Weekly update

I actually lost track of what week it was at the start of this video. Did I do the Aussie workshops last week? Or the week before? I know I was at home so... it's just all becoming a blur. But be that as it may, life marches on and this week like every other one before it was full of interesting cyber-things. I find the situation with Zoom in particular quite fascinating, particularly the willingness - even eagerness - that so many seem to have to throw the very tool that's bringing so many people together in a time of need under the security and privacy bus. More on that and a bunch of other things in this week's...

This has been an absolutely flat-out week between running almost 3 hours of our free Cyber-Broken talk with Scott Helme, doing an hour of code with Ari each day (and helping get up to speed with remote schooling) then running our Hack Yourself First workshop on Aussie time zones the last couple of days. But, especially given the current circumstances, I'm pretty happy with the result 😊 This week's update covers those events plus the onboarding of the USA government onto HIBP, an announcement I was very happy to make this week! Oh - and about the green screen - I don't know whether I'll stick with this for future weekly updates or not, I'm just enjoying the novelty factor for...

Geez, where do I even begin? I honestly wasn't sure, then I could hear the kids playing in the background whilst I was setting up and per the video thought "yeah, stuff it, I'll leave that in" because as messed up as a bunch of stuff is, life goes on. And that's where I really wanted to start this week - what life looks like today. As I say in the video, it's paradoxical because it's all (mostly) very normal here, but it's painful to watch what's happening to friends around the world. It's also painful to watch what's happening to many friends here because although we're not (yet) in the same position as many other countries, businesses are suffering...

Geez, where do you even begin given how the world has turned just in the last week? I spend a good quarter hour at the start of this video talking about what I'll be doing, namely getting on with business and running a bunch of public workshops remotely in conjunction with Scott Helme. I felt genuinely excited talking about this; they'll be less than half the price of in-person events, no travel, no accommodation costs and we've both run a heap of these remotely in the past too so this is a pretty well-known process for us. We're also working on a bunch of ideas to make sure we don't lose "the hallway track" and the human interaction that makes...

This is the big one. It's all HIBP and Project Svalbard top to bottom this week and I've chosen to exclude everything else in its favour. This is just such an essential part of not just the HIBP narrative, but indeed the narrative of my career and what gets me up each day. So here it is, the video insights version to the announcement post from a few days ago. Here's the 11-month journey to HIBP remaining independent: ReferencesHave I Been Pwned is remaining independent (this is the project Svalbard wrap-up)Duo Security. The Essential Guide to Securing Remote Access. Download the to explore how to ensure user, device and application trust....

If last week was the week where I felt like I was drowning in data that was still being processed, this week was the week where it came to light. Not all of it, mind you, I've still got ginormous volumes I'm disclosing but it certainly was a whole heap of it. There are some real zingers in there too in terms of how the breaches went down and were handled, have a listen to that and more in this week's update (oh - and hear how happy I am about the way HIBP handled this week's massive traffic spike 😊). ReferencesThe Slickwraps breach got really messy (who ever knew the world of consumer device wraps was so brutal!)Straffic takes...

On reflection, I feel this week's update was dominated by having a laugh at an IoT candle 😂 And that's fair, too, even though I then went and bought one because hey, this is gonna be great conference talk material! Delivery is going to be much later this year so don't hold your breath, but it could be really, uh, "interesting" once it lands. Stay tuned for that one but until then, here's this week's update: ReferencesIf you're not pwned, you may be an anomaly (I'd actually like to write this up in more detail one day, there's some really interesting insights in there)A connected candle - serious, an IoT candle (what sort of idiot would buy one of these?...

This week I'm at Microsoft Ignite "The Tour" in Sydney with Lars Klint. I've spent most of the last couple of days doing the "hallway track" (basically just wandering around and saying "hi" to people) and doing a bunch of meetings with folks here on cyber things. I didn't mention it in the video, but there was also the Azure User Group Wednesday night and a panel here at Ignite last night so definitely keeping busy. Not too busy, mind you, and I did manage to get a couple of blog posts out this week. I'll be home on the Gold Coast from tomorrow beginning what I'm planning to be an extended "quiet period" with a lot less travel and...

Well that's the audio issues fixed - mostly. The Zoom H6 is an awesome recorder, I just can't quite work out the right adaptors for the mic. I've got a couple of Saramonic SR-XLM1 lav mics and the guy at the DJ store I bought the Zoom from was convinced we'd be fine with just with 3.5mm to 6.35mm jack converters which appears to be incorrect. Someone else hen said we'd need a TRRS to TRS adaptor so we grabbed a couple of Rode SC3s which also didn't solve the problem. So, keeping in mind we have no idea what we're doing (and missing), can someone explain the gap here and what's required to fill it? In other...

Alright, let me get this off my chest first - I've totally lost it with these bloody Instamics. I've had heaps of dramas in the past with recordings being lost and the first time I do a 3-person weekly update only 2 of them recorded (mine being the exception). I was left with a zero-byte file on my unit which we tried to recover to no avail. It's not just that; the mobile app is clunky AF (Scott was demonstrating how many times he had to mash a button on his just to get it to connect to a mic), firmware updates require an install on the PC (which at least previously, was unsigned code loaded over HTTP via an...