Shared Security Podcast

A certificate authority issued intermediate TLS keys with so little randomness that researchers could recreate them, putting browser trust, certificate revocation, and the systems beyond the browser under a harsh spotlight. Tom Eston, Scott Wright, and Kevin Tackett explain the certificate chain in plain English, why a public key is meant to be shared while a private key must stay unpredictable, a...

A reported attack on French supermarket refrigeration systems is a vivid example of a wider cyber-physical problem: physical operations increasingly depend on connected equipment with long lifecycles, complicated vendor access, and real-world consequences when controls fail. Tom Eston and Scott Wright cover retail OT, remote management, segmentation, patching, safety thresholds, and the questions...

Canada’s Bill C-22 tries to frame lawful access as a bounded public-safety tool, but its technical-capability requirements keep the central encryption question alive: can exceptional access exist without creating a security weakness that someone else will eventually exploit? Tom Eston and Scott Wright discuss Canada’s proposed Lawful Access Act, the bill’s systemic-vulnerability safeguard, existin...

Roblox is more than a game—it is a social platform where kids play, trade, spend Robux, and chat. Tom Eston and Scott Wright break down fake Robux offers, phishing links, account theft, off-platform pressure, and practical ways parents can use controls, MFA, spending protections, and honest conversations to help kids play more safely. The episode focuses on practical, non-alarmist risk reduction:...

Meta Muse is designed to work across a user’s inbox, calendar, browser, connected apps, and other personal services. That makes it useful—and makes its delegated authority a security problem worth examining. Tom Eston and Scott Wright discuss Meta’s stated guardrails for Muse, including isolated execution, connector separation, credential boundaries, and approval flows. They also examine reporting...

A familiar voice is no longer proof of identity. Tom Eston and Scott Wright explain how AI voice-cloning scams turn family emergencies, executive requests, and urgent account changes into social-engineering bait—and why the defenses that work are old-fashioned but essential: pause, call back on a known number, use a private code phrase, and require independent approval before money, data, credenti...

Will AI kill us all? Tom Eston, Scott Wright, and Kevin Tackett examine competing AI-risk claims, public calls for guardrails, and the gap between dramatic safety messaging and verifiable internal controls. They discuss realistic harm pathways—from people over-trusting automated systems to distributed operation and weak shutdown options—while challenging the incentives that let companies call for...

A reported dark-web service offering more than 153 million U.S. and Canadian driver’s-license scans for sale has brought the hidden cost of identity verification into focus. Tom, Scott, and Kevin discuss the alleged breach and FBI inquiry, why a license is a durable credential that people cannot simply rotate, and how ID scanners, vendors, and downstream data sharing turn routine checks into a sup...

Hotel Wi‑Fi is not automatically unsafe, but it is never a network you should blindly trust. Tom Eston and Scott Wright break down Microsoft’s CaptiveCrunch reporting, including how manipulated captive portals can lead to credential phishing, device-code abuse, and malware delivery. They cover what HTTPS and VPNs actually protect, why a lock icon does not prove a page is legitimate, the warning si...

Can a pattern on your clothing change what a camera thinks it sees? Tom talks with Black Hat USA 2026 speaker Bill Swearingen about adversarial clothing research, why person detection and facial recognition are different problems, and what model limitations mean for biometric surveillance, privacy, and accountability. ** Links mentioned on the show ** Black Hat USA 2026 briefing https://blackhat.c...

Scott Wright joins Shared Security to discuss his Digital Legacy Tree framework and upcoming book, The Digital Legacy Tree. We talk about what happens to your accounts, passwords, devices, files, money, cloud storage, crypto, and online identity if you die, become incapacitated, or are suddenly unavailable — and how to plan for trusted access without weakening your security today. The conversation...

Flock cameras and automated license plate readers are often sold as tools for finding stolen cars, wanted suspects, missing people, and serious threats. But what happens when that same infrastructure starts being used for everyday traffic enforcement, broader vehicle surveillance, or searchable location databases? In this episode, Tom, Kevin, and Scott discuss a 404 Media report about police alleg...

A federal case involving a GrapheneOS phone wipe during an airport search raises a bigger question for privacy-minded users: can using strong mobile security features be treated as evidence of criminal intent? Tom and Scott break down what happened, why border searches are different, and what this could mean for secure phones and everyday privacy. Tom and Scott also discuss duress codes, realistic...

OpenAI disclosed an unusual AI security incident involving a frontier model evaluation and Hugging Face, but the episode cuts through the hype: was this true autonomous intent, an agent following bad scope boundaries, or a warning about giving AI systems real tools and permissions? Tom, Scott, and Kevin discuss why anthropomorphizing AI makes the story harder to evaluate, what companies should lea...

You plug in a new monitor. Windows detects the hardware, pulls down a vendor companion app, and the first thing you see is… a McAfee ad. That’s the story that kicks off this episode, but the bigger issue is not just one annoying popup. Hardware setup has become a software delivery channel. Drivers, companion apps, RGB utilities, printer suites, vendor dashboards, trialware, telemetry, ads, and sta...

This week on Shared Security, Tom and Scott dig into surveillance pricing: the use of personal data, behavioral profiles, shopping history, location signals, income assumptions, household information, and AI-driven targeting to decide what price or discount different people see for the same product. The conversation connects New Jersey’s proposed grocery surveillance-pricing ban, Consumer Reports-...

Russian intelligence services are targeting Signal, WhatsApp, and Telegram users — not by breaking encryption, but by stealing accounts through phishing, QR code tricks, linked-device abuse, and backup recovery key theft. Tom and Kevin break down the FBI warning, the $10 million Rewards for Justice bounty, and the practical security lesson for anyone relying on encrypted messaging: your app can be...

The Supreme Court says constitutional privacy protections can apply to cellphone location history and geofence warrant data. Tom Eston and Scott Wright discuss the privacy implications of geofence warrants — requests that can sweep up information about many people near a location, not just a named suspect — and why this ruling matters for anyone carrying a smartphone. They also connect the ruling...

This week on Shared Security, Tom and Kevin sit down with Jay Beale — founder of InGuardians, long-time Black Hat trainer, creator/contributor behind Kubernetes security training, and part of the team behind the DEF CON Kubernetes CTF. Jay shares stories from decades of offensive security work, including the time Tom hired him for a physical penetration test and Jay somehow ended up inside a call...

The U.S. government reportedly ordered Anthropic to suspend access to two of its newest frontier AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, citing national security concerns tied to a possible jailbreak. Anthropic complied, but pushed back on the reasoning, arguing that the reported behavior was narrow and that similar capabilities already exist in other advanced AI models. In this episode, Tom, Scott, and...

AI agents are useful, but they become risky when they can take action in real systems. In this episode, Tom Eston discusses recent reporting about attackers tricking Meta’s AI support chatbot into helping hijack Instagram accounts, and why that story matters far beyond social media. Tom explains practical guardrails for AI agents: read-only access first, human approval for consequential actions, s...

Mobile apps are now deeply connected platforms for identities, payments, sessions, APIs, healthcare, retail, gaming, and cloud services. In this special episode, Tom Eston talks with Joel Destefano, Senior Product Manager at Guardsquare, about the modern mobile app threat landscape and why organizations can’t treat mobile security as an afterthought. Topics include runtime manipulation, API abuse,...

Microsoft’s response to a researcher publicly disclosing proof-of-concept exploit code has reignited an old debate in security: where does responsible disclosure end and reckless disclosure begin? Tom and Scott discuss the Nightmare Eclipse controversy, the history of full disclosure, bug bounty incentives, and why legal threats against researchers may ultimately hurt customers. They also explain...

Apple and Google are finally bringing end-to-end encrypted RCS messaging to iPhone and Android chats. In this episode, Tom Eston and Kevin Tackett explain why that matters, why insecure SMS is not going away anytime soon, and why Signal is still the better choice for truly sensitive conversations. They also revisit the green bubble versus blue bubble debate, platform trust issues, and what everyda...

OpenAI is now allowing some ChatGPT users to connect their bank accounts and financial data directly to the platform. In this episode, we discuss the technology behind the feature, the convenience it promises, and the serious privacy and security questions it raises. From AI-generated budgeting advice to the risks of centralized financial profiling, we examine what happens when conversational AI g...