Tag: radio

Posted on

Talking Heartbleed on ABC 774 Melbourne, ABC 720 Perth

ABC logoAnother day, another Heartbleed-related radio spot. This one was on ABC Radio 774 Melbourne, 720 Perth, and local stations throughout Victoria and Western Australia.

This conversation with presenter Prue Bentley was a straightforward explainer. It contains the current state of play in terms of what we believe, so if you only want to listen to one then make it this one. Unless there’s a more recent one on the site somewhere.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.6MB)

The audio is of course ©2014 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Posted on

Talking Heartbleed and social media on ABC 702 Sydney

ABC logoThere’s something rather cool about being introduced with the Mission: Impossible theme, and that’s precisely what happened when I did a spot for ABC 702 Sydney on Friday morning.

The Heartbleed security bug was one topic, obviously, but I also spoke with breakfast presenter Robbie Buck about another story in the news that morning, about radio presenter and activist Vanessa Powell, who’d complained that Australia’s Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) had been, as she put it, spying on her social media activities.

Or, as I put it, that they’d been reading what she published on the internet — just as, presumably, she’d been reading what they published on the internet. That they’d gathered her comments with some semi-automated process — and, presumably, she hadn’t gathered theirs the same way — to me says “naivety” rather than “victim of sinister conspiracy”.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (4.5MB)

The audio is of course ©2014 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Posted on

Taking Heartbleed on ABC Radio “The World Today”

ABC logoBy Thursday, news of the Heartbleed security bug had permeated from the technical press and the odd radio talk show into mainstream current affairs.

And so it was that ABC Radio’s Will Ockenden spoke to me for a story on the lunchtime current affairs program, The World Today.

Online security experts are warning today that nearly every user of the web over the last two years is exposed to a security bug sweeping the internet. Known as Heartbleed, the bug is a serious vulnerability in a piece of encryption software which secures data on nearly two in three web servers. It’s now a race between the server administrators and hackers to either fix the software in time or come under attack.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.1MB)

The audio is of course ©2014 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Posted on

Talking Heartbleed on 1395 FIVEaa Adelaide

FIVEaa logoI’ve already hinted at the importance of Heartbleed, the internet security bug, to my working week. Oh, and to the internet, yeah, that too. Well, my first media object was an article for Crikey. The second was this conversation on Adelaide commercial radio station 1395 FIVEaa.

Even though a lot more has been learned about Heartbleed since this conversation took place, and I’ve written a bunch of stuff for ZDNet Australia after each of the daily briefings by the SANS Institute’s Internet Storm Centre (ISC), which will be listed in the Weekly Wrap, this conversation with Will Goodings from Wednesday afternoon stands up surprisingly well.

I think.

Judge for yourself.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (4.3MB)

The audio is ©2014 dmgRadio Australia, but here it is ‘cos it hasn’t been posted on the radio station’s website. Besides, this is a reasonable plug, and they sent the audio file to me knowing this is exactly what I was going to be doing with it.

Posted on

Talking copyright infringement on ABC 720 Perth

ABC logoAnother series of Game of Thrones is released, which means another series of radio spots talking about Australia’s reputation for (allegedly) massive levels of illegal downloads.

This spot is from Tuesday 8 April, a chat with ABC 720 Perth afternoon presenter Gillian O’Shaughnessy, triggered by the news that the first episode of Game of Thrones series four had seen record levels of illegal downloads, with Perth topping the list — although Angus Kidman at Lifehacker disagrees.

One highlight of this conversation is when I suggest that the entire Australian content distribution industry should just get out of the way, retire and go play on their yachts.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (4.7MB)

The audio is of course ©2014 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Posted on

Heartbleed kills my schedule

Heartbleed logoNothing has appeared here since Weekly Wrap 200 last Sunday — including the update to my guest lecture at UTS from Monday — because my work schedule has been dominated by the Heartbleed internet security bug.

There’s a lot that’ll appear here in the coming three days, and not just the UTS lecture. There’s radio spots that I did with ABC 720 Perth, ABC 783 Alice Springs, 1395 FIVEaa Adelaide, ABC Radio’s The World Today, and ABC 702 Sydney, for starters, plus links to the stories I’ve written on Heartbleed — one for Crikey and four for ZDNet Australia — although clever possums will know that they’re already listed on the media page.

In the background, I’ve also been sketching out ideas for a Pozible crowdfunding campaign or two, continuing from the one I did last year, to resurrect Corrupted Nerds and The 9pm Edict. Stay tuned.

I guess I shouldn’t whinge about Heartbleed killing my schedule. Some people have to do the really hard programming and systems administration work to clean up the mess, not just write and talk about it, and the extra work is heartbleeding revenue straight into my pocket.