Masked Actors
True crime meets cybercrime. Discover the people behind the keyboard.
From Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) gangs to global financial crime syndicates, the rise of sophisticated cyber threats is reshaping the world. These aren’t lone hackers — they’re organized groups running multi-million dollar operations in the shadows.
In the Masked Actors podcast, cyber threat expert and former soldier turned hacker Gary Ruddell joins forces with Nick Palmer, a seasoned financial crime fighter, to investigate the top 10 most dangerous cybercriminal groups of 2025 — drawn from Group-IB’s High-Tech Crime Trends Report.
Each episode explores the tactics, motivations, and impact of major cybercrime groups, uncovering their role in the latest cybercrime, RaaS, and financial crime trends. You’ll learn how these actors exploit vulnerabilities, fuel geopolitical tension, and affect businesses and consumers alike.
Tune in to Masked Actors — and stay one step ahead of cybercrime.
Masked Actors
Latest Episodes
The Wire: ShinyHunters - Hackers Hunting Hackers
ShinyHunters has left an alleged trail stretching from university campuses, and major healthcare providers, to government agencies. It even turned on its peers, extorting and publicly humiliating Cl0P ransomware group in a turf war that offered...
MuddyWater: Expanding an Espionage Operation
Successful espionage usually relies on patience. Nation-state actors quietly infiltrate targets, maintain access for years, and gather intelligence without attracting attention. But one threat actor has spent nearly a decade rewriti...
Defenders: Two Front Lines - Fraud From the Case File and the Comments Section
Most people experience fraud as a single event. A suspicious text message, a fake investment opportunity, or a phone call from someone pretending to be their bank.The reality is that modern fraud is an organised global economy, powered b...
GoldFactory: Rethinking Digital Identity in the Age of Biometric Theft
For years, stronger authentication was seen as the answer to online fraud. As passwords became easier to steal, organisations turned to stronger forms of verification, from facial recognition and voice authentication to digital identity checks....
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TX-NFC: Ghost Tap — can your bank catch fraud from a card that never left your pocket?
Contactless payments have become such a routine part of everyday life that we rarely think twice about how they are secured. For decades, every contactless transaction has been built on the assumption that your card needs to be physically prese...
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