The Host Unknown Podcast

The Host Unknown Podcast

Host Unknown is the unholy alliance of the old, the new and the rockstars of the infosec industry in an internet-based show that tries to care about issues in our industry. It regularly fails. With presenters that have an inflated opinion of their own worth and a production team with a pathological dislike of them (or “meat puppets” as it often refers to them), it is with a combination of luck and utter lack of good judgement that a show is ever produced and released. Host Unknown is available for sponsorship, conferences, other web shows or indeed anything that pays a little bit of money to keep the debt collectors away. You can contact them at contact@hostunknown.tv for details

Episodes

July 18, 2025 43 mins

8th July 2008: Several DNS vendors released patches to mitigate an attack method discovered by Dan Kaminsky which could be used to cause DNS cache poisoning. Kaminsky had discovered the vulnerability 6 months prior and reported it to vendors privately so they could address it. RIP, Dan.

https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1942695691270193211

10th July 1999: Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) member DilDog debuted the program Back Orifice 200...

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27th June 2007: Live Free or Die Hard was released. Cop John McClane partners with hacker Matt Farrell to stop cyberterrorists trying to take down the US's infrastructure. Traceroute (1337!) is used to find the ringleader's location, then McClane kills him by shooting HIS OWN shoulder.

https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1938731279937057144     

1st July 2003: California's data breach notification law went into effect. California bec...

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17th June 1995: Spyglass goes public

World Wide Web software producer Spyglass Inc. went public, the year after it had begun distributing its Spyglass Mosaic software, an early browser for navigating the Web. With previous year's earnings at $7 million, Spyglass was founded by students at the Illinois Supercomputing Center, which also inspired Netscape Communications Corp.

https://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/june/27/#spyglass-goes-p...

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11th June 1986: Ferris Bueller's Day Off was released. https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1932838235102716317

13th June 1994: A Russian hacker group led by Vladimir Levin stole $10.7 million from Citibank via X.25, in what was the first international bank robbery over a network to be made public. Levin was caught in London in 1995 and sentenced in the US to 3 years in prison in 1998. https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/193350431064...

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  1. 26th May 1995: Realizing his company had missed the boat in estimating the impact and popularity of the Internet, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates issues a memo titled, “The Internet Tidal Wave,” which signaled the company’s focus on the global network. In the memo, Gates declared that the Internet was the “most important single development” since the IBM personal computer — a development that he was assigning “the highest level of imp...
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As always we will bring you today in infosec, a rant, admire a billy big ball move, talk about industry news, and bring you a tweet or alternatively suitable social media post of the week.

Hey, it's hard enough Thom being off that I have to edit and publish this, I need to find an AI to write the notes for me. Love you all, Javvad... now go an subscribe! 

Come on! Like and bloody well subscribe!

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Episode 219 of the Host Unknown Podcast covers a wide range of humorous and insightful discussions relating to both technology and personal anecdotes. Key segments include a nostalgic look back at significant moments in InfoSec history, as well as a critique of a poorly-constructed analogy between casino strategies and cybersecurity. The hosts also discuss the misadventures of an AI app that wasn't really AI, cyber insurance claims...

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This week in InfoSec  (10:26)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

1st April 1998: Hackers changed the MIT home page to read "Disney to Acquire MIT for $6.9 Billion".

https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1907094503552336134     

1st April 2004: The now ubiquitous Gmail service is launched as an invitation-only beta service. At first met with skepticism due to it being launched on April Fo...

This week in InfoSec  (11:22)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

27th February 2002: Timothy Allen Lloyd was sentenced to 41 months in prison for activating a logic bomb at Omega Engineering, 20 days after being fired as a network administrator.

https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1895255588881474024    

18th February 2013: Burger King's Twitter account was compromised, had its name ch...

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December 11, 2024 51 mins

This week in InfoSec  (11:10)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

4th December 2013: Troy Hunt launched the free-to-search site "Have I Been Pwned? (HIBP)". At launch, passwords from the Adobe, Stratfor, Gawker, Yahoo! Voices, and Sony Pictures breaches were indexed. Today? Billions of  compromised records from hundreds of breaches.

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/18642991555...

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This week in InfoSec  

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

24th November 2014: The Washington Post published an article which included a photo of TSA master keys. A short time later functional keys were 3-d printed using the key patterns in the photo. Oops.

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1860803840620044356   

22nd November 2010: Matt Blaze published the PowerPoint slides he ...

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This week in InfoSec  (08:24)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

12th November 2012: John McAfee went into hiding because his neighbour, Gregory Faull, was found dead from a gunshot. Belize police wanted him to come in for questioning, but he fled to Guatemala where he was then arrested. He was never charged, though he lost a $25 million wrongful death suit.

https://x.com/todayininfos...

This week in InfoSec (13:28)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

5th November 1993: Bugtraq was created by Scott Chasin as a full disclosure vulnerability reporting mailing list at the dawn of the World Wide Web. Bugtraq had an enormous influence on how orgs responded to vuln disclosure and paved the way for a shift which led to bug bounty programs.

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/s...

No notes this week - Andy had ONE job...

Come on! Like and bloody well subscribe!

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October 25, 2024 17 mins

How does Thom also do the episode notes? 

This week in infosec  was about a EULA

Rant of the week

https://securityaffairs.com/170125/laws-and-regulations/sec-fined-4-companies-misleading-disclosures-impact-solarwinds-attack.html

Billy Big Balls

https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/24/anthropic_claude_model_can_use_computers/

Some news articles from infosecurity-magazine.com 

Tweet of the week 

https://x.com/thomas_violence/status/1849627627...

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October 14, 2024 50 mins

This week in InfoSec  (08:29)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

10th October 1995: Netscape introduced the "Netscape Bugs Bounty", a program rewarding users who report "bugs" in the beta versions of its recently announced Netscape Navigator 2.0 web browser.

Navigator was the dominant browser from 1995-1998, when it was overtaken by Internet Explorer.

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec...

October 7, 2024 42 mins

This week in InfoSec  (10:01)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

27th September 2001: Jan de Wit was sentenced to 150 hours of community service in the Netherlands for creating and spreading the Anna Kournikova virus. It was one of the first of the major viruses created from a virus toolkit - the dawn of cybercrime toolkits.

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September 24, 2024 46 mins

This week in InfoSec  (10:44)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

18th September 2001: The Nimda worm was released. Utilising 5 different infection vectors, it became the most widespread virus/worm after only 22 minutes.

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1836495262409175187  

17th September 2014: Apple announced that the iOS 8 operating system (used on iPhone and iPad) would be ...

September 16, 2024 44 mins

This week in InfoSec  (11:25)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

12th September 2014: Stephane Chazelas contacted Bash maintainer Chet Ramey about a vulnerability he dubbed "Bashdoor", which later becoming known as Shellshock. It was publicly disclosed 12 days later.

Shellshock was kind of a big deal - and the vuln had been in Bash for 25 years!

https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1834...


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