Television has convinced us that criminal profilers can glance at a crime scene and instantly reconstruct an offender’s personality, habits, and life story. Reality is considerably less dramatic, but far…
In cybersecurity, we often spend millions of dollars and countless hours studying the threat actor. We map infrastructure, dissect malware, and reverse-engineer code. But any experienced security consultant knows that…
A spear phishing attack is a precision-guided digital strike, far more refined than the chaotic, wide-net approach of standard phishing. While common phishing is like trawling the entire ocean hoping…
When people think about threats to a company, they usually imagine hooded hackers sitting in dark rooms, furiously typing while green text scrolls across their screens. Hollywood has done an…
When people hear the word “forensics,” they usually imagine crime scenes, fingerprint powder, or somebody in sunglasses dramatically removing their gloves before announcing the victim died “between 8:13 and 8:17…
In the business world, companies rebrand when sales are down, public image is damaged, or somebody in marketing decides the logo needs to look “more modern.” In the ransomware world,…
If you spend enough time reading about cyberattacks, criminal investigations, espionage, or serial killers, you eventually notice something interesting: investigators from completely different fields often describe criminals in surprisingly similar…
Smurfing is one of those criminal techniques that sounds oddly adorable until you realize it’s basically financial hide-and-seek with regulators. No, it has nothing to do with tiny blue cartoon…
When someone dies under unclear or controversial circumstances, investigators typically begin by searching for physical evidence. Fingerprints, blood patterns, toxicology reports, phone records, and surveillance footage are all part of…
Dumpster diving is a practice that consists of searching through discarded materials (usually in trash bins or dumpsters) in order to recover items or information that may still have value.…
