Category: Politics

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Talking the alleged Apple iCloud hack on 1395 FIVEaa

FIVEaa logoThe third and final of today’s radio spots about the alleged hack of Apple’s iCloud service was at lunchtime, so I’d had time to wake up and gather my thoughts — as well as see how the infosec community was reacting.

The afternoon presenter on 1395 FIVEaa in Adelaide, Will Goodings, gave it plenty of time too, some 14 minutes, so we covered quite a few issues — including the privacy implications of cloud technology generally.

I sound a bit tired or something, though. Possibly because I was tired.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (6.6MB)

The audio is ©2014 dmgRadio Australia.

Today’s previous two radio spots were for Nova 100 Melbourne and ABC Radio’s AM.

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Talking the alleged Apple iCloud hack on ABC Radio AM

ABC logoA few minutes after doing the live spot on Nova 100, I recorded an interview on the alleged Apple iCloud hack for ABC Radio’s national current affairs program AM.

Reporter Emily Bourke would have gone away with a disjointed mess of soundbites, but the disjointedness isn’t so important when it’ll be edited into a multi-voice report.

I think this one quote best summarises my view of the compromise we enter into when using cloud services:

The big problem with creating massive online cloud storage systems — which is now the way we do things on the internet, whether it’s Apple or Microsoft or Google or Amazon or whoever — is that you create a vast honey pot of a target for the attackers.

Once you find one way to get in, you can potentially get access to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people’s data.

The plus side is such concentrated services means they can hire some of the best security people they can find, putting brains onto the problem is obviously important. So at one level the cloud providers can, if they do it right, protect things far better than you or I could on computer systems under our own control.

The failures are therefore going to be far less frequent. It’s just that when the failures do happen they can be catastrophic.

Here’s the full story, served directly from the ABC website, where you can also read the transcript.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (1.7MB)

The audio is of course ©2014 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

A few sentences of my comments were also used in a later report on The World Today at lunchtime, which featured security researcher Troy Hunt.

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Talking the alleged Apple iCloud hack on Nova 100

Nova logoIt’s starting to look like an alleged hack of Apple’s iCloud service was the source of a series of nude photos of female celebrities that has appeared online. That news led to a series of radio appearances for me today. Starting with this one.

The story itself has already been widely reported, and I won’t go into any detail about the victims of this invasion of privacy. One good place to start is this summary at The Guardian, and there’s more technical details at TUAW. These blog posts will simply present the media spots that I did.

First up was Nova 100 in Melbourne. This was done live with breakfast presenters Meshel and Tommy at 0720, and my coffee hadn’t kicked in yet. That’s why I screwed up my first, embarrassingly-wrong go at the explanation — at least that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.2MB)

It seems Meshel was quite taken with my name. That’s so sweet.

The audio is ©2014 dmgRadio Australia.

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Talking tech on ABC Local Radio, again

ABC logoEvery Tuesday night after 8pm, Dom Knight talks tech on ABC Local Radio around NSW — and I joined him on 1 July 2014.

Also joining us was Belinda Smith, deputy science and technology editor at The Conversation. We spoke about the notorious Facebook experiment, amongst other things.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (27.3MB)

The audio is of course ©2014 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, archived here because it isn’t being archived anywhere else.

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Talking greatest inventions on 1395 FIVEaa Adelaide

[I’m finally tackling the backlog of media spots that need posting, some of them going back weeks. This is the first, from late June. — Stilgherrian.]

FIVEaa logoIt’s now 25 years since Australia got the internet, at least in terms of a permanent link. Will Goodings thinks the internet is humanity’s greatest invention, and I tend to agree. But what’s your choice?

We ended up speaking about this stuff on 1395 FIVEaa Adelaide on 26 June 2014, along with studio guest Ben Lewis, programs coordinator at RiAus, a science hub in Adelaide that emphasises the role of science and technology as being “as much a part of our cultural fabric as art, music, theatre and literature”.

Here’s the full conversation, as well as the first part of the talkback. The rather rough edit in the middle is to remove the ad break.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (11.6MB)

The audio is ©2014 dmgRadio Australia.

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“Corrupted Nerds” on the future of media

Corrupted Nerds 11 cover image: click for podcast pageIt was my very great pleasure to meet Bob Garfield the other day — former advertising man, veteran journalist and media commentator, and co-presenter on NPR’s On the Media and Slate’s Lexicon Valley.

We managed to find time for a coffee and a conversation, and the result forms the latest Corrupted Nerds podcast.

“For 300-plus years, it was great for the audience, they got free and subsidised content. It was great for advertisers ’cos they got audience. And it was great for media, ’cos they got filthy stinking rich,” Garfield said. But now, things are bleak. “Unless you are in gambling, search or porn, there’s just no money to be made.”

Garfield explains why, basically, we’re all fucked.

Subscribe to all Corrupted Nerds podcasts via RSS, iTunes and SoundCloud.

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