Whether you’re working in cybersecurity or acting as your own tech support at home, you’ve probably heard about firewalls. A properly configured firewall acts like a fastidious border guard, making all the little data packets show their credentials before they can enter the country - er, the computer. In this episode, we’ll learn about the history of firewalls (including where that name came from), how they work, and how they’ve adapted from the days of big hair to the era of big data.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, fast food giant McDonald’s teamed up with iconic board game Monopoly to run a promotion that lured customers with prizes ranging from a free small fries to a million dollars in cash. Pairing fast food with a game that’s famous for taking hours and straining family relationships might not seem like an obvious choice, but it generated a ton of buzz in the U.S. It all ended in scandal when the FBI charged the head of security for the contest with fraud and conspiracy for rigging the game. We’ll talk about how he dunnit, and what it teaches us about basic infosec principles.

Welcome to part two of Hacker Summer Camp, reviewing the highlights of hacking conventions our hosts attended this summer. Ymir and Hackalope share what they learned on a range of topics, from updates in the field of satellite and spacecraft security, cloud service event logging, and newly discovered vulnerabilities in keycard security systems. They also discuss how the hype cycle is distorting our understanding of AIs capabilities, and why humans are uniquely bad at distinguishing between writing generated by people and large language models.

At this year’s annual Black Hat convention in Las Vegas, artificial intelligence was top of mind for attendees and presenters alike. Join us as Hackalope recounts the talks and topics that got his brain churning. We discuss using AI in incursion and defense, and how it works as a modeling tool. We also talk about how the cost of cyber defense is straining budgets at smaller organizations, and a new wrinkle in the history of systems that are hard to get to, but easy to crack.

We’ve Been Trying To Reach You About Your Firewall’s Extended Warranty

Voice over IP (or VoIP) lets a user make phone calls over a computer data connection rather than a phone line. This union of computing and calling enables lots of flexibility and fancy features, but it also makes phone calling vulnerable to all the security challenges of being on the Internet. We’re talking about the protocols and infrastructure of VoIP this week, and why phone fraud that doesn’t compromise a computer system can still be an infosec issue.

One of the main features of the Cold War was the great lengths the United States and Soviet Union went to gather intelligence about each other. Few of those went further than the U-2, a US spy plane so secret that its pilots were issued suicide pills, and so advanced that it could take detailed photographs from an altitude above most anti-aircraft defenses. This week, we’re talking about what happened when the Soviets finally managed to shoot down a U-2, and captured the plane and its pilot, Gary Powers, mostly intact.

In the constant arms race between cybersecurity and hackers, law enforcement is a huge player. Without effective oversight, programs they deploy to investigate potential crimes can easily be used for illegal mass surveillance, or to target and punish political dissent. This week we’re talking about the NSO Group, a vendor whose tools have emboldened law enforcement agencies, and also enabled human rights abuses by governments around the world.

Google has arguably the most comprehensive index of all the publicly identifiable websites, files, and servers that are available on the Internet. Inevitably, that’s going to include evidence of security vulnerabilities that might be turned up by the right search query. A “dork” is a specialized search string that can zero in on interesting results. Some of these are just curiosities, but others can hint at weaknesses for bad actors to exploit. This week, we’re talking about the development of Google Dorks alongside attempts to limit their utility for evil.

During the Cold War, information about the enemy's nuclear arsenal was a top priority for intelligence operations. Force deployment, base construction, and untold billions of dollars in weapons development all turned on how many nukes each side had pointed at the other. So what did military, intelligence, and political officials do when they couldn’t be sure of those all-important numbers? They made guesses that ranged from educated to outright exaggerated. This week, we’re talking about just how wrong our tally of the tools of armageddon actually was.

The mid-90’s to the end of the 2000’s is a fascinating period in the cat-and-mouse history of viruses and the methods to defend against them. Dozens of vulnerabilities were identified, exploited, and (mostly) fixed. New attack vectors were opened up as well, many of which are still with us today. Various countries started taking steps to criminalize viral attacks, cybersecurity became a real industry, and virus programmers went from pulling high-profile pranks to extorting billions through ransomware and fraud. Join us as we walk through some of the biggest milestone moments.