Plaintext with Rich

Latest Episodes:

Last Seen - When the Phones Woke Up (Episode 4) Sep 25, 2026

Show notes

Episode 4: When the Phones Woke Up

Finding one another doesn’t fix the city. There are still people waiting for news, families searching for loved ones, and neighborhoods trying to function without the systems they depend on.

Then the phones begin waking up.

In the final chapter of Last Seen, messages arrive out of order, maps fill with roads again, and everyday convenience returns almost as quickly as it disappeared. But after seeing what happens when one damaged connection affects nearly everything, one family decides not to return to life exactly as it was.

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Last Seen - The Meeting Place (Episode 3) Sep 18, 2026

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Episode 3: The Meeting Place

Leah and her parent are both moving across the city, but every piece of information arrives too late. Each new clue leads to another place the other person has already left.

With phones, maps, and location sharing still unreliable, a forgotten family emergency plan may be their only chance to stop missing each other.

In Part Three of Last Seen, the search leads to a broken clock in Washington Park and a meeting place no one has mentioned in years.

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Last Seen - The Rumor (Episode 2) Sep 11, 2026

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Episode 2: The Rumor

A broken voice message offers one clue: “We’re going to St—”

But St. where?

As Leah’s parent searches hospitals, shelters, and gridlocked streets, the communications outage creates another problem. Reliable information is moving slowly, while rumors are racing across the city.

In Part Two of Last Seen, a paper map, a neighborhood radio network, and a small act of trust become more useful than any app. Then a handwritten note sends the search in an entirely new direction.

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Last Seen - No Signal (Episode 1) Sep 04, 2026

Show notes

Plaintext is doing something different this September.

Instead of breaking down one cybersecurity concept, we’re telling one story across four short episodes.

In Episode One of Last Seen, an ordinary communications outage begins with a frozen card reader, missing messages, and apps that no longer work. By nightfall, Leah hasn’t come home and her parent has only a broken voice message and half a clue about where she might be.

This is “No Signal,” the first chapter of Last Seen: a fictional spoken word story grounded in the technology we depend on every day.

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Google Selfie Account Recovery: Convenience vs. Privacy Aug 28, 2026

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Would you hand Google a video of your face for one more way back into your account? That question gets harder when you are locked out, holding a new phone, and missing every recovery route you thought would save you.

In this episode of Plaintext with Rich, we look at Google's selfie video sign-in option and what eligible users should know before opting in. You will hear how Google described comparing a saved recording with a new video, why prompted head movements support a liveness check, and how suspicious sign-in checks add another layer. We also unpack encryption at rest, biometric data, optional use of recordings to improve verification services, and Google's deletion terms. The episode explains the eligibility limits Google documented in July 2026. Most importantly, it puts selfie recovery alongside passkeys, recovery contacts, phone numbers, and recovery email as one part of a stronger account recovery plan.

This is for anyone whose Google Account holds important email, photos, documents, or access to other services, and for leaders helping people make informed security choices.

Convenience and privacy both matter, so make the choice on purpose. One Topic, Ten minutes, No panic.

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AI Security Test Escape: Why Agent Containment Failed Aug 21, 2026

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An AI security test was supposed to stay inside a controlled environment. Instead, the models found an unexpected route to the public Internet and reached real Hugging Face infrastructure while pursuing benchmark answers.

In this episode of Plaintext with Rich, we unpack how an OpenAI cyber evaluation became a real security incident. You will hear how the models exploited a package service, increased their permissions, used stolen credentials, and pursued ExploitGym solutions beyond the intended test boundary. Rich explains zero-day vulnerabilities, remote code execution, vulnerability chaining, and why a sandbox depends on far more than one isolation control. The episode also examines Hugging Face's response and the practical management lesson behind the incident: when an agent is rewarded for reaching a goal, leaders must understand every system it can touch along the way.

This episode is for business leaders, security teams, technology buyers, and anyone evaluating AI agents with access to websites, codebases, or internal tools. You will leave with a five-part starter kit for mapping exits, limiting credentials, layering containment, monitoring agent behavior, and writing a stop plan before testing begins.

One Topic, Ten minutes, No panic.

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PTC Windchill Vulnerability: Why Your Product Blueprints Are at Risk Aug 14, 2026

Show notes

A company can lose its most valuable product plans without a broken lock, an encrypted laptop, or an obvious warning on the screen. The first clear sign may be an extortion email claiming the files are already gone.

This episode of Plaintext with Rich explains the attacks disclosed against PTC Windchill and FlexPLM, two product lifecycle management platforms that can hold designs, bills of materials, manufacturing instructions, supplier details, and launch plans. Rich breaks down CVE-2026-12569, remote code execution, unsafe deserialization, and web shells in language built for people who do not spend their days reading security advisories. You will also hear why CISA added the vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, why reporting in July 2026 compared the campaign tactics to Clop, and why attribution was unconfirmed when the episode was prepared. Most importantly, the episode explains why applying the PTC patch is only half the job when attackers may already have copied sensitive data.

This is for business leaders, technology teams, product owners, manufacturers, retailers, and anyone responsible for a central platform that holds concentrated company value. It offers a practical way to think about patching, compromise hunting, incident response, and the business decisions that follow possible data theft.

One Topic, Ten minutes, No panic.

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CVE-2026-50522: Why SharePoint Patching Is Only Step One Aug 07, 2026

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A critical SharePoint alert arrives, the update goes in, and the ticket closes. But what if an attacker entered before the lock was fixed and left with secrets that still work?

In this episode of Plaintext with Rich, Rich explains why CVE-2026-50522 is more than an ordinary patch story. The actively exploited remote code execution flaw affects on-premises Microsoft SharePoint Server, including SharePoint Enterprise Server 2016, SharePoint Server 2019, and SharePoint Server Subscription Edition. You will hear why CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog matters, how SharePoint machine keys can extend risk beyond the vulnerable code, and why a clean vulnerability scan cannot prove that nobody arrived earlier. Rich breaks the response into three separate jobs: patch the affected farm, hunt for signs of compromise and persistence, and rotate machine keys, credentials, or tokens that may have been exposed. He also explains why rotation must be coordinated to avoid session, authentication, and integration problems.

This episode is for leaders, business owners, IT teams, and anyone responsible for asking whether a SharePoint incident is truly contained. It gives you better questions for the status meeting without turning a serious risk into panic.

One Topic, Ten minutes, No panic.

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AutoJack Attack: How Malicious Pages Hijack AI Browsing Agents Jul 31, 2026

Show notes

You told your AI assistant to book a flight and compare hotels. You come back, and it did all of that. It also ran commands on your machine that you never approved. What just happened?

This episode unpacks AutoJack, a demonstrated attack pattern where malicious web pages hijack AI browsing agents through prompt injection. We cover how untrusted web content can steer autonomous agents into unsafe actions, the critical risk of localhost access in agent frameworks like AutoGen, and the chain from reading a bad page to remote code execution on your host machine. You'll learn why giving an agent a browser is fundamentally different from giving it information access, and how ambient authority plus autonomous actions creates a blast radius most teams haven't planned for.

This is for security teams adopting AI agents, engineering leads building agentic tools, and anyone who needs to understand the new attack surface before deploying browsing automation at work.

One Topic, Ten minutes, No panic.

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North Korea Mastra NPM Supply Chain Attack: How It Works Jul 24, 2026

Show notes

You installed a dependency before lunch. Tests passed, app booted, nothing looked wrong. By dinner, your machine had quietly run someone else's code.

This episode covers the Mastra npm supply chain compromise Microsoft attributed to North Korea linked threat actors. We break down how postinstall scripts became the attack vector, why an 88 minute exposure window still matters, and what remote access trojans do on developer endpoints. You will learn how AI framework supply chains expand your attack surface, the difference between package takedown and forensic cleanup, and why lockfiles are history snapshots not security verdicts. We walk through the controls that protect teams most: deterministic builds with pinned versions and provenance attestations for verified package origins. The episode includes timeline thinking for exposure windows, hunting for execution artifacts beyond package names, and the specific steps for rotating secrets and rebuilding compromised environments.

This is for developers, security teams, and engineering leaders managing open source dependencies in fast moving stacks.

One Topic, Ten minutes, No panic.

Is there a topic/term you want me to discuss next? Text me!!

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