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Weekly Update 111

On my first attempt at recording this, I decided the framing was crooked after a couple of minutes so I started again. On my second attempt, the PC BSOD'd after 42 mins and I thought I'd lost all the audio. I hadn't, so on the third attempt I completed the last of it. Then I waited nearly an hour for it to render before realising there was unedited material at the beginning so I had to re-render the whole thing again. This is on top of one of my screens refusing to go beyond 480p today and a wee...

Weekly Update 110

I'm home! And home for another 6 weeks at that which is rather exciting if I'm honest. Travel really takes its toll in so many ways and I'm really looking forward to just having a bunch of time to code, blog and jet ski (not necessarily ordered by priority). But even without having had time to blog, there's a heap of material this week including the SIBOS conference, HIBP (apparently) being a top site that's "shaped the web", people losing their minds over sex toy privacy and EV certificates, W...

Weekly Update 109

Last one before home time! But it has been an epic trip and as I say in the video, this is by far my most enjoyable trip to the US yet after probably a dozen over the last few years (that includes Hawaii, too). Given the interest after my pointing out a couple of little differences in the US compared to the rest of the world last week, after the usual tech and infosec intro this week I decided to focus a big whack of this week's video on what some of differences look like. Other than that, ther...

Weekly Update 108

I'm in Texas! And I've had enough BBQ to last me a very long time. I'm here doing a couple of speaking events and other related things as well as taking some time out with my wife to see the sites. As such, it's a bit quieter this week but there's still a couple of things I reckon are worthy of discussion. Just before jumping on the plane over here I pushed out a blog post on how my approach to callbacks in HIBP broke Mozilla's service which in turn broke my Azure Function. This was one of thos...

Breaking Azure Functions with Too Many Connections

For the most part, Have I Been Pwned [https://haveibeenpwned.com/] (HIBP) runs very smoothly, especially given how cheaply I run many parts of the service for [https://www.troyhunt.com/serverless-to-the-max-doing-big-things-for-small-dollars-with-cloudflare-workers-and-azure-functions/] . Occasionally though, I screw up and get something wrong that interrupts the otherwise slick operation and results in some outage. Last weekend was one such occasion and I want to explain what I got wrong, how y...

Weekly Update 107

It's another "business as usual" week; past events, upcoming events, major security news, someone forgetting to renew a certificate and a new Pluralsight course. Actually, thinking about it more, this is possibly the most normal week I can remember, which is kinda disconcerting considering the (potential) impact of some of that news. Next week I'll be back in the US and in Texas so the schedule may be a little erratic, but I'll do what I can to pump out another update on time and with more of t...

New Pluralsight Course: Adapting to the New Normal: Embracing a Security Culture of Continual Change

I take more pleasure than I probably should in watching the bewilderment within organisations as the technology landscape rapidly changes and rushes ahead of them. Perhaps "pleasure" isn't the right word, is it more "amusement"? Or even "curiosity"? Whichever it is, I find myself rhetorically asking "so you just expected everything to stay the same forever, did you?" A case in point: you should look for the green padlock on a website so that you know it's safe. Except that you can't say that an...

Weekly Update 106

Home again! Another NDC is down and I talk a little about how the talks were rated and about PubConf [https://pubconf.io/] (make sure you get to one of these one day!) I've got another couple of weeks at home before any more travel and I'll talk more about the next things as they draw closer. This week, I'm on my new iPhone (which is very similar to my old iPhone), I'm talking about Uber getting fined, Cloudflare introducing some very cool new things, Firefox Monitor launching on top of the HIB...

Mmm... Pi-hole...

I have a love-hate relationship with ad blockers. On the one hand, I despise the obnoxious ads that are forced down our throats at what seems like every turn. On the other hand, I appreciate the need for publishers to earn a living so that I can consume their hard-earned work for free. Somewhere in the middle is a responsible approach, for example the sponsorship banner you see at the top of this blog. Companies I choose to partner with get to appear there and they get themselves 140 characters...

Weekly Update 105

It's another day-late weekly update courtesy of another hectic week. Scott and I were at NDC Sydney doing a bunch of talks and other events and I just simply didn't get time to push this out until sitting at the airport waiting for the plan home. This week's update is a little different as we did it at SSW's [https://www.ssw.com.au] recording setup in front of a live audience. Better video, better audio and some questions asked in the process too. Other than that, it's business as usual: more k...