Root Causes: A PKI and Security Podcast

The automobile is undoubtedly among today's most complex, commonplace, and security-sensitive IoT devices. Our hosts describe the cyber threats facing connected cars, including real attacks that already have been proven, new challenges that will come with increasingly advanced capabilities, and what manufacturers can do to protect drivers from harm.

In episode 35 our hosts explained Mosca's Inequality, a formula for calculating when we need to have post-quantum encryption in place to prevent the Quantum Apocalypse. In this episode our hosts embark on a nuanced exploration of the factors influencing this calculation and test whether popular estimates are credible.

We talk about botnets a lot, but not everyone understands how they are built and used by the criminals who control them or how headless IoT devices have greatly added to their power. Expert guest Alan Grau (VP of IoT and Embedded Security, Sectigo) joins us to help dissect today's botnets.

Our hosts frequently run into the assumption that blockchain and PKI are extremely similar technologies and are possibly even competitive to each other. While the two approaches accomplish some related goals, they are very different in how they work and ultimately accomplish different ends. Join us as we explain what blockchain actually does and how it compares to PKI, including some examples of u...

Recently at Black Hat and on public YouTube videos security newcomer Crown Sterling has claimed to factor the RSA algorithm. It turns out the breathlessly discussed feats were already accomplished as early as 1999. Join our hosts as they debunk this fundamentally misleading rumor and discuss the reality of RSA encryption today.

The majority of all phishing sites now use SSL certificates to more closely imitate the behavior of legitimate sites. New research from RWTH Aachen, a large, German technical university, investigates the patterns behind this certificate usage. Join our hosts as we dig into the details of these findings to learn specifically which certificate types are more or less likely to appear on phishing site...

The month of August saw some unusual criminal activity when it comes to PKI and malware. Our hosts explain four August news stories including a SHA-1 enabled breach, stolen certificates and keys, and some interesting developments with malware-driven botnets.

Quantum annealing is a special case of quantum computing for which the engineering challenges are lessened - and therefore we expect computers of this sort to achieve stability sooner. In this episode we examine the potential for the quantum annealing approach to break RSA-based cryptography sooner than most people have been expecting, and the difficulty of predicting the "Z date" at all.

Finding the new quantum-resistant cryptography we will need to replace RSA and ECC is a difficult task requiring the coordinated effort of academics, industry, and government. NIST has stepped in to lead this volunteer community. Join us to learn about this project to discover and vet going-forward crypto candidates, where we stand in the process, and where we go from here.

Quantum computers have the potential to defeat the RSA and ECC encryption underlying our digital world. We must swap out these algorithms before quantum computers reach that stage of maturity. But how long to we have? Join our hosts Tim Callan and Jason Soroko as they explain how to calculate the ominously named "Z date," the possible consequences of missing that deadline, and potential hairstyles...

Shadow IT has become a fact of the modern enterprise. SaaS, BYOD, outsourced development, embedded IT, DevOps, and public cloud have all chipped away at the CIO's ability to oversee and control the enterprise's technology systems. This fragmentation leads to identity and access challenges that can affect security, governance, auditability, and compliance. Join our hosts as they discuss these chall...

The CA/Browser Forum faces a proposed ballot to limit the maximum duration of an SSL certificate to 13 months. Even if this ballot fails, browsers such as Google Chrome have the ability to simply distrust certificates of longer duration, creating the same de facto situation. Our hosts discuss the trend to shorter certificates, the pluses and minuses of decreased maximum term, and automation as the...

Breaking research from two esteemed universities shows that sites with Extended Validation SSL certificates are much less likely to be engaged in criminal behavior like malware and phishing. And yet, leading browsers are reducing or removing EV information from the interface. Join our hosts as they explore the research results, this paradoxical browser behavior, and the effect it's likely to have...

Few people know that caller ID numbers have no identity value as they are completely self-reported. This fact enables the plague of robocalling scams sweeping our society right now. Join our hosts as they discuss public telephony systems and other environments that suffer from this problem, where this situation creates vulnerabilities, and what can be done about it.

Recently we have seen major news items in some of the common Root Causes themes. Join our hosts as they discuss new whopping breach fines from GDPR and the FTC, what happens when an entire country has its PII stolen, and phishing sites with SSL.

The Kazakhstan government is taking measures to force citizens to trust its own root, enabling the widespread persecution of dissidents, journalists, and human rights advocates. Join our hosts to learn the long history of Kazakhstan's weaponization of PKI, what its effects may be, and the opportunities and challenges the browser community faces in fighting it.

Security flaws in the device integrity modules of Cisco routers and other devices have lately filled the headlines. Join our hosts and guest Alan Grau as they discuss what is happening with these flaws, why, and what to do about it.

ACME is a new SSL certificate automation standard that is taking the world by storm. With support by 150 million web sites and more than 130 open source tools, ACME is a key tool in your digital certificate bag. Join our hosts and guest Abul Salek as they discuss this ACME, why it's important, and what's next for this hugely popular standard.

The German government has published a draft of its latest guidelines for safe browsers, which include requirements for how SSL certificates are supported and treated. Join our hosts as they discuss the German safer browser requirements and their potential impact on Germany, other governments, and industry worldwide.

The White House is the latest government entity seeking to defeat widespread encryption technology through legislated "back door" access. Join our hosts as they explain why such an idea is essentially unworkable and would endanger the confidential online business and personal services upon which we all depend.

One cornerstone of successful cryptography is entropy, or the ability to create genuinely unpredictable values. But it turns out that generating truly random numbers is harder than you might think. Join our hosts as they discuss the need for randomness, the lengths companies go to to generate random numbers, and the bad things that can happen when they fail.

Occasional certificate revocation is an essential part of the digital certificate lifecycle and any secure PKI scheme. Not only do certificate owners need the revoke their own certificates, but also CAs sometimes need to revoke certificates to keep trust high. Join our hosts as they discuss the whys and wherefores of revocation by the CA, especially as it relates to code signing and malware.

The world's energy grids and other utilities have increasingly become targets for cyber attack, both state-sponsored and otherwise. Join our hosts as they discuss the latest developments, possible consequences of cyber war against energy grids, and what we can do about it.

A recent spate of ransomware attacks against US municipalities is noteworthy for being enabled by the stolen US cyber weapon EternalBlue. Join our hosts as we explain this attack, its similarities to earlier incidents, and the whole syndrome of government-sponsored cyber war.

The state of Texas is leading the way with new legislation requiring cyber protections for its energy grid. Join our hosts as we explain this legislation, why it comes now, and its potential impact on the greater energy industry.