Decipher Security Podcast

Brian Donohue of Red Canary joins Dennis Fisher to break down all the interesting talks and news from this week's Cyberwarcon conference, including Andy Greenberg's keynote on Sandworm and several sessions on influence operations.

Read Brian's research and analysis on the Red Canary blog.

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For more than 15 years, the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto has been doing groundbreaking research into a variety of security, privacy, and civil liberties threats. Ron Deibert, the founder and director of the lab, joins Dennis Fisher to talk about the team's origins, its work uncovering GhostNet and other cyberespionage operations, and the current work investigating surveillance vendors such as NSO Group and others.

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When Mr. Robot premiered in 2015 it was an immediate hit not just in the hacker community but with wider audiences, as well. The show follows the exploits of Elliot Alderson, a troubled young loner who gets involved with a small group of other hackers called F-Society and runs up against a variety of adversaries connected to the monolithic E-Corp. The show has a number of deeply technical storylines, and its creators relied on a handful of technical advisors to keep the hacking realistic, including James Plouffe, a lead architect at MobileIron. As the fourth and final season of Mr. Robot ramps up, James joined Dennis Fisher to talk about his experience working with the creators and writers of the show, Mr. Robot's effects on the culture and the challenges of portraying hacking accurately on TV. 

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Math is hard and because encryption relies on some pretty complex math, encryption is hard to get right. Kenneth White, product security lead at MongoDB and a member of the board of the Open Crypto Audit Project, joins Dennis Fisher to talk about the challenges of implementing encryption in modern environments and how shifting public policy is affecting enterprises and individual users who rely on encryption to stay safe online.

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The state of IoT security is not great, and despite increased pressure from lawmakers and regulators, vendors are actually going backward in some respects. A year-long study by the Cyber Independent Testing Lab of millions of IoT firmware binaries found that many manufacturers are removing various hardening technologies such as ASLR from their binaries over time. Dennis Fisher spoke with Parker Thompson of CITL about the results and what can be done to turn things around.

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Sometimes the most interesting careers don't follow a straight line, and that's certainly the case for Tanya Sam, the director of operations and partnerships at TechSquare Labs in Atlanta. Tanya spent years as an oncology nurse in Toronto and New York before moving to Atlanta and finding her way into the startup and security culture that thrives there and helping found a seed fund and incubator for early stage companies. As if that wasn't enough, she joined the cast of the Real Housewives of Atlanta this year, adding another layer to an already fascinating career.

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There are a lot of things you could say about Blackhat. Not many of them are kind. But of all the hacker movies that have been made, it's definitely one. It has many of the elements of a good spy thriller, and there's probably a very solid espionage movie hiding in there somewhere. It also has some pretty realistic hacking scenes, shady CIA operatives, and Thor. It's a lot, but Zoe Lindsey, Peter Baker, and Dennis Fisher are here to break it all down for you.

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Spy Game isn't explicitly a sequel to Sneakers or Three Days of the Condor, but it's certainly a spiritual successor, with all of the high-stakes espionage, double-dealing, and shady characters that made those films classics. Also: Robert Redford. Spy Game serves as a master class in social engineering and influence operations and demonstrates exactly how powerful the art of persuasion can be. This is Deciphering Spy Game. 

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Michael Coates, CEO and co-founder of cloud security startup Altitude Networks, has had a long and varied career. Beginning with a stint as a consultant breaking into banks and continuing through roles as head of security assurance at Mozilla and CISO at Twitter, he has helped protect hundreds of millions of users over the years. He spoke with Dennis Fisher about what he's learned about empowering teams, the importance of making users safe by default, and the value of solving problems one at a time. 

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