Paul Ducklin joined me from Sydney this week as we both returned home from a long and rewarding trip to InfoSec Europe.
While the news has been dominated by the recent attack on Sony Computer Entertainment, we started off talking about the actions the US government took against the Coreflood botnet. The news was largely positive, but it does allow broadened powers for the police that include actions some feel could further harm the victims.
When the topic of DSLReports, Sony and other data leakage incidents came up, our conclusions were ultimately in alignment. While these incidents are important and may draw our attention to the problem, these losses are only a small part of what Paul likes to call the “death of a million cuts.”
On the topic of the supposed “Stars” virus, which Iran claims is a second stage Stuxnet virus, the conclusion was the same. Even if this “Stars” virus is real, and is a concern for Iran, in the meantime the rest of us are being hit with a barrage of cyber-crap that is having real impact on our lives.
No story is complete without some comment on Facebook and Chet Chat 58 is no exception. Aside from the usual list of attacks and scams, it appears that their DMCA takedown process and other pieces of their self-defense mechanisms are easily manipulated. Ars Technica’s Facebook page was arbitrarily deleted this week based on a DMCA claim that no one has yet been able to explain.
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(28 April 2011, duration 18:37 minutes, size 12.6MBytes)
You can also download this podcast directly in MP3 format: Sophos Security Chet Chat 58.
