Law Meets Internet
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Security Now! Transcript of Episode #591 Page 1 of 37 Transcript of Episode #591 Law Meets Internet Description: This week Leo and I discuss Russia's hacking involvement in the U.S. election; that, incredibly, things get even worse for Yahoo; misguided anti-porn legislation in South Carolina; troubling legislation from Australia; legal confusion from the Florida appellate court; some good news from the U.S. Supreme Court; Linux security stumbling; why Mac OS X got an important fix last week; the steganography malvertising attack that targets home routers; news of a forthcoming inter-vehicle communications mandate; professional cameras being called upon to provide built-in encryption; Let's Encrypt gets a worrisome extension; additional news, errata, miscellany; and how exactly DOES that "I really, really promise I'm not a robot (really)!" non-CAPTCHA checkbox CAPTCHA work? High quality (64 kbps) mp3 audio file URL: http://media.GRC.com/sn/SN-591.mp3 Quarter size (16 kbps) mp3 audio file URL: http://media.GRC.com/sn/sn-591-lq.mp3 SHOW TEASE: It's time for Security Now!. Steve Gibson is here. We've got a jam-packed show, lots of security news. Yahoo hacked; a billion accounts lost. What did the Russians actually do to hack our elections? And why the Florida court says, no, you've got to turn over your passcode as well as your fingerprint. It's all coming up next, and a lot more, on Security Now!. Leo Laporte: This is Security Now! with Steve Gibson, Episode 591, recorded Tuesday, December 20th, 2016: Law Meets Internet. It's time for Security Now!, the show where we cover your security and privacy online, the last episode, last fresh episode of 2016 for this guy, Steve Gibson, the man in charge at GRC.com, our security guru. I think you have disciples, Steve, who follow Steve's way. I know I'm a disciple, in the sense that, when I see a weird security practice or something new, I always ask myself, "What would Steven say?" Steve Gibson: What would the Gibsonian response be? Leo: What would Gibson do, WWGD. I also - I think that you've helped me kind of be a better consumer of technology because of that; you know? So thank you. Steve: Well, I do know, for what it's worth, that I get a lot of really good feedback from Security Now! Transcript of Episode #591 Page 2 of 37 people who, as you said, they'll see some news and send me a note to make sure that it's on my radar and often say, you know, can't wait to hear what you think of this. Because as we've seen... Leo: Mm-hmm, exactly, Steve: Yeah. As we've seen, these things are complicated. It's funny, I was just thinking an hour ago about the Windows metafile issue. Leo: Wow. Steve: Which was controversial because it was clear to me, and to Mark Russinovich when he looked at it, that all it was, was an escape that would allow native code to be placed in the image. Now, and the problem is that people immediately go to how horrible that is from an exploitation standpoint. But it's important that it be put in context. Metafiles were created before networking. So this was a clever solution to what if the language of the interpretive metafile doesn't do something that we need? Oh, let's just let the metafile contain native code. You know, Google does that with Chrome. That's NACL, their native library that allows them with a great deal of control to do the same thing. Anyway, so the point is that this stuff is not simple. And you know me, I love figuring things out and living in complexity. I just dig - I just jump in with both feet. And I've had the advantage of being here all along, watching this sort of all happen. So for me it's really - it's a symbiotic relationship. I love being able to look at these things and explain them to our listeners. And I'm just glad that so many people appreciate it. Leo: We do. We do indeed. I look forward to - I've learned, you know, I have to say, in general TWiT's more educational for me probably than almost anybody because I'm here for all the shows. Steve: And actually I do hear you using... Leo: All the time. Steve: ...some of the stuff that we've talked about here on the other podcasts... Leo: Absolutely. Steve: ...where there's overlap. So this week I called - I named this "Law Meets Internet" because the lead stories generally involve the struggle that I think we're just seeing the beginning of, of the Internet becoming, like, really a thing. It's important now. And in fact the first thing we need to talk about at least somewhat is this whole Russia hacking involvement because we can't just ignore it. Security Now! Transcript of Episode #591 Page 3 of 37 Leo: I really want to talk to you about this. Steve: We can't ignore it completely. Leo: Yeah, yeah. Steve: But, so, I mean, it's clear that this is - like the Internet is really something. And so naturally there's confusion about how to handle the intersection of what started off as pure technology with life, and the way civilized societies have figured out to do this. Well, I guess even tribal societies. They have their sets of laws, too. So it's rules and regulations and dos and don'ts. And so we have a number of things there. We've got of course the Russian hacking involvement in the U.S. We have to also talk about briefly, incredibly, it gets even worse for Yahoo. Who could have thought it could be worse than 500 million accounts breached? Well, yes, it can. Leo: Yes. Steve: Then we've got, speaking of legislation, we have some misguided anti-porn legislation that's been made in South Carolina; some troubling legislation in Australia; some legal confusion from the Florida appellate court that you were talking about on MacBreak Weekly; some good news finally on the patent scene from the U.S. Supreme Court. So those are all just sort of law things that happened in the last week. Some interesting problems with Linux desktop security, four new problems that have just happened recently. And again the press has drawn the wrong conclusion. It's like, oh, my god, Linux is no more secure than anything else. It's like, okay, slow down. Then also why last week's Mac OS X update was important. Because of responsible disclosure, we only found out now what got fixed. And it was kind of scary. Then we have more news about the steganography malvertising attack that we discussed last week, and what the actual mechanism is that it's using. Some news of forthcoming inter-vehicle communications, which the National Transportation Safety, whatever it is, is mandating for, like, right now its proposed rules. Once it happens, it has a two model- year cycle. And then any new vehicles need to be able to talk to each other. So we'll cover that in more detail. And something I thought would really interest you, Leo, that you'll probably want to talk to Scott about, is professional cameras are being called upon to provide native, built-in encryption. Also Let's Encrypt has an almost foreseeable, yet still worrisome, extension that we need to talk about. Then, after all that, we've got some additional news, some errata, some miscellany. And then I answer the question, well, or I try to, exactly how does that "I really, really promise I'm not a robot" checkbox... Leo: Oh, good. Steve: ...non-CAPTCHA CAPTCHA work. Security Now! Transcript of Episode #591 Page 4 of 37 Leo: I've wondered this a long time, so that's good. Steve: Yeah. So I think a great podcast. Leo: [Crosstalk] coming up. And the law meets the Internet. Steve: Our Picture of the Week... Leo: I love this. Steve: ...I got a kick out of. Leo: Yes. Steve: I don't know where it came from. But I think everybody's probably heard that, like... Leo: You don't go on Facebook. But Facebook is loaded with this kind of quiz thing. Steve: Oh, okay. Leo: And this could easily be a Facebook quiz. Steve: Well, so remember, what was it, I think... Leo: Your porn name. Steve: Yes, that's what I was going for. I think it was your childhood pet and the street you grew up on, something like that. Leo: Yes. Steve: Which would make me Terry Overhill. Leo: That's good - for an older porn star. Steve: So, yeah. Well, and I would be. Security Now! Transcript of Episode #591 Page 5 of 37 Leo: By the way, don't give out your - some of these could be used in security questions. But I know you're smart enough. You would never use anything factual in a security question. Steve: Exactly. Leo: But that could potentially be another reason why they put these quizzes up; right? Steve: Well, okay. And that of course is the point. So in that vein, this appears to be, for the people who don't have video, this is a form you fill out that says, "What's your Star Wars name?" And so they're apparently doing the same thing.