PEBCAK Podcast: Information Security News by Some All Around Good People

Before you can sell software, you have to sell yourself. After every Sales Engineer interview panel, the team asks one question: if we had to drive three hours together to a customer meeting, would the time fly by or would it feel like a root canal? Chapter 3 of Sales Engineering, Unfiltered covers how to pass the windshield test and the rest of the SE interview loop.
In this chapter:
Why likability and coachability beat a perfect resume
The technical screen as a Kobayashi Maru, and what interviewers watch for when you hit a question you don’t know
Two candidates: one froze, regrouped and went on to win President’s Club year after year; the other made up terms about packet flow
How to research a company like your commission depends on it
The typical SE interview flow, from recruiter call to offer
The answer that works when you’re stumped, and the catch that comes with it
Next week: Chapter 4, The Unseen Hours.
 
A free audiobook, one chapter a week, on Season 3 of The PEBCAK Podcast.
📘 Get the paperback, hardcover or Kindle edition: https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Engineering-Unfiltered-What-Someone/dp/B0HLWSJ448
⭐ If it helps you, an Amazon review helps us more than you’d think.
🎙️ More from the PEBCAK Podcast: chrislouie.net

Welcome to this week's episode of the PEBCAK Podcast!  We’ve got three amazing stories this week so sit back, relax, and keep being awesome!  Be sure to stick around for our Dad Joke of the Week. (DJOW)
Follow us on Instagram @pebcakpodcast
 
Please share this podcast with someone you know!  It helps us grow the podcast and we really appreciate it!
 
Support the hosts by buying a copy of our book: https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Engineering-Unfiltered-What-Someone/dp/B0HLWSJ448
 
Freezers Into Ovens: Supermarket Sabotage, a Spy Bug at OpenAI & Tesla's Flying Roadster Hackers hijacked Danfoss refrigeration controllers at hundreds of French supermarkets, running defrost at 50°C (122°F) and spoiling food worth tens of millions of euros. - https://thehackernews.com/2026/10/attackers-heat-french-supermarket.html
- https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/france-fridge-hack-smart-devices-food-system-9.7379613
- https://claroty.com/team82/research/freeze-the-controller-defrost-the-food-uncovering-vulnerabilities-in-danfoss-refrigeration-controllers
 
A cyber incident at Ahold Delhaize knocked Albert Heijn's apps, deliveries, and distribution centers offline, leaving Dutch shelves short on fresh food.
- https://nltimes.nl/2026/10/14/albert-heijn-recovery-underway-cyberattack-damage-likely-tops-eu10-million - https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/10/albert-heijn-begins-restocking-as-hack-traced-to-foreign-servers/
 
 An OpenAI engineer was arrested for allegedly hiding a toilet-paper-wrapped recording device behind the TV in an executive conference room.
- https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/saudi-national-arrested-installing-surreptitious-audio-recording-device-openai-san - https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/artificial-intelligence/openai-engineer-arrested-for-allegedly-planting-spy-device-in-office/
 
Tesla finally unveiled the Roadster, complete with SpaceX cold-gas thrusters that let it hop over other Teslas, with production promised for 2028.
- https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/15/tesla-reveals-spacex-powered-roadster-that-flies-and-falls-with-style/
 
Dad Joke of the Week (DJOW)
 
Find the hosts on LinkedIn:
Chris - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chlouie/
Brian - https://www.linkedin.com/in/briandeitch-sase/
Glenn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/glennmedina/
Ben - https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamincorll/

A compliance-heavy customer, a quarter-end deadline, and a stock answer from the knowledge base that wasn’t going to cut it. Chris spun up a proof of concept on his own credit card and walked the customer through it live. Six months later, that account expanded into the largest commercial deal in company history.
 
Chapter 2 of Sales Engineering, Unfiltered covers what a Sales Engineer actually does, and why the demo is only about twenty percent of it:
Why the job title has two words, and what happens when an SE is missing either half
Being “coin operated”: the three questions to ask before you commit time to any request
Why “I don’t know, but I’ll find out” builds more trust than bluffing
 
Every chapter ends with an action plan you can start this week.
New chapters drop every week. Find the full audiobook under Season 3 of this feed. Next week: Chapter 3, The Windshield Test.
📘 Get the book (paperback and Kindle): https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Engineering-Unfiltered-What-Someone/dp/B0HLWSJ448
⭐ If it helps you, an Amazon review helps us more than you’d think.
🎙️ More from the PEBCAK Podcast: chrislouie.net

Welcome to this week's episode of the PEBCAK Podcast!  We’ve got four amazing stories this week so sit back, relax, and keep being awesome!  Be sure to stick around for our Dad Joke of the Week. (DJOW)
Follow us on Instagram @pebcakpodcast
 
Please share this podcast with someone you know!  It helps us grow the podcast and we really appreciate it!
 
Support the hosts by buying a copy of our book: https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Engineering-Unfiltered-What-Someone/dp/B0HLWSJ448
 
A Fortnite player allegedly dared the FBI to show up at his door over voice chat. Epic reported him, and the FBI obliged three days later.
-https://www.dexerto.com/fortnite/fortnite-player-arrested-by-fbi-after-epic-games-report-his-voice-chat-threats-3416033/
 
A suspected South Korean bank hacker allegedly asked Claude Code to write a résumé bragging about his ARTEX hacking ops, complete with his own phone number and Telegram handle.
-https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/10-08-2026-korean-bank-hacker-asked-claude-where-to-sell-stolen-data-crowdstrike-says-375059181193646
-https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-us/blog/unknown-threat-actor-uses-artex-to-target-south-korean-finance/
 
Microsoft Teams is adding third-party deepfake detection and impersonation warnings to meetings, with general availability slated for November.
-https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/microsoft-teams-to-add-third-party-deepfake-detection-impersonation-protection/
 
Amazon's "About You" page shows what it has inferred about you from your shopping, and one shopper learned Amazon thinks she has "flat buttocks."
-https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/amazon-users-discover-bizarre-about-you-page-detailing-their-interests-how-to-check-yours-3416457/
 
Dad Joke of the Week (DJOW)
 
Find the hosts on LinkedIn:
Chris - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chlouie/
Glenn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/glennmedina/
Ben K. - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-k-b7196831/

Year one, a big enterprise prospect, and a 30-slide deck nobody asked for. Thirty minutes in, the CISO stopped Chris cold, and that night a bar napkin became his first real discovery framework.
Chapter 1 of Sales Engineering, Unfiltered introduces the three voices behind the book and the lessons they wish someone had handed them on day one:
Why the best SEs treat every customer conversation like a two-way interview
Why learning how to learn beats mastering today’s product
How to use this book, whether you’re brand new to the SE seat or years in
Every chapter ends with an action plan you can start this week.
New chapters drop every week. Find the full audiobook under Season 3 of this feed. Next week: Chapter 2, Twenty Percent Demos.
📘 Get the book (paperback and Kindle): https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Engineering-Unfiltered-What-Someone/dp/B0HLWSJ448⭐ If it helps you, an Amazon review helps us more than you’d think.🎙️ More from the PEBCAK Podcast: chrislouie.net

Welcome to this week's episode of the PEBCAK Podcast!  We’ve got four amazing stories this week so sit back, relax, and keep being awesome!  Be sure to stick around for our Dad Joke of the Week. (DJOW)
Follow us on Instagram @pebcakpodcast
 
Please share this podcast with someone you know!  It helps us grow the podcast and we really appreciate it!
 
Simple 6 signup link
https://simple6.co/r/CFUR98
 
California's athletic commission slaps a robot fight league with a cease and desist after a Terminator-inspired humanoid push-kicked an influencer into the cage wall.
https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/california-sends-cease-desist-fight-125530914.html
https://x.com/intcyberdigest/status/2105795226103058621
 
An Airbnb host demanded $1,700 for an overflowing toilet with an AI-generated photo, and Google's own SynthID watermark ratted them out.
https://www.reddit.com/r/isthisAI/comments/1wt6sb0/photo_of_a_toilet_airbnb_sent_in_justification/
 
Bitget lost $388M after attackers used a zero-day in a third-party security product to inject fake withdrawal commands straight into its wallet backend.
https://www.theblock.co/news/regulation/2026-09-28-bitget-attacker-tested-risk-controls-small-transfers-388-million-theft-ceo-says-417045
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/bitget-hacked-via-zero-day-in-third-party-security-products/
 
Managers are trying to figure out where the line is on team happy hours when every joke can end up timestamped in Slack and in front of HR.
https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/happy-hour-office-after-work-drinks-over-0daf6b60
 
Dad Joke of the Week (DJOW)
 
Find the hosts on LinkedIn:
Chris - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chlouie/
Ben C. - https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamincorll/
Ben K. - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-k-b7196831/

Welcome to this week's episode of the PEBCAK Podcast!  We’ve got four amazing stories this week so sit back, relax, and keep being awesome!  Be sure to stick around for our Dad Joke of the Week. (DJOW)
Follow us on Instagram @pebcakpodcast
 
Please share this podcast with someone you know!  It helps us grow the podcast and we really appreciate it!
 
Simple 6 signup link
https://simple6.co/r/CFUR98
 
ShinyHunters Hack the FBI, Waymo Snitches & OreoGate Was an Ad
 
Anthropic drops Claude Opus 5.5: Fable-level performance, 40% cheaper to run than Opus 5, and shipped with Fable-style cyber safeguards.
-https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/22/anthropic-claude-opus-5-5/
-https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/998868/anthropic-claude-opus-5-5-cybersecurity
 
ShinyHunters claims an Oracle PeopleSoft zero-day got them into the FBI, 2-3TB of employee and applicant data, and a defaced FBI Jobs site, all as payback for a May FBI FLASH report.
-https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/shinyhunters-claims-fbi-hack-data-theft-in-peoplesoft-zero-day-breach/
 
China's internet regulator is grilling DeepSeek and Moonshot AI after Anthropic alleged both labs secretly relayed user requests, including police-related work, to Claude.
-https://www.theinformation.com/articles/china-probes-deepseek-moonshot-potential-data-leaks-anthropic
-https://gizmodo.com/china-probes-deepseek-moonshot-ai-over-anthropics-claims-they-route-requests-to-claude-2000815507
 
A Waymo pulled itself over and called SFPD on two teen riders carrying a loaded AR-style homemade gun, and nobody's saying who was watching the cabin camera.
-https://www.theverge.com/transportation/994405/waymo-pulls-over-calls-cops-on-riders-with-a-ghost-gun
-https://www.nssf.org/articles/lawful-gun-owners-should-be-wary-of-rideshare-options/
 
The viral OreoGate kindergarten snack war was a paid Suno AI partnership, and the creator still won't say if the group chat was real.
-https://www.dexerto.com/food/viral-oreogate-mom-drama-was-a-paid-ai-ad-and-its-creator-wont-say-if-it-was-real-3403588/
 
In this episode:
- Claude Opus 5.5 launches with Fable-level performance at a lower price
- ShinyHunters claims an FBI breach via a PeopleSoft zero-day
- China investigates DeepSeek and Moonshot over data relayed to Claude
- Waymo robotaxi calls the cops on riders with a ghost gun
- OreoGate: viral mom drama exposed as a paid AI ad
 
Dad Joke of the Week (DJOW)
 
Find the hosts on LinkedIn:
Chris - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chlouie/
Brian - https://www.linkedin.com/in/briandeitch-sase/
Glenn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/glennmedina/
Ben - https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamincorll/

Welcome to this week's episode of the PEBCAK Podcast!  We’ve got four amazing stories this week so sit back, relax, and keep being awesome!  Be sure to stick around for our Dad Joke of the Week. (DJOW)
Follow us on Instagram @pebcakpodcast
 
Please share this podcast with someone you know!  It helps us grow the podcast and we really appreciate it!
 
Simple 6 signup link
https://simple6.co/r/CFUR98
 
Zero Data Retention is a contract term, not a law of physics - and the first CISO who finds that out the hard way is going to get fired for it.
https://openai.com/index/navier-stokes-solution/
https://www.axios.com/2026/09/08/openai-math-solution-navier-stokes-credit
https://www.rubrik.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/26/rubrik-unveils-code-guardian
https://www.tenable.com/blog/microsofts-september-2026-patch-tuesday-addresses-964-cves-cve-2026-81963-cve-2026-85880
Chamath predicted on All In that some poor CISO or CIO gets fired in the next few months for trusting a frontier lab's ZDR agreement, and Chris thinks that prediction ages well. ZDR promises no storage, no logging, no training - but it's best effort, enforced by contract language instead of a technical security boundary, and OpenAI just admitted that while unlikely, it cannot rule out that de-identified data from product usage helped improve the models behind its Navier-Stokes result. Worse, the legal bar is lower than email: a warrant gets your inbox, a subpoena gets your prompts, and you may never know. Ben's CISO take: the real problem isn't the frontier model you let in the front door - it's the vetted software that quietly became AI-enhanced after you accepted the risk. Excel with Copilot bolted on is Clippy on steroids. Can you disable it, can you cancel, can you get a refund, and what's your recourse when the vendor can't tell you where your data went? The flip side is real upside: Rubrik's new Code Guardian points a Claude Mythos 5 harness at an air-gapped copy of your repo and chains small, unremarkable findings into validated attack paths - three CVSS 3.0s become a 9.8. That same AI-assisted discovery is why Microsoft shipped 974 CVEs in a single September Patch Tuesday, and why "patch for patch's sake" is officially dead. Is the cure worse than the disease when the fix breaks your ERP?
 
An Anthropic researcher quit after six weeks at Anthropic and three years in pretraining, said AI could kill us all by 2030, and Chris is here to say the emperor has no evidence.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/09/anthropic-researcher-quits-ai-safety.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2026/09/09/anthropic-alignment-lead-warns-ai-could-kill-all-humans-as-researcher-quits/
Jacob Coxon's resignation thread hit 70 million views, Anthropic's own Alignment Science Lead Evan Hubinger publicly agreed with the >10% extinction estimate, and Congress started drafting. Chris isn't buying it: a whistleblower produces evidence a company tried to bury, and Coxon produced conjecture. Every doomer prediction so far has missed - no mass AI job losses, no water crisis, no energy apocalypse - and the scariest thing frontier agents have actually done is break into another lab to cheat on a test, which is high school antics, not an extinction event. Ben wants the smoking gun: what spooked you, what's the roadmap from lost agent control to dead planet? Both hosts land on human-in-the-loop as the real backstop: Robinhood makes Chris confirm an agentic trade three times, and poisoning a water plant still runs into a dozen downstream checks and someone eventually testing the water. Meanwhile the robots at the Chinese Robot Olympics can't stop running or climb stairs. The more likely motive is regulatory capture - write the RFP, win the deal, then pull the ladder up on open-weight competitors while China ignores the pause entirely, exactly like it ignored Paris while firing up a coal plant a week. Same playbook as Uber lobbying for a human in every driver's seat. AI is a nail gun, not an emerging god.
 
Dad Joke of the Week (DJOW)
 
Find the hosts on LinkedIn:
Chris - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chlouie/
Ben - https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamincorll/

Welcome to this week's episode of the PEBCAK Podcast!  We’ve got four amazing stories this week so sit back, relax, and keep being awesome!  Be sure to stick around for our Dad Joke of the Week. (DJOW)
Follow us on Instagram @pebcakpodcast
 
Please share this podcast with someone you know!  It helps us grow the podcast and we really appreciate it!
 
Simple 6 signup link
https://simple6.co/r/CFUR98
 
Wheel of Fortune's announcer says he wandered into a ped*phile chatroom by accident — but the same username left a two-year trail on a second forum.
- https://shootingthemessenger.blog/2026/09/04/scoop-a-pseudonym-used-by-wheel-of-fortune-announcer-was-active-on-second-child-abuse-forum/
Pseudonym reuse is forensics: Jim Thornton was fired from Wheel of Fortune hours after TMZ published photos of him posting into a chatroom from a plane under the handle "NicholasB77." His lawyer's defense was that he mistook it for a suicide-prevention site. An independent journalist then found the same handle on a second pedophile forum, posting from mid-2023 to late-2025 — praising that chatroom, coaching other members on staying hidden, and repeatedly posting a photo of a topless boy. One recycled username across two sites is the entire story. Thornton has not been charged.
 
Dutch police baited a bank-helpdesk scam with a fake pensioner, the courier showed up, and the court acquitted him anyway.
- https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/details?id=ECLI:NL:RBAMS:2026:8867
The decoy that was too good: police seeded phishing sites with a fake pensioner's details, got the scam call a day later, and arrested the courier who came to collect. Amsterdam's court acquitted him.  Under Dutch law, fraud requires that someone was actually deceived, and the decoy clocked the script on the first call. Prosecutors charged completed fraud instead of attempt. The judges basically said attempt would have stuck, but it wasn't on the indictment. Great sting, wrong paperwork.
 
Trezor's shipping-vendor breach now reaches 81,000 customers, and in Mexico a family was murdered over a $1.5M hardware wallet.
- https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/trezor-data-breach-impact-now-reaches-81-000-customers/
- https://decrypt.co/377795/mexican-family-killed-bitcoin-cold-wallet
Your shipping data is your threat model: Trezor's breach grew from 14,000 to 81,000 customers after logistics provider ShipMonk failed to delete data it had contractually promised to delete. Attackers got in via a Metabase SQL injection zero-day — the same campaign that hit Framework and Tally — and ShinyHunters has sent extortion mail. Leaked names, addresses, and phone numbers of confirmed hardware-wallet buyers is a wrench-attack shopping list. See also: four people killed in Atizapán, Mexico on September 1, allegedly by a business associate who knew about the Bitcoin in the house.
 
Apple's "Surprise and Shine" event delivered a foldable iPhone Duo, a 2nm chip, and a $100 price hike that's really $300.
- https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/09/apple-september-2026-event-recap/
Apple's fall lineup: foldable iPhone Duo (pre-orders Oct 16, ships Oct 23), iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max on the A20 Pro, the first 2nm phone chip, with variable aperture cameras, a tripled vapor chamber, and up to 45 hours of battery. Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4, AirPods 5 with ANC standard, iOS 27 on September 14. The security-adjacent bits: Apple Reference Image for photo authenticity, the new C2 modem, and Siri AI daily usage limits with "expanded access" for a fee.
 
Dad Joke of the Week (DJOW)
 
Find the hosts on LinkedIn:
Chris - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chlouie/
Glenn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/glennmedina/
Matt - https://www.linkedin.com/in/disher/

Welcome to this week's episode of the PEBCAK Podcast!  We’ve got four amazing stories this week so sit back, relax, and keep being awesome!  Be sure to stick around for our Dad Joke of the Week. (DJOW)
Follow us on Instagram @pebcakpodcast
 
Please share this podcast with someone you know!  It helps us grow the podcast and we really appreciate it!
 
Simple 6 signup link
https://simple6.co/r/CFUR98
 
Your parked car is now a witness, and Oakland PD showed up with a tow truck to collect its testimony.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/tesla-sentry-mode-police-evidence-19731000.php
Just past midnight on July 1, 2024, outside the La Quinta Inn near Oakland airport, officers found a man in an RV with stab and gunshot wounds; he later died. In the stall directly opposite sat a gray Tesla belonging to a Canadian tourist with no connection to the case. Officer Kevin Godchaux's affidavit asked a judge to authorize seizing the car so its Sentry Mode footage could be searched under a second warrant. The owner walked up mid-tow and handed over the glovebox USB to get his car back. The Chronicle found OPD pulled this at least three times that summer. No subpoena to Tesla needed; the footage sits on a thumb drive in your glovebox. Defender angle: your parked-car threat model is no longer "catalytic converter." It's seizure of a $50k asset over where you happened to park.
 
Apple's camera-equipped AirPods are real, and we know because the demo video shipped inside a macOS release candidate.
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/08/17/camera-equipped-airpods-macos-26-7/
MacRumors dug a promo clip out of the macOS Tahoe 26.7 RC: a man holds up a book so the camera in his AirPods can read the title, and Visual Intelligence offers to save it for later. Codename B790, flagged earlier by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who expects launch as soon as this month's iPhone event. Buried detail: the software nags you when hair covers the lens, so the camera is meant to run continuously. The forum reaction nailed the real issue: the wearer's privacy was never the concern, it's everybody standing near them. Defender angle: "phones in the locker" BYOD policy now has a hole the size of an earbud. SCIFs, clean rooms, trading floors and hospitals need a rewrite before September.
 
Iran-linked hackers reached the operational tech at water utilities in at least seven states; Washington's answer is a six-month pilot in Texas.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/first-fox-texas-becomes-testing-ground-new-defense-against-attacks-americas-water-systems
https://www.route-fifty.com/cybersecurity/2026/08/states-feds-scramble-prevent-more-water-cyberattacks/415670/
Project Watershed 250 puts ONCD, EPA, CISA and Texas Cyber Command alongside Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, Reflection AI and Dragos to red-team Texas water utilities at no cost, with National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross and Gov. Abbott pitching it as a national template. The White House insists it isn't a reaction to the 30-plus Minnesota systems that got hit, only that those attacks "reiterated the need." Schiff and Klobuchar want $300M a year through the State Revolving Funds for cyber, plus incident reporting extended to state and locally owned systems now exempt. Dragos CEO Robert Lee keeps pointing at the same soft spot: tiny utilities with no budget and no staff. Defender angle: a joint FBI/NSA/CISA bulletin warns attackers are hitting PLCs with AI-generated exploit scripts dressed up as legitimate monitoring tools. Same old fix list: patch, get it off the internet, kill default creds.
 
Montana built a legal on-ramp for unapproved drugs, and a dad in a hurry is finding out that "legal" and "available" are different words.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/07/31/1140945/montanas-new-right-to-try-law-cant-come-soon-enough-for-some/
Kris DeVault's three-year-old son Brody has creatine transporter deficiency, a rare condition that starves the brain and muscles of energy. There is no cure. French biotech Ceres Brain Therapeutics has a nasal spray meant to get creatine past the blockage; it cleared a phase I dosing trial in 48 healthy adults and has never been tested in a CTD patient or a child. Montana's expanded right-to-try now has an Experimental Treatment Review Board about to hear its first two applications. Ceres could apply, but CEO Thomas Joudinaud won't, fearing it poisons his eventual FDA approval. DeVault can't get the FDA to put anything in writing either, so he's eyeing a clinic in Prospera, the private charter city in Roatan, Honduras. Harvard's Aaron Kesselheim has the objection to sit with: phase I proves tolerability at a dose, not safety, and not efficacy.
 
Dad Joke of the Week (DJOW)
 
Find the hosts on LinkedIn:
Chris - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chlouie/
Brian - https://www.linkedin.com/in/briandeitch-sase/
Ben - https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamincorll/