All the Latest Cybersecurity Research, Summarized: Rebooting ThinkstScapes with Jacob Torrey

What if there was someone who could take all of the best security research over recent months and distill it down into the greatest hits? Sort of like a Spotify “Release Radar”, but for the best talks at conferences.

There is.
It’s not in Blinkist.
It’s (back) at ThinkstScapes after a multiyear hiatus.
And it’s now gloriously free.

This episode of Security Voices covers the return of Thinkstscapes with Jacob Torrey who led the reboot of the now quarterly report. In the interview with Jack and Dave, Jacob explains how he and the team at Thinkst devour and summarize the very best security research from thousands of presentations and hundreds of conferences across the globe.

Jacob starts with some of his favorites, which focuses on an innovative research project not from a startup or researcher, but from a multi-decade antivirus company that went all in on an industrial controls system honeypot project. From there we cover ground that ranges from speculative execution vulnerabilities to a spate of embedded vulnerabilities, including a Hollywood style attack using laser pointers to compromise voice activated devices such as Amazon’s Alexa. In continuity from our last episode with Frank Pound, we also discuss a TCP timing attack that threatens to allow eavesdropping over satellite base station connections.

Look for our next episodes to resume their normal, monthly cadence as we’ve found a means of streamlining our audio production and we now have a recording waiting in the wings. Enjoy the show!