Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons Podcast
by Carey Parker
Latest episode
Amateur Radio Fun & Safety
Amateur Radio Fun & Safety
About this podcast
A Podcast on Computer Security & Privacy for Non-Techies
Episodes
The newest 50 of 506 episodes
- Amateur Radio Fun & Safety · 1 h 14 minRadio frequencies are all around us – invisible airwaves crackling with life, antennas bristling with energy. Traveling on those airwaves is information of all sorts – much of it…
- Black October · 1 h 13 minIt’s been a rough month if you work in cybersecurity. Some are calling it Black October. Today we’ll talk about two of the major security events: PHP2Shell and eMudhra’s TLS…
- DROP Your Data · 1 h 6 minAs with many consumer protection laws, California is leading the way with regard to data privacy. In recent years, with the Delete Act and the DROP tool (Delete Request and…
- Build Your Own Apps with AI · 1 h 19 minIn the past, we’ve been told that “there’s an app for that” – meaning, if you search the app store, surely you can find a pre-existing app that does what you’re looking for. But…
- IP Reputation Laundering · 55 minResidential proxy networks have become very popular ways for bad guys to launder their illicit activities through our normal home network traffic. By mixing in their traffic with…
- Hold Off on Muse · 55 minMeta has released a very powerful new AI agent app called Muse. Likewise, OpenAI has released a similar app called Dots. Both apps feature charming, friendly and decidedly…
- Here’s to 500!! · 1 h 32 minToday marks an incredible milestone for this podcast: 500 episodes! Not only is that a crazy long run for any podcast, but I’ve also been astonishingly consistent. I’ve managed…
- Solving the AI Paradox · 1 h 3 minIn the last week, many news organizations have breathlessly covered the “AI doomer” comments by a former Anthropic employee, who said that many of his colleagues were secretly…
- Obscuring the Exit · 1 h 4 minWhile we do have some state privacy laws in the US that require companies to allow you to opt out of data collection, these companies have devised clever ways to make these…
- Use a Secure Wi-Fi Router · 1 h 21 minProbably the single most important device on your home network in terms of security is your Wi-Fi router. In most cases, it’s the only thing between all your networked devices…
- Supply Chain Attacks · 1 h 15 minSoftware apps today are a hodgepodge of libraries, software development kits, and third party code, all stitched together like Frankenstein's monster. Furthermore, software…
- Digital Citizen: Phase 2 · 1 h 6 minAs part of my celebration of the upcoming 500th podcast, I'm launching Phase 2 of my "cyber neighbor" campaign to both help as many people be more secure and private as possible…
- DEF CON 34 · 1 h 27 minIt's August, which means it's time for Hacker Summer Camp once again! I flew out to a sweltering Las Vegas, Nevada, to attend two of the three major cybersecurity ("hacker")…
- AI Tech Support: Trust, but Verify · 1 h 13 minOne of the most underrated uses for modern chatbots, in my estimation, is tech support. I don't mean the chatbots offered by product websites, I mean using one of the "frontier"…
- Top Cyber Threats 2026 · 1 h 11 minWith so many cyber threats to report on, it's easy to get lost in the weeds. It's good to take a step back and look at the big picture every so often. Today, I'll review some of…
- Update All the Things · 1 h 14 minOver the last 2-3 months, large software makers such as Microsoft have been releasing tons of fixes for vulnerabilities in their apps and operating systems. Did their software…
- Digital Provenance · 1 h 6 minWith modern AI tools, how do we know which images and videos are real and which ones are generated? Wouldn't it be helpful to have some digitally verifiable way to tell where…
- Countdown to Episode 500! · 58 minIt's time to start the official countdown to my 500th podcast episode! I've been publishing a podcast every single week for over nine years now, which is a rather amazing…
- Defending Device Data · 1 h 12 minOur Constitutional rights were written without any concept of modern technology such as cell phones and the internet. Much of our privacy laws are still geared towards the…
- We Can Do This · 1 h 4 minWith the 500th podcast and America's 250th anniversary approaching, I've been doing a lot of thinking about how we can be better digital neighbors and digital citizens. We're all…
- A More Personal AI · 1 h 6 minMost of the chatbots in the news today are trained on public data (often including copyrighted data). But it doesn't have to be that way. What if you had a chatbot that could…
- Backup Your Email Archive · 1 h 9 minIn the final part of my series on downloading all of your historical emails from the cloud, we’ll make backups of your archive and make sure we store them in multiple places…
- Transaction Denied · 1 h 5 minWhat would you do if you suddenly lost your bank account - and potentially access to all your funds? What about your credit cards? How long could your business stay afloat if you…
- Verify Your Email Archive · 1 h 2 minAs part of my ongoing series on creating a full backup of all your old emails, we want to take some time to verify that we got everything okay. In today's Tip of the Week, I'll…
- Bossware & Boundaries · 1 h 12 minWhen you're working for your employer, no matter where you are, you're on company time, using company equipment. Your employer has a responsibility to protect their assets - not…
- Download All Your Emails · 1 h 11 minIn the next phase of withdrawing our email data from the cloud, we're going to download a complete archive of every email we've ever sent. It's not as easy as it should be, but…
- Cindy Cohn: Privacy’s Defender · 1 h 11 minCindy Cohn has been on the front lines, defending your digital rights, for three decades. With the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), she has litigated several seminal legal…
- Withdraw Your Email Data · 1 h 13 minProbably the oldest online data you have - like, still have out there right now - is your emails. Did you have an AOL account? Or email through your internet service provider…
- The Power of Prophecy · 51 minWe have relied on prophets and seers for most of human history, largely because humans are obsessed with the future - specifically their own. But prophecy has often been used to…
- AI’s Promise and Peril · 1 h 23 minArtificial Intelligence - in particular, Large Language Models (LLMs) or "chatbots" - are increasing in power at an astonishing pace. In fact, the latest models from Anthropic…
- Identity Resolution · 1 h 24 minThere are all sorts of things that can be used to identify us online and in the real world, beyond our names, addresses, and phone numbers. But data brokers are desperate to tie…
- Routers Behaving Badly · 56 minThe US is planning to ban all foreign-made or foreign-designed home WiFi routers... which is basically all routers. It's true that many consumer routers are pretty crappy when it…
- Privacy Guides Panel · 1 h 11 minNate Bartram and Jonah Aragon have been advocating for privacy for a long time. Their sites, The New Oil and Privacy Guides, have a ton of fabulous resources for anyone…
- Spring Cleaning · 1 h 15 minWhen we think about improving security and privacy, we tend to add things: password managers, VPNs, encrypted communication apps. But one of the most effective ways to protect…
- Surveillance Pricing · 1 h 4 minWhen you shop online or through an app, do you ever wonder if you're being charged the same as someone else for the same thing? Even controlling for things like shipping address…
- Fixing ClickFix · 1 h 3 minBad guys have found a willing accomplice for installing malware: YOU. This very effective malware delivery mechanism, dubbed ClickFix, accounted for over half of all infections…
- Double Blind Armadillo · 1 h 11 minCellular providers need to know your location in order to deliver calls and text message to your phone. But it turns out that they really don't need to know who you are to give…
- New Google Alternatives · 1 h 10 minIn my seemingly never-ending quest to replace all things Google, I've finally found some solid, private alternatives to Google Sheets and Google Forms. And we'll also talk about…
- Professionally Paranoid · 1 h 7 minToday I speak with Yahoo CISO Sean Zadig - aka, the Chief Paranoid. Sean has had a long and varied career in cybersecurity, working both in law enforcement (at NASA!) and working…
- Agents of MisfortuneThe latest craze with artificial intelligence is agentic AI - exhibited most recently in the viral AI project called ClawdBot... or Moltbot... or OpenClaw. (The name has changed…
- Debunking Hacklore · 1 h 5 minWe're all busy people with busy lives. We only have so much time and energy. So when security people dole out to-do lists, we really need to focus on the tips with the most bang…
- Zero-Knowledge Proofs · 1 h 13 minThere exist many interesting technical tools which can greatly improve our privacy while still allowing us to use very personal data. In the next installment of my series on…
- Honoring Auto Privacy Rights · 1 h 7 minHaving data privacy laws are great. But if those laws can't be practically enforced or your rights easily asserted, they're not very useful. Modern cars are chock full of…
- Private AI Chat · 1 h 10 minAI has many problems, but also has promise. Today I'm going to focus on one particular problem that has some viable solutions: privacy. Chat bots like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude…
- Decentralized Messaging · 1 h 29 minThere are a ton of messaging apps on the market - and there are actually quite a few that are very secure and private. I would argue that there is no such thing as a "perfect"…
- Best of 2025 Bonus Content · 59 minEvery week, I record a special, private bonus podcast for my patrons. Normally all of that content is restricted to my supporters. But today I’ve got a sampler platter of some of…
- Replay: Stop Reusing Passwords · 1 h 2 minI’m digging into the vault for a classic interview - a blast from the past! I've done 460 episodes over the last nearly 9 years, and some of the best old episodes still hold up…
- Best of 2025! · 1 h 17 minI’ve had some truly amazing interviews this past year. For your listening enjoyment, I’ve curated a set of clips from some of the best shows, creating a sampler platter of…
- 40 Years of Phrack · 60 minWay before the world wide web, computer enthusiasts were sharing information via digital bulletin board systems (BBS). This amounted to attaching a modem to your home computer…
- Be Wary of Holiday Scams · 1 h 8 minWith the holiday season come holiday scams - and honestly, just more scammer activity across the board, in general. People are busy and buying lots of stuff, and it's a time when…
