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Chris Wysopal Profile
Chris Wysopal

@WeldPond

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Following
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Hacker. Co-founder/CTO Veracode. Former L0pht security researcher. GenAI Auto-repair of vulns is the future @weld.bsky.social @[email protected]

Joined March 2008
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
1 year
My Congressional testimony on how vulnerabilities are discovered by researchers, how patching doesn't solve our problems and the need for secure by design. This was 9/11/2003. Are we making progress yet?
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
6 years
So the Secret Service stuck Zhang's thumbdrive into their computer.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
4 years
What are all the people who used "Sign in with Facebook" doing now?.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
2 years
We've lost a true pioneer of the digital world, Kevin Mitnick. His ingenuity challenged systems, incited dialogues, and pushed boundaries in cybersecurity. He will remain a testament to the uncharted power of curiosity. #RIPKevinMitnick
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
6 years
.@sifutweety pointed out that the fact that this is getting so many retweets is a credit to infosec education -- everyone knows this is a stupid idea.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
5 years
Does anyone want to share 15% of their password?.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
1 year
"There are nearly 600K unfilled cybersecurity jobs in the U.S. right now, and about 3.5M open roles globally, says Lisa Gevelber, Google’s chief marketing officer for the Americas". This is because all the openings are entry level positions requiring 5 yrs experience.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
3 years
Log4j 2.16.0 is out and completely disables JNDI by default.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
3 years
Current status: Sorry, I’ll have to get back to you. I’m dealing with an open source issue.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
3 years
"Password expiration requirements do more harm than good, because these requirements make users select predictable passwords" . Thank you Microsoft. NIST agrees. Everyone who attacks password auth agrees. Can we get compliance to update their requirements.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
4 years
My son me asked for some fidget toys.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
6 years
Ah, the good old days.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
8 months
If you have an .io domain you should read this. When the British government announced last week that it was transferring sovereignty of an island in the Indian Ocean to the country of Mauritius, Gareth immediately realized its online implications: the end of the .io domain.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
5 months
Due to U.S. telco networks being compromised, today CISA is recommending:.1. Use only end-to-end encrypted communications.2. Enable Fast Identity Online (FIDO) phishing-resistant authentication.3. Migrate away from Short Message Service (SMS)-based MFA.4. Use a password manager.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
1 year
House passes Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act, H.R. 7520.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
4 years
An infrastructure bill should include funding for cybersecurity. The internet is critical infrastructure for public and private realms in the 21st century.
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Chris Wysopal
3 years
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
8 years
No government helped WannaCry victims. It was independent security researchers who found & used the kill switch, and built a decryption tool.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
4 years
3.5" floppy disks may be obsolete but their ghosts live on in cyberspace as little save button outlines.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
7 years
I'd rather hire someone who knew how to use netcat than someone who thinks one of these answers is correct.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
10 years
Universal asks Google to take down 127.0.0.1 for piracy. See claim #2
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
7 years
20 years ago today 7 hackers from the L0pht testified about cyber security on Capitol Hill. @spacerog @joegrand @WeldPond & @dotMudge will return on 5/22/18 to discuss what has improved what hasn’t.
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Chris Wysopal
3 years
The patched version of log4j 2.15.0 requires a minimum of Java 8. If you are on Java 7 you will need to upgrade to Java8 . When there is active exploitation and you need to patch fast it is beneficial if you have been updating your other dependencies over time.
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Chris Wysopal
10 months
This might be the most classic hacker photo of all time. It has it all: style, swagger, butt set, huge laptop, and a casino security guard's watchful eye.
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Chris Wysopal
3 years
The cryptocurrency ecosystem requires a lot of “trusting people not to write bugs.”.
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Chris Wysopal
4 years
#protip If your lawyer, doctor, or therapist has an Amazon Echo or other voice device in their office, tell them they need to remove it or you will be taking your business elsewhere.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
6 years
OMG all 3 teams got this wrong in @defcon hacker jeopardy. Answers were 21, 22, and 25.
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Chris Wysopal
3 years
For Apache Log4j remediation priority it seems the best approach right now is:. 1. log4j 2.x through 2.14 - update to 2.16.2. log4j 1.x - update to 2.16.3. log4j 2.15 - update to 2.16.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
4 years
Put on guest network. Tape over camera. Snip wire on internal mic. I'm available for additional White House IoT security consulting.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
4 years
Tonight Pres. Biden mentioned cybersecurity twice. Once as a career a student can learn at a community college (potentially for free) and once as an example of a global challenge where the U.S. can’t go it alone. This bodes well for a more secure digital world.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
4 years
"We [Facebook] also describe our in-house BGP software implementation, and its testing and deployment pipelines. These allow us to treat BGP like any other software component, enabling fast incremental updates."
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
3 years
Korean researchers have developed a set of attacks against some solid-state drives (SSDs) that could allow planting malware in a location that's beyond the reach of the user and security solutions.
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Chris Wysopal
7 years
The new hacker economics.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
6 years
Zoom video conferencing zero day patch now available.
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Chris Wysopal
6 years
Going through TSA tonight I got randomly flagged for an electronics inspection. Seeing the stickers on my laptop the agent asked if this was my college laptop. I didn’t have the guts to tell him they didn’t have laptops when I graduated college.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
5 years
Like if you wrote software that had menus like this.
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Chris Wysopal
6 years
“But the [Luxor] beam has also become a magnet for grasshoppers, which experts say could linger in Las Vegas for weeks.” The Luxor is next to the Black Hat conference hotel. This is not the bug bounty I was expecting.
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Chris Wysopal
4 years
I first learned hacking from underground BBSs. Banning demos/info from mainstream services will harm security. One of my earliest hacker lessons is all cybersecurity info is dual use. Let's stop pretending learning about attacks is harmful.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
10 years
A disaster foretold — and ignored. L0pht’s warnings about the Internet drew notice but little action http://t.co/ZRnZVFdw56.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
2 years
@Cobylefko Boston’s North End
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
6 years
How Banksy authenticates his work.
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Chris Wysopal
4 years
My parrot and I are enjoying an early Christmas present. ⁦@EffinBirds
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Chris Wysopal
3 years
Not the best way to open an email to a security person. "Chris,.I would like to introduce you to XXXX, the premier global solution for non-hackable, completely secure and authentic long term data storage.".
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
9 years
If Trump is soliciting Russian hackers to find Hillary's missing emails isn't he taking away jobs from hard-working Americans hackers?.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
5 years
We’re going to start seeing a lot of these signs.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
5 years
Singapore launches cyber security label for smart home devices.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
5 years
What a crypto backdoor looks like. NSA Backdoor Key from Lotus-Notes
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Chris Wysopal
6 years
On Sunday, it will be 25 years since day was registered. was a homebrew 486 33MHz running a Slackware distribution of Linux 1.0 on a 28.8K dialup line to The machine also ran mail and routed our class C.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
4 years
Turn off your ad blocker they said.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
2 years
The head of a pen testing company redacted text by overlaying black boxes and saving it as PDF.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
4 years
This is a good time to reconsider giving yet more usage information to data aggregators like Facebook by using their sign in with feature.
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Chris Wysopal
3 years
With @cisagov's recent advisory on Russia, the question on the cover of Time from 1995 seems more apropos as ever
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
6 years
We are entering the era of forever vulnerable hardware. D-Link router with CVSS 10.0 vuln won't get a patch because it is EOL.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
6 years
Leaving Tokyo now and I have to say it is the most cyberpunk city I have visited.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
4 years
the attack leveraged a unique design flaw of the open-source ecosystems called dependency confusion.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
4 years
Costumes from the movie "Hackers" on display in a London gallery.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
4 years
27 year old invoice for ⁦@L0phtHeavyInd⁩ 56 kbps dedicated line which ran our website and gave our LAN internet access. We eventually stepped up to 128 kbps ISDN as we sold more shell accounts, t-shirts and archive CDs.
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Chris Wysopal
5 years
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
3 years
OH from some 90's hackers:. "I hacked NASA" is straight up there with "I had a newspaper route".
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
3 years
Log4j 2.17.0 is out and protects against infinite recursion DoS. CVSS 7.5
@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
3 years
Log4j 2.16.0 is out and completely disables JNDI by default.
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Chris Wysopal
6 years
90’s hacker groups are having a moment 20 years later. #CultoftheDeadCow.
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Chris Wysopal
5 months
Is this potential ban because the products have more security vulns than average or the update process is poor or is there a fear of backdoors? Make the reasons clear and hold all vendors to the standard.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
7 years
The Senate Cyber caucus had a surprise for me when I came to speak today
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Chris Wysopal
4 years
Imagine if election security hadn't improved in the last 4 years and instead of the current 95% paper ballots we were back at 82% like in 2016. Our democracy depends on secure elections. Thank you to all the patriots who defended and continue to defend our elections.
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Chris Wysopal
4 years
Syncing your phone to the car or having a built in GPS are privacy risks. Cars don’t have the data protection of a modern phone.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
6 years
Following a serious vulnerability disclosure affecting casinos globally, an executive of casino technology vendor Atrient has assaulted the security researcher who disclosed the vulnerability at the ICE conference in London.
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Chris Wysopal
7 years
Before and after #L0pht20
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Chris Wysopal
5 years
Put your VPN exit node in another country.
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Chris Wysopal
2 years
Today is the 25th anniversary of my testimony to the U.S. Senate as part of a group of 7 hackers from the L0pht. The hearings were titled, "Weak Computer Security in Government: Is the Public at Risk?" (cont)
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Chris Wysopal
9 years
I'm happy to see secure network shell access promoted.
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Chris Wysopal
3 years
What was the very first cybersecurity task you remember doing? For me it was turning off services in /etc/inetd.conf to harden a default Linux install.
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Chris Wysopal
6 years
My son graduated today from the U of Oregon with a degree in music performance and I couldn't be happier. 🎺.
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Chris Wysopal
3 years
Looks like they gave this poor guy all the workstations for all of the still open positions.
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Chris Wysopal
6 years
DEFCON [videos on YouTube] is cancelled.
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Chris Wysopal
7 years
Just saw a baby in a stroller @defcon with a tinfoil hat.
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Chris Wysopal
4 years
How much is my PiHole is costing them? Can simple network blocking evaporate 10s of $billions? Is it really this easy to gain privacy and destroy value.
@PatrickMcGee_
Patrick McGee
4 years
*New*: @Apple’s privacy settings caused an estimated $9.85bn of revenues to evaporate in the second half of this year at @Snap, @Facebook, @Twitter and @YouTube, as their advertising businesses were shaken by the new rules. Average impact on revenue: -12%. *Thread*
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Chris Wysopal
4 years
I’m shocked that they have been unable to fill this cybersecurity leadership position for $109k.
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Chris Wysopal
2 years
There will be an AI Village at @defcon and many AI players (Anthropic, Google, Hugging Face, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAI and Stability AI) are bringing their models to be hacked.
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Chris Wysopal
6 years
I can't wait to give this a read.
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Chris Wysopal
3 years
ProTip: looking for a way to bypass NAC when you are on premises? Find an unused docking station that has ethernet. Its MAC is already approved.
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Chris Wysopal
6 years
Hey U.S. govt. look here! "The Swiss government has issued a 150,000 Swiss franc (US$149,790) challenge to online hackers; break into our new generation electronic voting system and we'll reward you."
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Chris Wysopal
11 months
At @reconmtl, @j00ru is presenting on his vuln research of the windows registry. He classifies bugs in these layers and is giving examples of analyzing each layer and bugs he found.
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Chris Wysopal
6 years
Does everyone with a stickie or cover over their Mac camera feel more justified tonight?
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Chris Wysopal
6 years
A 13 yo notified the city that 35K student records were exposed. Police confiscated his computer. Then an online bank offered him a job.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
6 years
A response to ISIS required a new kind of warfare, and so the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command created a secret task force, a special mission, and an operation that would become one of the largest and longest offensive cyber operations in U.S. military history.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
2 years
"Computer scientists from Stanford University have found that programmers who accept help from AI tools like Github Copilot produce less secure code than those who fly solo.". Looks like there will be a market for AI vuln remediation!
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Chris Wysopal
4 years
The Colonial Pipeline shutdown is a good example of why we need a CyberNTSB. If a criminal group can shut down 45% of the east coast's fuel supply we all have a right to know how this happened and how it should be prevented.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
7 years
Yes those 1981 Hayes Modem Command set AT commands. "including the ability to enable USB debugging, bypass Android security controls, exfiltrate sensitive information, perform screen unlocks, reflash device firmware, and inject touch events solely through the use of AT commands."
@BlackHatEvents
Black Hat
7 years
Vulnerabilities in #Android security controls accessible via the AT command interface #BHUSA Briefing by Grant Hernandez (@digital_cold)
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
8 years
Who remembers when technical knowledge was disseminated this way?
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Chris Wysopal
4 years
Seems my son had a little fun with my keyboard last night.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
6 years
Please join me in congratulating @chriseng for his new title as @Veracode's Chief Research Officer!
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
6 years
I don't think naming your vulnerability after a popular security tool is a good idea. Have these researchers never heard of netcat?
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
4 years
Calling something unhackable is the best thing you can do if you want lots of testers.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
3 years
Who remembers reading newspaper articles on microfiche? We had a portable unit at the L0pht bought at the MIT flea market. Then we found DEC manuals on microfiche. Such cool tech.
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Chris Wysopal
8 months
When a con booth is a metaphor.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
6 years
A 20th anniversary viewing will be as fun as the 1st time.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
6 years
The NSA, yes the NSA, is urging people to patch.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
4 years
I see the following advice over and over. Enable 2FA for any sensitive accounts. I don't think people understand how difficult and expensive this is to do (and enforce) across any business with thousands of employees and 100+ SaaS applications.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
4 years
But Macs don't get malware. Yes, you should run AV on your Macs.
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
6 years
Cisco patches router flaw by banning Curl user agents. Netcat FTW!.
@RedTeamPT
RedTeam Pentesting
6 years
@info_dox @TheHackerNews @bad_packets @hrbrmstr We were also quite surprised to find this /etc/nginx.conf in 1.4.2.20
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@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal
6 years
But it used blockchain.
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