
Advertise on podcast: Hacker Valley Studio
Rating
4.7from
This podcast has
445 episodes
Language
EnglishPublisher
Hacker Valley MediaExplicit
No
Date created
2019/07/07
Latest episode
2026/10/14
Average duration
34 min.
Release period
7 days
Description
Welcome back to the show! Hacker Valley Studio podcast features Host Ron Eddings, as he explores the world of cybersecurity through the eyes of professionals in the industry. We cover everything from inspirational real-life stories in tech, to highlighting influential cybersecurity companies, and we do so in a fun and enthusiastic way. We’re making cybersecurity accessible, creating a whole new form of entertainment: cybertainment.
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Check latest episodes from Hacker Valley Studio podcast
Voice Phishing Is the New Front Door
2026/10/14
What would you do if your phone rang and the caller ID showed your own company? Would you pick up? Would you help the person on the other end?
This Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Ron goes solo to break down a breach that started with that exact call. Attackers spoofed Astrana Health’s main corporate phone number, posed as coworkers, and talked their way into systems connected to roughly 1.5 million patients. Ron starts with a rewind from phone books to data brokers, including a live search on a people-search site that turned up his own family. From there he walks through the SEC filing, sends a swarm of AI research agents after the public record, and lines up the suspects behind the attack.
The uncomfortable part is that we spent a decade training people to spot a bad email while attackers moved to the phone. Voice phishing is now the second most common way attackers get in, and resetting credentials doesn’t fix the instinct to help when a familiar number calls. Ron closes with three practical ways to stop making it easy for them, starting with one simple habit: hang up and call back.
Impactful Moments
00:00 - Introduction
02:25 - The rewind: from phone books to data brokers
03:15 - What a people-search site found on Ron’s family
05:30 - A breach that started with a phone call
06:15 - Inside Astrana Health’s SEC filing
07:55 - Why spoofing the main number changes everything
09:05 - How the attack likely played out
11:35 - Technical fixes for a human attack
12:50 - The time Ron got got
13:35 - Why attackers want healthcare data
15:15 - 1.5 million patients’ worth of exposure
17:15 - Voice phishing climbs to #2 in M-Trends
19:35 - Three ways not to make it easy for them
21:05 - How to run a phone drill
Links
Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams
Love Hacker Valley Studio? Pick up some swag: https://store.hackervalley.com
Become a sponsor of the show: https://hackervalley.com/work-with-us/
Securing the Apps Everyone Is Building with Roi Nisimi and Yonatan Levi
2026/10/07
What happens when your marketing team, your sales team, and the person down the hall can all ship a full app from a single prompt? And what is that app quietly connected to? In this episode, Ron sits down with Roi Nisimi, Principal Security Researcher, and Yonatan Levi, AI Security Researcher, of Orca Security. They built apps on the most popular AppGen platforms and then tried to break into them.
Ron, Roi, and Yonatan get into what's really running behind a prompt-built app, and what Orca's team found when they went looking for trouble. In one case, a single misconfigured app gave them a way into every integration connected to the workspace. They also explain why Supabase has become a favorite of builders and attackers alike, and share the security questions they ask before sending a prompt.
The bigger tension is speed. With no code review between the prompt and production, Roi argues that velocity has broken the threat models that security relied on for years. And when the agent makes every decision, nobody fully understands what was built, not even the security researchers.
Impactful Moments
00:00 - Introduction
02:15 - Busting the vibe coding myth
04:40 - Inside Orca's State of AI report
05:55 - The unpatched AI SDK problem
07:40 - What is AppGen?
10:20 - Who builds the backend?
12:25 - Inside Orca's AppGen hackathon
14:10 - Thinking like a citizen developer
15:15 - Who's really building these apps
19:25 - One misconfigured app, every integration exposed
20:45 - Why Supabase is the holy grail
23:00 - Checking your own exposure
24:30 - Why the SDLC is breaking down
26:55 - Prompting for a secure app
28:15 - Don't hand the agent every decision
31:20 - Staying sharp by never stopping learning
33:35 - From protecting environments to protecting apps
Links
Connect with Roi Nisimi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roinisimi/
Connect with Yonatan Levi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yonatan-levi-b22168258/
Register for Orca’s virtual Builder Exchange: https://orca.security/builder-exchange/?utm_source=HVN&utm_medium=3rd-part
Read the security findings in Orca’s 2026 State of AI Security Report: https://orca.security/lp/2026-state-of-ai-security-report/?utm_source=HVN&utm_medium=3rd-party
–
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Giving Your AI Agent Its Own Identity with Ashish Rajan
2026/09/30
Your newest hire has a Google Workspace account, a Slack login and a laptop. It never sleeps, and it never asks before it acts. So who owns its identity? Ron welcomes back Ashish Rajan, CISO at Techriot.io and researcher with AI Security Lab, who spent 17 years in identity, cloud security and security leadership. His take: vendors haven't solved AI identity, and the open questions are on your side, not the product's.
Ashish got into identity after failing his OSCP three times: if he couldn't break in, he wouldn't let anyone else in. Now he reviews Ron's own setup, where Hacker Valley's AI agent, Jennifer Romani, has her own accounts just like an employee. Ashish explains how that call changes from a one-laptop small business to an enterprise where every developer's machine acts like five. They also cover the Gemini breach headlines, swarms of agents and AI Security Lab, which Ashish describes as what OWASP is for AppSec, but for AI security.
The uncomfortable truth: defenders have the same models attackers do, but attackers don't wait for a pull request review. Ashish calls that a people problem, not a technology problem. He also shares the question he asks before handing anything to an AI agent: can this be reversed?
Impactful Moments
00:00 - Introduction
02:30 - Busting a myth: AI identity isn't solved
05:30 - Three OSCP attempts and a pivot to IAM
07:00 - Why AI identity is more complex than ever
09:15 - Hot or not: giving an AI agent its own accounts
11:10 - One laptop, five machines in the enterprise
12:50 - AI gateways and developer observability
14:05 - Where Ashish would spend his AI security budget
18:20 - Why defenders don't hack themselves first
19:05 - The real problem is people
22:15 - Swarms of agents are coming
23:50 - What AI Security Lab is building
26:35 - Never share your credit card with AI
28:40 - Ron's callback: can it be reversed?
Links
Connect with Ashish Rajan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashishrajan/
Listen to Ashish's first Hacker Valley Studio episode: https://www.podbean.com/pw/pbblog-bpaij-51b280
–
Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams
Love Hacker Valley Studio? Pick up some swag: https://store.hackervalley.com
Become a sponsor of the show: https://hackervalley.com/work-with-us/
From Read Access to Admin with just an AI Agent
2026/09/23
What if someone got full admin access to your company's platform, including your CRM, your payments app, and your private messages, and the only tool they used was an AI chatbot? Can AI models really find zero-days on their own, or is that just the headline? And if AI can do the attacker's job, who's actually holding the scissors?
In this solo episode, Ron Eddings shares his own methodology for offensive assessments with AI. He talks about the models he trusts, the tools he uses to get agents working together, and a real assessment where his agents turned SQL read access into admin control and unlocked the API keys stored inside. Ron also calls out what's hype and what's real with today's models, and why the agent still needs a skilled person behind it.
For defenders, Ron covers what attackers go after once they're in, and why the fundamentals like asset inventory are still where every strong security program starts. He closes with the bigger picture: anyone, good or bad, now has powerful intelligence on hand, and it's on all of us to look out for each other.
Impactful Moments
00:00 - Introduction
02:25 - Can AI Really Find Zero-Days Alone?
04:20 - The Real Danger Is Human Intent
05:00 - Why Grok 4.6 Tops Ron's List
07:55 - Ron's Three-Model Assessment Workflow
09:50 - Maestro, Interceptor, and Agent Ensembles
11:20 - Privilege Escalation and Persistence With LLMs
12:50 - Why AI Hacking Feels Like Cheating
14:20 - Ron Called Automated Security in 2015
16:05 - The Lazy Way to Hack
17:55 - From SQL Read Access to Admin
21:05 - What Attackers Want After Getting In
23:40 - Asset Inventory Is Security Flossing
27:05 - Why AI Is Like Scissors
29:05 - Waymos, Robotaxis, and Physical AI Risk
Links
Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams
Love Hacker Valley Studio? Pick up some swag: https://store.hackervalley.com
Become a sponsor of the show: https://hackervalley.com/work-with-us/
Do You Know What Your Agent is Doing at 3AM? with Amir Ofek
2026/09/16
Every AI agent in your environment inherits someone's permissions, and most teams have no idea what those agents are actually doing with them. Amir Ofek, CEO and co-founder of Aizome, shares how to make every agent accountable before the damage shows up as a $150,000 bill.
In this episode, Amir explains why human and machine identity tools both fail for AI, why agents act more like eager, naive interns than employees, and how a new category called ARISE (Agentic Runtime Identity Security Enforcement) is emerging to fix it.
This one's for anyone building with AI agents right now (so, most of us). Amir's take: the biggest danger isn't a breach. It's agents quietly doing the wrong thing at scale while nobody's watching.
Impactful Moments
00:00 - Introduction
02:30 - Busting the Myth: "I Know What My Agents Are Doing"
05:30 - The Samurai Story Behind Aizome's Name
08:25 - Why Not All AI Agents Are Born Equal
11:15 - Where Enterprises Are Actually Deploying AI Agents Today
14:25 - What Claude Cowork Inherits Without You Realizing It
17:15 - Machine Identity vs. Human Identity vs. AI Identity
19:35 - Treating AI Agents Like Eager, Naive Interns
23:00 - The Biggest AI Risk Isn't Security, It's Cost
25:45 - Meet Ito: Aizome's Supervisor Agent
26:40 - Inside the New ARISE Category
33:35 - What Aizome Actually Does
35:30 - The Callback: Was the Myth Wrong, or Dangerously Wrong?
Links
Connect with Amir Ofek on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirofek/
Learn more about Aizome: https://www.aizome.ai/
–
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Cloud Broke My World Before AI Did with Dr. Jay Abdullah
2026/09/09
Cybersecurity has survived cloud, mobile, and a dozen other "biggest disruptions of our lifetime," and each one felt unprecedented in the moment. In this episode, Ron sits down with Alyssa "Dr. Jay" Abdullah, Deputy CISO at MasterCard, who started her career as a radio DJ and has since worked inside the White House, Lockheed Martin, Stryker, and Xerox before landing in payments security.
Ron and Dr. Jay trace her path from spinning records to securing global payment infrastructure, and dig into why she'd argue cloud, not AI, was the real turning point in her career. They cover what convergence actually looks like when AI, cloud, and synthetic identity start overlapping, why curiosity matters more than fast answers, and what it means when employees start bringing their own trained AI agents to work.
The conversation closes on something most teams haven't fully reckoned with yet: AI agents that carry their own identity, independent of the humans who built them, and what that shift demands from the people responsible for securing them.
Impactful Moments
00:00 - Introduction
02:25 - Busting the AI hype myth
04:40 - From radio DJ to Dr. Jay
06:10 - A day in the life as Deputy CISO at Mastercard
07:25 - Why AI hasn't disrupted her world
08:50 - White House tech through the decades
12:30 - Smartphones, wearables, and what's next
13:30 - Defining convergence for 2026
14:50 - When AI meets quantum computing
17:20 - Bring your own AI agent to work
19:00 - Negotiating salary in tokens
21:05 - Teaching curiosity over answers
23:50 - Overhype equals overtrust
27:10 - The future of tier one and autonomous SOC
29:50 - Hot take: AI in the SOC
31:35 - Predictions: AI identities and the human outside the loop
Links
Connect with Alissa "Dr. Jay" Abdullah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dralissajay/
–
Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams
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The Dashboard Is Dead, Long Live the Harness with Myke Lyons
2026/09/01
Security teams spent decades begging for more logs. Now the enterprise is generating petabytes a day, and the thing drowning in it isn't just the SOC anymore, it's your AI agents too. In this episode, Ron sits down with Myke Lyons, CISO at Cribl, who cut his teeth in telemetry and logging decades ago and has landed right back there in the age of AI.
Ron and Myke dig into why most telemetry failures aren't data problems at all, they're decisions nobody made about why the logs are being collected in the first place. Myke breaks down what to track on every agent in your environment, why token spend belongs on the security team's plate, why dashboards are quietly dying, and why treating an AI agent like just another employee is a mistake that's going to bite security teams hard.
Underneath it all is one question Myke keeps circling back to: do you actually know what normal looks like for every agent in your environment?
Impactful Moments
00:00 - Introduction
01:50 - Myth Busting: AI Agents Aren't Just Another User Account
04:25 - Meet Myke Lyons, CISO at Cribl
05:05 - What it means to run security at a telemetry company
06:10 - From gigabytes of logs at GE to petabytes today
07:45 - MITRE ATT&CK, Cribl's new APEX framework, and orienting telemetry
10:20 - Why most telemetry problems are decision problems, not data problems
13:20 - OCSF and how security teams are rethinking their schemas
14:25 - Why the dashboard is dying
17:35 - What Myke wants to track about every AI agent
20:10 - How to spot an agent going rogue
23:15 - Making your data AI-ready and the case for schematizing everything
27:10 - Tokenomics: treating AI spend as a security responsibility
29:05 - The non-negotiable logs every org should be collecting
31:50 - Hot takes: build vs. buy, tier two to three, and Myke's daily AI briefing
33:35 - Closing thoughts and outro
Links
Connect with Myke Lyons on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mykelyons/
Learn more about Cribl: https://cribl.io/
–
Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams
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The AI Already Inside Your Company with Russell Spitler & Richard Penshorn
2026/08/25
A year ago, the average employee held about 30 OAuth grants. Today that number has risen to 88, and it isn't slowing down. Ron sits down with Russell Spitler, co-founder and CEO of Nudge Security, and Richard Penshorn, a senior security engineer at a top financial services company, to talk about the AI already living inside your business.
Ron, Russell, and Richard dig into why shadow AI doesn't behave like shadow IT, how one forgotten grant became the door into a real world breach, and whether AI agents should ever get access to a corporate inbox.
Underneath all of it is the one thing Russell and Richard keep coming back to: ownership. Give an AI agent access with no owner attached and it becomes invisible. Give every employee an approved, low-friction path to use AI and they stop wandering off it. Find out how you can get ahead of the AI already running inside your walls.
Impactful Moments
00:00 - Introduction
02:00 - Busting the "shadow AI is just shadow IT" myth
03:45 - Meet Russell Spitler and Richard Penshorn
05:50 - The surprising long tail of AI tool usage
07:00 - Entertainment vs. finance: build vs. buy culture
08:50 - How 30 OAuth grants became 88 in 2026
10:25 - Why manual OAuth audits became untenable
11:30 - The Canva example: what "click to connect" really grants
15:20 - Benign vs. malicious: how a stolen OAuth grant gets exploited
17:00 - Shadow IT vs. Shadow AI: what's actually different now
21:00 - Hot take: should AI agents ever touch corporate email?
25:10 - The three buckets of AI agent discovery
27:55 - Russell's best practices for locking down agents
31:00 - Fundamentals for the next 18 months: visibility and easy paths
Links
Connect with Russell Spitler on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russell-spitler/
Connect with Richard Penshorn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardpenshorn/
Learn more about Nudge Security: https://www.nudgesecurity.com/
–
Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams
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Humans First: Adobe's Rule for Building AI Security Tools with John Gillis
2026/08/19
Imagine how much investigation time your SOC could get back if the busywork just disappeared. Ron sits down with John Gillis, Staff Security AI Engineer at Adobe, who built an in-house AI investigation platform from scratch.
John's system runs on more than 30 specialized agents that reason through cases instead of following a script. In one run, that meant over 140 detections investigated in under four hours at an 80 to 85% quality rating. Ron and John dig into the hard lesson that made John rip out his own tooling and rebuild it around function calling, why "humans first" drives every decision his team makes, and whether AI SOC is actually different from SOAR or just the same promise with way better marketing.
Underneath all of it is the one thing John says decides whether any of this actually works: context. Give the AI too little and it's guessing, give it too much and it drowns just like a human would. Listen to find out what it actually takes to build an AI SOC that reasons instead of just automates.
Impactful Moments
00:00 - Introduction
02:05 - The rewind: how SOAR promised to save the SOC in 2015
03:35 - Meet John Gillis, Adobe's Staff AI Security Engineer
05:30 - What cybersecurity looked like before AI at enterprise scale
07:00 - The "humans first" strategy behind Adobe's AI investigator
09:30 - Why careless context management is the biggest pitfall in agent design
14:45 - Solving the speed problem: is it tooling, process, or people?
17:10 - From monolith to microservices: rebuilding the platform for scale
24:05 - What actually makes an AI agent's "persona" work
26:00 - John's prediction for the SOC three years from now
28:50 - The three skills every security practitioner needs for 2026
32:10 - Final verdict: is AI SOC really different, or SOAR with new branding?
Links
Connect with John Gillis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gillis/
If you're a researcher ready to make an impact, check out the announcement about Adobe’s new home for the Adobe Bug Bounty Program here: https://blog.adobe.com/security/a-new-home-for-the-adobe-bug-bounty-program
Check out Adobe’s Bug Bounty profile on Intigriti: https://app.intigriti.com/programs/adobe/adobepublic/detail
Learn more about Adobe: https://www.adobe.com/
–
Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams
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Let AI Do More Without Surrendering Your Judgment with Jen Easterly
2026/08/14
Fresh off the showroom floor at Black Hat 2026, Ron brings back some hot takes from the crowd. Nearly every booth he visited, including the Exaforce booth, was pushing in the same direction. Trust in AI isn’t a philosophy debate anymore, it’s an engineering problem people are actively solving.
Ron then catches up with Jen Easterly, CEO of RSAC, for a wide-ranging conversation on what it actually takes to build that trust. From her move out of government to her hard line on AI regulation and liability, the conversation takes an unexpected turn when Jen opens up about "cognitive surrender" and why she believes good judgment can't be automated away. Couldn't make it to Black Hat this year? This episode has you covered.
Impactful Moments
00:00 - Introduction
02:45 - Reporting live from Black Hat 2026: hot takes from the showroom floor
05:05 - Welcoming Jen Easterly, CEO of RSAC
07:55 - A day in the life running RSAC and the Innovation Sandbox
10:00 - AI whack-a-mole and the sweet spot for regulation
11:00 - Governance vs. regulation, the EU AI Act, and state laws
13:30 - Why accountability and liability need to catch up to AI makers
14:45 - The case for autonomous patching and healing code like "The Matrix"
17:50 - The hot take Jen hasn't said before: not outsourcing our humanity
20:30 - Why in-person conferences matter more in the AI era
21:55 - Ron's takeaway: who decides when AI has earned our trust?
Links
Connect with Jen Easterly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jen-easterly
Learn more about Exaforce: https://www.exaforce.com
–
Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams
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Post-Quantum Cryptography: What Every Organization Needs to Know with Michael Fasulo
2026/08/12
What if the encrypted traffic flowing across the internet right now (emails, files, logins) is already being quietly collected and stored by someone waiting for the day they can finally crack it open? That's the threat behind "harvest now, decrypt later," and it's closer than most people think.
Ron Eddings sits down with Michael Fasulo, Senior Director of Portfolio Marketing at Commvault, to talk about where post-quantum cryptography (PQC) really stands in 2026. They discuss "harvest now, decrypt later," the specific industries quietly racing to prepare, and why a commercially viable quantum machine might only be four years away.
Ron and Michael trace the journey from a 1998 hack to today's quantum race, and the good news is there's still time to get ahead of it. Listen to hear where the real opportunity is, and how to start building your defense today.
Impactful Moments
00:00 - Introduction
01:40 - Rewind: the 1998 Deep Crack story
04:10 - Michael Fasulo and the current state of post-quantum cryptography in 2026
05:05 - Harvest now, decrypt later: do people really have the storage to do this?
06:10 - Where is this actually happening? Nation-states vs. coffee shops
08:50 - Who the real targets are: government, financial services, oil and gas
10:05 - Are everyday SaaS tools like Zoom and Gmail implicated?
12:25 - How Commvault helps organizations inventory their crypto footprint
17:00 - Trust, vendor partnerships, and the Commvault / Microsoft Sentinel integration
18:30 - Signs that a commercial quantum machine may be closer than we think
24:45 - Are we already behind? What to do starting next week
28:20 - Deep Crack revisited
Links
Connect with Michael Fasulo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-fasulo
Learn more about Commvault: https://www.commvault.com
–
Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams
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Stop Defending the Edge: How to Rethink Your Mobile Security with Jared Shepard
2026/08/07
What if the biggest risk to your organization isn't the device that gets lost, but the data that lives on it? Ron Eddings sits down with Jared Shepard, Founder and CEO of Hypori, whose path ran from homeless high school dropout to Army infantry to building a company that rethinks mobile security from the ground up.
Jared makes the case for something more radical than most vendors will admit: stop defending the edge device entirely, and make sure sensitive data never lands there in the first place. He and Ron cover MDM and MAM's blind spots, executive protection, and the shadow AI habits quietly becoming every security leader's next headache.
The episode also lands at a tense moment for the defense industrial base with the Pentagon having just paused third party CMMC assessments, now putting the burden of proof back on self attestation. If you're still trusting the edge device to protect you, this episode is your wake up call.
Impactful Moments
00:00 - Introduction
02:00 - Hack The Headlines: Top new from around the industry
07:30 - Meet Jared Shepard, founder and CEO of Hypori
10:00 - What Hypori does and how it started
15:40 - MDM vs. MAM: why both miss the real problem
18:45 - Shadow AI and the security habits practitioners can't ignore
20:30 - Collapsing the attack surface and bringing back BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)
22:40 - The 4-gigabit-speed "parlor trick" that proves the Cloud beats your device
25:20 - What the 60-day CMMC pause really changes (and what it doesn't)
29:20 - China, stolen tech, and the rise of AI models like Mythos
36:00 - Closing the loop on the CMMC pause
Links
Connect with Jared Shepard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shepardj
Learn more about Hypori: https://hypori.com
–
Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams
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Inside Conti: The Ransomware Gang That Ran Like a Company with Geoff White
2026/07/28
What does the world's most prolific cybercrime operation look like from the inside? And why does it operate suspiciously like a mid-sized tech company, complete with HR headaches, salary negotiations, and a distracted boss nobody respects?
Ron Eddings sits down with investigative journalist and author, Geoff White, who has spent over 20 years covering cybercrime for the BBC, Channel 4 News, and Sky News. Geoff has read 47,000 of Conti’s 300,000 leaked internal chats, the gang that dominated the ransomware world in 2021 and 2022, pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in ransoms. From the Moscow movie studio the gang's leader used to launder money years previously, to the Ukraine war leak that brought the whole Conti empire down, this one plays like true crime… because it is.
Geoff makes the case that defenders should think the same way: you're not buying security tools to fend off a hoodie in a basement, you're investing to outcompete a rival business. For anyone trying to integrate a better incident response plan, this episode reframes the whole conversation.
Impactful Moments
00:00 - Introduction
01:45 - The Rewind: Colonial Pipeline and the week the East Coast ran dry
03:50 - How Geoff went from tech news to cybercrime reporting
05:10 - The difference between threat groups, APTs, and crime gangs
07:25 - Inside the Conti leaks: 300,000 messages
08:55 - Meet the gang: Stern, Mango, and Target
13:20 - Stern's origin story: Zeus malware, money mules, and the 25th Floor front company
16:50 - Ransomware gangs vs. the mafia: where's the protection?
18:10 - The money: $2.5M single payouts and 400 years of wages
19:30 - The Conti member arrested on a layover in Miami
20:35 - The downfall: the Ukraine war and the leak that ended it all
23:05 - What businesses can learn from Conti: recruitment, retention, reputation
27:45 - Advice for defenders: response waves, segmentation, and negotiating down
31:05 - Ron's takeaway: belonging and the thin line between operator and criminal
Links
Connect with Geoff White on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffwhitetech/
Get your own copy of Geoff's books (Crime Dot Com, The Lazarus Heist, Rinsed): https://geoffwhite.tech/book/
Want more information on Conti? Check out Geoff’s BBC podcast series, Cyber Hack: The Conti Files, available on BBC Sounds, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts
–
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What AI Agents Should Own in Your SOC, And What Happens If You Wait with Tim Leehealey
2026/07/21
What happens when the adversary moves at machine speed, and your SOC is still responding at human speed? Why does nearly every security team say AI should handle L1 work, while 64% of organizations still have zero agents in production? And how long until the "coworker" resolving your ticket in Slack turns out not to be human at all?
Tim Leehealey, VP of Strategy and Operations at Strike 48, joins us this week to talk about what it actually takes to get AI agents out of the demo and into production. Tim agenticized his own company's IT, watched it blow up, and came out the other side with lessons from Fortune 100 SOCs running agents at serious scale.
He shares where AI actually belongs in the alert pipeline, the objections holding teams back, and a blunt warning for any leader still waiting on the sidelines in 2027. If AI in the SOC is on your roadmap before the end of this year, start here.
Impactful Moments
00:00 - Introduction
01:55 - Busting a myth: AI will replace analysts
04:45 - Introducing Tim Leehealey
05:30 - The Strike48 survey: 84% say hand L1 to AI
08:00 - Fear the low-and-slow attacker, not the loud one
13:00 - Getting breached without agents in 2027
15:00 - When Tim's own rollout blew up
19:00 - Micro agents inside deterministic workflows
21:25 - Skills advice for L1 analysts
26:00 - The next 18 months of agentic adoption
28:00 - Jim Bob in your Slack is an agent
21:30 - Ron's take: transparency is the trust unlock
Links
Connect with Tim Leehealey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-leehealey-b8b04321
Learn more about Strike48: https://strike48.com
Check out the 2026 State of Agentic Security report here: https://hubs.ly/Q04p49S20
Go deeper on Strike 48's technology: https://labs.strike48.com
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We Shipped a Tool That Acts Like You. Meet Interceptor.
2026/07/14
Think about everything you could accomplish if you don’t have to be the one driving your browser. In this solo episode, Ron Eddings introduces Interceptor, Hacker Valley Media's first piece of software.
Interceptor is an open-source Chrome extension that lets an AI agent drive your real browser, logged-in sessions and all, with no vendor lock-in. Ron shares how it works and describes the use cases that matter most to security practitioners: OSINT and recon, bug bounty operations, prompt-injection testing, and threat-intelligence automation.
Ron also puts himself in the hot seat, answering the hardest questions he's gotten about the tool, including why anyone should trust an open-source tool from a podcast company over a polished product from a billion-dollar AI lab. The delegation is coming, and we would rather the security community be the ones who understand it.
Impactful Moments:
00:00 - Introduction
02:35 - The Rewind: Same Origin Policy and the Web's Foundation
04:40 - Rapid-fire facts: AI agents got hands, and attacks followed
07:00 - What is Interceptor and why was it built?
10:20 - How Interceptor works: stealth, network visibility, teach and replay
13:10 - Live use-case: dynamic dashboard without writing code
17:05 - Cybersecurity use-cases: OSINT, bug bounty, prompt injection testing
21:50 - Ron answers the hard questions about Interceptor
24:10 - Why trust an open source tool from a podcast company?
25:20 - What a practitioner can do tomorrow
27:30 - Closing reflection: knocking down the vendor lock-in wall
Links
Download Interceptor on GitHub: https://github.com/hackervalleymedia/interceptor
Connect with Ron on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronaldeddings/
–
Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams
Love Hacker Valley Studio? Pick up some swag: https://store.hackervalley.com
Become a sponsor of the show: https://hackervalley.com/work-with-us/
Podcast reviews
Read Hacker Valley Studio podcast reviews
LSW24 2023/04/21
A Fan fave
I listen to this podcast very often. Chris and Ron have great chemistry; they understand the art of storytelling and explore it visually and creativel...
b_liggs 2022/10/03
Always Queued Up!
Whether I'm headed to the gym, or boarding a flight. This show is queued up and ready to play first! Their art of storytelling, mixed with a diverse...
StephenAHart 2022/06/19
One Dope Cyber Pod
Love Chris and Ron. Great conversations and energy throughout. Keep it coming! ~StephenAHart
JenniferC11 2022/03/13
There’s something for everyone!
While this is cybersecurity/technology focused podcast, ANYONE can listen to this! I’m not a technologist, but I learn so much from this show. Ron & C...
ClintArthur 2021/11/17
Great Professional Show!
These guys run a very tight ship and a very professional podcast. I enjoyed being a guest and they got a lot out of me that will help a lot of listene...
Arbrnchck 2021/04/07
A little something for everyone
As I become more and more familiar with HVS, I become more and more of a fan. There’s a little bit of something for everyone in each episode. Chris an...
BarbiLou1967 2021/01/18
Non Hacker
Hacker Valley Studios is great source of knowledge / inspiration no matter your expertise! I really enjoy the variety of guests and the quality of inf...
BagsC1963 2020/10/30
This is great!
My first review of a podcast but so worth it. These guys get cybersecurity and more importantly, they understand life and the human condition.
Skaar88 2020/10/10
Wow...
What a niche... cyber and some of the best personal growth and development stuff in podcasting... Ron and Chris are superstars.
A.J.Y.. 2020/10/07
Best cybersecurity podcast out!
One of the best podcasts in the cybersecurity space. Whether you’re a seasoned expert or new to the field, you can learn so much from this show.
Chr...
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