The Zelig of Hacking Back

Episode 215 of the Cyberlaw Podcast

Our interview is with Nick Schmidle, staff writer for the New Yorker. His report on cybersecurity work that goes to the edge of the law and beyond turns up some previously unreported material, including the tale of Shawn Carpenter, a cybersecurity researcher with a talent for showing up in all the best hackback stories.

In the news, Jamil Jaffer reports on domain fronting, a weird form of protection for people hiding the site they're connecting to behind some bland Google or AWS site. Some of those people are dissidents in authoritarian lands; many are authoritarian governments hacking secrets out of corporate networks. In any event, domain fronting is disappearing before it had even made an impression on the public's mind. I say good riddance, bolstered in my opinion by the wailing of professional privacy groups that, do I have to remind you?, don't care about your security at all.

The Supreme Court takes a case of great interest to social media and other tech firms who attract class actions. Jennifer Quinn-Barabanov explains the law and the likely outcome. I mostly quibble about how to pronounce "cy pres."

Move fast and break things probably isn't the best motto if the thing you're likely to break is, um, you. Megan Reiss talks about the death of Aaron Traywick, and the risks of bringing the hacking ethic to genetic engineering.

Europol and a host of allies were bragging last week about taking down ISIS's online recruiting and propaganda infrastructure. But this week they've had to admit that ISIS is back on line. Jamil and I talk about what lessons can be drawn from cyber-whac-a-molery.

For Chinese phone makers, it never rains but it pours. Fresh off a ban on Chinese phones from US military retail stores, there may be even more pain in the works for ZTE and other Chinese mobile infrastructure providers.

Finally, Megan Reiss and I dig deep into Rep. Ruppersberger's thoughtful take on cybersecurity, information sharing and DHS.

The Cyberlaw Podcast is hiring a part-time intern for our Washington, DC offices.

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Download the 215th Episode (mp3).

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