Mastodon

Disqus and the disappearing comments (which still exist)

Update (just a couple of hours later): We're fixed! By all means, read the background it you're having similar problems or jump to the bottom for the solution. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm writing this post because I've pretty much exhausted all other avenues. I'm out of ideas. I'm stumped. I'm also missing a truckload of Disqus comments that should be appearing on many of the blog posts I've just migrated. Let me explain what I've done...

It's a new blog!

It's been 434 blog posts over six and a half years. It's gone from being excited about a hundred visitors in a week to hundreds of thousands on a big day. It's taken me from a hobby to a career. In so many ways, this blog has defined who I am and what I do today but finally, it was time for a change. You're now reading an all new blog in an all new design on an all new platform. The content is the only thing that remains and I've literally rebuilt everything from the ground up over the last few...

When a nation is hacked: Understanding the ginormous Philippines data breach

Remember when OPM got breached last year [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach]? There was a lot of excitement in various parts of the world (namely the US) because here we had a government department (Office of Personnel Management), and they’d just lost 21.5 million records! These records included such sensitive data as names, dates of birth and addresses and by any reasonable measure, it was serious – that’s almost 7% of the country’s population! Yet some...

Lenovo P50 and my dislike of high DPI displays (for now)

A little while back, I wrote about how Lenovo were sending me some things as part of their Insiders program [https://www.troyhunt.com/2016/02/kids-and-code-simple-programming-on.html] which meant getting to use a number of machines I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about otherwise. The Yoga 900 in that blog post, for example, is not something I would have normally considered for myself as I like a physically larger, gruntier machine yet it’s turned out to be one of the best laptops I’ve eve...

Have I been pwned, opting out, VTech and general privacy things

It’s now going on two and a half years since I launched Have I been pwned [https://haveibeenpwned.com/] (HIBP) and I’m continually amazed by how much has happened in that time. It started out with a “mere” 152M breached records and has now more than doubled in volume, I’ve added an API, notifications, domain searches, pastes and a heap of other things both visible to the public and behind the scenes. It’s also gone from a hobby project which I thought only a few curious technology people would v...

MVP, round 6!

Each year since 2011, on April first (yeah, I know…), I’ve looked for one of these to land in my inbox and fortunately, this year didn’t disappoint: The MVP program has been an enormously fulfilling thing to be a part of these last five years. It’s been great for the connections I’ve made, the access to folks in Microsoft and the community engagements it’s lead to, particularly in my post-corporate life as an independent. Now yes, I’ve been misquoted as “Troy Hunt from Microsoft” many, many t...

The world needs more stupid security researchers – join me!

I love this Google Play store review of the NissanConnect app which had such terrible security issues recently [https://www.troyhunt.com/2016/02/controlling-vehicle-features-of-nissan.html]: > I may print and frame this: pic.twitter.com/P0hu7E08GQ [https://t.co/P0hu7E08GQ] — Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) March 17, 2016 [https://twitter.com/troyhunt/status/710604327186931712] I join a long line of stupid security folks who’ve messed things up for other people. Sometimes people have been unable to purc...

New Pluralsight course: Ethical Hacking, Denial of Service

I’ve just launched my latest Pluralsight course titled Ethical Hacking, Denial of Service [https://app.pluralsight.com/library/courses/ethical-hacking-denial-service/table-of-contents] but before I explain what’s in it, let’s kick off with some trivia: DDoS attacks have increased massively in size in recent years: This is from Arbor Networks’ latest Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report [https://www.arbornetworks.com/images/documents/WISR2016_EN_Web.pdf] and that was current in October wh...

Understanding CSRF, the video tutorial edition

Cross site request forgery is one of those attacks which remains enormously effective yet is frequently misunderstood. I’ve been running a bunch of security workshops for web developers around the globe recently and this is one of the topics we cover that often results in blank stares when I first ask about it. It usually unfolds that the developers have multiple resources at risk of a CSRF attack and if it’s not a classic web form style resource, then it’s frequently an API somewhere (you’re pa...

Request for feedback: Organisations using “Have I been pwned” data

Working on Have I been pwned [https://haveibeenpwned.com/] (HIBP), I come across a lot of interesting things. Interesting people dealing in data breaches, interesting vulnerabilities in systems which have been compromised and interesting requests from people wanting the data. In fact, I was getting so many requests for data I ended up writing No, I cannot share data breaches with you [https://www.troyhunt.com/2015/10/no-i-cannot-share-data-breaches-with-you.html] where I very explicitly laid out...