Smashing Security podcast #479: How a fake police officer nearly stole Graham’s cryptocurrency

LowGraham Cluley · Graham Cluley·

Graham gets a phone call from the police. Well, someone who sounds convincingly like the police. There's just one small problem: what they really want is the 24-word seed key to Graham's cryptocurrency wallet. Meanwhile, if you've stayed in a hotel recently, the free Wi-Fi you connected to might have come with an unexpected extra: an all-you-can-eat buffet of "Captive Crunch" for a Russian intelligence-linked hacking group. And a group calling itself the "ExFilSquad" has walked off with 600,000 records of the UK's teachers and head teachers from the Department for Education — sending an unusually polite ransom demand. All this and more in episode 479 of the "Smashing Security" podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest Danny Palmer.

We summarise and link; this source is not one we hold a licence to reproduce. Everything below is what NexaPulse adds: the vulnerabilities involved, whether they are being exploited, who is named, and who else covered it.

At a glance

Severity
Lowfrom category and source signals; no CVSS referenced
Exploitation
No vulnerabilities referenced
Vulnerabilities
None referenced
Vendors & products
None named
Threat actors & malware
None named
Industries
Not industry-specific
Coverage
1 outlet· first seen 2026-08-05 23:10 UTC
Priority
28/100Source tier, category, exploitation and corroboration. Not a risk score for your environment.

Coverage

One outlet has carried this so far.

  1. Graham CluleyEstablished SourceFirst reported

    2026-08-05 23:10 UTC

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