Lock and Code

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Roe v. Wade: How the cops can use your data Jul 17, 2022

Show notes

On June 24, that Constitutional right to choose to have an abortion was removed by the Supreme Court, and immediately, this legal story became one of data privacy. Today, countless individuals ask themselves: What surrounding activity is allowed?

Should Google be used to find abortion providers out of state? Can people write on Facebook or Instagram that they will pay for people to travel to their own states, where abortion is protected? Should people continue texting friends about their thoughts on abortion? Should they continue to use a period-tracking app? Should they switch to a different app that is now promising to technologically protect their data from legal requests? Should they clamp down on all their data? What should they do?

On this episode of the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with two experts on this intersection of data privacy and legal turmoil—Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Saira Hussain and senior staff technologist Cooper Quintin.

As Quintin explains in the podcast, while much of the focus has recently been on the use of period-tracking apps, there are so many other forms of data out there that people should protect:

"Period-tracking apps aren’t the only apps that are problematic. The fact is that the majority of apps are harvesting data about you. Location data, data that you put into the apps, personal data. And that data is being fed to data brokers, to people who sell location data, to advertisers, to analytics companies, and we’re building these giant warehouses of data that could eventually be trawled through by law enforcement for dragnet searches."

By spotlighting how benign data points—including shopping habits and locations—have already been used to reveal pregnancies and miscarriages and to potentially identify abortion-seekers, our guests explain what data could now be of interest to law enforcement, and how people at home can keep their decisions private and secure.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “SCP-x5x (Outer Thoughts)” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

When good-faith hacking gets people arrested, with Harley Geiger Jul 03, 2022

Show notes

When Lock and Code host David Ruiz talks to hackers—especially good-faith hackers who want to dutifully report any vulnerabilities they uncover in their day-to-day work—he often hears about one specific law in hushed tones of fear: the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA, is a decades-old hacking law in the United States whose reputation in the hacker community is dim. To hear hackers tell it, the CFAA is responsible not only for equipping law enforcement to imprison good-faith hackers, but it also for many of the legal threats that hackers face from big companies that want to squash their research.

The fears are not entirely unfounded.

In 2017, a security researcher named Kevin Finisterre discovered that he could access sensitive information about the Chinese drone manufacturer DJI by utilizing data that the company had inadvertently left public on GitHub. Conducting research within rules set forth by DJI's recently announced bug bounty program, Finisterre took his findings directly to the drone maker. But, after informing DJI about the issues he found, he was faced not with a bug bounty reward, but with a lawsuit threat alleging that he violated the CFAA.

Though DJI dropped its interest, as Harley Geiger, senior director for public policy at Rapid7, explained on today's episode of Lock and Code, even the threat itself can destabilize a security researcher.

"[It] is really indicative of how questions of authorization can be unclear and how CFAA threats can be thrown about when researchers don’t play ball, and the pressure that a large company like that can bring to bear on an independent researcher," Geiger said.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast, we speak with Geiger about other hacking laws can be violated when conducting security researcher, how hackers can document their good-faith intentions, and the Department of Justice's recent decision to not prosecute hackers who are only hacking for the benefits of security.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Securing the software supply chain, with Kim Lewandowski Jun 19, 2022

Show notes

At the start of the global coronavirus pandemic, nearly everyone was forced to learn about the "supply chain." Immediate stockpiling by an alarmed (and from a smaller share, opportunistic) public led to an almost overnight disappearance of hand sanitizer, bottled water, toilet paper, and face masks.

In time, those items returned to stores. But then a big ship got stuck in the Suez, and once again, we learned even more about the vulnerability of supply chains. They can handle little stress. They can be derailed with one major accident. They spread farther than we know.

While the calamity in the canal involved many lessons, there was another story in late 2020 that required careful study in cyberspace—an attack on the digital supply chain.

That year, attackers breached a network management tool called Orion, which is developed by the Texas-based company SolarWinds. Months before the attack was caught, the attackers swapped malicious code into a legitimately produced security update from SolarWinds. This malicious code gave the attackers a backdoor into every Orion customer who both downloaded and deployed the update and who had their servers connected online. Though the initial number of customers who downloaded the update was about 18,000 companies, the number of customers infected with the attackers’ malware was far lower, somewhere around 100 companies and about a dozen government agencies.

This attack, which did involve a breach of a company, had a broader focus—the many, many clients of that one company. This was an attack on the software supply chain, and since that major event, similar attacks have happened again and again.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Kim Lewandowski, founder and head of product at Chainguard, about the software supply chain, its vulnerabilities, and how we can fix it.

Show notes, resources, and credits:

Kubernetes diagram:

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/622577/170547400-ef9e2ef8-e35b-46df-adee-057cbce847d1.svg

Tor’s (security) role in the future of the Internet, with Alec Muffett Jun 05, 2022

Show notes

Tor, which stands for "The Onion Router," has a storied reputation in the world of online privacy, but on today's episode of Lock and Code with host David Ruiz, we speak with security researcher Alec Muffett about the often-undiscussed security benefits of so-called "onion networking."

The value proposition to organizations interested in using Tor goes beyond just anonymity, Muffett explains, and its a value prop that has at least persuaded the engineers at Facebook, Twitter, The New York Times, Buzzfeed, The Intercept, and The Guardian to build onion versions of their sites.

Tune in to hear about the security benefits of onion networking, why an organization would want to launch an onion site for its service, and whether every site in the future should utilize Tor.

Show notes and credits:

Why and How you should start using Onion Networking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pebRZyg_bh8

How WhatsApp uses metadata analysis for spam and abuse fighting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBTOKlrhKXk

Alec Muffett's blog and about page: https://alecmuffett.com/about

Hunting down your data with Whitney Merrill May 22, 2022

Show notes

Last year, Whitney Merrill wanted to know just how much information the company Clubhouse had on her, even though she wasn't a user. After many weeks of, at first, non-responses, she learned that her phone number had been shared with Clubhouse more than 80 times—the byproduct of her friends joining the platform. Today on Lock and Code with host David Ruiz, we speak with Merrill about why hunting down your data can be so difficult today, even though some regions have laws that specifically allow for this. We also talk about the future of data privacy and whether "data localization" will make things easier, or if it will add another layer of geopolitics to growing surveillance operations around the world.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: "Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Outro Music: “God God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Recovering from romance scams with Cindy Liebes May 08, 2022

Show notes

Earlier this year, a flashy documentary premiered on Netflix that shed light onto on often-ignored cybercrime—a romance scam. In this documentary, called The Tinder Swindler, the central scam artist relied on modern technologies, like Tinder, and he employed an entire team, which included actors posing as his bodyguard and potentially even his separated wife. After months of getting close to several women, the scam artist pounced, asking for money because he was supposedly in danger.

The public response to the documentary was muddy. Some viewers felt for the victims featured by the filmmakers, but others blamed them. This tendency to blame the victims is nothing new, but according to our guest Cindy Liebes, Chief Cybersecurity Evangelist for Cybercrime Support Network, it's all wrong. That's because, as we discuss in today's episode on Lock and Code with host David Ruiz, these scam artists are professional criminals. Today, we speak with Liebes to understand how romance scams work, who the victims are, who the criminals are, what the financial and emotional damages are, and how people can find help.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: "Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “God God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Why software has so many vulnerabilities, with Tanya Janca Apr 25, 2022

Show notes

Every few months, a basic but damaging flaw is revealed in a common piece of software, or a common tool used in many types of programs, and the public will be left asking: What is going on with how our applications are developed?

Today on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak to returning guest Tanya Janca to understand the many stages of software development and how security trainers can better work with developers to build safe, secure products.

Why data protection and privacy are not the same, and why that matters Apr 10, 2022

Show notes

Data protection, believe it or not, is not synonymous with privacy, or even data privacy. But around the world, countless members of the public often innocently misconstrue these three topics with one another, swapping the terms and the concepts behind them.

Typically, that wouldn't be a problem—not every person needs to know the minute details of every data-related concept, law, and practice. But when the public is unaware of its rights under data protection, it might be unaware of how to assert those rights. Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Gabriela Zanfir-Fortuna, the vice president for global privacy at Future of Privacy Forum, to finally clear up the air on these related topics, and to understand how US law differs from EU law, even though the US helped lead the way on data protection proposals all the way back in 1973.

Telling important stories securely, with Runa Sandvik Mar 28, 2022

Show notes

In 2017, a former NSA contractor was arrested for allegedly leaking an internal report to the online news outlet The Intercept. To verify the report itself, a journalist for The Intercept sent an image of the report to the NSA, but upon further inspection, it was revealed that the image was actually a scan of a physical document.

This difference—between an entirely digital, perhaps only-emailed document, and a physical piece of paper—spurred several suspicions that the news outlet had played an unintended role in identifying the NSA contractor to her employer, because the NSA did not have to find people who merely accessed the report, but only people who had printed it.

This is what journalism can look like in the modern age. There are countless digital traces left behind that can puncture the safety and security of both journalists and their sources. Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with security researcher Runa Sandvik about how she helps reporters tell important stories securely and privately amongst many digital threats.

De-Googling Carey Parker’s (and your) life Mar 14, 2022

Show notes

Three years ago, a journalist for Gizmodo removed five of the biggest tech companies from her life—restricting her from using services and hardware developed or owned by Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft. The experiment, according to the reporter, was "hell."

But in 2022, cybersecurity evangelist Carey Parker, who also hosts the podcast Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons, wanted to do something similar, just on a smaller scale, and with a focus on privacy. Today, on Lock and Code with host David Ruiz, we speak with Parker about lessening his own interactions with one of the biggest tech companies around: Google. Tune in to hear about privacy-preserving alternatives and unforeseen obstacles in Parker's current de-Googlization effort.

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