Security Now - 16k MP3

This week we look into last week's critical Chrome update and also cover the wackiest-but-true Chrome extension of all time. We look at Google's new funding of Linux security development; a surprisingly undead, long-unheard-from media player that just received a massive collection of updates; and, yes, still another way of abusing Intel's latest processor microarchitecture. We need to update everyone on our Dependency Confusion topic from two weeks back because there's big news there. We have several bits of identical listener feedback all wanting to be sure that I knew something had happened. Then we're going to cover the world's latest global crisis which we first mentioned as breaking news in the middle of last week's podcast. It was breaking then. It's badly broken now.

This week we discuss a welcome change coming soon to the Chrome browser, and a welcome evolution in last week's just released Firefox 86. We're going to look at questions surrounding the source of the original intrusion into SolarWinds servers, and at a new severity-10 vulnerability affecting Rockwell Automation PLC controllers. We'll touch on VMware's current trouble with exploitation of their vCenter management system, and I want to share a recent code debugging experience I think our listeners will enjoy and find interesting. Then we're going to conclude with some information about something that's been going on quietly out of sight and under the covers which must be made as widely public among web technologists as possible.

This week we'll follow-up on the Android SHAREit app sale. We look at a clever new means of web browser identification and tracking and at a little mistake the Brave browser made that had big effect. I want to remind our listeners about the ubiquitous presence of tracking and viewing beacons in virtually all commercial eMail today. We'll look at Microsoft's final SolarWinds Solorigate report and at another example of the growing trend of mobile apps being sold and then having their trust abused. I'll share a post from the weekend about a dramatic improvement in SSD performance after running SpinRite, but also why you may wish to hold off on doing so yourself. And then we're going to look at what everyone will agree was -- and perhaps still is -- a breathtaking oversight in the way today's complex software products are assembled which creates an inherent massive vulnerability across the entire software industry.

This week we'll begin by following up on last week's headline-making attack on the Oldsmar, Florida water treatment plant with new details that have since come to light. We'll then take a look into last week's Patch Tuesday event and at some of the sadly broken things that have once again been fixed. Also, anyone using Adobe's PDF tools, Acrobat or Reader, needs to update. We're going to look at a dangerous Android App with 1.8 billion (with a "b") users, and at Microsoft's note about the rise of web shells, which dovetails nicely into this week's WordPress add-on disaster. I'll briefly update about my past eventful week with SpinRite, which includes a 25-second movie of new SpinRite code running. Then we'll take a look at the recent discovery of the largest list of email and password combinations ever compiled, and what we can each do about it.

This week we begin with a collection of interesting and engaging news surrounding Google's Chrome browser. We look at a high-profile Windows Defender misfire, and at new WordPress plugin nightmares. We check in on the world of DDoS attacks and cover the meaning of three new critical vulnerabilities in SolarWinds software. We have a bit of closing-the-loop feedback from our listeners, an update on my work toward the next SpinRite, and then we look at a near-miss disaster in a poorly designed industrial control system.

This week we examine another instance of a misbehaving certificate authority losing Chrome's trust. We cover a number of serious new vulnerabilities including an urgent update need for the just-released Gnu Privacy Guard; another supply chain attack against end users; a disastrous 10-year-old flaw in Linux's SUDO command; and, thanks to Google, some details of Apple's quietly redesigned sandboxing of iMessage in iOS 14. I'm going to share something that I think our listeners will find quite interesting about some recent architectural decisions for SpinRite, and then we'll conclude with a look at the inevitable improvement in NAT bypassing Slipstreaming.

This week we look at the updates in release 88 of both Chrome and Edge with their evolving password manager features. We also look at two recent headshaking consequences of the hard end of life for Adobe's Flash. Ransomware gangs have added another new incentive for payment, and additional details continue emerging about last year's SolarWinds attacks. We have newly disclosed discoveries from a Google Project Zero researcher, and I spend a bit of time wondering out loud how we're ever going to change the low priority that's currently being given to serious security problems that don't directly inconvenience end users. And we finish by examining a very useful analysis of the comparative security of iOS and Android recently published by Johns Hopkins' Matthew Green and team.

This week we look at one aspect in which Chrome and Chromium differ, and then at a bit of growth news from the DuckDuckGo folks. Google's Project Zero reports on some terrific detective work, and we look at last week's Patch Tuesday. There's also Microsoft's pending change to the flaws which enabled last year's Zerologon debacle, and the NSA's interesting statement about enterprises and the DoH protocol. We look at the research that cracked the secret key out of Google's supposedly uncrackable Titan FIDO U2F dongle, and we catch up with a bit of listener feedback. Then we wrap up by looking at various aspects of the frenzy caused by WhatsApp's quite predictable move to incorporate its users' conversation metadata into Facebook's monetization ecosystem.

This week we address critical updates for Firefox and all Chromium-based browsers and a potentially unwelcome, but reversible, change coming to Firefox. We look at another new tactic being employed by ransomware gangs; an update on ransomware's profitability; a bogus-seeming announcement from Intel during yesterday's CES; and the first use, on this podcast, of the term "teledildonics." Following that, we have some residual SolarWinds news, the formation of a security screw-up crisis management group, news of the inevitable attacks on Zyxel users, the mass exodus from WhatsApp following their plans to force all metadata sharing, and a sci-fi note about "The Expanse." Then, inspired by the amazing amount of old code I have rediscovered inside SpinRite, I will take our listeners back to the roaring '80s with a look at how far we have come from DOS v3.3, whose maximum partition size was 33.5 megabytes.

This week we open the New Year taking a longer look at fewer topics since the bad guys were apparently enjoying their New Year holiday, too. So we look at an interesting kludge that's been forced upon Chrome by ill-mannered antiviral scanners. We need to warn all enterprise users of Zyxel network border security products of another recently discovered built-in backdoor. We look at the rise in IoT compromise swatting attacks and a series of new flaws and vulnerabilities in the PHP Zend and Yii frameworks. We have a quick bit of miscellany to share, then I want to explain a lot about the value of trimming SSDs and newer SMR drives. And we'll conclude by catching up with what will hopefully be the last news, for a while at least, of the disastrous SolarWinds breach and intrusions.