The Audit - Cybersecurity Podcast

An underground forum post breaks down how hackers scan, exploit, and cash out on vulnerabilities — and it reads like a step-by-step guide. Meanwhile, Microsoft is catching heat for stonewalling a researcher who found real zero-days, and a new phishing campaign is hitting small businesses through the platforms they trust most. 
The OG crew — Joshua Schmidt, Eric Brown, and Nick Mellem — digs into this week's biggest cybersecurity headlines with sharp takes and real-world context that practitioners can actually use. 
🗞️ This week's stories:  
Underground hacker forum "Hacking for Profit" breaks down the full vulnerability exploitation playbook — and what it means for your security gaps  
Gray hat researcher Chaotic Eclipse discloses zero-days to Microsoft, gets stonewalled on bug bounty, and now July 14th Patch Tuesday just got interesting  
Third-party plugins and open source tools: the supply chain risk hiding in your dev pipeline (and tools like Akido and Veracode that help)  
Meta Business Suite phishing campaign targeting SMBs — and a live near-miss story from Joshua himself  
SMS phishing: a new IT Audit Labs team member got hit on day three, before his welcome post even went live 
Don't wait until your organization is the next headline. IT leaders need to stay ahead of evolving threats, and this episode delivers the intel to do it. Like, share, and subscribe for weekly cybersecurity coverage. 
#cybersecurity #infosec #bugbounty #phishing #zerodayvulnerability #supplychainsecurity #microsoftsecurity #ethicalhacking #ciso #itauditlabs

What happens when a deepfake video becomes probable cause? Law enforcement agencies are already grappling with AI-generated evidence, doxing attacks on officers, and a training gap that's growing wider every six weeks. If the justice system can't keep up with the AI threat curve, the consequences won't just be policy problems — they'll be people's lives. 
In this episode of The Audit, former firefighter-paramedic turned strategic communications consultant Braden Frame — founder of Modern Cartographers and Modern Fortis — joins co-hosts Joshua Schmidt, Eric Brown, and Nick Mellum to break down the rapidly evolving AI threat landscape facing law enforcement and public safety. Braden draws a sharp parallel between law enforcement's slow adoption of social media a decade ago and the AI reckoning happening right now — and why that delay could be catastrophic this time around. 
🔍 What We Cover: 
How AI-generated fake evidence is already entering courtrooms — and why it'll only get harder to detect 
Why law enforcement is repeating its social media mistakes with AI adoption 
The guardrails debate: Venice AI, unregulated tools, and who pays the price when there are no limits 
Doxing attacks on officers and public servants — and how to defend your personal information 
AI in the field: body cam transcription, paramedic decision support, and where the tech actually works today 
Authenticity as a weapon: why real human voices will matter more than ever in the age of AI slop 
Don't wait until your organization is the next headline. IT leaders need to stay ahead of evolving threats, and this episode delivers critical insights to help protect your business. Like, share, and subscribe for more in-depth security discussions! 
#AI #cybersecurity #lawenforcement #deepfakes #doxing #publicsafety #infosec #artificialintelligence #AIthreats

What would you do if ransomware told you not only that your data was gone — but that it was encrypted with a quantum-safe algorithm and you have 72 hours to pay? That's not a hypothetical anymore. 
In this live news episode of The Audit, co-hosts Joshua Schmidt, Eric Brown, and Nick Mellum are joined by IT Audit Labs member Bill Harris for a rapid-fire breakdown of the week's most important cybersecurity stories — and a few conversations that went places nobody expected. 
🎯 Stories & Topics Covered: 
Iranian Cyber Group Handala Targets U.S. Troops — WhatsApp-based psychological ops against service members in Bahrain, and what OPSEC looks like when soldiers can't leave their phones at home 
Agentic AI Risk Goes Live — A real incident where an AI deleted a production database in 9 seconds, and why "trust but verify" has never mattered more 
Quantum-Safe Ransomware (Kyber) — The first confirmed ransomware family using NIST's post-quantum cryptographic standards, and why it's more marketing than menace — for now 
Robinhood Email Exploit via Gmail Dot Trick — How threat actors weaponized a years-old stolen email list using a quirk in how Google and Robinhood handle email addresses differently 
Bitwarden/Checkmarks Supply Chain Attack — Why even security-first tools aren't immune, and how Bitwarden's 90-minute response time became a case study in breach communication 
Apple's AI Strategy: Late on Purpose? — Is Apple sitting out the AI arms race, or quietly building something nobody's seen yet? 
Eric's AI Email Vision — A live whiteboard idea for using agentic AI as a personal email firewall that could eliminate phishing at the infrastructure level 
Don't wait until your organization is the next headline. IT leaders need to stay ahead of evolving threats, and this episode delivers critical insights to help protect your business. Like, share, and subscribe for more in-depth security discussions! 
#cybersecurity #ransomware #postquantum #AI #infosec #ethicalhacking #supplychain #phishing #NIST #agentic #bitwarden #OPSEC #cyberdefense #ITaudit #TheAudit

Most organizations think they're protected. They're not. Microsoft Defender sounds solid on paper — but in the real world, it's letting phishing, malware, and business email compromise walk right through the door. In this episode of The Audit, the crew pulls back the curtain on one of the most exploited attack surfaces in any organization: email. 
Co-hosts Joshua Schmidt, Eric Brown, and Nick Mellem are joined by IT Audit Labs' own Cameron Birkland — fresh off three first-place CTF wins in Vegas — for a live walkthrough of Check Point Harmony Email, a tool that plugs directly into your Microsoft 365 environment and shows you exactly what your current setup is missing. 
🎯 What you'll learn in this episode: 
Why out-of-the-box Microsoft Defender consistently fails against advanced phishing and BEC attacks — and what "good" email security actually looks like 
How Check Point Harmony uses machine learning and contextual AI analysis (not just signature matching) to catch threats that bypass traditional filters 
How threat actors silently set up forwarding rules and inbox monitoring to loot data for weeks — without triggering a single alert 
IT Audit Labs' new "14 plus one" email security assessment — a 14-day live scan of your Microsoft 365 environment with a full debrief, no disruption required 
A live demo of the Harmony dashboard: phishing reports, geo-anomaly detection, OneDrive malware scanning, and DLP for exposed sharing links 
Whether you're securing a 50-person company or advising a 5,000-user enterprise, this episode gives you the practitioner-level insight to finally close the gap in your email defenses. 
Don't wait until your organization is the next headline. Subscribe for weekly cybersecurity insights from the practitioners actually doing the work. Like, share, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts if this episode hit home. 
#emailsecurity #cybersecurity #phishing #businessemailcompromise #Microsoft365 #infosec #checkpoint #harmonyemail

Your organization may have hundreds of AI agents running right now that your security team doesn't know exist. Every single one is an identity. Every identity is an attack surface. 
In this episode of The Audit, co-hosts Joshua Schmidt, Eric Brown, and Nick Mellem sit down with Madhav Nakar, security researcher on the Phantom Labs team at BeyondTrust, to break down one of the most underexplored threats in enterprise security today: untracked AI agents creating exploitable "ghost identities." Madhav just returned from RSA — where he noticed every booth had an AI angle and a bubble forming — and he's here to cut through the noise with hard-hitting research and practical guidance. 
🔍 Key Topics Covered: 
How low-code platforms let non-technical users spawn unvetted AI agents — and why that's a goldmine for attackers 
Ghost identities: what happens when AI agents run on untracked, over-privileged system identities 
The AWS sandbox DNS exfiltration proof-of-concept from BSides (BeyondTrust research) 
Why siloed AWS, Azure, and Okta teams create hidden privilege escalation paths 
"AI vs. AI" — the emerging defender model where autonomous systems monitor each other 
Browser extension cross-contamination and prompt injection risk for enterprise Claude deployments 
The three conditions that make any AI agent dangerous: private data access + untrusted instructions + tool execution 
Madhav's framework: inventory → least privilege → visibility — the basics that still matter most 
Bonus: Madhav shares how "spiritually red-teaming yourself" — facing fear, breaking false narratives, and building trust — maps directly to how security professionals should approach zero trust and identity management. Plus: Joshua, Eric, and Nick on conquering stage fright and what that has to do with cybersecurity culture. 
Don't wait for a ghost identity to become a ghost incident. Subscribe for weekly cybersecurity insights from practitioners, researchers, and the people defending the frontlines. 

#GhostIdentities, #AIAgentSecurity, #NonHumanIdentity, #ZeroTrust, #TheAuditPodcast