You've had your iPhone stolen. A day later, you get a text from Apple saying they've found it, and a very helpful woman called Alice from Apple Support calls to walk you through recovering it. She's polite. She's professional. But she is not from Apple. She's not even human. And she's about to break into your iPhone. Meanwhile, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta have all announced - with varying degrees of drama - that their AI agents have "broken out of the sandbox" and gone hacking. James takes a step back and asks the awkward question: is this really an emergent AI apocalypse, or did they just leave the door open? All this and more in episode 483 of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest James Ball.

At Black Hat this month, a group of security researchers took a $9,000 robot dog, plugged Google's AI into its brain, and jailbroke it by telling it - with a completely straight face - that it was a Pokemon. What followed involved a wall, a blue ice chest, and anyone in the room wearing white shoes. Oh, and did we mention you can buy a flamethrower attachment? Meanwhile, in Salzburg, 280 gold statuettes of Mozart have vanished from the streets. This has happened to the same artist before. Organised crime, or a publicity stunt? Jenny has thoughts - and some parallels for the world of cybersecurity. All this and more in episode 481 of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest Jenny Radcliffe.

Apple has imposed strict new submission limits on its bug bounty portal after finding itself overwhelmed by low-quality, AI generated vulnerability reports - many of which were found to be describing security flaws that simply didn't exist. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

You've been headhunted for a great job in cryptocurrency. All you have to do is complete a short online assessment - with your webcam on, of course, so they can verify who you really are. Which is ironic, because the person recruiting you doesn't exist. And North Korean hackers using this trick have already made off with $643 million in crypto this year alone. Meanwhile, researchers at UC San Diego have discovered that 2.2 million cars across the United States can be unlocked or immobilised by anyone with a bit of Bluetooth kit - thanks to one aftermarket car alarm that made a truly spectacular cryptographic blunder. The bug has been sitting there since 2017. Nobody noticed. All this and more in episode 478 of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest Paul Ducklin.

Gemini, Google's AI assistant, is supposed to make life easier for Android smartphone owners. But right now it may also be making life easier for anyone anyone who happens to pick up your phone. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

An app has appeared in India that lets anyone with a smartphone stop a passing e-rickshaw dead in its tracks - no login, no passwords, no permissions needed. Meanwhile, Geoff - swimming in money and Lamborghinis, as all published authors are - has been on the receiving end of a slew of AI-generated scam pitches from fake book marketing experts. Rather than ignore them, he's been playing them at their own game... All this and more in this episode of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest Geoff White.

Polymarket has built an entire business on predicting the future. So how did it manage to spectacularly fail to predict its own hack? Plus, the Google engineer with a million-dollar secret, and the curious case of the airport hairdryer. Meanwhile, "FortiBleed" sees 75,000 Fortinet firewalls thrown wide open - and the real damage is going to roll on for years. All this and more in episode 474 of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest Quentyn Taylor.

A polite caller from your bank says there is a problem with your account. Don't worry - they'll send someone round to help. They'll even take your cards away to keep them safe. The scam has run rampant, until Dutch police plastered blurred photos of 100 suspects across billboards, supermarkets, and TikTok, with a two-week ultimatum to turn themselves in... or else. Meanwhile, a security researcher called Bob DaHacker got her hands on the live broadcast controls for every match of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. She could have Rickrolled the entire planet, but actually spent days trying to find anyone at FIFA who would pick up the phone. Plus! Don't miss our featured interview with Black Kite's Jeffrey Wheatman exploring ransomware and extortion attacks across Europe. All this and more in episode 473 of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest Danny Palmer.

What if your AI coding assistant could be tricked into stealing your own company's secrets - by reading a single booby-trapped bug report? No phishing email. No malware. No password ever stolen. Just an AI doing exactly what it was told. Meanwhile, someone themselves Nightmare Eclipse has decided to teach Microsoft a lesson. The result? Three zero-days dropped on the internet, one of which lets a thief with a USB stick walk straight past BitLocker. Microsoft is furious. Plus don't miss our featured interview with Son Nguyen Kim of Proton Pass, who explains why plugging AI agents into your email and calendar without thinking twice is rather like hiring a new employee with the keys to everything - and skipping the background check. All this and more in episode 472 of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest Paul Ducklin.

A website called "UK visa portal" has been quietly collecting passport scans, selfies, and personal data from thousands of travellers who thought they were applying through official channels. They weren't. And when a journalist tried to warn the company, it was lawyers who responded. Meanwhile, a paper from Cornell suggests that prompt injection - the technique malicious actors use to trick AI agents into doing things they really shouldn't - may be fundamentally unsolvable. Which is err... awkward, because everyone is rushing to plug AI agents into their email, files, and corporate networks. Plus don't miss our featured interview with Andrea Sivieri of CoreView, who tells us how hackers can lock your entire organisation out of its Microsoft 365 environment... without having to trick you into running a single piece of malicious code or handing over a password. All this and more in episode 470 of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest Tanya Janca.

Dutch police have arrested a 35-year-old man suspected of hacking into the computer systems of Amsterdam football giant Ajax, after the personal data of hundreds of thousands of supporters was put at risk. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

For almost 20 years, stolen credentials have been the most common route for attackers into organizations, according to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR). But that's no longer the case. Read more in my article on the Fortra blog.

A 23-year-old radio enthusiast spent £300 on a piece of kit from the internet, and used it to bring four packed high-speed trains to a screeching halt. His defence in court? Possibly the most creative excuse we've heard all year. Meanwhile, owners of $4,000 robot lawnmowers are discovering that their gadget can be hijacked over the internet, redirected at journalists who foolishly lie down in front of it, and used to harvest Wi-Fi passwords, email addresses, and GPS coordinates. Change the default password? Sure - until the next firmware update silently resets it back. Plus - don't miss our featured interview with XBOW's Brendan Dolan-Gavitt about how AI is transforming penetration testing. All this and more in episode 468 of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest Geoff White.

Meta's smart glasses promise privacy "designed for you" - but everything they record was being beamed off to workers in Nairobi to label by hand. When those workers blew the whistle, Meta sacked all 1,108 of them. Meanwhile, the IT press is in a frenzy over a new Linux bug called "Copy Fail" - complete with logo, dedicated website, and a marketing-friendly name. But is it really the disaster everyone's making it out to be? And in our featured interview, Jake Moore of ESET explains how he tricked a company into offering his deepfake clone a job - after a perfectly normal-looking video interview. All this and more in episode 466 of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, joined this week by special guest Paul Ducklin.