Behind the Binary by Google Cloud Security

"TTD is a paradigm shift in the way you interact with the target... Potentially, five years from now, when we talk about debugging, we will just by default go to TTD."
In this episode, we are joined by Xusheng Li, a debugger architect and reverse engineering expert, to explore the evolution of Time Travel Debugging (TTD). While traditional debugging has remained largely stagnant for decades, TTD introduces a novel new way to debug by recording and replaying execution traces with total precision. Xusheng takes us behind the scenes of how this technology solves the "granularity problem" in malware analysis—moving from a high-level API overview down to instruction-level "ground truth" without ever needing to re-run the program.
We break down the engineering required to record billions of instructions into a manageable trace, the power of querying execution data like a searchable database, and how a "sealed" execution history is changing the workflow for both software developers, malware analysts, and vulnerability researchers.
THE SESSION:
The Deterministic Leap: How TTD avoids the overhead of recording every single instruction by focusing only on non-deterministic events—like file reads, CPU ID calls, and system inputs—allowing billions of cycles to be reconstructed from a fraction of the data.
The Death of "Step-Over": Why the future of debugging lies in querying an execution database rather than manually stepping through code, enabling researchers to instantly find every moment an API was called or a specific memory address was modified.
Solving the Granularity Problem: How a single trace file provides a "safety net" for analysis, allowing researchers to start with a broad triage of behavior and then use a "microscope" to dig into specific crypto functions or obfuscated payloads later.
Data Flow vs. Code Flow: A look at the shift toward "concrete data flow analysis," where researchers focus on the movement of sensitive buffers and keys rather than getting lost in the mental overhead of complex instruction sets and registers.
The Mystery of the i9 Crash: A real-world troubleshooting case where TTD was used to identify a hardware-level microcode bug in a modern CPU that would have been nearly impossible to pinpoint with traditional tools.
The AI Connection: Why the "fixed world" of a TTD trace is the ideal training ground for LLM-assisted analysis, providing a secure, deterministic environment for AI to solve intermediate-level reverse engineering challenges.
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"I thought that we would never hear about these people after they were named. But what was a surprise is that they actually hired a lawyer in New York... and they were like, 'Yeah, we're going to be taking part in this trial."
In this episode, we are joined by Pierre-Marc Bureau from Google’s Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) to unpack the unprecedented takedown of the Glupteba botnet. Active since 2011, Glupteba infected roughly 1 million Windows devices before Google launched a coordinated technical and legal strike. Pierre-Marc takes us behind the scenes of an investigation that evolved from reverse engineering binaries to a surreal showdown in a New York civil court.
We break down how a single hardcoded string unraveled a massive criminal enterprise, the mechanics of using the Bitcoin blockchain for resilient command and control, and the bizarre moment when Russian cybercriminals actually hired a US lawyer to fight back.
THE SESSION:
The Blockchain Fallback: How Glupteba operators hid AES-encrypted blobs inside Bitcoin transactions, creating an un-takable backup C2 infrastructure if their primary domains went down.
The Fatal OpSec Flaw: How one mistake—leaving the string get.voltronwork.com in a Go module—allowed Google to connect the botnet to Russian developer shops and Delaware shell companies.
The Corporate Cyber-Cartel: Why the group operated like a legitimate tech startup, openly selling end-to-end "services" like proxy networks and compromised Google and Facebook accounts on the open web.
The Extortion Twist: The surreal courtroom drama where the malware operators tried to extort Google for $1 million per defendant in exchange for private keys—a move that ended with the judge sanctioning their lawyer for $250,000.
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In this episode, we are joined by Robert Wallace, Joseph Dobson, and Blas Kajusner to dissect the new "Hybrid Heist." The panel argues that the era of isolated crypto-theft is over; sophisticated actors are now targeting the Web2 layer—the frontends, the developer workstations, and the cloud infrastructure—to bypass the immutability of the chain itself.
We also break down "Ether Hiding," a technique where attackers store malware payloads directly on the blockchain to create an unstoppable Command & Control (C2) infrastructure that cannot be taken down by traditional authorities.
THE SESSION:
Immutable C2 (Ether Hiding): How threat actors are updating smart contract state variables to serve second-stage malware payloads, effectively turning the blockchain into a "dead drop resolver" that ignores domain blocks and takedown requests.
The Hybrid Attack Surface: Why the massive Bybit heist wasn't a failure of cryptography, but a Web2 frontend attack on the "Safe Wallet" interface that tricked users into signing transactions they couldn't see.
The "OpSec" Crisis: Why smart contract developers are the new "Domain Admins," and how simple phishing campaigns against personal devices are leading to nine-figure losses.
The "Choke Point" Vulnerability: Why the decentralized ecosystem is still entirely dependent on centralized on-ramps and off-ramps, and how this dependency creates a "kill chain" that defenders can disrupt.
Governance Attacks: The shift from exploiting code to exploiting consensus—how attackers are buying enough tokens to legally vote themselves the contents of a project's treasury.
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"Skilled adversaries have a 100% success rate against all of the defenses that we know about."
In this episode, Kevin Harris defends that claim. We move past the standard "AI Safety" talking points to distinguish between the two attack vectors confusing the industry: Prompt Injection (an application-layer failure) vs. Jailbreaking ("gaslighting" the model via context shifting).
Kevin argues that we haven't actually invented AI yet—we've just built a mirror that reflects our own intelligence (and psychosis) back at us. We also dissect the new model context protocol (MCP) and why giving "discretion" to agents that cannot think is potentially repeating the security mistakes of Web 2.0.
THE SESSION:
The "Pirate" Jailbreak: Why telling a model to be a pirate isn't just a party trick—it's a method of shifting the context window to bypass refusal patterns.
The 100% Failure Rate: Why current defenses are only speed bumps for skilled adversaries, and why you are attacking the application, not the model.
"There Is No AI": Kevin’s theory on why LLMs are just "predictive text made 3 orders of magnitude better" and the danger of "AI-induced psychosis".
The Agentic Threat (MCP): A deep dive into the model context protocol. Why client-side authorization is the new "Browser Security" battleground, and why we are handing "table saws" to users who don't know how to use them.
The Fix: Why "Attention Functions" are the key to understanding (and securing) the future of these models.
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In this episode, Dhillon Kannabhiran shares the gritty origin story of Hack in the Box (HITB), detailing how he dug a $20k financial hole to launch the first event in Malaysia before building it into a global brand.
The conversation moves beyond conferences to explore the cutting edge of technology and creativity. Dhillon explains why "agentic" systems (like Xbow) signal the end of hand-built exploits and discusses the unique challenges of securing Web3 smart contracts. We also dive into the intersection of math and music, how AI tools like Suno are changing art, and why the "hacker ethos" applies to everything from bug bounties to content creation.
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Research Hub: Threat research, training events and news:
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