radio – Page 40 – Stilgherrian

01 June 2012

Talking Stuxnet and Flame worms on ABC Local Radio

The Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran’s uranium enrichment program was indeed launched by the US, according to a major investigative report published by the New York Times shortly before I was due to appear on ABC Local Radio this evening.

So guess what we talked about.

Yes, the Stuxnet worm, as well as the newly-discovered Flame worm that’s been in the news this week — including my Day 1 piece for Crikey and Day 2 for CSO Online.

The host was Dom Knight, and here’s a recording of the whole conversation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:45 — 6.3MB)

26 May 201227 May 2012

Talking Twitter for idea-generation on ABC Local Radio

I must admit, this one threw me a bit. Last Sunday ABC Radio presenter James O’Loghlin wanted to know whether he should start using Twitter because “having to tweet” might help him generate ideas.

I thought he was looking at Twitter from the wrong angle. If he used Twitter it’s not that he had to tweet something but that he wanted to tweet it.

Nevertheless, it turned into an interesting chat, kicking off with ABC political writer Annabel Crabb before I joined the conversation around the 9 min 20 sec mark. I even managed to get Mr O’Loghlin’s sex life into the conversation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:07 — 17.5MB)

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and was recorded on 20 May 2012. I’ve included the audio right up to the 7pm news because there’s some Twitter-related comments at the end.

21 May 201203 June 2012

Weekly Wrap 102: Infosec and interference

My week from Monday 14 to Sunday 20 May 2012 was mostly about the AusCERT information security conference and a blur of returning pain thanks to my dodgy shoulder.

As I finish compiling this post, I’ve still got lots of AusCERT material to produce and Monday looks like being intense. So let’s just list everything and see what happens.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 138, “Anonymous ‘crippled’: where to for hacktivism?”. Following last week’s conversation with Israeli information security researcher Tal Be’ery about hacktivists’ tactics, I spoke with former journalist and commentator Barrett Brown, who has worked with Anonymous for about a year and a half. He discusses Anonymous’ position in the wake of revelations that Sabu, a core member and informal leader of the offshoot hacking group LulzSec, had become an FBI informant.

Articles

These are just the first two articles from my AusCERT coverage. More will follow.

AusCERT 2012: Russian crims evade transaction profiling, ZDNet Australia, 17 May 2012.
AusCERT 2012: DNS poisoning the ‘thin end of a wedge’, ZDNet Australia, 17 May 2012.

Videos

5 Conference Tips for PR Professionals, an impromptu video message from Gold Coast airport.

Media Appearances

On Monday I spoke about Facebook charging for highlighted posts and the company’s stock market float on ABC 702 Sydney.
On Tuesday I spoke with journalism student Tom Davey about various attempts to regulate the internet. Here’s his resulting radio report.
On Friday night I spoke about AusCERT, cybercrime, cyberwar and claims that Apple is behind the pace on ABC Local Radio.
On Sunday afteroon I spoke about the surveillance society at the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Here’s the audio recording.
On Sunday night I spoke about using Twitter to generate ideas with James O’Loughlin on ABC Local Radio. Here’s the audio recording.

Corporate Largesse

AusCERT 2012 conference organisers and sponsors paid for various meals and drinks, but I didn’t keep track of that. While that means I can’t disclose who paid, it also means I can’t be influenced because I can’t remember who’s meant to be doing the influencing. Complete market failure, that.

The Week Ahead

There’s a couple of days of intense writing and production ahead. At the very least there’s two or three articles about AusCERT 2012 and the Patch Monday podcast. Then there’s a piece to do for CSO Online, and one for Technology Spectator.

I should be returning to Wentworth Falls this evening, but I plan to be back on Wednesday night to go to a paintball session with Eugene Kaspersky and other journalists. That could be weird. And I’ll probably be in Sydney again at the end of the week, but that hasn’t been planned out yet.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream (or they used to before my phone camera got a bit too scratched up) and via Instagram. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags. Yes, I should probably update this stock paragraph to match the current reality.

[Photo: Airbus A320-232 VH-VGY at Gold Coast airport, the aircraft I traveled in on Saturday. Check out the complete history of VH-VGY at FlightAware.]

[Update 26 May 2012: Links added to last weekend’s audio recordings, added earlier today as separate blog posts. Update 3 June 2012: Link added to Tom Davey’s radio report.]

19 May 2012

Talking AusCERT 2012 and cyberwar on ABC Local Radio

My full output from the AusCERT 2012 information security conference has yet to appear. Stand by. But last night I did a half-hour conference wrap with Dom Knight on ABC Local Radio.

We spoke about the conference atmosphere itself, cybercrime, cyberwar, the risk of Cybergeddon (yes, I know), and the claim by Eugene Kaspersky that Apple is ten years behind Microsoft when it comes to security.

Not that Mr Kaspersky would ever, like, troll the entire planet.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:41 — 15.5MB)

What we didn’t talk about, really, was the two stories that have been published so far:

Russian crims evade transaction profiling, which details a trans-national organised crime operation profiled by Mikko Hypponen.
DNS poisoning the thin end of a wedge’, in which domain name system pioneer Dr Paul Vixie supports my argument that fiddling with the internet’s fundamental navigation systems probably isn’t such a great idea.

14 May 2012

Talking Facebook pay-for-highlighting on ABC 702 Sydney

While the Facebook IPO Roadshow rolls on, the company is trying a bunch of experiments — both to search for new revenue streams and to maintain the buzz. One of them is paying $2 to have your post highlighted.

The numbers in the story don’t surprise me. Typically a Facebook user’s posts are only seen by around 12% of their followers, depending on whether Facebook’s secret-sauce algorithm decides whether you’re a sufficiently close friend or the topic is of sufficient interest to the viewer.

Why not let people pay money to change that?

I could tell from the tone of his voice that ABC 702 Sydney host Richard Glover did not approve.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:04 — 4.7MB)

05 May 201205 May 2012

Talking the risks of unsecured Wi-Fi on 1395 FIVEaa

News that the Queensland Police is once again war-driving to find unsecured Wi-Fi networks is doing the rounds, and I ended up talking about the risks with Keith Conlon and John Kenneally on Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa on Wednesday morning.

Here’s the audio, and I reckon you can hear very clearly that I had a very bad cold.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:05 — 4.3MB)