Risky Business Podcast

This week's feature interview is with anonymous infosec blogger Diocyde.

He has access to some fairly sensitive shit, so we can't tell you his name and we've had to disguise his voice.

Diocyde is best known as the author of the Veiled Shadows blog.

On it, he's written volumes about state-sponsored attacks against the United States. He's tracked who he says are Chinese malware writers and basically doxed them on the blog. He's advocated a hot cyber-war against China to stop that country from continuing to siphon off US-developed intellectual property and intelligence and he's written it all under the influence of pure fury.

Chinese attacks against the USA make this guy angry, as does the idea that attribution in the cyber sphere is difficult.

Interest in Diocyde's blog really took off when links to it popped up in e-mail stolen from HBGary Federal. Things got even more interesting when a few of his posts not only disappeared from the blog, but also disappeared from Google's cache.

In particular, one post titled "Busting the APT can wide open" went missing. It contained a large amount of intelligence on Chinese malware writers.

It was a fascinating read, and it's been completely removed from the Internet.

Doicyde joined me to discuss his blog, the missing posts, Chinese cyber espionage and attribution.

This week's sponsor interview is with RSA Product Manager Jeffery Carpenter.

This week we're chatting to Jeff about RSA's vision for the future of two-factor authentication. Are soft tokens becoming more popular? Is that a problem? What role will mobile device features like NFC play in the 2FA equation in the future?

Also this week, Adam Boileau joins us with the week's news headlines.

You may have heard about Microsoft's Blue Hat Prize for defensive security research. The company is running a contest for the best memory corruption bug mitigation technology. So, if you reckon you've found the next DEP or ASLR, you could be eligible for the company's $200,000 first prize.

It marks a departure from bug bounties -- this is a contest that rewards defensive research, not just new attacks.

There has, however, been a limited but vocal backlash. Security development firm Supreption took to its blog to describe the contest as a "late April Fools joke".

Winners of the contest maintain ownership of their ideas and intellectual property, but Microsoft assumes right to implement any entries it chooses into its operating systems. The guys at Supreption say that means Microsoft is getting way too good a deal for its prizemoney.

The blog claims the PaX team, creators of ASLR, support the company's position.

Microsoft's Katie Moussouris joins the show to face the criticisms and defend the prize.

Adam Boileau, of course, joins the show to discuss the week's news headlines.

In this week's feature interview we're chatting with Dino A Dai Zovi about Mac security -- Dino's well known as a Mac hacker and he's just done a BlackHat talk in which he evaluated Apple's IOS 4.x operating system for enterprise suitability. How did it stack up? Find out after the news!

Also this week we check in with Sophos Network Security director of support Alan Toews about Moxie Marlinspike's latest work, an alternative way of doing SSL certificates that completely does away with CAs. That's this week's sponsor interview.

Adam Boileau, of course, joins us for this week's news.

On this week's show we're taking a look at the most devastating state sponsored planet melting, child eating APT the world has ever seen... according to Gizmodo it's the BIGGEST CYBER ATTACK IN HISTORY.

Ummm... actually no, it's a fairly unsophisticated botnet comprising of 70 targeted infections.

It seems like the tech guys and analysts at McAfee did some interesting work in seizing control of a small botnet, then the salesbots, marketroids and public relationamatrons got their hands on it and spun it way out of perspective. The result? The media describing a fairly run-of-the-mill spooky botnet as the end of the world.

We'll be joined by Searn Duca of McAfee -- a very nice chap -- to have a chat about some of the detail of the so-called operation Shady RAT, which to me, seems more like operation shady AV vendor sales and marketing pitch. The media has spun this one way out of control, much, I'm sure, to the delight of the PRs at McAfee and the irritation of the wider infosec industry!

Also in this week's show we're joined by Marcus Ranum in the sponsor interview. Marcus is, of course, Tenable Network Security's CSO, and he joins me to discuss the US military's new cyber warfare doctrine -- you know, the one that explicitly states the US can use kinetic retribution in the event of a cyber attack.

So, like, doesn't that mean Iran can go and air-strike US nuclear refineries now? Heh... heh... yeah. :'( Marcus joins us to discuss that toward the end of the show -- that's actually a really interesting chat.

We're also joined by Adam Boileau, as usual, to go over the week's news headlines.

This week we're chatting with Detective Superintendent Brad Marden of the Australian Federal Police. While the FBI are out locking up Low Orbit Ion Cannon users on no-bail warrants, Mr. Marden and his team, apparently, are out doing real, actual police work to catch real, alleged criminals. How refreshing!

Listeners to this program would have heard of the case of Distribute.IT -- an Australian domain name registrar and hosting company that got majorly worked by a hacker calling himself "Evil from efnet".

After entry, the attacker rm -rf'd the entire company and basically destroyed the business. What remained of the company's assets were sold at presumably fire-sale prices to NetRegistry, another Australian company.

Well, earlier this week the AFP arrested an unemployed truck driver as a result of its investigation into the distribute.it matter. The suspect, 25-year-old David Cecil, has been charged with 49 offences relating a breach at a company called Platform Networks, but police have hinted that further charges are to come.

Marden joins the program to discuss the arrest.

Adam Boileau drops in to discuss the week's news, including the arrest of alleged LulzSec member Topiary in Scotland.

In this week's feature interview we're chatting with Silvio Cesare.

Silvio's an extremely well regarded infosec guy down here in Oz. He'll be chatting to us about his experience in academia. Silvio argues much criticism of academia in industry largely misses the point, and academia actually serves infosec quite well. Cryptography anyone?

This was also the week that saw LulzSec make a spectacular return to the public eye. It was also the week the FBI rounded up around 16 "cyber criminals". Well, actually it was more like 14 LOIC users and a couple of scripty-tardos. More on that in the news.

In this week's sponsor interview we catch up with RSA's CSO Eddie Schwartz to chat about everything from crappy marketing to problems with mobile device-based 2FA. It's good stuff.

Adam Boileau, of course, takes a break from grooming his spectacular, manly beard to discuss the week's news headlines.

This week's show is all about the news -- a 30 minute dose of Metl!

With Anons being arrested, parties unknown pwning defence contractors in the name of #antisec, Sony doing (even more) dumb stuff, Zeus-grade viruses smashing Android devices, India trying to wiretap Skype, support for XP running out in less than three years, Microsoft Security Centre dishing out porn and Morgan Stanley losing customer info on unencrypted disks, we just didn't have time for a feature interview this week!

In this week's sponsor interview Astaro founder Markus Hennig joins us to discuss Sony's curious statement that its brand is recovering from all the negative press surrounding its security woes. Are they dreaming?

This week's edition of the show is brought to you by Tenable Network Security, thanks guys.

In this episode we're taking an in depth look at BitCoins. Most listeners would have heard of the fledgling online currency by now, but there are a number of things that make BitCoins extremely interesting. It's the world's first popular virtual, cryptographically supported commodity, and once you wrap your head around it, it's very cool stuff, regardless of whether or not you think it has a future.

I'll be joined by regular guest Paul Ducklin to talk about BitCoin, after the news.

In this week's sponsor interview we're joined by Tenable Network Security's Brian "Jericho" Martin. He's stopping by to discuss the trojaning of vsftpd. Some wise-ass modified the source so using a username against vsftpd that contains a smilie spawns a shell on 6200. Subtle.

Brian chats about that and his work with Attrition.org, tracking Sony's woes. The Sownage! That's all coming up after this week's feature interview. Before all of that we check the week's news with our very own beardy guy Adam Boileau!

Episode 200 FTW!

In this week's feature interview we'll be chatting with Daniel Grzelak. Dan's the founder of shouldichangemypassword.com -- and interesting little website that pulls together compromised information and lets you see if you've been affected.

Dan was searching Google for .sql files that had inadvertently been made accessible online and indexed... aaaaand he found the entire database for Groupon India including plaintext passwords FOR THE LOSE!!! He'll be telling us all about that after the news.

Adam Boileau, of course, joins the show to discuss the week's security news.

NOTE: CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE. NO NAUGHTY WORD EDITS THIS WEEK.

Put on your Hypercolor t-shirts and Swatch watches, because this week's show features an interview with Jason Scott, the founder of Textfiles.com.

If you don't remember the BBS scene in the late 80s or early nineties, well, that doesn't matter; Jason has archived all of the quirky stuff that made the BBS scene what it was back then.

[ED NOTE: CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE (MISSED SOME EDITS)]

Textfiles.com is a culture bearer for the pre-Internet hacking scene. It's a massive archive of textfiles on everything from early hacking, phreaking and all sorts of other illicit stuff like bombmaking. w00t w00t!

Those were the days!

In this week's sponsor interview we're chatting with NetWitness security researcher Alex Cox about operational security. How concerned should you be with the operational security of your vendors? How critical is it?

We also chat with him about the opsec of those on the other side of the law. Is it possible groups like LulzSec can operate for a long period without being caught? If they're careful do the authorities stand a chance?

Adam Boileau, as usual, joins us for this week's show. Be nice to Adam. He's a sad panda at the moment because there's a bug he can't trigger. :'(