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Troy Hunt

Hi, I'm Troy Hunt, I write this blog, run "Have I Been Pwned" and am a Microsoft Regional Director and MVP who travels the world speaking at events and training technology professionals

Court Injunctions are the Thoughts and Prayers of Data Breach Response

You see it all the time after a tragedy occurs somewhere, and people flock to offer their sympathies via the "thoughts and prayers" line. Sympathy is great, and we should all express that sentiment appropriately. The criticism, however, is that the line is often offered as a substitute for meaningful action. Responding to an incident with "thoughts and prayers" doesn't actually do anything, which brings us to court injunctions in the wake of a data breach. Let's start with HWL Ebsworth, an Aust...

Weekly Update 472

This probably comes through pretty strongly in this week's video, but I love the vibe at CERN. It's a place so focused on the common good of science that all the other cultural attributes that often put people at odds these days fade into the distance. That hit me more than it did on my last visit in 2019, perhaps because of the world events of late that have become so divisive. So, I'm exceptionally happy to give CERN the same level of access to HIBP data as we have the dozens of other national...

Welcoming CERN to Have I Been Pwned

It's hard to explain the significance of CERN. It's the birthplace of the World Wide Web and the home of the largest machine ever built, the Large Hadron Collider. The bit that's hard to explain is, well, I mean, look at it! Charlotte and I visited CERN in 2019, nestled in there between Switzerland and France, and descended into the mountainside where we saw the world's largest particle accelerator firsthand. I can't explain this! The physics are just mind-bending. A few months ago, we headed...

Weekly Update 471

I'm so happy to finally be getting those HIBP demos out! The first couple are simple, but as I say in this week's vid, it's the simple questions we're still dealing with. As if to taunt me (or prove my point), we got this ticket just a couple of hours ago: I’m looking at 10-12k api calls per year. Do you have a custom package that will fit this range? Now, let's see what happens if you drop that exact text into the chatbot on support.haveibeenpwned.com: There's literally a dedicated KB articl...

HIBP Demo: Querying the API, and the Free Test Key!

One of the most common use cases for HIBP's API is querying by email address, and we support hundreds of millions of searches against this endpoint every month. Loads of organisations use this service to understand the exposure of their customers and provide them with better protection against account takeover attacks. Many also use it to support customers who've already fallen victim - "hey, did you know HIBP says you're in 7 data breaches, any chance you've been reusing passwords?" Some compan...

Weekly Update 470

Imagine jumping on board a class action after your precious datas have been breached, then sticking through it all the way until a settlement is reached. Then, finally, after a long and arduous battle, cashing in and getting... $1. Well, kinda $1, the ParkMobile class action granted up to $1 for successful claimants. But wait - there's more - because you can't spend it all at once, instead you get it in $0.25 whacks. Oh - and you don't actually get any cash either, instead you get credit for you...

Have I Been Pwned Demos Are Now Live!

Well, one of them is, but what's important is that we now have a platform on which we can start pushing out a lot more. It's not that HIBP is a particularly complex system that needs explaining in any depth, but we still get a lot of "how do I..." style questions for the fundamentals. Stuff like "how do I search our domain", which is why that's now the very first video we have in the series: You'll also find this on the brand new demos page at haveibeenpwned.com/Demos where you'll soon be s...

Weekly Update 469

So I had this idea around training a text-to-speech engine with my voice, then using that to speak over the Sonos at home to announce AI-driven events, such as people ringing the doorbell. A few hours' worth of video from these weekly updates fed into ElevenLabs and wammo! Here you go: Oh yeah! Now *this* is cool! Or freaky 🤔 Doorbell by @Ubiquiti, voice by @elevenlabsio and orchestration by @home_assistant. It’s an evolution of this post: https://t.co/qwN64UJqWy pic.twitter.com/dMrD9hPT4J...

Weekly Update 468

I only just realised, as I prepared this accompanying blog post, that I didn't talk about one of the points in the overview: food. One of my fondest memories as a child living in Singapore and now as an adult visiting there is the food. It's one of those rare places where the food at every level is just exceptional, and even a basic outing is a treat. As a kid, the most common "fast food" I'd eat was from local "hawker centres", probably what many people would call street food, but never in the...

Weekly Update 467

Using AI to analyse photos and send alerts if I've forgotten to take the bins out isn't going to revolutionise my life, no more so than using it to describe who's at the mailbox when a letter arrives and at the front door when they buzz. But that's really not the point; it's by playing with tech like this that firstly, you come to understand it better and secondly, you find genuinely impactful use cases. I keep scratching my head to try to work out where AI can do something really useful in HIBP...