Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons Podcast

The rampant collection and sharing of personal data is not just a creepy nuisance. Surveillance capitalism has actually had seriously deleterious effects on society and democracy. In the United States, we have certain rights enshrined in the Constitution that are supposed to protect citizens against unreasonable search and seizure. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are supposed to have to...

Transparency is critical when it comes to trust – and right now, particularly in the United States, we’re having some real issues with trust in our elections. Most of our election systems today are completely opaque in terms of their hardware and software design because they’re made by private companies who want to protect their intellectual property. But this secrecy also seriou...

Credit cards are more secure than debit cards. I’ve said this in my book, my podcast, my blog and my seminars. Credit card transactions are loans – you’re not out any money if a fraudulent charge comes through (assuming you or the credit card company catches it first). With debit cards, any fraud activity will actually take your money from your account – it’s gone and...

When you think about improving your privacy and protecting your personal information, it’s important to realize that it will also improve your security. According to Craig Danuloff, CEO of The Privacy Co. and maker of the Priiv app, privacy harms fall into at least four different buckets: personal data leaks (embarrassment and reputation harm), online tracking (targeted ads and manipulation)...

The gift-giving season is officially upon us, and with covid supply chain issues, if you’re going to order gifts, you need to get on it. And in today’s show, I’ll share the highlights of my annual Best & Worst Gift Guide where I focus on the privacy and security of popular gifts. You won’t be surprised at a lot of the items on my naughty list, but I’ll bet you&#82...

Nothing is arguably more fundamental to a democracy than voting. But it’s not enough to have a secure election. The electorate also needs to trust that the results are valid. In the United States today, that trust is in short supply – many people believe that the 2020 election was rigged. On one hand, many of our electronic voting systems are demonstrably insecure and trivially capable...

There were lots of scary computer security and privacy stories in the news this week, coinciding nicely with Halloween. We’ll start off with an unfortunate new cybersecurity term: killware. This is software whose end result is actual physical harm to human beings, including death. Sadly, this is now a thing. And I don’t know about you, but Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of the future (...

Today, we’re surrounded by strong encryption. Thanks to efforts like Let’s Encrypt, almost all web communications today at encrypted. And thanks to wonderful privacy communications tools like Signal, we can share private thoughts instantly and securely with anyone on the planet. But this was not always the case. This secure, private, encryption-enabled future we’re living now was...

Facebook had a horrible, no-good, very bad week. Not only did Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp go completely offline for about six hours, a whistleblower came forward to show the world what most of us already knew: Facebook values money over its users’ well being. And I have another story that backs that up, as well – one that you almost surely did not hear about. In other news: the FT...

Today I have the great honor and pleasure of speaking with two luminaries in the field of privacy: Michelle Finneran Dennedy and Melanie Ensign. Between them, they have decades of experience managing privacy processes, policies, technology and communications within dozens of big name tech companies. I get their unique perspective on data privacy and the evolution of how these companies approach th...

I admit it. I’m an Apple fan. Are they perfect? Definitely not. But in most cases, they’re actually trying to be good. And at the end of the day, their business model doesn’t rely on hoovering up your personal data. Apple just released a big update to its devices, iOS 15, and it’s got some really cool security and privacy features. I’ll tell you all about them in toda...

Apple was set to roll out controversial new on-device scanning technology in iOS 15 last week, but thanks to pushback from groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and people like you, Apple has since thought better of it and backed down. It’s not clear when or if these “child safety” features will come to iPhones, but in the meantime we can hope that Apple will listen care...

It’s really easy to complain about the sadly insecure state of many of our products and services, but the fact is that doing security right is hard – even when you’re trying to get it right. Part of the problem is that there are just so many things to secure, even on a single product or service. Today we’re going to discuss several recent security issues with popular produc...

Ever paired your phone to a rental car? Did you erase all the data from the last car you sold or turned in at the end of your lease? Do you know what data you car is sending to the cloud wireless right now? Cars have become a privacy nightmare. Andrea Amico is the founder of a company called Privacy 4 Cars and today he’ll help us understand all the data you car is hoovering up – from y...

For many people, privacy is just a vague concept. But it can literally be a matter of life and death. It deserves your attention, your consideration and (crucially) your support. Technology has vastly improved our daily lives, but some of it also threatens to undermine our basic human rights and even our democracy/society. We need to understand the implications of the laws we pass – and the...

Computers are supposed to be completely predictable. When you tell it to do something, it should do exactly that – over and over again, if necessary – in the same way, with the same result. This is the nature of computer programming. But this predictability can allow computer criminals to interrupt a computer’s processing and divert it to do nefarious things. If you know exactly...

How far would you go to protect your children from sexual predators? How much privacy would you give up to try to prevent the sharing of child pornography? We are now faced squarely with those questions because Apple has just announced some new initiatives that it believes will curb the viewing and sharing of pornographic images. But we need to be extremely careful here. The Four Horsemen of the I...

Are hackers born or are they made? What is the essence of a true hacker? Today I explore these topics and more with the founder of both DEFCON and Black Hat, Jeff Moss – also known as The Dark Tangent. I also ask Jeff why we seem to suck at cybersecurity, what his top tips are for staying safe online, when DEFCON evolved to be bigger than its founder, how DEFCON has managed to stay focused o...

What is a hacker, exactly? What does it mean to hack something? With all the ransomware attacks and election meddling in the headlines, it’s easy to paint all hackers with a broad brush as malicious, self-serving computer criminals. And to be clear, many computer criminals are definitely hackers (some aren’t). But the real definition of hacker, the original notion of hacking itself, is...

Every time you load a web page, your personal data is being shared with thousands of companies. The ad spaces on the page are being auctioned off to the highest bidder in fractions of a second. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties calls this the biggest data breach in history, and is suing the ad tech companies on your behalf to stop this needlessly invasive and dangerous practice. My guest Johnn...

Your phone number is arguably as strong a personal identifier as your social security number, passport number or email address. These are things we almost never change any more – meaning that it’s an identifier for life. Our cell phones contain a ton of personal information, including our locations (not just now, but over time). Today I’ll help you understand why it’s so im...

The first step to solving any problem is gathering as much information as you can. Unfortunately, today we’re basically flying blind when it comes to identifying and resolving latent software bugs in our systems. Software today is made up of dozens if not hundreds of distinct components. Like automobiles, these piece parts can come from many different vendors. And even the parts from those v...

Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, the bad guys say “hold my beer”. The REvil gang has managed to pull off what appears to be the biggest ransomware infection ever through a clever supply chain attack on a company you’ve never heard of called Kaseya. Kaseya is what we call a Managed Service Provider, or MSP. They manage software and IT functions for lots of small-...

Robocalls are the bane of my existence. I get so many spam calls that I’ve just stopped answering my home phone altogether. I’ve given out my cell number to fewer people, so thankfully I get fewer junk calls there. But I still won’t answer any calls unless I recognize the number. Why is it so easy to spoof caller ID? Well, starting July 1st in the US, mobile carriers are now requ...

Today’s news headlines are littered with stories on massive cybersecurity failures: SolarWinds, Microsoft Exchange, Colonial Pipeline, data breaches, ransomware… Are the bad guys ramping up their game? Or are we just really bad at cybersecurity? (Or both?) How do we fix this? Who can lead the charge to improve our cyber defenses and fend off these attacks? Where do we learn best practi...