UnHacked the podcast with hosts Justin Shelley, Bryan Lachapelle, and Mario Zaki.

When Homeland Security, NASA, and the DOJ get breached, small business owners ask: what hope do we have? The answer is more than you think.

A Chinese state-sponsored hacker group operated undetected for eight years by enslaving everyday consumer devices into a massive botnet. They used cheap Amazon routers, home Wi-Fi, and IoT thermostats to hide their traffic and brute-force government agencies using a database of two million known, unpatched vulnerabilities. If the biggest organizations in the world with endless resources can fall victim to basic security lapses, what does that mean for your business?

In this episode, Justin Shelley, Mario Zaki, and Joshua Holloway break down exactly how this attack worked, why it was largely preventable, and what it means for small to mid-sized businesses. They discuss the danger of "if it's not broken, don't fix it" mentality, the true cost of downtime versus the cost of IT recommendations, and why publishing known vulnerabilities (CVEs) is a double-edged sword. Most importantly, they cover the specific, relentless security basics that would have stopped this attack and can protect your business from the same fate.

Joshua Holloway is CEO of Seven IT Technologies, helping companies navigate complex compliance and IT operations to stay secure and profitable.

What you'll learn:

  • How hackers built a database of 2 million known vulnerabilities and used enslaved home devices to bypass firewalls and breach government agencies.
  • Why the "if it's not broken, don't fix it" mentality is exactly what bad actors are banking on, and why end-of-life equipment is a massive liability.
  • The critical difference between the cost of an IT recommendation and the catastrophic cost of doing nothing.
  • How to catch your IT guy if they aren't patching your systems, and why 97% of breaches are still preventable.
  • How the FBI took down the botnet by seizing hardcoded domains, and why this attack model will be replicated again.