Root Causes: A PKI and Security Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Root Causes 97: Firefox to Deprecate Support for FTP Jun 04, 2020

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Mozilla has announced its intention to remove support for FTP from the Firefox browser, citing concerns about security and the degree of effort required to keep this functionality current. Join our hosts as they discuss this announcement and its potential effects as well as the considerations that go into choosing when to drop support for outdated, unpopular, or sub-optimal capabilities in technology products.

Root Causes 96: Signal May Leave the USA to Protect Its End-to-End Encryption Jun 01, 2020

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Congress's proposed EARN IT act has many industry observers worried about its potential effect on the integrity of encrypted communication. In recent news, secure communication app Signal has floated the idea of relocating outside the United States if that's what's required to retain its ability to offer end-to-end encryption without spying eyes interfering.

In this week's episode, we discuss this announcement and related issues surrounding the keeping of digital secrets and encryption.

Root Causes 95: Cryptographic Key Vaulting May 28, 2020

Show notes

For PKI to be secure, private keys need to remain private. In this episode we explain "vaulting" for keys or other shared secrets. We touch on the vulnerabilities that secrets vaulting fights against and the common use cases for vaulting.

Root Causes 94: Revocation Checking Through OCSP and CRL May 26, 2020

Show notes

One essential portion of the certificate lifecycle is the ability to revoke certificates. Public SSL certificates use a pair of mechanisms to communicate this revocation status to client machines, CRL and OCSP. In this episode we explain how these mechanisms work and some of their strengths and challenges.

Root Causes 93: Videoconferencing Phishing May 21, 2020

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With the global workforce's massive shift to work-from-home, a clever new set of opportunistic social engineering attacks has sprung up to take advantage of our unfamiliarity with our new communication and collaboration applications and processes. In this episode our hosts describe these new attacks and what IT departments can do to combat them.

Root Causes 92: COVID-19 Immunity Passports May 18, 2020

Show notes

As we plan our societal return to normalcy, a number of people and groups are discussing the concept of an electronic "immunity passport" that individuals can possess if they are known to be immune to COVID-19 (possibly through vaccination or prior infection). Today our hosts discuss the requirements for such an immunity passport, some of the opportunities and challenges in putting this kind of system in place, and how existing schemes and systems may fit into an immunity passport initiative.

Root Causes 91: Rabobank Banking App Outage May 13, 2020

Show notes

Australia's Rabobank recently experienced an outage preventing its Android banking app from connecting to its servers. The root cause? An expired certificate. In this episode our hosts explain what happened and how it could have been avoided. They also discuss certificate pinning, how it came to be used with apps like this one, and its disadvantages.

Root Causes 90: An Analysis of Distributed PKI May 10, 2020

Show notes

Distributed PKI is a new approach, with advocates saying it will eliminate many weaknesses they perceive with traditional, hierarchical PKI architecture. Guest Alan Grau joins our hosts at they explain how distributed PKI works, describe its proclaimed benefits, and take a hard look at whether or not these claims hold up.

Root Causes 89: PKI's Role in Zero Trust May 07, 2020

Show notes

"Zero Trust" is an IT security philosophy that maximizes protection from threats by tightly controlling access and permissions for every individual, device, and process in the organization's environment. Learn how digital identity and certificates play a key role in operating a secure Zero Trust strategy.

Root Causes 88: PKI and Blockchain May 04, 2020

Show notes

Many observers notice similarities between PKI and blockchain, including their applicability to secure digital systems and their ability to enable authentic information and non-repudiation in an electronic environment. Join our hosts and expert guest Alan Grau as they go over the similarities and differences between PKI and blockchain, explain the qualities of a good use case for each, and describe how they can complement each other.

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