangs aren't happy, and they're beginning to tell us so. Now, did you see last week, there was a report from Reuters?
It's very interesting, this story, and I think we may find out more about it in the coming months.
Report from Reuters that the FBI and others had ganged up on the REvil ransomware gang.
They had their systems messed up, and I think they ended up paying a ransom to the REvil group as well.
And a Swedish supermarket chain also ran out of cheese after its infrastructure was taken down by the ransomware gang. Anyway, according to sources, this is what Reuters reported.
They said law enforcement and intelligence cyber specialists were able to hack REvil's computer network infrastructure, obtaining control of some of their servers.
And when a ransomware gang gets hacked by the good guys, the guys in blue, the guys who are trying to bring them down, they obviously try to recover.
And so REvil, rather like a company that had been hit by a ransomware attack, turned to their backups.
And they were really happy with themselves that day. That was like, they came home from work and was like, that was a good day.
It hadn't just been hacked, its backups had been hacked too. Hence, feelings, you can imagine the sadness. It's a bit like being a gunman, you're trying to rob a bank, right?
You've got your little pistol there, you've got your cap gun or whatever.
You go into the bank, you've got your stocking over your head, you've pulled up with a Ford Cortina outside the bank, you lurch into the bank and you're threatening people with the gun to get the money.
And then some darn bank clerk shoots you while you're trying to do the robbery. Now that is just not cricket, right? That's not the way it's meant to work.
And it's very, very sad for the bank robber.
You can't get to it anymore. So, oh yeah, I think it's a bit sad really for the ransomware guys. They must be feeling rather downtrodden. It's heartless. It's unfair.
They're just trying to earn a dishonest crust so they can buy themselves a luxurious yacht and sail around the Baltics. With a mountain of cocaine and prostitutes galore.
You know, that's all they want. It's a simple life. Oh, that's a very— okay. I would imagine, don't you? I mean, what else would a ransomware gang member want to do?
I would think they want to live the high life.
It seems that, it seems what we see from even the rich in the world, even though you've got so, so much, you still want more moolah, don't you? Bezos hasn't taken a break.
Maybe they're adopting pandas and, you know, animals which are close to extinction inside zoos.
The Conti ransomware gang, for instance, they've described what happened against REvil as a, quote, unilateral, extraterritorial, and bandit mugging behavior of the United States in world affairs.
They're saying this just isn't on. They're saying the United States has not behaved legally.
Is server hacking suddenly legal in the United States or anywhere else? They say it's an outrageous law if it allows you to hack servers in a foreign country.
So they're just saying this is outrageous what's going on. Now, what do you think about that?
I don't think that's been perfectly translated because in this particular context, it really was mugging the bandit, as in bandit mugging behavior.
It was— this is just written so perfectly. It is.
And as I'm running along the high street trying to catch a bus or something, someone sticks out a foot. I'd be very out of breath.
They stick out a foot and trip me up, which frankly isn't very nice behaviour and has prevented me from catching the bus, albeit I was robbing a bank.
So would I then say, well, hang on, you can't legally go around tripping me up because that might be actual sort of actual bodily harm or something which you've done there.
It's certainly an assault in a way if I'm running at speed. It feels a little bit ridiculous, but this is a growing trend of ransomware operators demonstrating their sensitivity.
So we've also heard in the last week from security firm MCSoft, and they're a bunch of chaps who help victims of ransomware recover after an attack.
They say that the BlackMatter ransomware gang, they've also got a bit of a quivering lower lip, right?
They're about to show their emotional side as well, because BlackMatter has just announced on its blog that it will start publishing victims' data and break off ransom negotiation if anyone other than respected journalists and researcher personalities, whoever they might be—
The problem is that some of the negotiations which BlackMatter has been doing with its victims, trying to earn themselves a crust, has leaked into the public domain.
So what happened was this: the BlackMatter guys failed to properly secure their darkweb negotiation portal.
So what happens is you get hit by the BlackMatter ransomware, you're given a link where you can go to negotiate how you're going to give them the money and how much money you're going to give them.
And someone took a screenshot of that message and posted it up on Twitter.
And I know you're going to be surprised to hear this about Twitter, but hijinks resulted, and there were some mischief makers up there who went to that link and leaped onto the conversation happening between the victim and the ransomware gang and started bombarding the ransomware gang with insults and expletives and started trolling them and basically ruining the whole conversation.
They were just having a business transaction and other people on Twitter jumped in.
And then, of course, people started taking screenshots of how they had trolled the BlackMatter ransomware gang, shared those on Twitter, which encouraged even more people to join in the fun of having a go.
And this has hurt the poor ransomware gang's feelings. And they're saying, look, can you stop hurling insults at us and swearing at us?
They now make you answer questions that only the victim corporation could know rather than any old— so they'll ask you for domain names and of servers and—
I do mostly looking after designers and running a design org now.
But every time I look at a story like this, I think the infrastructure that they need is not just people breaking in and doing all that kind of stuff, but they probably need UI and UX designers as well to make sure that people can get to this point.
So the infrastructure that you need to start building to make this, you know, as a service, comes from someone who is building a service. It's quite a lot.
See, I wonder if there's enough steps removed in that situation where you're actually not doing the actual legit crime, writing the code and negotiating with victims.
Go to Fiverr.com or something like that. You know, it always strikes me, this isn't 5 people in hoodies. They have an infrastructure.
So we know that some cybercriminal gangs have hired penetration testers who believe they're working for a cybersecurity firm in order to find vulnerabilities on people's sites that they believe they've been engaged by the firm that is actually going to be attacked looking for vulnerabilities.
It is extraordinary.
Anyway, there's a serious side to this, which is that law enforcement and cybersecurity companies have in the past monitored negotiations being undertaken by ransomware gangs and in some cases have been able to jump in and say to the victims, actually, 'We've got a decryption tool for that because we found a bug in the ransomware.' So there are sometimes ways of doing this.
This certainly has happened with BlackMatter in the past.
And now it's harder to snoop on the negotiations because BlackMatter has made it a little bit more tricky because of all these Twitter users who were bombarding abuse left, right, and center.
So maybe it's not so good to swear at ransomware makers after all. It's interesting.
So Netflix is obviously a company that makes TV shows and shows other TV shows and movies and stuff. But it's also really a company that is built on data.
It's common knowledge that everything they collect about you and what you watch and how long you watch it for.
Essentially, seeing this article about all the things that they look at, and when they put on shows like Bandersnatch, do you remember that one?
It's got to the point where the streaming service allegedly greenlit the political drama House of Cards without even seeing a pilot because they could use data to determine that it was going to be a hit.
Reading through this article, it's really fascinating to learn about all the things that Netflix is knowing about your habits.
The article talks about not being able to turn it off, right?
You can't choose for Netflix not to understand that you didn't like this show or this one more or have this one in your list or even the fact that you share your Netflix with a partner or a flatmate, or that you share your password with someone else, which will give them information based on the other IP address and all that stuff.
So as you build this network of identifiers of all the information that you're giving Netflix, my thought about this article is, what if Netflix then decided to become a data business and sold that information to, I don't know, YouTube or anywhere?
It starts to strike me is Netflix could be a big contender for a data business.
I don't want them to promote this, even though I'm saying it on a podcast publicly. It's quite, I don't know, it's particularly tasteless.
So, but yeah, when the person rocked up to the other person, can't remember any of the names, and said, 'That piercing is going to have to go.' I believe he had an eyebrow piercing.
And maybe that's the best way to describe a trending meme that is pissing off schools and parents alike. And it's called devious lick.
I imagined you would have people on TikTok licking people in the face and filming it and then putting it up on TikTok or something.
But then, it would be easy to identify who the licker is, wouldn't it?
Okay, so the trend began on TikTok earlier this month when a TikTok user posted a video of them stealing disposable masks from their school, right, with the caption, "A month into school, absolutely devious lick.
Should have brought a mask from home." Okay, right. And within days, users had copied the video idea and stole other items from their schools too.
One showed a hand sanitiser dispenser in a school bag. That one gained over 2 million views.
Another one unzips their backpack and pulls out two COVID antigen testing kits, and they toss those two kits into a larger pile of boxed kits on their bed, and then pan over to a duffel bag filled with even more kits.
And this video reached 2.3 million views, and then a repost apparently got 4.6 million views. So they are getting rewarded by the clicks.
As of Monday last week, Mashable reported the hashtag #DeviousLick had gotten more than 175 million views. And I was reading on Reddit of young TikTokers.
An 8th grader dumped ground-up graphite pencil into his teacher's smoothie as his devious lick.
And it looks like a war zone.
And the worst is making porn-like moaning sounds, saying things like, oh, Daddy, in a really loud and disgusting way for your child to do.
This sounds absolutely horrendous.
Yeah, I think it's specifically designed so Victorian children can't fall all the way down it and instead kind of just get stuck in that bit.
It's kind of angled at the bit where if you put a child up the chimney, then they don't fall back down again. Handy.
It was a caption to a video of him pretending to dismantle a boiler.
Another one joked about stealing the entire planet, posting space footage of the planet Earth saying, biggest lick in the universe.
Why don't they do that?
And if you were a parent of one of these kids, you'd be mortified. No? You'd just be like, "You what?
You stole the hand sanitizer during a fucking pandemic?" I'd say, "In my day, lad, I just kidnapped the Christmas tree."
And Mashable wrote that one student on TikTok said participants took this devious lick thing too far at their school, and now the school's only allowing transparent backpacks.
And another school is taking anti-menace measures by locking soap dispensers in metal casings.
So I'm going to put these, I'm going to put the first one in here for you guys to watch.
But anyway, there's a Senate committee going on right now, and TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat are all up for questioning on what are you guys doing to help protect our children.
TikTok's response so far is, well, we'll remove the hashtag devious licks. So that's good story.
And this could be a joke, but someone else could see it and go, well, I can do that.
But because of TikTok, it's kind of the one-upmanship has made this really bad. We had one kid in our school who set his own bag on fire trying to set the school on fire.
And I didn't go to the finest of establishments, let's say. And all he ended up doing was setting his own bag on fire.
I feel if that had been on TikTok, it would have been really cool.
But actually what he did was just set his own bag on fire, and we called him Bagfire for the rest of his school life.
To end this on a happy note, check out— I put in another link there for you, and this is someone who's trying to combat these devious licks.
And he's walking into— It says, it says gentleman's club and there's sort of lovely lighting. And it says loo. Oh, it's the school loo. What? Oh, cool.
This was the other thing I did, other than kidnap the school Christmas tree, was I set up tinsel and fairy lights around the urinal, because we used to call it our office.
And we got into real trouble at sixth form. They claimed it was a health and safety thing, that we could electrocute our willies when we peed in the urinal. You probably could have.
—candescent light bulbs linked to 250 volts. Yeah, that probably was the smart thing to not put that around on. Urinal, yeah. Oh, I rather love this.
Yes, our lovely friends at 1Password have created a fun, dynamic, and free resource for all skill levels. Find out how to build a culture of security in your workplace.
Learn how to make the most of 1Password's features, or discover why reusing the same password across multiple accounts puts you at risk.
Broaden your knowledge, starting with the basic building blocks of security, and learn at your own pace and discover how to keep yourself and your company safe on the internet.
1Password University's growing catalog of courses has definitely got something for you, and it's a lot more fun than dull workplace training or scouring the web for advice.
So check out 1Password University free online security resources made for everyone at www.1password.university. That's www.1password.university.
And thanks to 1Password for supporting the show. Most companies discover they've been breached way too late. Well, Thinkst Canary fixes this.
Just 3 minutes of setup, no ongoing overhead, nearly zero false positives, and you can detect attackers long before they dig in.
Simply go to canary.tools to find out why its physical, VM, and cloud-based canaries are deployed and loved. On all 7 continents.
And what's more, listeners who mail in referencing Smashing Security get a 10% discount on their order. Can't say fairer than that. So go and check it out now. Canary.tools.
And welcome back. Can you join us at our favorite part of the show? The part of the show that we like to call Pick of the Week. Pick of the Week.
Could be a funny story, a book that they read, a TV show, a movie, a record, a podcast, a website, or an app. Whatever they wish. It doesn't have to be security-related necessarily.
Better not be. Well, my Pick of the Week this week is not security-related. Good. I want to take you to Woodmere Avenue in Watford.
And Watford is a town outside of London, north of London, and that Woodmere Avenue is a road which people live on.
And there is a resident of Woodmere Avenue in Watford who has set up a YouTube channel, and he is posting videos from his Amazon Ring camera. Because—
And what happens just about every day is cars come along and misjudge the width and crash. And for a few years, he's been asking the council to sort this out. Nothing's happened.
So he's now posting videos of these crashes occurring, including a compilation video, which I've linked to.
And when they hit, they really— oh boy, oh boy, they really hit. Including a police van is one of the vehicles which crashes. And sometimes there'll be a lot of smoke. Yeah.
No one's been hurt as far as I know, but there's some serious crunching going on.
And I mean, there was one van which came along and really tried to keep going and wasn't able to stop at all. It is an astonishing video.
And I think maybe a good use for an Amazon Ring camera, having discussed them last week.
Here, they're sort of providing a service warning people about I've been on Google Maps to check out this particular road, to look at the— I've sort of driven up in the Google car, Street View car, to see what it's like.
It does seem quite tight. It does seem quite tight. So—
I'd be very surprised if it was actually 7-foot wide." Who knows the width of their car? I don't know. I guess if you buy a Jag XF, you do, because it's so fucking expensive.
That I just think it's a bike, basically.
you're just sitting there in your house, minding your own business. Bam. Right.
And if that wasn't bad enough, from the looks of the picture, a digger then has to come along and scoop up the car to get it off the bollard.
And if that is happening even once a week, that's driving me up the wall.
So I don't see like a, I basically don't see a reason at all to do this.
But all they've actually done is made the traffic much more anarchic and—
So they've slowed traffic down by just putting people with phones and cameras on the road.
They're on their third season now. It's John Richardson, who's a comedian.
I didn't really massively like him in other stuff, but it is also Ed Gillespie and Mark Stevenson, who are authors, futurists, and provocateurs.
And they essentially pick one topic each, you know, each episode, and they talk about the future of it.
So the future of work and how, you know, what that looks like when more jobs are automated, the future of education and how that might happen, the future of energy and the upcoming, you know, push on eco-friendly.
This has been probably the thing that got me through the pandemic. But also, it is the kind of most behaviour-changing thing that I have ever done.
Like, not read a lot of self-help books and that type of stuff.
But this to me, like, I now only buy secondhand clothing and only do various stuff to kind of help climate change and that type of thing.
And, you know, the behaviour that I had before listening to this podcast was completely different. So yeah, that's my pick of the week. I highly recommend it.
1911 coronation of George V. There you go. Lovely. Very classy mug. And then, yeah, you can pick them up at car boot sales all over England and it's quite nifty.
I think that would be one of my favourite jobs to do, to just sit around and go, what will happen in 5 years? Do I think— well, it's just great.
But yeah, the Future of Fashion where they talk about how fast fashion can't continue and all this kind of stuff. Yeah, it's great. Oh, fantastic.
So, the story gist is a true crime podcast host is roped into a decades-old murder. And this is when someone calls into a call-in show she does.
I don't know how you do a call-in podcast. I mean, people do do them, but it must be difficult.
But anyway, so she, you know, someone calls into her show with a staggering reveal that the person who went to prison for the crime didn't actually do it.
So, of course, our podcast host puts on her Detective Clouseau mustache or whatever, and goes off to try and find out who actually did kill this woman named Peg.
And she forms kind of unlikely alliances with the victim's son. All kinds of different stuff happen. It's really great if you like crime stuff.
And what I love about it most is there's just basically 1-hour-long episodes and there are 8 of them.
So I love that because I listen to podcasts when I go to sleep and this is a perfect one.
So I've actually probably listened to it 4 times over the period of a month just because I keep missing bits and so I go back.
And I think if anyone's out there going, "I just need something to get my teeth into," this is a good one. So I'd say check out Dead Air from Realm Podcast.
You can find it wherever you get your podcasts.
And don't forget to ensure you never miss another episode. Follow Smashing Security in your favorite podcast app, such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts.
And to our amazing Patreon community, it's thanks to them all this show is free.
For episode show notes, sponsorship information, guest lists, and the entire back catalog of more than 248 episodes, check out smashingsecurity.com.
Hosts:
Graham Cluley:
Carole Theriault:
Guest:
Matt Davey – @mattdavey
Show notes:
- Governments turn tables on ransomware gang REvil by pushing it offline — Reuters.
- REvil ransomware – what you need to know about the criminal enterprise — Tripwire.
- REvil ransomware rampages following Kaseya supply-chain attack — Graham Cluley.
- Meat supplier JBS probed after paying $11 million ransom to attackers. US Congress has a beef with those who pay ransoms to cybercriminals — Graham Cluley.
- Hitting the BlackMatter gang where it hurts: In the wallet — Emsisoft.
- Ransomware gang outraged at “bandit-mugging behavior of the United States” after REvil group pushed offline — Graham Cluley.
- All the ways Netflix tracks you and what you watch — Wired.
- The inside story of Bandersnatch, the weirdest Black Mirror episode yet — Wired.
- Netflix’s Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human — The New Yorker.
- Why Netflix Might Run Ads: Analysts See $1 Billion Revenue Upside — Variety.
- Devious Licks Trend — Know Your Meme.
- TikTok's 'devious licks' challenge source of destruction in Summit County schools, businesses — MSN.
- TikTok Bans 'Devious Licks' Trend Which Saw High School Students Arrested — Newsweek.
- TikTok to be in congressional hotseat over school-trashing content — Reuters.
- Kid destroys printer for TikTok in front of his parents — Reddit.
- To combat all the devious licks, we are now met with angelic yields — TikTok.
- Woodmere Avenue Width Restriction Crashes Compilation — YouTube.
- Woodmere Avenue Crashes YouTube channel.
- Moment 11 vehicles including a police van smash into steel post in just four weeks — Daily Mail.
- Jon Richardson & The Futurenauts podcast.
- Dead Air podcast.
- Smashing Security merchandise (t-shirts, mugs, stickers and stuff)
- Support us on Patreon!
1Password University is a fun, dynamic and free resource for all skill levels.
Find out how to build a culture of security in your workplace, learn how to make the most of 1Password’s features, or discover why re-using the same password across multiple accounts puts you at risk.
Broaden your knowledge, starting with the basic building blocks of security. Learn at your own pace and discover how to keep yourself and your company safe on the internet.
1Password University’s growing catalogue of courses has definitely got something for you… and it’s a lot more fun than dull workplace training or scouring the web for advice.
Check out 1Password University – free online security resources, made for everyone – at www.smashingsecurity.com/university
Most companies discover they’ve been breached way too late. Thinkst Canary fixes this: just 3 minutes of setup; no ongoing overhead; nearly 0 false positives, and you can detect attackers long before they dig in.
Go to canary.tools to find out why its Physical, VM and Cloud Based Canaries are deployed and loved on all 7 continents…
Follow the show:
Follow the show on Bluesky at @smashingsecurity.com, on the Smashing Security subreddit, or visit our website for more episodes.
Remember: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or your favourite podcast app, to catch all of the episodes as they go live. Thanks for listening!
Warning: This podcast may contain nuts, adult themes, and rude language.


