Mike Burgess is the director general of ASIO. But the thing about Mike is he’s actually a cybersecurity guy. He joined ASD, Australia’s NSA, back in 1995 when it was still the Defence Signals Directorate. He was there for 18 years before he bounced out to the private sector for a while to work as the CISO for Australia’s largest telco, Telstra. In 2017 he returned to ASD to run it, and in 2019 he was appointed director general of ASIO.

Back in April, Burgess made a series of comments on the topic of encrypted messaging during a Press Club speech in Canberra. Our right to privacy, he said, is not absolute, and he implied that if certain providers didn’t start helping Australian authorities out a little more, he’d use some of the provisions in Australia’s Assistance and Access bill to force them to provide access to certain content.

So I reached out to organise this interview to get some more detail from him about exactly what sort of cooperation he’s seeking and why.

A short podcast updating listeners on the security news of the last few days, as prepared by Catalin Cimpanu and read by Kaitlyn Sawrey

You can find the newsletter version of this podcast here.

In this Risky Business News sponsor interview, Catalin Cimpanu talks with Haroon Meer, Founder and CEO at Thinkst, about the company’s evolution over the past 15 years, its focus on hacker-like internal culture, and the UK NCSC’s new deception network.

A short podcast updating listeners on the security news of the last few days, as prepared by Catalin Cimpanu and read by Kaitlyn Sawrey.

You can find the newsletter version of this podcast here.

In this podcast Tom Uren and Patrick Gray discuss an Australian government effort to bridge the gap between online and real identity across the whole economy. It addresses a real need, but Tom doesn’t think it will go smoothly.

They also discuss ongoing Chinese cyber espionage focussed on Russian targets. They may have a ‘no limits’ friendship, but spying between allies is remarkably common.

This episode is also available on Youtube.

On this week’s show, Patrick Gray and Adam Boileau discuss the week’s security news including:

• Microsoft did a good thing! Soon all Azure admins will require MFA
• The three billion row National Public Data breach mess, courtesy Florida Man
• US govt confirms that it was Iran that hacked the Trump campaign
• Is TP-Link the next Huawei, or just not very good at computers?
• Major Chinese RFID card maker has hardcoded backdoors
• And much, much more.

This week’s episode is sponsored by Specter Ops, makers of Bloodhound Enterprise. VP of Products Justin Kohler joins to talk about how they’ve joined their on-prem AD and cloud Entra attack path graphs, so you can map out that juicy, real-world attack surface.

A short podcast updating listeners on the security news of the last few days, as prepared by Catalin Cimpanu and read by Kaitlyn Sawrey.

You can find the newsletter version of this podcast here.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq examine how the cybersecurity industry is very strange when compared to other professional fields such as doctors and accountants.

In this conversation Risky Business host Patrick Gray speaks with SentinelOne’s Chris Krebs and Alex Stamos about what sort of cyber enabled interference we can expect in the 2024 US presidential race.

Alex was the CISO at Facebook during the 2016 election, and Chris Krebs was responsible for US election security as the director of CISA in 2020.

Watch the video version of this episode on Youtube.

A short podcast updating listeners on the security news of the last few days, as prepared by Catalin Cimpanu and read by Claire Aird.

You can find the newsletter version of this podcast here.

In this Risky Business News sponsor interview, Catalin Cimpanu talks with Brian A. Coleman, Senior Director at Pfizer for Insider Risk, Information Security, Digital Forensics Expert. Brian goes over all the Island features that have made the browser a favorite tool to secure older corporate apps, either by blocking insecure features or adding logging capabilities where they didn’t exist.

A short podcast updating listeners on the security news of the last few days, as prepared by Catalin Cimpanu and read by Claire Aird.

You can find the newsletter version of this podcast here.

In this podcast Tom Uren and Patrick Gray discuss a US government policy initiative to cover cyber insurance gaps while also improving security across the economy. Lofty goals, but Tom wonders if it is a difficult way to address security gaps.

They also talk about what appears to be a hack and leak operation targeting the Trump campaign and a recent US federal court decision which ruled that geofence warrants are unconstitutional.

You can watch the video version of this episode here.

On this week’s show, Patrick Gray and Adam Boileau discuss the week’s security news and recap the best research presented at Black Hat and DEF CON in Las Vegas last week. They cover:

• Iran tries an election hack’n’leak like its still 2016
• Crowdstrike takes home the Pwnie for Epic Fail at DEF CON
• UK healthcare SaaS faces six million pound fine for lack of MFA
• US circuit courts disagree on geofence warrants
• Our roundup of juicy Blackhat/DEF CON research
• And much, much more.

This week’s episode is sponsored by Trail of Bits. CEO Dan Guido is fresh back from the DARPA AI Cyber Challenge at DEF CON, where the Trail of Bits team moved through into the finals. Dan talks through the challenge of finding, reporting and fixing bugs with AI systems.

You can also watch this week’s show on Youtube.

A short podcast updating listeners on the security news of the last few days, as prepared by Catalin Cimpanu and read by Claire Aird.

You can find the newsletter version of this podcast here.

In this edition of Between Two Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq discuss what it would mean to be in a golden age of OSINT and whether we are in one.

In this sponsored Soap Box edition of the show we talk to Proofpoint’s Chief Strategy Officer Ryan Kalember about making security tech more people centric.

We often talk about how we can use signals from users to drive some of our security tech. But what about using our security tech to drive user behaviour?

Ryan thinks there are some opportunities here, particularly around identity security.

A short podcast updating listeners on the security news of the last few days, as prepared by Catalin Cimpanu and read by Claire Aird.

You can find the newsletter version of this podcast here.

In this Risky Business News sponsored interview, Tom Uren talks to Brian Dye, CEO of Corelight about a string of recent CISA advisories. These advisories address specific technical issues, but when examined together Brian says there is an underlying message about addressing security holistically.

A short podcast updating listeners on the security news of the last few days, as prepared by Catalin Cimpanu and read by Claire Aird.

You can find the newsletter version of this podcast here.