The theme this week is China’s growing confidence in using cyberweapons in new and sophisticated ways, as the US struggles to find an answer to China’s growing ambition to dominate technology. Our interview guest, Chris Bing of Reuters, talks about his deep dive story on Chinese penetration of managed service providers like HP Enterprise – penetration that allowed them access to hundreds of other companies that rely on managed service providers for most of their IT. Most chilling for the customers are strong suggestions that the providers often didn’t provide notice of the intrusions to their customers – or that the providers’ contracts may have prevented their customers from launching quick and thorough investigations when their own security systems detected anomalous behavior originating with the providers. Chris also tells the story of an apparent “Five Eyes” intrusion into Yandex, the big Russian search engine.

Continue Reading Episode 270: China’s cyber offense comes of age

If you’ve lost the Germans on privacy, you’ve lost Europe, and maybe the world. That’s the lesson that emerges from my conversation with David Kris and Paul Rosenzweig about the latest declaration that the German interior minister wants to force messaging apps to decrypt chats. This comes at the same time that industry and civil society groups are claiming that GCHQ’s “ghost proposal” for breaking end-to-end encryption should be rejected. The paper, signed by all the social media giants, says that GCHQ’s proposal will erode the trust that users place in Silicon Valley. I argue that that argument is well past its sell-by date.
Continue Reading Episode 266: Will an end to social media trust mean an end to end-to-end encryption?

In the News Roundup, Nick Weaver and I offer very different assessments of Australia’s controversial encryption bill. Nick’s side of the argument is bolstered by Denise Howell, the original legal podcaster, with 445 weekly episodes of This Week in Law to her credit.

Later in the program, I interview Rep. Jim Langevin (D-RI), who’s a force for cybersecurity both on the Homeland Security Committee and on the Armed Services subcommittee that oversees Cyber Command and DARPA – a subcommittee that insiders expect him to be chairing in the next Congress.

Continue Reading Episode 243: Tech World Turned Upside Down Down Under

Episode 154:  What cybersecurity experts tell their Moms about computer security

In this week’s episode, we ask two acknowledged NSA cybersecurity experts, Curtis Dukes and Tony Sager, both from the Center for Internet Security, what they tell their family members about how to keep their computers, phones, and doorbells safe from hackers.

Joining us

In this episode, Stewart Baker goes to RSA and interviews the people that everyone at RSA is hoping to sell to – CISOs. In particular, John “Four” Flynn of Uber, Heather Adkins of Google, and Troels Oerting of Barclays Bank. We ask them what trends at RSA give them hope for the future, which make

We ask Rihanna to sum up the latest US-EU agreement:

And that’s when you need me there
With you I’ll always share …
You can stand under my umbrella

RiRi’s got the theory right:  The Umbrella Agreement was supposed to make sure the US and EU would always share law enforcement data.  But when the

We couldn’t resist.  This week’s topic is of course President-elect Trump and what his election could mean for All Things Cyber.  It features noted cybercommentator Paul Rosenzweig and Daily Beast reporter Shane Harris. 

In the news, we’re reminded of the old Wall Street saying that bulls and bears can both make money in the market