Take 1 Security Podcast: Episode 4

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START CONTENT
  • Ghost bug in PHP could affect millions of servers

    • Flaw is in glibc, which is extensively by all Linux distributions

    • Patch and reboot using yum or aptitude

  • The US Army Released DShell, a malware forensics tool

    • This is an interesting trend where we see tons of formerly secret groups flock to Github. Great to see

  • Reddit released its first transparency report last week

    • Says it received 55 requests for user information

    • Says it complied with 64% of state and federal requests

    • Says it received 218 requests for content removal, and complied with 31 percent of those

    • I am pleased to see them releasing these numbers, and I hope more organizations do the same

  • The GHCQ was using a program called BADASS to collect data leaked by games such as Angry Birds

    • Luckily it only affected the 11 people still playing that game

  • Russian dating site, Topface, got hacked for 20 million usernames

  • The FBI busted up a Tom Clancy book plot in New York City

    • The plan was to get information about wall street trading algorithms and hopefully destabilize the markets

    • All they managed to do was embarrass themselves by commenting on how they couldn’t recruit young women

  • China is demanding to be able to build backdoors into any code sold to its banking sector

    • Some people call this news, but with China we just call this Wednesday

  • Apple released a Yosemite update that fixed Thunderstrike, among other things

  • Anonymous and Lizard Squad are going after each other

    • Anonymous is the famous hacking group known for all sorts of things

    • Lizard Squad is known for taking down the XBox and Playstation networks around Christmas time

    • Anonymous DDoS’d the Lizard Squad website, and then Twitter suspended a couple of their handles

    • Interesting to see these groups going after each other

  • BMW and the internet of things is in the news, with BMW owners receiving an automatic push to around 2 million cars

    • A vulnerability was present that could allow attacks to spoof cell towers and possibly control onboard systems

    • BMW pushed a patch that ensures all such communications go over HTTPS

    • It’s interesting that, like printers, cars are likely to become a primary IoT platform just because there are so many of them

    • The key is to figure out what normal things exist in the world today en mass, and then imagine those things being connected

    • Printers, cars, furniture, clothing, etc. It’s the regular stuff that makes it interesting because of how much attack surface they represent, and how prevalent the perspective they’ll offer into our daily lives

END CONTENT

Notes

  1. Intro is from Zomby. The song is ‘Orion’, and it’s from the ‘With Love’ album. Highly recommended if you like chill EDM.

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