Weekly update

Somehow this week ended up being all about Russia and Cloudflare. Mostly as 2 completely separate topics, but also a little bit around Cloudflare's ongoing presence in Russia (with a very neutral view on that, TBH). Looking back on this video a few hours later, the thing that strikes me is the discussion around what appears to be a phishing page seeking donations for Ukraine. Just listen to me try to figure this out and as I say in the vid, if I have trouble discerning phish from legit resource, how do people who don't live in this world work it out?! Easy answer - they don't, that's why phishing remains so lucrative. ReferenceThe idea of Tesla remotely killing cars...

With travel now behind me, I'm back to a stable schedule and doing these on time again. Mind you, I came home to some of the wildest weather I've ever seen here, but it was kinda cool to watch and the kids didn't complain getting days off school. Oh - and I also loaded a bunch of new data breaches this week, the Robinhood one from earlier today being particularly noteworthy with more than 5M unique email addresses. At that and more in this week's update. ReferencesThe weather here got a bit crazy, check out how much dirt got dumped into the waterways (drone footage courtesy of Heather Downing)So much water the kids were literally kayaking out of our...

A little late this week as the tail end of travel bites into my time, but it's nice to be home again (albeit amidst a period of record rainfall). I'll get back on a normal schedule next week but for now, here's all the usual stuff in number 284, complete with a super cool "ransomwear" hoodie from this week's sponsor, Varonis 😎 ReferencesThe Messaging Malware Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group Mary Litynski Award (seeing industry recognition for HIBP is enormously fulfilling)Hacktivist action against Russia might be well-intentioned, but is fraught with problems (a kid in their bedroom on the other side of the world is a very different story to someone on the ground defending their livelihood)The documentary I was...

A super quick intro this week as I take a bit of time out before a hectic week. It's hotel room quality audio this week, but that's a temporary state before I'm back home next week. I hope you entry week 283, so much FUD to debunk on website identity verification... References I took issues - lots of issues - with DigiCert's guidance around ho to verify website identity (with the EV cash cow dead, it's desperate times...)New Zealand is now the 28th government to join HIBP (free and open access to query all data in the service for their gov domains.)Sponsored by: Varonis. Reduce your ransomware blast radius with the leader in data-first security. Try it free!...

Just listening back to this now, I'm really happy with the Focusrite Scarlett Solo DAC that has replaced the old setup. Super simple, one of the cheapest of all the options and just works! Good times. The other thing of note as I put this video into a blog post is that I definitely want to carve out time to write up that DigiCert blog post I discussed. It's just such a nonsensical piece that's so easily debunked yet still has a veneer of integrity. It's just the sort of thing that makes me want to put everything else I had planned aside for a few hours and get it off my chest, so stay tuned for that one 😊 Oh...

I feel like perfect audio remains an unsolved problem for me. Somehow, a low "hiss" has slipped in over the last couple of weeks and messing around trying to solve it before recording this video only served to leave me without any audio at all on the first attempt, and the status quo remaining on the second attempt. And I still can't use my Apollo Twin DAC as an input device almost a year on from when I bought it. Perhaps, that's where the remainder of my weekend will go, burning hours messing around with drivers and tracking down electrical interference 🤦‍♂️ In the meantime, here's this week's vid, a little shorter and sweeter this time: ReferencesWhat paint when you can...

Well, true to my opening dialogue, this was a monotopical weekly update (and yeah, apparently that's a word). The Azure bill story got a huge amount of traction this week and there are many interesting angles to it that I didn't fully cover in the original blog post. And incidentally, yep, there's a little background hiss on this video. Wasn't there last week and I've got no idea what changed, I'll take a peek at what's going on before next week's video. ReferencesI got an Azure bill that really stung (but like I say in the video, I think this will be a "net positive" insofar as it will be a very useful experience for others to learn from)Sponsored...

It's mostly breaches this week and that's mostly business as usual, except for one. I didn't know whether I should speak about the one that frankly, upset me, but I felt it would be somewhat disingenuous not to. I couldn't on the one hand build out this "brand", for want of a better term, of transparency and then just shelve a breach and not talk about it because it's too uncomfortable. So, here it is, and hopefully that's the last I'll think about it for a very long time. ReferencesIndian Fashion Retailer Data Leaked on Darknet Marketplace (yeah, nah, it's on the clear web, which is even worse)The Brian Krebs book I was trying to remember is Spam Nation...

I recorded this a week after Charlotte appeared with me, fresh out of isolation with a negative COVID test. However... 9 year old Elle had tested positive on Monday (albeit entirely asymptomatic, so no idea how long she'd been positive) but hey, hopefully she'd be clear today. Yeah, nah and to top it off, 12 year old Ari was positive. Also entirely asymptomatic (and double-vaxed) so instead of ending today with our freedom, we're ending day 15 of our ongoing isolation in, well, more ongoing isolation. If only this family could grasp the concept of parallel processing rather than running the whole thing out in sequence... But hey, we're in a wonderful environment, everyone is well and it's near beer...

Well that all changed very quickly. One week ago, I was like "I'm going to do this video from somewhere really epic next week". A few hours after that video, the host of the drinks we'd gone to over the road the day before told us she had symptoms. Another few hours later and she's COVID positive. A few days after that and Charlotte is positive too. Then, after 5 days isolating in the master bedroom at home, she's negative. That was weird. It's all weird, not just for us but for everyone at the moment. But this experience did fundamentally change many of our views about the pandemic from the contagiousness of it (off the charts) to the health...