You don't need to live near a scam compound for it to wreck your life. Americans lost $5.8 billion to crypto investment scams last year alone - and a raid in Sri Lanka this month shows exactly how the operations behind them keep finding new places to hide. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

The fraud landscape has been changed by AI and cryptocurrency in a way that should concern organisations and individuals alike. Read more in my article on the Fortra blog.

Cambodia has taken a dramatic step in its fight against scam compounds that have imprisoned innocent people, and forced them to work as virtual slaves defrauding victims via the internet around the world with romance scams and dodgy investment schemes. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

A Nigerian fraudster spent years posing as a woman online, romancing unsuspecting American men out of their savings - until he accidentally tried the same trick on a fellow scammer, who told him to "learn how to do a clean job." The recovered chat logs helped put him behind bars for 15 years. Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

Romance scammers have apparently discovered astrology... and Taurus is their secret weapon. In episode 449 of "Smashing Security", we take a look inside an actual romance-fraud handbook - complete with scripts, personality “types”, corporate jargon, and a seven-day plan to get victims from hello to hand over the crypto. Then Lesley "hacks4pancakes" Carhart delivers a reality check on the dire cybersecurity jobs market for juniors: why entry-level roles are evaporating, how automated CV screening is chewing candidates up, and what hopeful newcomers (and weary veterans) can do about it. Plus, Graham talks to ThreatLocker CEO Danny Jenkins about why misconfigurations are behind an uncomfortable number of breaches, how default-deny security actually works in practice, and why detecting attacks after they’ve started is already too late.