Maddie Stone is a security researcher for Google’s Project Zero. In this episode we hear what it’s like battling zero day vulnerabilities. Sponsors Support for this show comes from Zscalar. Zscalar zero trust exchange will scrutinize the traffic and permit or deny traffic based on a set of rules. This is so much more secure than letting data flow freely internally. And it really does mitigate ransomware outbreaks. The Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange gives YOU confidence in your security to feel empowered to focus on other parts of your business, like digital transformation, growth, and innovation. Check out the product at zscaler.com. Support for this show comes from Thinkst Canary. Their canaries attract malicious actors in your network and then send you an alert if someone tries to access them. Great early warning system for knowing when someone is snooping around where they shouldn’t be. Check them out at https://canary.tools. Sources https://www.sophos.com/en-us/medialibrary/pdfs/technical%20papers/yu-vb2013.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Tqi7fuOSU https://www.vice.com/en/article/4x3n9b/sometimes-a-typo-means-you-need-to-blow-up-your-spacecraft
I have a degree in software engineering, but can you remember a time in your life when there wasn't such a thing as software engineers?
I can't.
All my life, it's been a thing.
But I bet my great grandparents went their whole life without ever hearing about software engineering.
So let's take a quick look backwards to find when software engineering popped into existence in the 1950s, NASA was doing some pretty amazing things, flying spaceships to the moon and beyond.
These spaceships were loaded with lots of technology, antennas, radios, computers, cameras, software and hardware.
And that's just on board the spaceship.
You've seen these giant command centers.
They have where mission control is.
There are computers on everyone's desk and giant screens in front of the room.
And there are dozens of scientists and engineers in the room, yet not a single one of them was a software engineer, because the term had not been used at any point in the 1950s.
In the 1960s, NASA developed the Mariner space program.
The goal here was to send unmanned spaceships to mercury, Mars, and Venus to take photos of them.
In 1962, the first Mariner spaceship was launched, and it was headed for Venus.
It didn't have anyone on board.
It was controlled remotely.
And on board were just electronics, antennas, computers, jet fuel, and cameras.
But only a few minutes after launching, things started to go wrong.
The computer on board that was in charge of controlling the ship was acting erratic, giving all kinds of wild commands for the ship to do.
The folks at mission control tried to correct the computer gone wild, but they couldn't do anything about it.