2ue – Stilgherrian

24 April 201624 April 2016

Talking Cyber Security Strategy on Radio 2UE

This is the third of four radio spots I did on Thursday to discuss Australia’s new Cyber Security Strategy.

For background on strategy itself, see the first post in this series.

This spot was on Sydney commercial station 2UE. The presenter was Bill Woods.

Each of these spots varied in content and style. In this one, we discussed the importance of cyber security and its history, the Bureau of Meteorology hack and its timing, the assumption that our spooks do what other country’s spooks do, the difficulty of attribution, the difficulty of cyber security, the cost of cybercrime, China’s hack of US fighter aircraft programs, and Australia’s ability to cash in on the cyber skills shortage.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (5.0MB)

18 May 2015

Talking the hacking of airliners on 2UE

Is it possible to hack into a commercial airliner’s flight control systems by first hacking into its inflight entertainment system?

That’s the worry, certainly. But now the FBI has said that security researcher Chris Roberts told them he’d done exactly that hack 15 or 20 times, and on one occasion even managed to compromise the Thrust Management Computer, getting it to issue a “climb” command to one engine — with the result that the burst of increased thrust caused “lateral movement” of the aircraft.

Except Wired reports that Roberts told them that he claimed no such thing. He’d had many hours of conversations with the FBI, and in condensing that down to a few sentences they’ve got the wrong end of the stick.

This whole story caught the attention of 2UE morning presenter Stuart Hocking, we spoke about it for about seven minutes earlier today, and here’s the recording.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.9MB)

25 February 201525 February 2015

Talking SIM cards, spooks and hacks on 2UE

The second radio spot I did on The Great SIM Heist — or perhaps I should say the claimed heist, or even the alleged heist — was for the Sydney talk radio station 2UE on Tuesday afternoon.

I won’t repeat all the background. See my previous post for that. But I will say that it’s always interesting to hear the different questions asked and concerns raised by different presenters. And of course my responses differ in content and style to match the style of the program and the radio station.

Here’s the full seven-minute chat with drive presenter Justin Smith. At the end, we seem to have invented a new regular segment. And at least this time I pronounced Gemalto correctly.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (7.0MB)

18 January 2015

Talking propaganda hacks on 2UE

This was the week that the Australian media returned from holidays. What caught the eye, or ear, of Justin Smith on Sydney’s radio 2UE on Tuesday afternoon was the series of hacks and planned hacks for political purposes.

Someone had hacked the Twitter and YouTube accounts of US Central Command (CENTCOM) — although it probably wasn’t Islamic State. And Anonymous, or at least their French-speaking sections, announced that they were declaring war on the jihadists.

I’m posting the audio stream even though it suffers some dropouts. I’m assuming this was just the stream back to me, rather than the broadcast chain, because we continued on air regardless.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (5.7MB)

07 December 2014

Talking Hawking and artificial intelligence on radio 2UE

“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” said Stephen Hawking the other day.

“It would take off on its own, and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”

Look, I have many feels about this sort of statement, which will have to wait for another time. But I managed to express one of those feels to Justin Smith on Sydney’s radio 2UE on Thursday afternoon. And here it is.

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

06 June 2014

Talking swatting on Sydney radio 2UE, again

Following on from Wednesday’s conversation about swatting on 2UE’s afternoon program, I spoke about the topic again on Thursday’s drive-time program, because they had more to discuss.

First, they’d been contacted by a listener named Greg, who a couple months back had been a victim of swatting — or at least his son had — with the result that a dozen police cars were outside his house for a “friendly chat”. The swatter had told them that three people were being held hostage in the house.

Second, they’d wondered whether that meant that a more elaborately crafted swatting attempt couldn’t cause much more disruption. Short answer, yes it could.

This is the full conversation with presenter Justin Smith.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (5.1MB)