Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons Podcast

TikTok is the hot new social media service (Snapchat and Instragram are so last year), particularly in Asian countries like India. But India just banned this and several other apps from China over privacy concerns – and I have a feeling they won’t be the last. The TikTok app was just revealed to be copying the user’s clipboard contents every few seconds for some completely unknow...

In the second half of my interview with Eduard Goodman and Adam Levin from Cyberscout, we discuss the privacy aspects of our new work- and learn-from-home reality. How much privacy should you really expect? What are your legal rights? What should we beware of when using a single device for both work and personal things? How much should companies be willing to spend to make sure their employees and...

Today I speak with not one but two experts on security and privacy to get their insights, stories and tips on staying safe from scammers and hackers in our new COVID19 pandemic reality. These guys have dealing with cyber incidents every day and bring some unique perspectives. In some ways, it’s same stuff, different day; but the pandemic, economy woes and general civil unrest have given the...

With the US general election just over 20 weeks away and no vaccine in sight for the coronavirus, it’s time to think very seriously about how you’re going to vote. Even if you think you want to vote in person this November, you should have a backup plan: voting by mail. This means that you’ll need to register for an absentee ballot – and the sooner you do so, the better pre...

We’ve established that we have a high speed internet access problem – now what can we do about it? In part 2 of my interview with the EFF’s Ernesto Falcon, we’ll talk about how broadband fiber-based internet is a critical piece of national infrastructure, not unlike the highway system. It enables and supports industry and innovation, and ubiquitous access would greatly incr...

The COVID-19 era has exposed several weaknesses in American infrastructure and exacerbated the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than the digital divide: access to high speed internet. While much of the country was able to work and learn from home, for too many communities this was simply not an option due to poor or non-existent broadband access. In to...

The FBI is once again trash-talking Apple for not helping them in their investigation of a terrorist – this time, the alleged perpetrator of the Pensacola shooting. However, like the San Bernardino shooting a few years ago, Apple has actually done everything in its power to aid law enforcement. The issue is the “in its power” part. The FBI and DOJ would prefer that Apple (and the...

Intel created the Thunderbolt protocol to give us blazingly fast data transfer and other interesting features. Thunderbolt usually comes with the newer USB-C ports, common on laptops, especially Macbooks. Unfortunately, researchers have found a major flaw affecting all computers that will allow bad guys to gain access to your computer in just a few minutes with a few hundred dollars of common equi...

In part two of my interview with Malwarebyte’s David Ruiz, he tells us how to avoid the scams we discussed last week. And then we move on to discuss the potentially serious privacy issues that could come from the emerging surveillance regimes, designed to help us curb the spread of the coronavirus. David Ruiz is a content writer for Malwarebytes, covering online privacy, cybersecurity, and t...

In times of great fear and anxiety, we need to be especially vigilant against snail oil salesmen. Never letting a good crisis go to waste, the bad guys are capitalizing on the chaos to lure us into downloading malware and buying fraudulent (or even harmful) advice and products. In part one of my interview with Malwarebyte’s David Ruiz, we talk about the explosion of COVID-19-related phishing...

Every time there’s a data breach at a company or service where you do business, there’s a chance that the bad guys will reverse engineer your password. And once they do that, they will almost surely try to use that email and password combination to log into dozens of other sites – a hacking technique called credential stuffing . And why do they do this? Because they know most peo...

The bad guys are having a field day with all the coronavirus hubbub, using our fears and anxieties to trick us into clicking bad links, downloading infected files, or installing malware. While the topic is new, the techniques are the same: phishing. Using cleverly disguised emails and text messages, bad guys trick us into giving up credit card and social security numbers, login credentials, and ot...

As health services and society in general struggle to cope with the coronavirus pandemic, people are desperately seeking new and inventive ways to curb the spread of the disease. A tried and true tool of epidemiologists is contact tracing: interviewing infected subjects in order to create lists of people they’ve had contact with in recent days and weeks. But people’s memories are notor...

During our global COVID-19 self-quarantining, video conferencing usage has exploded. I’ve tried to find hard statistics, but they’re rising so fast that anything I post now will be stale tomorrow. That said, I’ve seen usage growth figures as high as 400%. And since we’re all staying home now ( right? ), video chatting is a great way to get some some social time with friends...

Wouldn’t it be nice if privacy wasn’t an afterthought? What if user privacy was built in from the get go? What if the entire design assumed that you didn’t want anyone selling your data – and respected those wishes? That’s the world of Privacy by Design – a concept pioneered in the mid-1990’s by Dr. Ann Cavoukian. This may seem like an unattainable Utopian...

Never let a good crisis go to waste. Though normally applied to politics, it can be equally applied to opportunistic cyber criminals. With the world transfixed by and anxious about this nasty virus, bad guys are seizing on our fears to make a quick buck. From ransomware-laden virus tracking apps to actually threatening to infect families directly with the actual virus, COVID-19 is becoming a gold...

In part 1 of this interview, Hayley Tsukayama walked us through the details of the new California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). In part 2, we discuss how this law will affect many of us who are not California residents and how it’s influencing potential legislation in other states and even at the federal level. We also discuss how CCPA can synergize with other state laws and be used as a tool...

On January 1st, 2020, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) went into effect. While not perfect, the CCPA is a landmark piece of legislation for the United States, even though legally it only protect California residents. I will dig into the details of this bill – both the good and the bad – in part one of my delightful interview with Hayley Tsukayama from the EFF. Hayley Tsukayam...

A few weeks ago, the New York Times published a bombshell article about a small startup called Clearview AI who was using a massive database of three billion faces scraped from several social media sites to offer a creepy facial recognition app. Just one snapshot of some stranger’s face could immediately identify that person – not just name, but potential location, age, other images, s...

it’s not cheap or easy to get your iPhone repaired – largely because there’s not a lot of real competition in the iPhone repair market. That’s no accident. Owners of modern John Deere tractors have really only one option: John Deere. Why? There’s no good technical reason. There’s really no good legal reason either, but laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright...

Here’s a riddle for you: when does something you paid good money not actually belong to you? Answer: when that device is part of the Internet of Things. Why? Because without the express permission and continued support of the company that sold you that device, it becomes a worthless piece of junk. All of our modern “smart” devices are inextricably tied to their cloud-based servic...

It’s that time of year again: tax time! And that means it’s also time for tax scams. I’ll give you some tips on how to avoid them, and also help you find the real “Free File” versions of your favorite online tax filing software. In other news: a German man fooled Google Maps with a wagon full of phones; Hue smart bulbs patched a serious vulnerability; Ring doorbell of...

We install antivirus software to protect us, not exploit us. Like a bodyguard, AV programs needs full, unfettered access to everything in order to properly do the job. That requires complete and absolute trust. And probably a non-disclosure agreement. Unfortunately, antivirus software doesn’t offer you an NDA promise. Avast, the maker of one of the top five AV software applications, has rece...

Happy Data Privacy Day! My guest today is none other than Bruce Schneier: world renowned security guru and author of several great books, including the Data and Goliath and Click Here to Kill Everybody ! Bruce and I discuss the current state of data privacy and what it’s going to take to rein in the corporations that are buying and selling our data with abandon. Bruce Schneier is an internat...

A small company has amassed over 3 billion online photos from social media and other public sources, creating perhaps the largest facial database in existence – far larger than even the FBI’s database. The images are often connected to a person’s full name, address, and people they know. The company, called Clearview, has sold access to this database to over 600 law enforcement a...