Signal // Noise

Chris Loehr & Bob Miller
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Signal // Noise is an epistemic security podcast hosted by Chris Loehr and Bob Miller. Where the incident ends and the analysis begins. Two analysts. One signal. Each episode selects a real-world cybersecurity incident and runs it through independent analysis across five AI systems, then synthesizes the findings into a single authoritative report. The goal is simple: separate what is true from what is loud, and deliver intelligence that security professionals and business leaders can act on. Truth. Information integrity. Cognitive security. Resilience.

  1. 5d ago

    Signal//Noise #040 - PHP Levels Are High!

    PHP2Shell: two critical PHP flaws let attackers run code before your app even loads. What happened, who is exposed, and what to do now. EPISODE OVERVIEW On October 21, 2026, PHP shipped emergency fixes for CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, two unauthenticated remote code execution flaws in the PHP interpreter itself. Details leaked a day before the patch, and a related flaw had sat unfixed since a 2024 audit. Chris Loehr and Bob Miller break down how the bugs work, why updating WordPress or Magento does not help, and what MSPs and hosting providers should do today. As always, they compare analysis from five AI tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, and Gemini) and look at where the engines split. WHAT WE COVER - How the PHP2Shell details leaked before coordinated disclosure, and the one-day emergency release - CVE-2026-109618: out-of-memory corruption and why Apache mod_php is the worst case - CVE-2026-109619: stale global state, use-after-free, and session upload progress - Why a clean HTTP 200 does not mean you were not exploited - The 2024 audit finding that stalled for two years, and the PHP Foundation's admission - Exposure estimates, hidden PHP in appliances and containers, and end-of-life versions - How five AI engines handled a story that changed by the hour KEY TAKEAWAYS - Patch the PHP runtime to 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 or 8.2.35 and restart every worker - Find PHP you do not know about: control panels, appliances, Windows bundles, container images - Isolate anything you cannot patch today; interim settings are partial - Hunt back to October 20 for PHP workers spawning shells and new files in web roots - Plan your exit from PHP 8.2 before its December 31, 2026 end of life ABOUT THE SHOW Signal // Noise is a cybersecurity podcast where Chris Loehr and Bob Miller break down the latest security incidents, threats, and trends. Each episode runs the same incident through five leading AI analysis tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, and Gemini) then compares results live on air. Subscribe for weekly analysis that helps security professionals and business leaders stay ahead of emerging threats. RESOURCES - Original article: https://www.php.net/archive/2026.php - CVE-2026-109618 advisory (GHSA-w8hw-w9fx-j79w): https://github.com/php/php-src/security/advisories/GHSA-w8hw-w9fx-j79w - CVE-2026-109619 advisory (GHSA-6wmf-4rv5-p3rp): https://github.com/php/php-src/security/advisories/GHSA-6wmf-4rv5-p3rp - PHP Foundation statement: https://thephp.foundation/blog/2026/10/21/todays-php-security-release-and-how-were-strengthening-php-security/ - CERT-EU Advisory 2026-018: https://cert.europa.eu/publications/security-advisories/2026-018 - UK NCSC guidance: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/critical-security-issue-affecting-php - Huntress Rapid Response: https://www.huntress.com/blog/php2shell-leaked-critical-php-vulnerabilities - Wiz Research: https://www.wiz.io/blog/php2shell-php-rce - Calif Research: https://calif.io/php2shell TAGS PHP2Shell, CVE-2026-109618, CVE-2026-109619, PHP vulnerability, PHP RCE, remote code execution, mod_php, PHP-FPM, WordPress security, cybersecurity, infosec, vulnerability management, patch management, MSP security, AI analysis, CISO, IT security

  2. Oct 20

    Signal//Noise #039 - The French Dis-Connection

    Signal//Noise #039 - The French Dis-Connection Hackers forced 700 French supermarket freezers into defrost overnight. No malware, no ransom. What happened and what to check now. EPISODE OVERVIEW On the night of October 11, 2026, an unknown attacker took control of internet-exposed refrigeration controllers at roughly 700 French supermarkets and held them in defrost for hours, spoiling fresh and frozen stock and causing fires at some stores. Chris Loehr and Bob Miller walk through the end-of-life Danfoss, Copeland and Dixell equipment involved, the date-based admin code researchers found months earlier, and why no indicators of compromise exist. As always on Signal // Noise, they compare analysis from five AI tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok and Gemini) and show where one of them invented evidence. WHAT WE COVER - How the overnight defrost attack on Intermarché, Carrefour, Coopérative U, Monoprix and E.Leclerc unfolded - The Danfoss AK-SM 800A "code of the day" authentication bypass and CVE-2025-41450 - Why end-of-life AK-SM 800 and AK-SC 355 controllers can't be patched - CERT-FR alert CERTFR-2026-ALE-012 and the six-step recovery sequence - MITRE ATT&CK for ICS mapping, including what was not observed - Who owns the risk when a contractor runs the refrigeration: retailer, vendor or MSP - Where five AI analyses agreed, drifted and, in one case, fabricated evidence KEY TAKEAWAYS - How to find exposed building and refrigeration controllers in client environments with Shodan or Censys - Why a factory reset does not protect an exposed, unsupported device - Behavioural indicators to watch for when no IOCs are published - Why temperature alarms need to work independently of the controller - How to read multiple AI threat analyses without trusting the most confident one ABOUT THE SHOW Signal // Noise is a cybersecurity podcast where Chris Loehr and Bob Miller break down the latest security incidents, threats, and trends. Each episode runs the same incident through five leading AI analysis tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, and Gemini) then compares results live on air. Subscribe for weekly analysis that helps security professionals and business leaders stay ahead of emerging threats. RESOURCES - Original article: https://www.afp.com/en/french-supermarkets-suffer-refrigerator-shutdown-after-unprecedented-cyberattack - CERT-FR alert CERTFR-2026-ALE-012: https://www.cert.ssi.gouv.fr/alerte/CERTFR-2026-ALE-012/ - Claroty Team82 Danfoss research: https://claroty.com/team82/research/freeze-the-controller-defrost-the-food-uncovering-vulnerabilities-in-danfoss-refrigeration-controllers - Danfoss security advisories: https://www.danfoss.com/en/service-and-support/coordinated-vulnerability-disclosure/danfoss-security-advisories/ - Copeland product security resources: https://www.copeland.com/en-us/product-security-resources - CISA ICS advisory ICSA-25-140-03: https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-advisories/icsa-25-140-03 - CVE-2025-41450, CVE-2025-41451, CVE-2025-41452

  3. Oct 20

    Signal//Noise #038 - Nothing Like Getting Skykick'd

    Signal//Noise #038 - Nothing Like Getting Skykick'd ConnectWise SkyKick backup credential abused to sign in to 300+ Microsoft 365 tenants. What happened, who is exposed, and what MSPs must check now. EPISODE OVERVIEW An attacker used a credential belonging to ConnectWise Cloud Backup, formerly SkyKick, to sign in to Microsoft 365 tenants as the backup app itself, with no user, password, or MFA involved. In one tenant a related ConnectWise app made itself Global Administrator and planted secrets on other applications that survive the vendor's shutdown, and the containment took backups offline. Chris Loehr and Bob Miller walk through the timeline, the persistence risk, and the backup outage. As always, they compare analysis of the incident from five AI tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, and Gemini) and show where the engines got it right and where they did not. WHAT WE COVER - How the ConnectWise Cloud Backup (SkyKick) application credential gave app-only access to customer tenants - Why MFA and user Conditional Access did nothing against app-only authentication - The Global Administrator escalation and planted client secrets in one documented tenant - Why 162, 173, 300, and 1,000 are different tenant counts that should not be added together - Targeted sweeps against policy, national security, trade, and critical minerals organizations - The backup outage and the recovery point gap it creates - Two AI-recommended fixes that do not work for third-party multi-tenant apps KEY TAKEAWAYS - Any tenant that ever consented to SkyKick or ConnectWise Cloud apps is in scope, including dormant ones - Disabling the vendor apps does not remove secrets planted on other applications - Check service principal sign-ins, not user sign-ins, for the published IPs and app IDs - Workload identity Conditional Access and App Instance Property Lock do not protect you from a vendor's multi-tenant app - Plan interim backup coverage until ConnectWise restores service and confirms credential rotation ABOUT THE SHOW Signal // Noise is a cybersecurity podcast where Chris Loehr and Bob Miller break down the latest security incidents, threats, and trends. Each episode runs the same incident through five leading AI analysis tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, and Gemini) then compares results live on air. Subscribe for weekly analysis that helps security professionals and business leaders stay ahead of emerging threats. RESOURCES - Original article (Huntress): https://www.huntress.com/blog/vendor-credential-enables-unauthorized-access - ConnectWise Trust Center advisories: https://www.connectwise.com/company/trust/advisories - Todyl investigation: https://www.todyl.com/blog/investigation-unauthorized-access-through-the-connectwise-cloud-backup-microsoft-365-app - BleepingComputer coverage: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-breach-microsoft-365-tenants-via-connectwise-supply-chain-attack/ - Blumira guidance: https://www.blumira.com/blog/connectwise-cloud-backup-skykick-compromise - Supporting Files: https://app.v3.irgame.ai/c/S2NFiles

  4. Oct 20

    Signal//Noise #037 - Agents Won't Keep You Safe

    Signal//Noise #037 - Agents Won't Keep You Safe NCSC says agents won't keep you safe: why defensive AI can't match attackers, and what you can safely automate. EPISODE OVERVIEW The UK's National Cyber Security Centre argues that defenders cannot deploy agentic AI the way attackers can. Offensive work has clear success states that automation handles well. Defensive work is an organizational problem where a wrong automated action can harm the business as badly as an attack. Chris Loehr and Bob Miller break down the NCSC guidance, including its five-dimension scorecard for deciding what you can safely automate, and compare the same article across five AI engines: Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, and Gemini. One engine never read the source and still produced the most confident, and the least accurate, report. WHAT WE COVER - The offense versus defense asymmetry, and Halvar Flake's maxim that offensive problems are technical and defensive problems are political - The three principles behind defensive automation that already works, and why agentic AI strains all three - The NCSC five-dimension risk scorecard: potency, scope, criticality, rollout confidence, and recoverability - Cyber Shield, the NCSC and DSIT national blueprint for agentic cyber defence, and the research gap that has to close first - Where five AI engines agreed, where they drifted, and the one that reconstructed the article without reading it - A practical starting point for teams: what to automate first and what to keep a human on KEY TAKEAWAYS - Automate the advice, keep a human on the action, and earn autonomy as risk becomes provable - Score any state-changing automation on the five dimensions before you enable it, and treat unknown criticality as high risk - Do not wait for national agentic defence to arrive; keep hardening the traditional way ABOUT THE SHOW Signal // Noise is a cybersecurity podcast where Chris Loehr and Bob Miller break down the latest security incidents, threats, and trends. Each episode runs the same incident through five leading AI analysis tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, and Gemini) then compares results live on air. Subscribe for weekly analysis that helps security professionals and business leaders stay ahead of emerging threats. RESOURCES - Original article: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blogs/one-does-not-simply-defend-agentically - Cyber Shield blueprint (NCSC/DSIT): https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blogs/cyber-shield-the-path-to-an-agentic-ai-future-for-cyber-defence - CETAS Autonomous Cyber Defence: https://cetas.turing.ac.uk/publications/autonomous-cyber-defence-autonomous-agents - Supporting files: https://tinyurl.com/C-B-QuickPicks TAGS cybersecurity, infosec, agentic AI, AI security, cyber defense, NCSC, Cyber Shield, autonomous agents, SOC, security operations, CISO, threat intelligence, AI agents, prompt injection, SOAR, Claude AI, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok

  5. Oct 20

    Signal//Noise #036 - Everything Shiny is not Gold. Ask the FBI!

    Signal//Noise #036 - Everything Shiny is not Gold. Ask the FBI! Hackers broke into the FBI's job portal, exposed its secret hacking unit, and demanded a retraction instead of a ransom. EPISODE OVERVIEW The extortion crew ShinyHunters claims it breached the FBI through the Oracle PeopleSoft software behind FBIjobs.gov and stole personnel data on current, former, and prospective employees. Inside the stolen sample, journalists found members of the FBI's Remote Operations Unit, the team that builds the bureau's own hacking tools. Chris Loehr and Bob Miller separate what the FBI confirmed from what the attacker only claimed, and they run the whole incident through five AI tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, and Gemini) to compare the analysis live on air. WHAT WE COVER - How a public recruiting portal became the claimed door into federal personnel data - Why the "brand new zero-day" is almost certainly the known flaw CVE-2026-35273, bypassed with one encoded character - The firewall-bypass trick that beat compensating controls on unpatched PeopleSoft servers - Why exposing the Remote Operations Unit is a counterintelligence problem, not a routine data breach - The real campaign indicators defenders can hunt for, and why they are not FBI-attributed - A non-financial extortion demand, and why paying is not the off-ramp - Where the five AI engines agreed, and the one that invented an attack step out of thin air KEY TAKEAWAYS - A WAF rule you can beat with one encoded character is not a patch - Confirmed facts in this incident are narrower than the headlines claim - Recruiting and HR systems are production attack surface, not back-office tooling - Cross-checking multiple AI analyses catches fabrications that a single tool hands you with confidence ABOUT THE SHOW Signal // Noise is a cybersecurity podcast where Chris Loehr and Bob Miller break down the latest security incidents, threats, and trends. Each episode runs the same incident through five leading AI analysis tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, and Gemini) then compares results live on air. Subscribe for weekly analysis that helps security professionals and business leaders stay ahead of emerging threats. RESOURCES - Original article: https://www.404media.co/fbi-hack-exposed-fbis-own-hacking-unit-remote-operations-shinyhunters/ - Google / Mandiant on the PeopleSoft campaign: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/shinyhunters-renewed-mass-exploitation-campaign-targeting-oracle-peoplesoft - Oracle advisory: CVE-2026-35273 (out-of-band Security Alert, June 10, 2026) TAGS FBI hack, ShinyHunters, UNC6240, Oracle PeopleSoft, CVE-2026-35273, PSEMHUB, WAF bypass, FBIjobs.gov, Remote Operations Unit, data breach, cyber extortion, threat intelligence, cybersecurity, incident response, SIDEEYE, AI analysis, CISO, Signal Noise, counterintelligence, PeopleSoft RCE

  6. Sep 20

    Signal//Noise #035 - Who Wants Swarma

    One criminal, a cheap AI model, and 395 organizations hacked through a flaw that was already patched. Here's what actually happened. EPISODE OVERVIEW A threat actor used AI to industrialize an exploitation campaign against two PaperCut NG/MF vulnerabilities, compromising 440 servers at 395 organizations across 48 countries. The post that made it go viral got three checkable things wrong, and every correction changes what the story means. Chris Loehr and Bob Miller work through what the primary research actually says, why "autonomous AI attack" is the wrong frame, and why a publicly patched vulnerability still produced global compromise inside a week. As always, Chris and Bob ran the same source through five AI analysis tools: Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok and Gemini. Three found the right story. Two could not read the source, said so honestly, then wrote thousands of well-cited words about a completely different incident. WHAT WE COVER - The PaperCut vulnerability chain, CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078, and why a print server is really an Active Directory problem - Why the models were DeepSeek, not OpenAI, and how one wrong product name changed the entire news story - What Blackpoint Cyber found in the operator's exposed workspace, and why they concluded this was NOT autonomous AI - The 28 country exclusion list the campaign ignored, and why nobody can explain it - Substitution versus hallucination, the AI failure mode that passes every source check - Why the most confident AI analysis in the set was the least accurate - What MSPs and security teams should do Monday morning KEY TAKEAWAYS - The patch window argument is over. This flaw was public and patched before the campaign started. The attacker needed exposed servers and your response time, not a zero day. - AI did not invent the exploit. It collapsed the labor cost of a global campaign from a team down to one person. - A security team can be handed a flawless, properly cited AI report that answers the wrong question. That is harder to catch than a made up number. - Model confidence and model accuracy are not correlated. Treat certainty as a warning sign. - Convergence from different methods is evidence. Convergence from the same method is an echo.

  7. Sep 17

    Signal//Noise #034 - AI Threats All Around

    AI is changing cyberattacks, but not in the way most headlines suggest. In Signal // Noise #034, AI Threats All Around, Bob Miller and Chris Loehr examine two major adversarial AI threat reports released within 48 hours of each other by Google Threat Intelligence Group and Anthropic Threat Intelligence. The central finding: the attack techniques are mostly the same. Stolen credentials. Unpatched systems. Exposed services. Phishing. SQL injection. What has changed is the economics. AI is allowing attackers to operate faster, at greater scale, with fewer people, and with less specialized knowledge. Among the documented examples: • Roughly 3 hours from a stolen developer token to full cloud administrative control • An agent-driven credential harvesting campaign built and executed in under 6 hours • More than 2,100 Azure AD token sets across 40+ corporate tenants collected in about 34 hours • 1.8 million Android applications automatically downloaded, decompiled, and searched for hardcoded secrets • An automated vulnerability research workflow producing more than a dozen possible zero-day findings in one month • Malware automatically rebuilt after security products detected it, repeating the process until it was no longer detected We also look at two developments that may represent genuinely new attack techniques: Prompt injection against defensive AI systems. Attackers embedded instructions designed to cause LLM-based security scanners to refuse analysis before reaching malicious code. AI coding assistants used as execution proxies. Malicious workspace configuration files caused AI assistants to execute attacker-controlled commands during normal developer activity. And there is an important boundary. What they did document were agentic operations running unattended inside human-defined objectives. Humans still selected targets, made strategic decisions, and handled monetization. That distinction matters. The threat is not some autonomous AI hacker suddenly replacing human attackers. The threat is that one attacker can increasingly do the work that once required a team. For defenders, the conclusion may be even more uncomfortable: most of the controls needed to stop these attacks already exist. Identity. Credential hygiene. Secrets management. Fast patching of internet-facing systems. Behavioral detection. Strong incident response. Clear authority to act when something goes wrong. The technology changed. The weaknesses being exploited largely did not. In this episode• Agentic cyber operations and the limits of current AI autonomy • Automated vulnerability research and exploit development • Malware that rebuilds itself when detected • AI-powered credential harvesting at massive scale • Attacks against AI coding assistants • Prompt injection as a defensive evasion technique • AI API keys as a new credential target • Software supply chain attacks and stolen CI/CD credentials • The changing economics of cybercrime • Why smaller organizations and MSP customers may face increasing exposure • What security teams should change now • What is Signal and what is Noise in the current AI threat narrative About Signal // NoiseSignal // Noise takes a real cybersecurity issue and runs it through multiple AI systems. We compare the findings, identify areas of agreement and disagreement, verify the evidence, and separate what matters from what does not. #Cybersecurity #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #CyberThreats #InfoSec #IncidentResponse #ThreatIntelligence #AgenticAI #Cybercrime #MSP

  8. Sep 6

    Signal//Noise #033 - Hey! I'm Driving Here!

    SIGNAL // NOISE | SN097 Episode: Hey! I'm Driving Here! Date: September 4, 2026 153M driver's license scans hit the dark web, including infrared and UV images banks trust. Here is who is exposed and what to do now. EPISODE OVERVIEW (description body, exactly 100 words) A dark web service called Nexus advertised searchable access to more than 153 million United States and Canadian driver's license scans. Each record held six images: front and back under visible light, infrared, and ultraviolet. Those non visible captures are what document authentication hardware reads to confirm a credential is genuine. Evidence points to identity verification provider IDScan.net, though nothing is confirmed. Chris Loehr and Bob Miller trace the attribution chain, the detection failure, and what relying parties should change. As always, they run the same incident through five AI engines and compare results live, including one that missed everything. WHAT WE COVER - How a journalist identified the likely source using nothing but GMT timestamps embedded in image filenames - Why infrared and ultraviolet license captures are a forgery input, not just a privacy loss - The Hertz and Planet13 correlation, and the negative evidence that ruled out airport and TSA systems - IDScan.net VeriScan retention defaults, and what Collect All plus Do not delete actually means in production - Why a year of continuous exfiltration produced no alert, and what egress detection should look for instead - MITRE ATT&CK coverage gaps when the incident is data brokerage rather than intrusion - How five AI engines handled the same source material, including one verifiability failure and two fabricated technique names KEY TAKEAWAYS - Treat the 153 million figure as a criminal seller claim, not a count of affected people - Inventory every ID capture point in your business and name the vendor behind each one - Contractually require deletion of document images within hours of the verification decision - Remove the license image as a standalone authenticator for account recovery, MFA removal, and credit origination - Tune egress detection for sustained low volume bulk retrieval rather than volume spikes ABOUT THE SHOW Signal // Noise is a cybersecurity podcast where Chris Loehr and Bob Miller break down the latest security incidents, threats, and trends. Each episode runs the same incident through five leading AI analysis tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, and Gemini) then compares results live on air. Subscribe for weekly analysis that helps security professionals and business leaders stay ahead of emerging threats.

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About

Signal // Noise is an epistemic security podcast hosted by Chris Loehr and Bob Miller. Where the incident ends and the analysis begins. Two analysts. One signal. Each episode selects a real-world cybersecurity incident and runs it through independent analysis across five AI systems, then synthesizes the findings into a single authoritative report. The goal is simple: separate what is true from what is loud, and deliver intelligence that security professionals and business leaders can act on. Truth. Information integrity. Cognitive security. Resilience.

Information

  • Creator
    Chris Loehr & Bob Miller
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    20
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Chris Loehr & Bob Miller
  • Show Website
    Signal // Noise

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