Episode 27 - Normal Service is Resumed

The Host Unknown Podcast

Your regular features and even more, such as vegan sweets, Host Unknown imposters, Jav appears in the press with the same quote for different stories, and HMRC incompetence.

Vegan sweets

https://www.thejealouslife.com/products/tropical-wonder

Will the real Host Unknown please stand up?

This Week in Infosec

5th October 1991: The Linux kernel was released by Linus Torvalds.

"This is a program for hackers by a hacker." -Linus Benedict Torvalds

For those keeping score at home, he said "hacker[s]" 4 times in his post to the comp.os.minix newsgroup.

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1313239418682179585?s=20

4th October 2005: The Samy worm, the first self-propagating cross-site scripting worm, was released onto the-then-mega-popular MySpace by Samy Kamkar.

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1312752236712333312?s=20

4th October 2017: A week after he retired as the result of Equifax's data breach, former CEO Richard F. Smith told members of Congress one person in the IT department was at fault.

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1312589059559170050?s=20

Tweet of the Week

Billy Big balls of the Week

https://twitter.com/repshalala/status/1313187148540137474?s=21

Industry News

Former Australian PM Talks Importance of Cyber Awareness

HMRC Hit by Multiple Phishing and Spam Emails

Endpoint Security Primary Pain Point in 2020

Food Delivery Service Chowbus Experiences Data Breach

Boards Increase Investment in Cybersecurity in Face of Threats and Regulatory Fines

Rant of the Week

https://www.verdict.co.uk/excel-coronavirus-test-data/

It has emerged that almost 16,000 cases were delayed in being transferred to the test-and-trace system because the government was using an Excel spreadsheet to store the data, with an individual column for each case.

This reportedly caused problems because the maximum number of columns on an Excel spreadsheet is 16,384, meaning the sheet exceeded its maximum size and so failed to update, preventing the coronavirus test data from updating.

Notably, if rows had been used instead, the problem would have been avoided, as Excel supports up to 1,048,576, although many experts are arguing that the software is wholly unsuited to the purpose at all.

“If indeed the government was using Excel to track Covid cases, it is a wholly inappropriate use of the tool,” said Javvad Malik, security awareness advocate at KnowBe4.

“Excel is a very good spreadsheet, but it has its limitations and in no way ever intended to be used as a database.”

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