Sean Gallagher (thepacketrat)
Information security threat researcher and journalist, currently Principal Threat Researcher at Sophos X-Ops.
I can be found on the following platforms:
- microblog/linkblog:Falling Anvils
- Mastodon:
- Counter.social: https://counter.social/@thepacketrat
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/packetrat
- Sophos : https://news.sophos.com/en-us/author/sean-gallagher/
- Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/author/sean-gallagher/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gallagherseanm/
- Random things from the days when blogs mattered: https://seanmgallagher.com
- Tumblr (!): https://www.tumblr.com/mythreecrows
- Threads: packetrat
- BlueSky: @thepacketrat.net
- Twitter: for now, @thepacketrat
Current projects:
- Building a simple social media link redirector using base64-encoded URIs to obfuscate links from Twitter.
- Sha zhu pan scam ring research.
- Various hacky things.
- Base64 encode and decode tools (working but ugly)
- Cyberthreaterator (a threat actor name generator) (working but ugly)
What is Falling Anvil?
This domain is my web scratchpad, testbed, and infosec toolbox, named for the iconic Acme product frequently purchased by Wile. E. Coyote, Super Genius.
Things come and go here on the regular. If you landed on this homepage looking for something other than my social links or current projects list, you either went to someplace that no longer exists or you’re a cybercriminal I canary-linked to geolocate and I gave you the wrong link. On both counts, sorry.
Recent posts and work
Sean Gallagher – Sophos News
“Inhospitality” malspam campaign targets hotel industry
Tue, 19 Dec 2023Social engineering drives password-stealing malware attack against the front desk... Read more
Luring with love, a network of pig butchering “mining” scams robbed millions from victims’ wallets
Mon, 18 Dec 2023Three threat groups using the exact same scam kit stole from 90 victims, mostly during the period of June to... Read more
Liquidity mining scam puts cruel new spin on Chinese cryptocurrency fraud, with a dash of AI chat ... Read more
SophosAI at DEF CON: Orchestrating large-scale scams using text, audio and image generative AI
Mon, 07 Aug 2023AI Village talk highlights how generative can be used to automate the creation of fraud campaigns, generating hundreds of fraudulent... Read more
“CryptoRom” fake crypto-trading mobile apps pushed through AI-assisted romance scam, using ChatGPT to lure targets.... Read more
And I Shall Call It Mini-Me GPT: Using Large Language Models to Classify the Uncharted Web
Thu, 22 Jun 2023Sophos AI team employs GPT and other large language models as teachers to train smaller models to label websites.... Read more
The Phantom Menace: Brute Ratel remains rare and targeted
Thu, 18 May 2023The commercial attack tool’s use by bad actors has faded after an initial flurry, while Cobalt Strike remains the go-to... Read more
“FleeceGPT” mobile apps target AI-curious to rake in cash
Wed, 17 May 2023Interest in OpenAI’s latest version of its interactive language model has spurred a new wave of scam apps looking to... Read more
Three SophosAI projects harness the model behind ChatGPT for better detection of malicious activity.... Read more
Sour Grapes: stomping on a Cambodia-based “pig butchering” scam
Tue, 28 Feb 2023A text message leads to discovery of a vast scam infrastructure run by Chinese cyber-criminals.... Read more
Sean Gallagher – Ars Technica
In the finale of our experiment, we look at how the low/no-code tools performed.... Read more
Setting our heart-attack-predicting AI loose with “no-code” tools
Tue, 09 Aug 2022In the second part of this three-part series, our heart attack predictions take flight.... Read more
In part one of three, we give the cloud a new problem to (heart) attack.... Read more
How to make critical infrastructure safer—there’s a long way to go
Tue, 31 May 2022At Ars Frontiers, Lesley Carhart spoke about the systems that make our world work.... Read more
Recapping our Ars Frontiers talk with a half-dozen information security experts.... Read more
We tear down some infosec conventional wisdom—there's a lot of bad advice out there.... Read more
Phone scams, targeted phishing, and... pig butchering? The future is kind of scary.... Read more
"Any sensor, any shooter" means more fighting flexibility—and more complexity.... Read more
We did the basics—now let's look at some more detailed steps to protect yourself.... Read more
Securing your digital life, part one: The basics
Mon, 25 Oct 2021In this first of two parts, we go over some security steps everyone should be taking.... Read more