Weekly update

Somehow, an hour and a half went by in the blink of an eye this week. The Spoutible incident just has so many interesting aspects to it: loads of data that should never be returned publicly, awesome response time to the disclosure, lacklustre transparency in their disclosure, some really fundamental misunderstands about hashing algorithms and a controversy-laden past if you read back over events of the last year. Phew! No wonder so much time went on this! (and if you want to just jump directly t...

I told ya so. Right from the beginning, it was pretty obvious what "MOAB" was probably going to be and sure enough, this tweet came true: Interesting find by @MayhemDayOne, wonder if it was from a shady breach search service (we’ve seen a bunch shut down over the years)? Either way, collecting and storing this data is now trivial so not a big surprise to see someone screw up their permissions and (re)leak it all. https://t.co/DM7udeUcRk — Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) January 22, 2024 What I didn...

I spent longer than I expected talking about Trello this week, in part because I don't feel the narrative they presented properly acknowledges their responsibility for the incident and in part because I think the impact of scraping in general is misunderstood. I suspect many of us are prone to looking at this in a very binary fashion: if the data is publicly accessible anyway, scraping it poses no risk. But in my view, there's a hell of a big difference between say, looking at one person's perso...

They're an odd thing, credential lists. Whether they're from a stealer as in this week's Naz.API incident, or just aggregated from multiple data breaches (which is also in Naz.API), I inevitably get some backlash after loading them: "this doesn't tell me anything useful, why are you loading this?!" The answer is easy: because that's what the vast majority of people want me to do: If I have a MASSIVE spam list full of personal data being sold to spammers, should I load it into @haveibeenpwned?...

Geez it's nice to be back in Oslo! This city has such a special place in my heart for so many reasons, not least of which by virtue of being Charlotte's home town we have so many friends and family here. Add in NDC Security this week with so many more mutual connections, beautiful snowy weather, snowboarding, sledging and even curling, it's just an awesome time. Awesome enough to still be here for the next weekly update so until then, I'll leave you with the pics I promised at the end of this we...

It's another weekly update from the other side of the world with Scott and I in Rome as we continue a bit of downtime before hitting NDC Security in Oslo next week. This week, Scott's sharing details of how he and Joe Tiedman registered a domain Capelli Sport let lapse and now have their JavaScript running on the websites shopping cart page (check your browser console after loading that link) 😲 That's not the crazy bit though, the crazy bit is the months they've spent trying to disclose this to...

We're in Paris! And feeling proper relaxed after several days of wine and cheese too, I might add. This was a very impromptu end of 2023 weekly update as we balanced family time with doing the final video for the year. On the cyber side, the constant theme over the last week has been ransomware; big firms, little firms, Aussie firms, American firms - it's just completely indiscriminate. Anecdotally, this seems to have really ramped up over 2023 so on that basis, 2024 will bring... well, let's wa...

It's that time of the year again, time to head from the heat to the cold as we jump on the big plane(s) back to Europe. The next 4 weekly updates will all be from places of varying degrees colder than home, most of them done with Scott Helme too so they'll be a little different to usual. For now, here's a pretty casual Christmas edition, see you next week from the other side 🙂 References 1. Sponsored by: Unpatched devices keeping you up at night? Kolide can get your entire fleet updated...

I'd say the balloon fetish segment was the highlight of this week's video. No, seriously, it's a moment of levity in an otherwise often serious industry. It's still a bunch of personal info exposed publicly and that suchs regardless of the nature of the site, but let's be honest, the subject matter did make for some humorous comments 🤣 References 1. Sponsored by: Identity theft isn’t cheap. Secure your family with Aura the #1 rated proactive protection that helps keep you safe online. G...

10 years later... 🤯 Seriously, how did this thing turn into this?! It was the humblest of beginning with absolutely no expectations of anything, and now it's, well, massive! I'm a bit lost for words if I'm honest, I hope the chat with Charlotte adds some candour to this week's update, she's seen this thing grow since before its first birthday, through the hardest times and the best times and now lives and breathes HIBP day in day out with me. I hope you enjoy this video, and we'd both love to h...