8th layer insights by Perry Carpenter | N2K Networks

Hey folks! It's been a few weeks, but now the gift is here. :) It's the 7th installment of the "Cognitive Heists" series. This one is titled, "The Trojan Gift." 🎁

Some cons don’t succeed because of the smooth-talking seller. Instead, they succeed because of the crowd.

Welcome to Deceptive Minds - An audio newsletter about how we are fooled, how we fool ourselves, and what we can do about it.

👻 New Deceptive Minds issue: Cognitive Heist series issue #4 -- The Ghost

📞 The Call Is Coming from Inside Your Mind

Welcome to part 2 of the Cognitive Heist miniseries: The Bait Man

🕵️‍♂️ New Deceptive Minds mini-series: Behind the Scams (Cognitive Heists) 🕵️‍♂️

When it comes to deception, everything is about story.

Hey Friends!

Ok. This one's pretty uncomfortable. It's about the lies we tell ourselves and why we believe them.

Not all deception hides in the shadows. Some of it walks right in — wearing a badge, a clipboard, or a lab coat.

If it made you panic, rage, or rush… it probably bypassed your cognitive defenses.

Some lies try hard to fool you. Others just make it easy for you to believe them.

Hey friends,

Welcome to issue #3 of Deceptive Minds: a newsletter about how we are fooled, how we fool ourselves, and what we can do about it.

Hey friends! Here's issue 2 of Deceptive Minds: a newsletter about how we are fooled, how we fool ourselves, and what we can do about it.

 Hey listeners, Perry Carpenter here. Yeah, it's been a while since I've posted this feed, but I've got something exciting that I think you'll be interested in. It's the audio version of a newsletter that I recently started.

Note: We're posting Perry's new show, "The FAIK Files", to this feed through the end of 2024. This will give you a chance to get a feel for the new show and subscribe to the new feed if you want to keep following in 2025.

Note: We're posting Perry's new show, "The FAIK Files", to this feed through the end of the year. This will give you a chance to get a feel for the new show and subscribe to the new feed if you want to keep following in 2025.

Note: We're posting Perry's new show, "The FAIK Files", to this feed through the end of the year. This will give you a chance to get a feel for the new show and subscribe to the new feed if you want to keep following in 2025.

Note: We're posting Perry's new show, "The FAIK Files", to this feed through the end of the year. This will give you a chance to get a feel for the new show and subscribe to the new feed if you want to keep following in 2025.

Note: We're posting Perry's new show, "The FAIK Files", to this feed through the end of the year. This will give you a chance to get a feel for the new show and subscribe to the new feed if you want to keep following in 2025.

This is Part Three of a ten-part miniseries exploring Perry Carpenter's latest book, FAIK: A Practical Guide to Living in a World of Deepfakes, Disinformation, and AI-Generated Deceptions. Each episode kicks off with a dramatized reading of the "Whispers from the Static" vignette that opens the chapter, followed by an in-depth conversation with Perry Carpenter and Mason Amadeus, where they unpack the chapter's themes and real-world implications.

This is Part Two of a ten-part miniseries exploring Perry Carpenter's latest book, FAIK: A Practical Guide to Living in a World of Deepfakes, Disinformation, and AI-Generated Deceptions. Each episode kicks off with a dramatized reading of the "Whispers from the Static" vignette that opens the chapter, followed by an in-depth conversation with Perry Carpenter and Mason Amadeus, where they unpack the chapter's themes and real-world implications. 

This is Part One of a ten-part miniseries exploring Perry Carpenter's latest book, FAIK: A Practical Guide to Living in a World of Deepfakes, Disinformation, and AI-Generated Deceptions. Each episode kicks off with a dramatized reading of the "Whispers from the Static" vignette that opens the chapter, followed by an in-depth conversation with Perry Carpenter and Mason Amadeus, where they unpack the chapter's themes and real-world implications. 

In this conversation, Perry sits down with Dr. Bilyana Lilly to discuss her new book Digital Mindhunters (Coming Oct 30) and the intersection of cybersecurity, disinformation, and AI. She describes the narrative structure of her book, navigating a world of cyber threats and influence operations, and the evolving landscape of disinformation with AI amplifying threats. Dr. Lilly emphasizes the importance of awareness and education in combating misinformation and highlights the global threats posed by countries like Russia and China.

In this episode, Perry catches-up with Stephanie (Snow) & JC Carruthers. They talk about social engineering, the DEFCON Social Engineering Community / Village, and share their favorite (and most embarrassing) social engineering stories.

On this episode, Perry gets to sit down with Ed Skoudis to discuss the simplicity and complexities of cybersecurity ethics. Ed's new book is The Code of Honor: Embracing Ethics in Cybersecurity.

On this episode, Perry gets to sit down with Jon Gillham. Jon is the founder and CEO of Originality.ai -- an AI content detection platform designed to help website owners, content marketers, writers and publishers hit 'publish' with integrity in the world of generative AI.

On this episode, Perry gets to sit down with investigative journalist, author, and podcaster, Geoff White. They discuss Geoff's new book, "Rinsed: From Cartels to Crypto: How the Tech Industry Washes Money for the World's Deadliest Crooks", the state of global cybercrime, and (everybody's favorite topic) artificial intelligence.

In this episode, Perry sits down with award winning cybersecurity author, George Finney to discuss his recent book, Project Zero Trust. This is a broad discussion that hits on the concepts of Zero Trust, George's approach to writing the book, his passion for storytelling, and much more.

In this episode Perry Carpenter sits down with Rachel Tobac to debrief after her recent KB4-CON session, "How I'd Hack You Live" where she... well... hacked Perry live. Perry and Rachel explore how age-old deception techniques are being revamped for the digital age. The discussion spans the future of social engineering, the increasing role of AI in security, and a few other fun bits.

On this episode Perry sits down with Dr. Matthew Canham to explore ways in which AI can be weaponized against us, and how age old social engineering tactics can be used to trick large language models.

On this episode Perry sits down with Jeremy Treadwell, a people-first technologist and futurist, to get the lowdown on how a futurist approaches the world.

Welcome to season 5 of 8th Layer Insights!

On this episode, Perry celebrates the one year birthday of ChatGPT by taking a look at AI from technological, philosophical, and folkloric perspectives. We see how AI was formed based on human words and works, and how it can now shape the future of human legend and belief.

Let's face it. Most of us have a love/hate relationship with technology and technological advances. We dream about the new thing... but when it arrives, we are usually a little disappointed. Many of us also lament the constant erosion of privacy, the changes in social norms, and more. And, little-by-little, we allow those aspects of new technology to make us numb. We accept the cognitive dissonance of not totally being happy with the trade-offs; yet we still make the trade.

On today's show, Perry sits down with Rick Howard to discuss Rick's new book and the concept of "First Principles" as they apply in the domain of cybersecurity.

If you’ve been listening to this show for a while, you’ll know that we’ve touched on the topic of Open Source Intelligence (otherwise known as OSINT) several times. It is an area of information security that penetration testing that’s been getting quite a bit of attention over the past several years. When you think about the digital world we live in, where we have a proliferation of personal, organizational, and governmental data on the internet...and the simple fact that data likes to leak…we can safely predict that OSINT investigation techniques will continue to be in demand.

Listen in as Perry Carpenter & Dr. Jessica Barker present their joint session, "Conversational Security Awareness" at the SANS Managing Human Risk Summit. ... and stay tuned after the presentation for a quick conversation between Perry, Jessica, and Lance Spitzner (SANS) as they discuss themes from this year's event.

On today's show, Perry sits down with Jayson E. Street to discuss his unique blend of social engineering, physical penetration testing, and security awareness. Jayson refers to this as being trained by a simulated adversary. At the heart of Jayson's method is intense boldness in his approach to social engineering and penetration testing coupled with an equally intense passion for helping his clients and their employees improve their overall security posture and mindsets. It's about education rather than exploitation.

Hey all! I'm at BlackHat and Defcon this week. If you're there, track me down. I'd love to meet you!

There has been a lot of buzz for the past few years about the benefits and importance of establishing security champions programs. These are groups of people in your organization who become vital, responsible, and proactive contributing evangelists to the security culture of your organization. I often refer to them as "culture carriers." And, while there is general agreement that these are good programs to have, establishing them is currently a bit of a dark art.

On this episode, Perry sits down with Chad Peterson, Managing Director at NetSPI, to discuss the importance of penetration testing. We touch on aspects of social engineering, discussing complex security issues with Boards of Directors, the prevalence of Ransomware, and some of the unique challenges facing the healthcare industry.

On this episode, what cybersecurity professionals need to understand about how social signaling and incentives really work.

In this episode, Perry Carpenter sits down with renowned mentalist and skeptic, Banachek. Banachek (Steve Shaw) grew up with a fascination in magic and a frustration with psychic frauds. As a teenager, he contacted magician and skeptic, James “The Amazing” Randi and ended up working with Randi on a special initiative known as Project Alpha, which set out to expose a general lack of objectivity in parapsychology research. Banachek served as the director for the James Randi Educational Foundation’s “One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge” for 15 years and is now the President of the James Randi Educational Foundation. 

This week's episode is a late Star Wars ("May the 4th Be With You") celebration. We check out a couple interesting articles about security-related lessons embedded in the Star Wars movies, and Perry sits down with Adam Shostack, author of the new book, Threats: What Every Engineer Should Learn From Star Wars to discuss threat modeling principles using Star Wars related examples.

Welcome to season 4, episode 1 of 8th Layer Insights!

For the last episode of season 3, I thought we'd talk about something that's been in the news quite a lot recently: Authentication and Password Managers. As security professionals, we've decried the password for decades. Multifactor authentication (MFA) has started to gain popularity... but not without its own issues. Security leaders and tech teams may have once again hoped for a silver bullet, only to be disappointed to find out that crafty attackers can easily bypass MFA. We've also been touting the benefits of Password Managers for quite a while. After all, in a world where most of us have to manage upwards of 200 passwords in a year, who can keep up? No human can have great password hygiene across all those accounts. But password managers also face their own problems as illustrated by a recent high-profile incident.

Hey all!

On this episode, Perry speaks with Chris Cochran and Ron Eddings. Chris and Ron started the Hacker Valley Studio Podcast back in June of 2019 with the goal of exploring the human condition to inspire peak performance in cybersecurity. The podcast is about Chris and Ron’s quest to find inspirational stories and knowledge to elevate themselves and their communities. That podcast eventually kicked off a journey that led them to create their own podcast network (Hacker Valley Media), foster communities, and they recently partnered with SANS to create the Difference Makers Awards.

On this episode, Perry sits down with Marta L. Tellado, President and CEO at Consumer Reports, to discuss the digital moment we are in and what that means for consumers and the marketplace: the risks, dangers, traps… and also the places and paths that can lead to progress. They also discuss Marta's new book, Buyer Aware: Harnessing Our Consumer Power for a Safe, Fair, and Transparent Marketplace.

Get ready for those 'fun' holiday dinner conversations with friends and family. You know the ones...

There is something about a good spy story that seems to really resonate with people in the cybersecurity world. We love watching the moves and the counter moves, and the sneaking around, and the social engineering, and hacking, and all of the gadgets and toys, and car chases, and fights and double crosses and triple crosses. Yeah, you get the point. 

For this week, we are revisiting a previous episode that first aired as Season 1 Episode 10. In this episode, we discuss the concept of security culture -- specifically, the difficulty that security leaders have in defining what a security culture actually is. Luckily, we can draw on learnings from organizational culture management and culture transformation experts.

On this episode, Perry sits down with Jenny Radcliffe (a.k.a. The People Hacker). Jenny is a well-known speaker, podcaster, professional social engineer, and physical penetration tester… in other words, she’s a social engineer who specializes not only in tricking people into doing things they shouldn’t do… but she also specializes getting into places she shouldn’t be and finding things she shouldn’t be able to find. Her job is to embody the criminal mindset and use the skills of a criminal to find the vulnerabilities that a criminal would find.

Over the past few years, there's been a lot of talk about the value of understanding Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). But, even with so much talk, relatively few cybersecurity professionals have had the time to take a deep dive into the topic. In this episode, Perry sits down with social engineer, OSINT investigator, and member of the OSINT Curious project, Christina Lekati to get an overview of the value of OSINT as well as some basic techniques. After that, we hear from Chris Kirsch (co-founder and CEO of runZero). Chris is a former black badge winner at DEF CON's social engineering competition and served as a judge in the most recent competition. He recently released an interesting report analyzing the top OSINT sources and vishing (voice phishing via phone) pretexts from that competition.

In this episode, Perry talks about the value of storytelling and provides 7 tips for anyone who faces the fear associated with staring at a blank screen, wondering how they can begin to create fresh content. This is adapted from a presentation Perry recently gave at the 2022 SANS Security Awareness Summit.

In this episode, Perry sits down with Mikko Hyppönen for a wide ranging discussion about the history, current state, and future of cybersecurity. We also discuss Mikko's new book, the title of which is derived from Hyppönen's Law: If It's Smart, It's Vulnerable.

This is a follow-up to Season 2, episode 4 –Bridging the Cyber Skills Gap. Many listeners contacted me saying that they loved the episode, but wished that I’d put more focus on people trying to find a career in cybersecurity later in life. So, consider this episode a Bridging the Cyber Skills Gap Part 2.

You've probably been hearing the term 'mindfulness' a lot these days. And for good reason. We humans seem to be busier and more stressed out than ever before, and mindfulness practices seem to offer positive benefit. But how does mindfulness intersect with cybersecurity? What practices can we learn and promote to decrease human risk in our organizations and live safer digital lives?

On this bonus episode, Perry sits down with physical penetration tester, lock picking guru, and Board Member of The Open Organization of Lockpickers (TOOOL), Deviant Ollam. They discuss lockpicking, physical penetration testing, locksport, and the ethics of teaching these skills.

On this bonus episode, Perry sits down with investigative journalist, speaker, podcaster, and author, Geoff White to talk about his path into investigative journalism, podcasting, and his new book, "The Lazarus Heist: From Hollywood to High Finance: Inside North Korea's Global Cyber War."

Please take the listener survey--->>> https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8LI_Survey <<<---

If you could interview a password, what questions would you ask?

Creativity can be a scary topic for technologists. Most of us haven't been trained in the art and science of creativity and so they either feel out of their depth when called on to create content. But it doesn't have to be that way. In this episode, Perry sits down with New York Times bestselling author, Michelle Richmond, Audible bestselling author Rob Dircks, and two critically acclaimed cybersecurity podcasters, Ran Levi (creator and host of the Malicious Life podcast) and David Spark (creator and host of the CISO Series podcast) to discuss creativity, how to create relatable content, and how to communicate technology-related content in clear and compelling ways.

"Security Awareness" is a slippery topic for a lot of people. It's a well known phrase -- and, let's face it, it's a phrase that can be very misleading. In this episode, Perry sits down with Dr. Jessica Barker (author and co-CEO at Cygenta), Cassie Clark (Security Awareness Lead Engineer at Brex), John Scott (Head of Security Education at Bank of England), and Lance Spitzner (Director, SANS Institute: Founder, Honeynet Project) to discuss what is currently being done well and, more importantly, where it needs to grow over the next few years. Spoiler alert: it's all about managing human risk.

Risk is a funny thing – our minds are constantly looking for risk, scanning our environments and our available choices. And sometimes we do a great job at anticipating and avoiding risky situations. But that doesn’t mean that we are universally good at dealing with risk. In fact, we can be downright appalling at considering and avoiding risk.

What images come to mind when you see or hear the word 'Cybersecurity?' That word probably evokes mental images of people hunched over keyboards launching cyberattacks at each other. Or maybe you picture someone picking a lock or stealing a badge to slip into a building. In other words, most people picture the battle... or what some might think of as "the fun parts." But, here's the thing. Not everyone gets to participate in these aspects of cybersecurity and, in many cases, finding safe and legal ways to practice these skills can be challenging. So where can curious minds turn?

If you love learning about cons, scams, and tricks, then this is the episode for you. Listen as Perry sits down with Brian Brushwood, someone who has made understanding and teaching scams and tricks his life's work. Brian is the creator of Scam School, Scam Nation, Hacking the System, Modern Rogue, and more. For the past 20 years, he's toured around the world teaching and demonstrating everything from side show stunts, to sleight-of-hand magic, to the intricacies of con artistry.

Every now and then you need to try something new. That's what this episode is. If you listened to Season 2, Episode 3 (Technology and the Law of Unintended Consequences), you may remember the mock interview with Janet, the virtual assistant. This episode expands that idea and features a set of four mock interviews -- all with security-related object. This is an interesting experiment to help flesh-out some ideas behind these objects, the reasons they exist, their motivations, and the situations in which they find themselves.

On this episode, Perry sits down with James Linton (formerly known as The Email Prankster). In 2017, James went on a virtual joyride exploiting the ways that people interact with emails. One of the most interesting things about James' story is that his exploits didn't rely on any type of highly technical method(s); they were simple display name deceptions. But that didn't stop him from fooling CEOs from some of the worlds largest banks, celebrities, and high ranking staff members in the White House.

If you've been following the cybersecurity industry for the past few years, you've likely heard about the "cyber skills gap." In this episode, Perry sits down with Heath Adams (TCM Security), Professor Karla Carter (Bellevue University), Sam Curry (Cybereason), and Lola Obamehinti (eBay) to explore what the skills gap is and how to begin to close the gap. We touch on subjects such as where traditional degrees, online training, certifications, mentorship, and networking fit in, as well as the value of diversity. And we offer thoughts for employers, current industry professionals, and job seekers.

Let's face it. Most of us have a love/hate relationship with technology and technological advances. We dream about the new thing... but when it arrives, we are usually a little disappointed. Many of us also lament the constant erosion of privacy, the changes in social norms, and more. And, little-by-little, we allow those aspects of new technology to make us numb. We accept the cognitive dissonance of not totally being happy with the trade-offs; yet we still make the trade.

And now for something completely different. This episode is a show within a show.

This episode is all about creativity: what it is, what it looks like, and what to do when you get stuck. Perry speaks with four experts who have made creating new and interesting things their life's work. Featuring Jack Rhysider (Creator/host of Darknet Diaries), Faith McQuinn (creator of Boom, Margaritas & Doughnuts, and Apollyon), Tom Buck (YouTuber and content creator), and Sam Qurashi (Exploring the Psychology of Everything).

This is the second of a two part series covering Cybersecurity’s ABCs: Security Awareness, Behavior, and Culture. This episode discusses the difficulty that security leaders have in defining what a security culture actually is. Luckily, we can draw on learnings from organizational culture management and culture transformation experts.

This is the first of a two part series covering Cybersecurity’s ABCs: Security Awareness, Behavior, and Culture. We touched on facets of Awareness in Episode 1 and Behavior in Episode 3. These two episodes cover the cybersecurity ABCs in a very pragmatic way, with this episode covering Awareness and Behavior and Episode 10 providing a deep dive into Culture.

Risk is a funny thing – our minds are constantly looking for risk, scanning our environments and our available choices. And sometimes we do a great job at anticipating and avoiding risky situations. But that doesn’t mean that we are universally good at dealing with risk. In fact, we can be downright appalling at considering and avoiding risk.

In this episode, Perry Carpenter sits down with renowned mentalist and skeptic, Banachek. Banachek (Steve Shaw) grew up with a fascination in magic and a frustration with psychic frauds. As a teenager, he contacted magician and skeptic, James “The Amazing” Randi and ended up working with Randi on a special initiative known as Project Alpha, which set out to expose a general lack of objectivity in parapsychology research. Banachek served as the director for the James Randi Educational Foundation’s “One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge” for 15 years and is now the President of the James Randi Educational Foundation. 

Have you ever taken time to view the world through the eyes of an attacker? Doing so is an interesting and useful exercise. Understanding the mind of an attacker is fundamental to securing your organization or aspects of your personal life. After all, if you aren't doing the job of viewing things from an attacker's perspective, that means that only the attackers are. The idea is to understand the mindset, motivations, and capabilities of a possible threat actor so that you aren’t simply oblivious to your vulnerabilities. 

In this episode, Perry Carpenter interviews cybersecurity guru Bruce Schneier. Perry and Bruce explore how cybersecurity is about so much more than technology — It’s about people, so we benefit by taking a multidisciplinary approach. 

Have you ever noticed how fundamental deception is to the human condition? Deception and forms of social engineering have been with us since the beginning of recorded history. And yet, it seems like we are just as vulnerable to it as ever. But now the stakes are higher because technology allows social engineers to deceive at scale.

Ever wrestled with the fact that people often make horrible security decisions even though their employers have security awareness programs in place? It's often because we assume that being aware of something should naturally result in better behavior. Well... that's not the case. This episode takes a deep dive into the knowledge-intention-behavior gap where we are confronted with three realities of security awareness. And those realities lead us to the realization that we need to focus on behavior.

This is an episode about the battle for truth. As disinformation, misinformation, malinformation, and conspiracy theories seem to be hitting epidemic levels, how can we help each other determine what is real and what is fake? How can we help people who are falling down conspiracy rabbit holes? And what roles do technology companies, governments, and ordinary citizens play?

This episode explores the concept of “Trojan Horses for the Mind.” There are four Trojan Horses. They are: emotion, sound, visuals, and words/story. Using these Trojan Horses will help us increase the signal to noise ratio in our communications, bypass mental defenses, and embed messages within the minds of our audiences.

Coming May 25, 2021. Get ready for a deep dive into what cybersecurity professionals often refer to as the "8th Layer" of security: HUMANS. This podcast is a multidisciplinary exploration into how the complexities of human nature affect security, risk, and life. Author, security researcher, and behavior science enthusiast Perry Carpenter taps experts for their insights and illumination. Topics include cybersecurity, psychology, behavior science, communication, leadership, and more.