Security

I can't recall if someone else originally came up with this saying or if I said it in some off-the-cuff comment and it just propagated, but since it's often attributed back to me, I'll relay it here regardless: Trying to delete yourself from the internet is like trying to take piss out of a swimming pool Depending on the publication, I'll tailor the saying to be either more broadly palatable or more, uh, "Australian", but the sentiment doesn't change: once data spreads on the internet, you can...

Let me start by very simply explaining the problem we're trying to solve with passkeys. Imagine you're logging on to a website like this: And, because you want to protect your account from being logged into by someone else who may obtain your username and password, you've turned on two-factor authentication (2FA). That means that even after entering the correct credentials in the screen above, you're now prompted to enter the six-digit code from your authenticator app: There are a few differen...

It's hard to find a good criminal these days. I mean a really trustworthy one you can be confident won't lead you up the garden path with false promises of data breaches. Like this guy yesterday: For my international friends, JB Hi-Fi is a massive electronics retailer down under and they have my data! I mean by design because I've bought a bunch of stuff from them, so I was curious not just about my own data but because a breach of 12 million plus people would be massive in a country of not muc...

The conundrum I refer to in the title of this post is the one faced by a breached organisation: disclose or suppress? And let me be even more specific: should they disclose to impacted individuals, or simply never let them know? I'm writing this after many recent such discussions with breached organisations where I've found myself wishing I had this blog post to point them to, so, here it is. Let's start with tackling what is often a fundamental misunderstanding about disclosure obligations, an...

I decided to write this post because there's no concise way to explain the nuances of what's being described as one of the largest data breaches ever. Usually, it's easy to articulate a data breach; a service people provide their information to had someone snag it through an act of unauthorised access and publish a discrete corpus of information that can be attributed back to that source. But in the case of National Public Data, we're talking about a data aggregator most people had never heard o...

Last week, I wrote about The State of Data Breaches and got loads of feedback. It was predominantly sympathetic to the position I find myself in running HIBP, and that post was mostly one of frustration: lack of disclosure, standoffish organisations, downplaying breaches and the individual breach victims themselves making it worse by going to town on the corporate victims. But the other angle that's been milling around in my brain is the one represented by the image here: Running HIBP has b...

I've been harbouring some thoughts about the state of data breaches over recent months, and I feel they've finally manifested themselves into a cohesive enough story to write down. Parts of this story relate to very sensitive incidents and parts to criminal activity, not just on behalf of those executing data breaches but also very likely on behalf of some organisations handling them. As such, I'm not going to refer to any specific incidents or company names, rather I'm going to speak more gener...

I hate having to use that word - "alleged" - because it's so inconclusive and I know it will leave people with many unanswered questions. (Edit: 12 days after publishing this blog post, it looks like the "alleged" caveat can be dropped, see the addition at the end of the post for more.) But sometimes, "alleged" is just where we need to begin and over the course of time, proper attribution is made and the dots are joined. We're here at "alleged" for two very simple reasons: one is that AT&T is sa...

Ever hear one of those stories where as it unravels, you lean in ever closer and mutter “No way! No way! NO WAY!” This one, as far as infosec stories go, had me leaning and muttering like never before. Here goes: Last week, someone reached out to me with what they claimed was a Spoutible data breach obtained by exploiting an enumerable API. Just your classic case of putting someone else's username in the URL and getting back data about them, which at first glance I assumed was another scraping...

Imagine you wanted to buy some shit on the internet. Not the metaphorical kind in terms of "I bought some random shit online", but literal shit. Turds. Faeces. The kind of thing you never would have thought possible to buy online until... Shitexpress came along. Here's a service that enables you to send an actual piece of smelly shit to "An irritating colleague. School teacher. Your ex-wife. Filthy boss. Jealous neighbour. That successful former classmate. Or all those pesky haters." But it woul...