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Weekly Update 112

Wow, didn't the passwords discussions go nuts this week! Passwords suck and they must die, they're never going to die, people are using bad ones, people should be able to use bad ones, developers are at fault and my personal favourite in the "how on earth did you reach that conclusion" category, I should actually do something to educate people about passwords rather than blaming them for using bad ones. I've gotta stop laying around doing nothing with my days... But seriously, both posts on pas...

When Accounts are "Hacked" Due to Poor Passwords, Victims Must Share the Blame

It's just another day on the internet when the news is full of headlines about accounts being hacked. Yesterday was a perfect example of that with 2 separate noteworthy stories adorning my early morning Twitter feed. The first one was about HSBC disclosing a "security incident" [https://www.zdnet.com/article/hsbc-discloses-security-incident/] which, upon closer inspection, boiled down to this: > The security incident that HSBC described in its letter seems to fit the characteristics of brute-fo...

It's End of Life for ASafaWeb

A lot has changed in the Microsoft technology world in the last 7 years since I launched ASafaWeb in September 2011 [https://www.troyhunt.com/building-safer-web-with-asafaweb/]. Windows XP is no longer the dominant operating system (Win 7 actually caught up the month I launched ASafaWeb [http://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-201001-201810] ). Internet Explorer is no longer the dominant browser (Chrome was in 3rd place back then [http://gs.statcounter.c...

Here's Why [Insert Thing Here] Is Not a Password Killer

These days, I get a lot of messages from people on security related things. Often it's related to data breaches or sloppy behaviour on behalf of some online service playing fast and loose with HTTPS or passwords or some other easily observable security posture. But on a fairly regular basis, I get an email from someone which effectively boils down to this: > Hey, have you seen [insert thing here]? It's totally going to kill passwords! No, it's not and to save myself from repeating the same mess...

Weekly Update 111

On my first attempt at recording this, I decided the framing was crooked after a couple of minutes so I started again. On my second attempt, the PC BSOD'd after 42 mins and I thought I'd lost all the audio. I hadn't, so on the third attempt I completed the last of it. Then I waited nearly an hour for it to render before realising there was unedited material at the beginning so I had to re-render the whole thing again. This is on top of one of my screens refusing to go beyond 480p today and a wee...

Weekly Update 110

I'm home! And home for another 6 weeks at that which is rather exciting if I'm honest. Travel really takes its toll in so many ways and I'm really looking forward to just having a bunch of time to code, blog and jet ski (not necessarily ordered by priority). But even without having had time to blog, there's a heap of material this week including the SIBOS conference, HIBP (apparently) being a top site that's "shaped the web", people losing their minds over sex toy privacy and EV certificates, W...

Weekly Update 109

Last one before home time! But it has been an epic trip and as I say in the video, this is by far my most enjoyable trip to the US yet after probably a dozen over the last few years (that includes Hawaii, too). Given the interest after my pointing out a couple of little differences in the US compared to the rest of the world last week, after the usual tech and infosec intro this week I decided to focus a big whack of this week's video on what some of differences look like. Other than that, ther...

Weekly Update 108

I'm in Texas! And I've had enough BBQ to last me a very long time. I'm here doing a couple of speaking events and other related things as well as taking some time out with my wife to see the sites. As such, it's a bit quieter this week but there's still a couple of things I reckon are worthy of discussion. Just before jumping on the plane over here I pushed out a blog post on how my approach to callbacks in HIBP broke Mozilla's service which in turn broke my Azure Function. This was one of thos...

Breaking Azure Functions with Too Many Connections

For the most part, Have I Been Pwned [https://haveibeenpwned.com/] (HIBP) runs very smoothly, especially given how cheaply I run many parts of the service for [https://www.troyhunt.com/serverless-to-the-max-doing-big-things-for-small-dollars-with-cloudflare-workers-and-azure-functions/] . Occasionally though, I screw up and get something wrong that interrupts the otherwise slick operation and results in some outage. Last weekend was one such occasion and I want to explain what I got wrong, how y...

Weekly Update 107

It's another "business as usual" week; past events, upcoming events, major security news, someone forgetting to renew a certificate and a new Pluralsight course. Actually, thinking about it more, this is possibly the most normal week I can remember, which is kinda disconcerting considering the (potential) impact of some of that news. Next week I'll be back in the US and in Texas so the schedule may be a little erratic, but I'll do what I can to pump out another update on time and with more of t...