Galactic Research: Articles & Insights
Part 1: The AI Implementation Question Is Coming. Are You Ready to Answer?
I had lunch a few weeks ago with an executive at a financial services firm, the kind of client every security advisor quietly hopes for: growing, regulated, complex enough to need real security help and profitable enough to pay for ...
AI Security
Part 1: The AI Implementation Question Is Coming. Are You Ready to Answer?
I had lunch a few weeks ago with an executive at a financial services firm, the kind of client every security advisor quietly hopes for: growing, regulated, complex enough to need real security help and profitable enough to pay for ...
OpenClaw's Marketplace Got Stuffed With Malware. Here's Why That Was Always Going to Happen.
What a Malware-Filled AI Agent Marketplace Tells Us About How the Industry Keeps Making the Same Mistake I've spent the better part of my career watching organizations adopt new technology faster than they can secure it, and documenting what happens ...
The Deepfake Was Convincing. So Was My Backpack.
Why Social Engineering Still Works, Why AI is Making it Sharper, and the One Habit that Stops it In early 2024, an employee at Arup, a global engineering firm, joined a video call with several colleagues, including someone who appeared ...
Threat Intelligence
Threat Thursday: June 18th, 2026
Welcome to Threat Thursday, Galactic's weekly threat intelligence roundup. Every Thursday we break down the cybersecurity stories that matter most for protecting your organization, with each item split into what happened, what it could mean for you, and what to ...
Threat Thursday: June 11th, 2026
Welcome to Threat Thursday, Galactic's weekly threat intelligence roundup. This week's stories share one theme: the gap between a vulnerability becoming public and a working exploit existing is collapsing toward hours, and the coordinated disclosure process meant to give defenders ...
Threat Thursday: June 4th, 2026
Welcome to Threat Thursday, Galactic's weekly threat intelligence roundup. This week's stories have a clear pattern: attackers didn't find obscure entry points or novel techniques but instead went after the things you were already using and already trusting. As always, ...
Security Education
Vulnerabilities Are Now the #1 Way In. The Window to Fix Them Is Closing.
Most of the time, I didn't break into a network so much as let myself in through something with a fix already out (just not installed yet): the VPN concentrator three versions behind, the firewall with a known vulnerability fixed ...
Your OSINT Reality Check: Here’s What an Attacker Is Finding in 30 Minutes or Less
Today’s connected, AI-driven digital ecosystem has made it easier than ever to build a professional brand, network with peers, and share ideas with a wider audience. It’s opened doors for businesses that simply didn't exist before: new customers, new partnerships, ...
Part 2: Threat Actors Don't Pick You. You Just Happen to Be There.
In Part 1, we established that Handala didn't pick Stryker off a strategic target list and then figure out how to break in. They found access, recognized the value, and used it. That's still a deliberate, damaging attack—it just means ...
Strategy & Leadership
Building Trust in Executive Relationships: Lessons from King Lear
A Framework for Establishing the Kind of Trust that Survives Budget Season Imagine the curtain going up and a group of players act out the opening scenes of Shakespeare's King Lear, just for you. An aging king sits in his ...
Your Jokes Were Funny. They Still Didn't Renew.
How MSPs Build the Kind of Client Rapport That Survives a Budget Review You walked out of the meeting feeling good. The handshake was firm, the small talk landed, and you even got a laugh with the printer joke. You ...
Value That Converts: Why Your vCSO Pitch Keeps Getting Pushed to IT
You walked out of that meeting feeling like a closer. Your credentials were on point. You covered the whole stack: EDR, SIEM, MDR, quarterly risk assessments, tabletop exercises, NIST alignment. Your vCSO offering was solid. You even had a phased ...
All Articles
Be On The Lookout As Astaroth Malware Makes A Comeback
Are you familiar with Astaroth? If you're a data security professional, you've probably at least heard the name. The group gained some notoriety last year when it came to light that they ...
Apple Update Blocks Safari Third Party Cookies By Default
In May of 2019, a Google blog post encouraged all web browsers to adopt the approach of blocking third-party cookies by default. Google announced their own plans to do so, outlining a ...
Windows 10 Announces One Billion Active Devices
Windows 10 is on a lot of devices around the world. In part, that's because it's a significantly better and more modern operating system than its predecessors. In addition, it's partly because ...
Computers Might Be Able To Smell In The Near Future
Word has recently leaked out about an interesting project that's ongoing at Intel's research labs. The company has apparently built an algorithm that mirrors the brain's activity to detect and identify smells. ...
COVID19 and HIPAA: What You Need To Know
With consideration to our current healthcare crisis with COVID-19, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) updated its guidelines on HIPAA enforcement. With the guideline revision, HHS has modified guidelines to ...
Financial Institution Worker Put User Information At Risk
Noam Rotem, a researcher for vpnMentor, recently made a startling discovery. A database connected to a now defunct app called MCA Wizard was found unsecured on the web. It contained a staggering ...
New Google Translate Feature Rolled Out For Android Users
Google Translate is one of the company's most popular services, and most of the people who use it dream of the day when it's a full blown Universal Translator. While that's obviously ...
Coronavirus Health Notifications Being Used To Carry Malicious Threats
A Pakistani-based hacking group that goes by a variety of names, including "Transparent Tribe," "APT36," "Mythic Leopard" and others has been discovered to be behind a particularly nasty attack recently. Researchers with ...
Hackers Targeting People Seeking Coronavirus Information On Health Sites
Some people just want to watch the world burn. That seems to be the reason behind the recent attacks on the US Health and Human Services Department website, which serves as a ...
Another Week Another New Ransomware To Be Concerned About
There's a new strain of ransomware to put on your radar. This latest one was discovered by researchers working from SentinelLabs and it has been dubbed Nefilim. Based on the initial research, ...
Over 1 Billion Android Devices No Longer Get Security Updates
According to the latest statistics, there are more than 2.5 billion Android devices in use around the world. That's a lot of devices by any reckoning. According to statistics gathered by Consumer ...
Paradise Ransomware Using Internet Query Files To Deliver Payload
The Paradise ransomware is like a bad penny; it just keeps turning up. The strain first appeared back in 2017, when it was spread far and wide via phishing emails. Then it ...
