In this episode...

• Mike explains once and for all how the BSides namesake came to be
• We talk about how the industry has evolved over the last 10+ years
• Mike dispenses a little of his philosophy on how to better the industry
• We talk burnout and why it exists, and possibly how to get through it

Guest

• Mike Dahn ( @MikD ) - Mike Dahn is one of the original co-founders of the Security BSides conference many of you have attended, spoken at, or heard of. In addition to that, Michael Dahn is an information security and organizational design strategist responsible for the management of data strategies, project engagements, and cost modeling. With over 12 years of information security experience, Mr. Dahn has managed teams of 50 people and budgets of up to $30m annually for Fortune 500 companies. Today he focuses on leading mobile security strategies and industry relations.
  
  He is an industry leader in regulatory compliance issues who previously worked for Visa, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, and Verizon Business, created PCI training for and trained over 10,000 assessors, merchants, and vendors globally. He contributes regularly to the continued development of the global PCI guidelines.
  
  During his tenure Mr. Dahn has presented to a variety of financial and banking associations (FDIC and NCUA), including regulatory bodies such as the PCI Council, and information security groups on topics including mobile security, compliance, information security programs, auditing and network security, and computer hackers. He has been published in several news articles and TV spots on information security.

I want to thank our guests - Beau Woods and Joe Knape for joining us this morning. It was great to have these two well-versed commentators on the show ...vote with your downloads folks - if you want to make this a regular thing leave us a comment!

Topics Covered

• RedHack 'hacks' Turkish police website, stops border traffic? - http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/redhack-hacks-turkish-police-website-as-border-traffic-grounds-to-a-halt.aspx?pageID=238&nID=53904&NewsCatID=341
• A few thoughts on the NSA/Crypto from Matthew Green's blog - http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/09/on-nsa.html
• The FTC settles with TRENDnet (the webcam shouting obscenities at the 2yr old story) - http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/09/04/ftc-settles-complaint-over-hacked-security-cameras/uYjAuRcb4uCz51Zt1HSGbP/story.html
• Citi ordered to pay $10.86/record, more harm than good - http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/34328/citi-ordered-to-pay-55k-to-connecticut-over-2011-data-breach
• NY Times hacked (again) but this time it's DNS ...DNS is baaaaack - http://www.thestreet.com/story/12020336/1/new-york-times-website-hacked-in-likely-malicious-external-attack.html
• "This is why we can't have nice websites" - http://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/1l7baq/creating_a_user_from_the_web_problem/

Other Links

• FTC FAQ (Thanks to Beau Woods) - http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus35-advertising-faqs-guide-small-business

Every once in a while this podcast has a guest who makes us truly feel blessed to be doing this - Rob Dubois is one of those people. If you don't know anything about Rob, go read his website, listen to this podcast and check out his book. He is a real American hero, a fantastic human being, and a true patriot. On behalf of James and I - I want to extend a hearty thank you for the time Rob spent, and wisdom he's imparted.

In this episode...

• Rob Dubois on being a 'badass'
• the parable of the blind wise men and the elephant
• be reachable and teachable (be a RAT)
• the collision of boots, bits, and threats
• the arrogance of security professionals are a weakness
• fail early, fail often - learn from it
• why plans are useless, and planning is essential
• a George Carlin quote, and a "The Office" reference
• a brutal lesson from PoW training

Guest

• Rob Dubois ( @RobDubois ) - Rob is currently best-known for his book "Powerful Peace - A Navy SEAL's Lessons on Peace from a Lifetime at War". I can't possibly do Rob justice but to call him a true, powerful, "badass"... check him, his book, and his powerful message out for yourself on his blog SEAL of Peace.

In this episode...

• Rob gives us a little history lesson
• Rob keeps going on the history lesson, IDS, open vs. closed circuits
• We discuss "defense in depth" from back-in-the-day
• James re-introduces us to the "security onion"
• Rob talks about "programming for super-high-speed" and scale
• Constructing things to truly "build scalability in"...
• Designing networks as a front-end vs. back-end architecture
• Rob points out that network diagrams are always wrong

Guest

• Robert Graham ( @ErrataRob ) - No, this is not Robert Graham the clothing designer, this is Robert Graham the guy who pioneered the IDS. In Robert's own words ... "I am a well-known security research (aka. "white-hat" hacker). I created the BlackICE personal firewall in 1998. I invented the first network intrusion prevention system (IPS) "BlackICE Guard" in 1999, which is now sold as "Proventia" by IBM."

Topics Covered

• The trash bin that stalked me (seriously, only in London) - http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/08/no-this-isnt-a-scene-from-minority-report-this-trash-can-is-stalking-you/ and a follow-up as we recorded today: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23665490
• No data breach in Indianapolis, after laptop stolen/recovered - http://www.theindychannel.com/news/call-6-investigators/state-no-data-breach-after-stolen-laptop-traced-to-indy-home
• DDoS blackmail in Manchester (UK) FAIL - http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/two-held-over-attempted-blackmail-5680548
• US national health push ("Obamacare") falling behind on security testing...who's surprised? - http://au.news.yahoo.com/technology/news/article/-/18390597/obamacare-months-behind-in-testing-it-data-security-government/
• Weird password 'feature' in Chrome... - http://blog.elliottkember.com/chromes-insane-password-security-strategy

In this episode...

• Dave reminisces a bit...
• Dave discusses 'digitall signed malware' and that it means
• We discuss whether it's true that 'all networks are compromised'
• We discuss consumer-grade vs. corporate-grade threats, and why they're different
• An interesting point by Dave about why enterprises aren't learning from their compromises
• We discuss customized malware, with specific and targeted payloads for specific systems
• Dave talks about whether 'compat the criminal, hire the criminal' is true

Guest

• Dave Marcus ( @DaveMarcus ) - Dave is currently the Chief Architect, Advanced Research and Threat Intelligence McAfee Federal Advanced Programs Group. He's been around the industry for a long time, and has influenced countless numbers of researchers. He is well known as a fantastic speaker, subject-matter expert and generally a badass, and I feel lucky enough to call him my friend.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are over the 50 episodes mark!  If you've enjoyed the podcast, please go rate us in the iTunes store, or leave us a note here. Have you checked out past episodes?! There are some gems in there, I promise, and worth your time.

Topics Covered

• Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek demonstrated (and will disclose code to) the hack which allows complete (tethered) remote control of a modern vehicle. You need to watch this video, and if you develop code for transport vehicles and aren't thinking about securing your code - it's time to adjust course before you actually kill someone - http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/07/24/hackers-reveal-nasty-new-car-attacks-with-me-behind-the-wheel-video/ and this is how the UK 'muzzled' a researcher who did something similar - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/28/birmingham_uni_car_cracker_muzzled_by_lords/
• Apple demonstrates how not to do breach disclosure, while Ibrahim Balic demonstrates how to jump into the spotlight (and put foot in mouth before thinking) by disclosing, video-recording, and telling the world of his 'ethical test' of Apple's forums - http://www.news.com.au/technology/ibrahim-balic-breaks-silence-on-hacking-apple-developer-site/story-e6frfro0-1226684484916 and http://gigaom.com/2013/07/22/researcher-comes-forward-to-claim-responsibility-for-intrusion-on-apple-developer-site/
• After many years on the run Russian super-hackers involved in the biggest breach of all time are caught - because they broke the first few rules of hiding - http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/26/us-usa-hackers-creditcards-arrests-idUSBRE96P02Z20130726
• Exciting news for those of you who are sick of Android App Developers' over-reaching nature in the permissions arena, with the release of 4.3 there is a glimmer of hope in reigning in those games that for some unknown reason require access to your contacts and 'premium services' and such - http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/07/25/app-ops-android-4-3s-hidden-app-permission-manager-control-permissions-for-individual-apps/

Welcome down the rabbithole as we hit EPISODE 50! I'm thrilled that we've made it this far, and look forward to having you along for the ride into the future! At this point, I'd like to encourage you to listen to some of the fascinating guests we've had on this show, people I'm proud to have had a chat with, in the past archives... suggest guests, or just leave us a comment.

/Wh1t3Rabbit

In this episode...

• We try and discuss 'defense in depth' on the geopolitical scale
• @packetknife drops the truth about 'geopolitics experts' in InfoSec
• Ali explains navigating the undocumented security requirements in emerging markets
• We talk about whether all this stolen data from enterprise has actually made a difference
• Ali discusses the 'western sense of intellectual property' (eye-opening!)
• Deperimeterization - why #InfoSec must adapt this RIGHT NOW, but seems allergic to it
• Ali drops 'lawfare' on us - and why #InfoSec must know its options
• Wwe discuss why people 'generally just don't get it' when it comes to moving to triage over 'secure'
• Ali decides he wants to be Frank, or is that frank? :-)

Guest

• Ali-Reza Anghaie ( @PacketKnife ) - Ali is a resident expert (or as much as one can be) on geopolitics from his unique background, experience and perspective. He's a well-known figure in the community and has deep insight into the things that most of us read in the media, and pretend to understand. He's the perfect guest for Episode 50!

*Apologies for this very important episode getting out a bit late ladies and gents, experienced a loss in the family so things were a little slow to re-start, we should be back on track for next week's episode.

Topics Covered

• Political hacktivism is making a big splash in international news - 
• http://www.ilovechile.cl/2013/06/17/chile-democratic-partys-official-site-hacked/87737
• http://www.kjrh.com/dpp/news/local_news/jenks/jenks-chamber-of-commerce-website-hacked-for-second-time-within-a-month
• http://www.publicnewshub.com/zimbabwean-hackers-hailed-for-attacking-ancs-website/
• http://www.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php/sid/215436810/scat/b8de8e630faf3631/ht/South-and-North-Korea-close-website-amid-hacking-alerts
• http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/syria-s-online-troops-wage-counter-revolutionary-cyber-war-113060900065_1.html
• http://www.ehackingnews.com/2013/06/turkish-ministry-of-interior-website.html
• Google Published their epic Transparency Report data
• http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/06/web-badness-knows-no-bounds/
• http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/
• European Union issues new data breach laws for telecommunications industry
• http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/33109/eu-announces-new-data-breach-rules-for-telecoms/
• Critical vulnerabilities found in CROWD single sign-on product
• http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9240487/Critical_vulnerabilities_found_in_Atlassian_Crowd_enterprise_single_sign_on_tool
• Facebook offers (pays!) $20,000 flaw for brilliant business-logic bug
• http://www.eweek.com/security/facebook-patches-mobile-text-vulnerability-rewards-flaw-discoverer/
• Microsoft launchges a bug bounty program, for IE11 and more
• http://www.microsoft.com/security/msrc/report/bountyprograms.aspx#
• http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/microsoft-bug-bounty-program/
• Opera code signing certificate stolen and used to sign malware
• http://www.eweek.com/security/opera-data-breach-exposes-legions-of-windows-users-to-malware-attack/

In this episode...

• We discuss the true nature of many of the security products decisions CISOs have to make every day
• Frank and Raf make very poorly thought-out sports analogies
• There are uncomfortable length of silence (mostly edited out)
• The crew discusses NSS Labs, and what they do to help the CISOs out there make smarter decisions
• "Someone" asks about anti-virus...

[ More info on NSS Labs and the two guests today can be found here: https://www.nsslabs.com/analysts and https://www.nsslabs.com/ ]

Guests

• Frank Artes ( @franklyfranc ) - Research Director Francisco Artes is a recognized information security executive who has helped form some of the motion picture & television industry’s best practices for securing intellectual property.  Artes is also know for his work with on cybercrime, hacking and forensic security issues with various federal, state and local government and law enforcement agencies such as the US Dept. of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Texas Rangers, US Marshals and several others.  Mr. Artes most recently served as Vice President, Chief Architect / Content Protection for Trace3, and as Vice President, Security Worldwide for Deluxe Entertainment Services Group. Artes has presented on six of the seven continents, serves on several boards and is a Trusted Adviser for The Security Consortium.
• John Pirc ( @jopirc ) - Research Vice President John Pirc is a noted security intelligence and cybercrime expert, an author and a renowned speaker, with more than 15 years of experience across all areas of security. The co-author of two books, “Blackhatonomics: An Inside Look at the Economics of Cybercrime” (published in December 2012), and “Cyber Crime and Espionage” (published in February 2011), Pirc has been named a security thought leader from the SANS Institute and speaks at top tier security conferences worldwide. Mr. Pirc’s extensive expertise in the security field includes roles in cybersecurity research and development for the Central Intelligence Agency, Chief Technology Officer at CSG LTD, Product Manager at Cisco, Product Line Executive for Security Products at IBM Internet Security Systems, Director of McAfee's Network Defense Business Unit and, most recently, Director of Security Intelligence at HP Enterprise Security Products, where he led the strategy for next generation security products. In addition to a bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Pirc holds the NSA-IAM and CEH certifications.

In this episode...

• Kevin, James and I discuss why penetration testing reports are often so worthless
• Kevin and I disagree. Then we agree, sort of.
• We discuss the major differences between the 'builder' and 'breaker' mindset, and whether they're actually different people
• Kevin gives some fantastic examples of how context and experience is critical in penetration testing
• We provide guidance no how someone can 'break into' (no pun intended) penetration testing and be effective
• Kevin gives an example of how someone can be a great penetration tester, but be of little value beyond that
• We wrap by disussing how enterprises can gain value from penetration testing- and Kevin provides an interesting strategy

Guest

• Kevin Johnson ( @SecureIdeas ) - Kevin Johnson is the Chief Executive Officer of Secure Ideas. Kevin has a long history in the IT field including system administration, network architecture and application development. He has been involved in building incident response and forensic teams, architecting security solutions for large enterprises and penetration testing everything from government agencies to Fortune 100 companies. In addition, Kevin is an instructor and author for the SANS Institute and a faculty member at IANS. He is also a contributing blogger at TheMobilityHub.  Kevin is also very involved in the open source community. He runs a number of open source projects. These include SamuraiWTF; a web pen-testing environment, Laudanum; a collection of injectable web payloads, Yokoso; an infrastructure fingerprinting project and a number of others. Kevin is also involved in MobiSec and SH5ARK. Kevin was the founder and lead of the BASE project for Snort before transitioning that to another developer.

It's another beautiful Monday (somewhere) and we've got the news of the last 2 weeks covered, and we're breaking it down for you. The news this week is, well, quite frankly kind of dark. Everything tells us we're in for a rough ride for the rest of the year, and it's only getting worse.

If I sound a little funny, it's because I'm talking through a massive sinus infection and it's making me talk funny and stuffy.  Also the recording you hear is take 2 ... I had a major technology fail so we had to re-record, with less sadness.

Topics Covered

• We are happy to report that Justin Beiber is in fact, not coming out of the closet and E! Online was only hacked by those wacky military hackers from the Syrian Electronic Army. Apparently they've been on quite the hacking spree of media outlets and even put a major - albeit brief - dent in the stock market! - http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/e-online-twitter-account-hacked-article-1.1335214
• The US Department of Labor was hacked, in what appears to be a very targeted 'watering hole' attack aimed at Nuclear employees. The attackers, if the stories are true, burned an IE8 0-day on this one, and of course they are Chinese - http://www.eweek.com/security/zero-day-exploit-enabled-cyber-attack-on-us-labor-department/
• Anonymous is threatening a massive attack against the White House (the political entity not the ...nevermind), Bank of America, Citibank and other targets on May 7th. Are these folks just becoming part of the 'background noise' of the Internet? Are security professionals just starting to become numb to the DDoS attacks? - http://pastebin.com/TyvAK20F
• Chinese hackers have apparently ransacked QinetiQ, a defense contractor with ties to global cyber intelligence operations, spooks,and other interesting things. Bloomberg's write-up was not kind to these guys - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-01/china-cyberspies-outwit-u-s-stealing-military-secrets.html
• In the perfect illustration of the fact that insider threats are real a systems manager returned to the company he was no longer employed at and wreaked havok. Folks, there is no magic 1U box that will stop this sort of attack, be vigiland and have good auditing and processes! - http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238874/Systems_manager_arrested_for_hacking_former_employer_39_s_network

In this episode...

• A critical discussion on the available 'cyber intelligence' reports from various vendors
• How hard is attribution in cyber space, really?
• "Alternative analysis" - why isn't it being used enough in cyber intelligence reporting?
• Discussion on 'degrees of certainty' and its apparent lack of application to cyber intelligence
• Extensive discussion on avoiding confirmation bias, critically reviewing intelligence work, and peer reviewing processes
• Kinetic responses to cyber threats and other outrageous rhetoric
• Hacking back? but hacking whom?

Guest

• Jeffrey Carr ( @JeffreyCarr ) - Jeffrey Carr is a cybersecurity analyst and expert.He lives in Seattle Washington. He is founder and CEO of Taia Global inc. He is also the founder and principal investigator of Project Grey Goose, an open source investigation into cyber conflicts including the Russian cyber attacks on Georgia, the Indian Eastern Railway Website defacement and the Israeli-Palestinian war in 2008 to 2009. He is also a government contractor who is consulted on Russian and Chinese cyber warfare strategy and tactics. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Carr ]

In this second episode of our Monday morning InfoSec quarterbacking, James and I actually got through the news items we had lined up in just about 20 minutes. I count this as a win.

Topics Covered

• Choice Escrow & Land Title, LLC vs. BancorpSouth, Inc. | At issue is the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) as it applies to commercial entities taking "commericially reasonable methods" to secure their transactions. This one is going to have a major ripple effect, keep an eye out for further developments - http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/03/missouri-court-rules-against-440000-cyberheist-victim/
• "The biggest cyber attack ever" | Or really, a DDoS feud between a known spammer (CyberBunker) and a spam fighter (SpamHaus) which actually did impact Internet traffic in Europe, but was effectively a tempest in a teapot for most everyone else - http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/27/tech/massive-internet-attack/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
• Schnuck's gets hacker by "computer code", but it's OK now | Short version of this story, be careful how hard you play up the 'reputation' angle with your business ...turns out people may not care so much - http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/schnucks-says-credit-card-fraud-source-found-and-contained/article_605469bd-db5d-5a1b-94cf-100f4eabc58f.html
• Darkleech affects huge amount of Apache servers, silently installs iFrame-based malware selectively | People who name these things come up with some of the coolest names ...seriously! Interesting story. - http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Darkleech-infects-scores-of-Apache-servers-1834311.html
• BitCoin wallet service InstaWallet hacked, shuts down "indefinitely" | Oh, another BitCoin tragedy as the currency suffers yet another blow to its viability as hackers target a wallet service, value bounces. - http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/03/bitcoin-wallet-instawallet-hacked/

Welcome to the Down the Rabbithole NewsCast!

Join me in welcoming James Jardine ( @JardineSoftware) of Secure Ideas to the show as a permanent co-host! The NewsCast is a bi-weekly (2nd and 4th Monday of the month) release where we'll discuss the news and events of the past 2 weeks, and attempt to analyze, break down, and generally make sense of the madness of the Security industry and real world at large.

Also a big thanks to Todd Haverkos, the voice behind the hilarious intro you'll hear on this podcast, and all the others ...

Topics We Covered

• Apple's new 2-Factor Authentication went live
• Cisco made passwords weaker (whoops!) in their IOS
• The US Government struck out twice (SAM security issue, and a contractor "buys" warez)
• Celebrities get their credit info jacked
• S. Korea gets whacked with a nasty bug, wipes out 32,000 machines in one swoop