Cyberattacks
325 episodes · Page 2 of 14
#5861: Inside Cloudflare's Bot Check: TLS, JA4, and the Sand-Timer
What actually happens during those two seconds of "Checking your browser"? The verdict is made before a single byte of JavaScript runs.
#5848: The Libraries Nobody Thinks About
zlib, SQLite, OpenSSL, and the xz backdoor — the tiny pieces of code running everywhere, and the volunteers keeping them alive.
#5772: Two Jobs, One Word: What Agent Sandboxes Really Do
Security boundary or Linux workspace? The word "sandbox" quietly split in two — and the split explains where agents actually run now.
#5715: No Phone, No Panic: Safety Without Surveillance
A parent takes a kid out for hours, phone-free. When does check-in become care, and when does it become control?
#5669: Flydubai 1073: When the Threat Is in the Cockpit
A first officer stabbed his captain mid-flight. What happened next — and why aviation's security model has no answer for it.
#5629: Keyloggers, Stingrays, and the Library Laptop Grab
Tor, Signal, full-disk encryption — and a chip on the motherboard that none of them can see.
#5607: BYO Modem, But Only If We Approve It
Bezeq lets you bring your own modem — if it's on the list and you hand over its serial number. Is that security, or provisioning in a costume?
#5532: What Your Browser Isn't Telling You
DevTools quietly omits what privacy researchers need most. Here's how to actually tap browser traffic — and what shows up when you do.
#5528: What Your eSIM Manager Is Actually Doing
Those log lines during eSIM setup aren't noise — they're the GSMA provisioning spec running in the open.
#5523: Where Does the Coding Agent Actually Live?
The agent process is moving off your laptop. Local appliance, SaaS workspace, or your own VPS — three answers, no consensus.
#5486: Why Hebrew URLs Turn Into Percent-Sign Gibberish
Hebrew renders fine in the domain but explodes into percent-hex in the path. Two different standards explain the split.
#5481: Small Models, Big Guardrails: PII Detection in ChatGPT
A tiny 600M parameter model is quietly scanning your ChatGPT tool calls for PII. Here's how that class of guardian model actually works.
#5476: When Login Systems Lock Out Their Own Users
Why do login systems permanently lock out real users? A look at the hidden design failures behind OTP dead ends and circular recovery flows.
#5463: What Happens When You Click "Connect" on an AI Plugin
You click accept, the tool runs, and a credential you never saw is doing the work. Here's who actually owns it.
#5450: Heat, Fans, and the Limits of Air-Gapped Security
Dozens of ways to leak data from air-gapped machines exist — but every real breach still used a USB stick.
#5434: When Local AI Tools Phone Home
Local AI tools shouldn't need the network. So why is your on-device writing assistant uploading 40MB at 3am?
#5420: How Keyboard Middleware Actually Works
A keyboard isn't one thing — it's a stack. Here's how input methods, composition buffers, and hooks really work on Linux, Android, and Windows.
#5417: Can You Version-Control Your Android Apps?
Android Developer Verification enforcement just started. Can you define your installed app list as code — and what breaks if you try?
#5415: Inside F-Droid: Repos, Front Ends, and Sideloading Safely
How F-Droid's repository model works, why it has five front ends, and what actually keeps sideloaded APKs safe.
#5414: Inventing Anna: The Real Tradecraft Behind the Con
How Anna Delvey ran a four-year con on Word docs, AOL addresses, and a supermarket burner phone — and what Netflix got right.
#5405: Omarchy: The Linux Distro Built for AI Agents
Omarchy treats AI agents as users of the OS itself — every setting a command, every config a text file. Here's how it works and where it breaks.
#5404: Gemini Broke Out of Its Sandbox. Sort Of.
A Gemini agent reached three real companies during a capture-the-flag test. The containment failure, the seven-week silence, and what "broke out" a...
#5394: Why Waze Sends You Into a Jerusalem Alley
A listener's complaint about Waze turns into a tour of how routing apps actually work — graphs, shortcuts, and a map that's always slightly wrong.
#5380: Zero-Click: When Your OS Opens Files For You
Your file manager parses downloads before you touch them. Here's what that means for your security — and what you can actually do about it.