@bittner@hachyderm.io cover
@bittner@hachyderm.io avatar

bittner

@[email protected]

Your friendly neighborhood cyber security podcast host. The Cyberwire, Hacking Humans, Caveat, Control Loop, Grumpy Old Geeks. He/Him.
Be kind to one another. Seek contentment.

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@bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

Just muted a cyber security company here for no other reason than the horrible AI generated images they attach to every post.

@bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

El Paso lawmakers address the recent airspace restrictions imposed by the FAA.
(Spoiler alert — they are not amused.)

https://www.youtube.com/live/BcwSuvzbVDs

@drobwil@hachyderm.io avatar drobwil , to random

@bittner back to the -ham pronunciation business, in 1958 the rather famous Peter Sellers did an audio parody of a US cinema travelogue focused on the extremely unremarkable London suburb of Balham, sorry Bal-ham. Nothing in this is true, and he did all the voices, so I hope you can forgive the mock-US narrator. :)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8RTWk9QIKS0

bittner ,
@bittner@hachyderm.io avatar

@drobwil I love this sort of thing — thanks for sending it along!

bittner ,
@bittner@hachyderm.io avatar

@drobwil I love the laughter from the audience, that type of knowing, long-suffering acknowledgment.
Here's a similar favorite -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKElYPkaQr8

@bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

I host cyber security podcasts. I also get pitches for guests to be on our shows.

An email pitch for a fashion influencer to be a guest on a podcast.
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@bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random
@bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random
@bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

Hugged someone who was wearing a lot of perfume and now I have to go change my clothes.

@bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

I was honored to be recognized with a SANS Difference Maker Award for my team's part in helping keep our nation and the rest of the world a bit safer and well-informed in the cyber realm.
Thanks to all who voted in support!

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/n2k-networks_sans-sansdma-cybersecurity-activity-7406387837811568640-ze0O/

Still image of CyberWire podcast host Dave Bittner, describing him as winner of the Media Creator of the Year for the SANS Difference Maker Awards.
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@bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

Some days I truly miss the unbridled techno-optimism of the 80s.

@bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

A personal pet peeve of mine, aka why your neighbor’s porch light looks so garish.

https://youtu.be/rW6IVVa8HsU?si=ircNlnBfNqGdUao0

@vga256@tomodori.net avatar vga256 , to random

the whole reason i rescued these NeXT machines from a garage an hour away was because of the asset tags still glued to them.

i know exactly where and when the machines came from: the university of alberta's General Services Building (GSB), 8th floor, computer lab, in 1995.

when i was a teenager, my mom would take me to the university and let me wander around campus with a pocket full of quarters for the arcade

her grad student office was on the 8th floor. across from it was the department computer lab, which consisted of three rows of boring beige 386 SX-20's and a massive line printer. i used to goof around playing Jezzball and Pipe Dream on those machines.

but tucked off in the corner were four jet black machines. they all had huge monochrome monitors, and a gorgeous GUI with Wile E. Coyote on the login prompt. there was a big sign that read "you must have permission from CNS to use these computers". i'd sneak over and try every login/pass i could dream of, and never figured out how to login.

ffwd to the 2000s:
i've hunted every week for the past 25 years to find those machines. i suspected they might turn up on some local ad eventually, and today they did.

they were bought by a gentleman (now in his 80s) from a provincial government surplus equipment auction sale 20+ years ago. they were decommissioned by the department, boxed up and auctioned as e-waste. he thought they'd be valuable, so he bought them all for a pittance. they sat in his garage for 25 years collecting dust, until his wife asked him to start clearing out his computing junk. (i'll post a pic of his garage soon)

so here they are - the department's most expensive asset at $10-20K CAD (after upgrades and accessories), ready to be put back to work again soon

A SCSI CD-ROM drive with a University of Alberta asset tag stickered to the top. The tag# is 0204218
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bittner ,
@bittner@hachyderm.io avatar

@vga256 That SCSI terminator is <chef’s kiss>.

@gabopagan@hachyderm.io avatar gabopagan , to random

@bittner re GOG camping. We had a nice chat about camping in the Discord. I'm an Eagle Scout and so is my son so we are the ones doing all the stuff. 😂 Sleeping in hammock is the best if you know what you are doing! I told Jason to try drinking vinegar for his mosquito issue. Works for me

bittner ,
@bittner@hachyderm.io avatar

@gabopagan I've not heard of the drinking vinegar trick. I'll have to suggest that to my wife, who gets devoured by bugs outdoors. (They seem to leave me alone.)

@JessTheUnstill@infosec.exchange avatar JessTheUnstill , to random

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

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    bittner ,
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    @malanalysis @JessTheUnstill I prefer "essential skills", and will annoyingly interject that preference whenever given the opportunity. (As demonstrated.)

    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

    We've officially hit that time of the year where every event seems like it should be further away than it actually is.

    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

    Talk about your crotch-rocket...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXUuExL8Cac

    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

    Surely someone out there can knit me a scarf modeled after Chewbacca's bandolier?

    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

    Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osAvIsgwIV0

    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

    I've noticed an increased error-rate when typing in the latest iOS, but I chalked it up to my aging fat-fingers.
    Turns out it's not just me.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hksVvXONrIo

    @vees@epistolary.org avatar vees , to random

    My favorite e-newsletter I never signed up for but continue to but stay on for the lols wants all their American Patriot subscribers to know why their dicks don't get hard anymore.

    bittner ,
    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar

    @vees All of the blood diverted to their flushed, rage-filled faces, no doubt.

    @metacurity@infosec.exchange avatar metacurity , to random

    I wonder how much of this is going on unreported - it's like taking candy from a baby.

    The small town of Gloversville, NY, was hit by a ransomware attack and paid a ransom of $150,000, negotiated down from $300,000.
    https://wnyt.com/top-stories/gloversville-hit-by-ransomware-attack/

    bittner ,
    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar

    @metacurity I refer to this as "nuisance" ransomware. It's in everyone's best interest to just pay and move on with their lives.

    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

    What is love?

    Love is smiling when your partner lights up at an old favorite song on the radio.

    Love is nodding along as they say, “Ah, George Michael! I had this on a twelve-inch single, played it ‘til the needle gave up.”

    And love - real love - is quietly resisting the urge to mention that the song currently playing… is actually by Tears for Fears.

    That’s love. The kind that knows when to say nothing… and when to just turn up the volume.

    @drobwil@hachyderm.io avatar drobwil , to random

    @bittner Cyberwire Daily 6 Oct, ParkMobile: you are the master of gentlemanly snark. 🤣

    bittner ,
    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar

    @drobwil Thank you!

    @itgrrl@infosec.exchange avatar itgrrl , to random

    Wes Smith ❤️‍🩹

    my 90 year-old dad died last night after a very long life, a long decline, multiple hospitalisations, and the last couple of months spent in hospital & a repat facility

    lots of complex feelings for me, but I’m glad he no longer needs to struggle in difficult circumstances (largely of his own creation, but still ❤️‍🩹)

    when he was young, he travelled the world in the Merchant Navy in the loud, hot bellies of large cargo ships amongst the enormous engines with pistons several times taller than himself. he only spent a short time in each port – a tasting menu, you might say – but he felt that he had seen the entire world by the time he got married

    he worked many jobs in his long career, most of them spent bending metal to his will, often shaping machines into new forms to perform tasks for which they were never originally designed. he worked long hours to provide financially for his family – which he saw as his main duty in life – but also because he loved working with machines & solving engineering problems born of metal. grease. electricity.

    he was a fitter & turner, a boiler-maker, a repairer & maintainer, a “keeper-runnerer”, a tinkerer. he used tools to design & make other tools to make machines. I’m sure that some of my own interests & skills were influenced by growing up watching him execute his craft, hearing him talk about his work, & being dragged along to yet another industrial robot exhibition 😩😜

    he was a life-long learner, and my own love of 🤔 – or at least facility with – computers & electronics & code (oh my!) were things he saw (and understood) and supported. in the late 1970s or very early 1980s he took a programming course (which was the spelling at the time 😜) at the local TAFE, and he took me along – a rare opportunity in that era. my first hands-on experience with code at 11 or 12 years old was in the form of mapping out & writing programmes down by hand on graph paper & then encoding them on a stack of mark sense cards with a B2 pencil to be fed into a card reader (and drawing that all-important diagonal line down the side of the stack with said pencil – 😆)

    it wasn’t long until I had begged sufficiently & got my very first computer (that we absolutely couldn’t really afford), a – the original model in “battleship grey” with 16K RAM 😲, later upgraded to a whopping 64K 🤯 🤯

    I still have that computer over 40 years later 😊

    after he retired, he always had several ambitious plans on the boil (less charitable folks might call them “hare-brained schemes” 🙃), including a petrol-powered all-terrain tracked wheelchair for a friend who wanted to be able to travel off the beaten path under his own (metaphorical) steam. it would have ended up weighing about a tonne & absolutely would never have worked (safely), but he was determined to “help” a friend & excited to work on solving an interesting engineering challenge, once again bending metal and machinery to his purpose du jour

    he was happiest noodling in his workshop, oil- & grease-stained hands deep inside a machine, wielding – or welding – a new tool of his own design. I always associated the smell of machines and ozone with his presence. until after he retired I never saw his hands unstained by years of ingrained, immovable grease

    in his later years he discovered and became a journeyman of sorts. he was exceptionally proud (and a bit obnoxious) when he was able to “teach the professionals at a thing or two” about his new hobby. his idea of a conversation had always been (impatiently) waiting for you to take a breath so he could tell you the next thing he was interested in – usually unconnected to whatever you’d shared 💁‍♀️

    he used a succession of smallish 3D printers to make many, many Japanese-inspired lanterns (into which he stuffed various strings of coloured flashing lights) and Chinese-inspired dragons, amazed & delighted that additive manufacturing was able to create interlocking objects right off the print bed – after having spent a lifetime creating sometimes-intricate interlocking components using tried-and-true subtractive manufacturing processes. he gave most of these prints away to others – whether they wanted them or not 😆

    he was a fitter & turner, a boiler-maker, a repairer & maintainer, a “keeper-runnerer”, a tinkerer

    and he was my father

    Wes Smith ❤️‍🩹
    1935-2025


    bittner ,
    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar

    @itgrrl I'm sorry for your loss.
    Your story echoes my own - my father passed earlier this year at 90. He had been a boiler tech in the Navy, a machinist, and later worked in sales. And yes, my first computer was the original CoCo.
    I miss him every day, as I'm sure you will miss your father. 90 years is a heck of a run, and it sounds like your father enjoyed a life well lived.

    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

    Today is the last day to vote in the SANS Difference Makers awards, for which I have been inexplicably nominated.

    https://www.sans.org/about/awards/difference-makers

    bittner OP ,
    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar
    @drobwil@hachyderm.io avatar drobwil , to random

    @bittner Listening to you and Ben talking about how AI can simplify finding things in vast amounts of data, I had a sobering thought.
    Step 1: identify all the domains owned by firms listed on the NYSE.
    Step 2: identify which of those domains have a registration expiring in the next 24 hours.
    I think you know where being able to easily (and repeatably) make a list like that could lead...

    bittner ,
    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar

    @drobwil It's an interesting idea, profiting from being a nuisance at scale, thank to automation.
    I've sometimes wondered about the possibility of otherwise white-hat hackers supplementing their retirement incomes with "nuisance ransomware," demands that are easy for the victim to pay, but for the individual collecting them add up to a tidy nest egg, and fly below the radar of law enforcement.

    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

    While interviewing a remote guest I noticed he had a model of a Klingon Bird of Prey hanging from his office ceiling.
    So naturally, I found a way to work a Kobayashi Maru reference into our conversation, much to his delight.

    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

    Thanks to the team at DataBee for inviting me to Comcast Connect in DC.

    image/jpeg

    @agent0x0@infosec.exchange avatar agent0x0 , to random

    Another milestone achieved...400 episodes of the Shared Security Podcast!

    Thank you to our listeners and subscribers on YouTube!

    In this episode we're taking a nostalgic look back at some of our favorite topics and moments from over 16 years of podcast episodes.

    Watch on YouTube:
    https://youtu.be/ZDHe-uj8O9Y

    Listen and subscribe to the podcast!
    https://sharedsecurity.net/subscribe

    https://sharedsecurity.net/2025/09/29/milestone-episode-400-reflecting-on-16-years-of-shared-security/

    The 400th episode of the Shared Security Podcast reflects on the show's history, top cybersecurity and privacy themes, memorable moments, and the evolution of both the podcast and the industry over the past 16 years.

    bittner ,
    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar

    @agent0x0 Congrats!

    @metacurity@infosec.exchange avatar metacurity , to random

    RE: https://infosec.exchange/@metacurity/115288119205396485

    The most concerning part of the deal: Silver Lake, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and Affinity Partners, which is founded and led by Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will now own the gaming giant.
    https://www.theverge.com/news/787112/electronic-arts-55-billion-privacte-acquisition-pif-silver-lake-affinity-partners

    bittner ,
    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar

    @metacurity At long last, Jared gets his sweet revenge on the neighborhood kids who wouldn't let him join in their Madden games

    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

    "Even if these glasses worked as well as Meta suggests they should, there is no way I would buy a pair. You are to tell me that I should strap a legacy of twenty years of privacy violations and user hostility to my face? Oh, please."

    https://pxlnv.com/linklog/meta-steak-sauce-demo/

    @avavsystems@mastodon.world avatar avavsystems , to random

    Don't see a miniDV job for ages, then the flood gates open

    Some Tape Action for the Nerds

    miniDV Tapes & Sony DSR 2000P, DVCAM Deck, 1999

    Assorted stuff, loading, unloading, gunk off the Drum from sticky, shedding Tapes, internals of the Deck

    Seeing more miniDVs with Tape issues.
    It's so thin & Digital can be very fragile, too much Dropout & off it goes.

    I use Pro / Broadcast Decks for Archiving, to get the best results

    @obsoletemediauk

    video/mp4

    bittner ,
    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar

    @avavsystems When miniDV first came out we celebrated, "It's Hi8 that works!"

    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

    Happy that Apple, at long last, added cross-fades to the Apple Music app, but my goodness is it ever buggy.

    bittner OP ,
    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar

    I stand corrected — this is, in fact, a "feature", and — even better! — an AI enabled feature!!!
    (Disable "AutoMix" in your App settings to put an end to this madness.)

    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

    In DC to emcee the annual DMV Rising event, hosted by Virtru.

    Dave Bittner stands before a monitor with a DMV Rising event logo.
    ALT
    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

    “Garden hoses connect like XLR cables, not BNC cables.”

    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

    AI security hypothetical - suppose an organization shares a report under embargo to a media outlet.
    If the media outlet uses an online LLM to summarize the report before the release date, have they violated the embargo? (Not publishing anything, just using the LLM as an assistant for internal use.)

    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

    The new 8X zoom on the iPhone 17 Pro claims "optical quality zoom" at 200mm, but seems to indicate only capturing a 12 MP image from a 48 MP sensor. So does that mean it's doing a crop on the sensor? In other words, is "optical quality zoom" just marketing weasel words for digital zoom?

    Screen shot of the iPhone 17 Pro 8x camera system from the Apple event video.
    ALT
    bittner OP ,
    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar

    Tagging @siracusa and @gruber

    bittner OP ,
    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar
    @q@glauca.space avatar q , to random

    GENLOCK ON IPHONE???

    bittner ,
    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar

    @q Right? The most jaw-dropping part of the presentation for me.

    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

    Got my flu and Covid booster shots today.

    @rushtone@mapstodon.space avatar rushtone , to random

    @bittner Listened to the latest Grumpy Old Geeks and yes, solder has changed.
    Lead-free solder is the thing now because of the toxicity of lead.
    But ye olde fashioned lead solder is much easier to work with.

    bittner ,
    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar

    @rushtone It seems to me like I’m having issues with the solder flowing, even tinning the leads. Any tips to share?

    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

    Yes, yes, I hear you. But when you say “deep dive” do you mean Mariana Trench deep or fetching pennies from the bottom of the pool deep?

    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , (edited ) to random

    This was great fun to be a part of! I hope you'll check it out and help spread the word.

    Hot sauce and hot takes: An Only Malware in the Building special.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDgLBxEKx28

    @avavsystems@mastodon.world avatar avavsystems , to random

    Todays Pt 2

    Sony BVH 500 Portable 1" C Format
    Video Recorder

    Power hungry beast & was heavy to carry around on a Backpack

    Here it is, running up. Tape Tension & getting Head Drum to speed

    It's a Recorder ONLY. Additional kit was needed for playback. Normally another machine was used

    @obsoletemediauk

    video/mp4

    bittner ,
    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar

    @avavsystems @obsoletemediauk I have great nostalgia for the sound of a 1" coming up to speed.

    @bittner@hachyderm.io avatar bittner , to random

    This is a fun fluid simulation app for iOS.

    https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fluidium/id6745104628