SN 1060: 3-Day Certificates - The Rise of AI Programming

[00:00:00] It's time for Security Now. Steve Gibson is here. We're going to take a look at code signing. Crazy. We're going to find out what about Idaho has going for it. Steve's going to talk about these three-day code signing certificates. And I'm going to give you a little demo of Claude Code. I've been using it to write applications. All of that coming up next on Security Now.

[00:00:25] Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This is TWiT. This is Security Now with Steve Gibson. Episode 1060, recorded Tuesday, January 13th, 2026. Three-day certificates. It's time for Security Now, the show where we cover the latest in security news. We attempt to protect you and your loved ones from bad guys in the outside world.

[00:00:57] We even talk a little bit about TV shows, books and vitamins with this guy. It's whatever Steve's into, frankly. Mr. Steve Gibson. Hello from GRC.com. Great to be with you again for, well, I'm not superstitious. So the fact that this is the 13th is just fine with me. It's not a Friday. Tuesday. That would be worse. Yeah, that's not a bad. I did have bad luck yesterday. Did you hear me talking about this on MacBreak Weekly? I got fished yesterday.

[00:01:24] No. And it's funny because I forgot to mention it. It's not in the show notes, but I saw if I got a fishing text which said that what was it? It was supposedly from Amazon saying that the quality of something that I'd ordered did not meet their standards. And so they were giving me a refund to click here.

[00:01:50] And it was a plus nine one something something, you know, phone number. So I was like, what? It's not. But I mean, again, I was like, I they kind of had me almost. Well, I got had and and and I got some insight from it. So it was wasn't a complete waste of three credit cards. I got a text from T-Mobile saying your points are about to expire. If you'd like to use them, click this link.

[00:02:18] What I really didn't pay attention because for two reasons, one, I'm a T-Mobile customer and I get a lot of promotional text from them. And this is companies got to knock this off because they're setting their users up. Oh, yeah. This is I see this. Oh, you. Oh, you mean the legitimate companies need to stop this behavior. T-Mobile should not be texting me with promotional stuff legitimately because it sets me up for phishing that looks exactly the same.

[00:02:49] Now, if I noticed the link was to L-U-O-S-A dot C-C, T-Mobile dot L-U-O-S-A-C-C. I probably would have been smart enough not to click on it. I clicked on it. It said, hey, look, you got boy, you got a lot of points. You could get an iPad. You could get some headphones. What would you like? I said, well, I don't really need any of this. But these headphones I could give as a gift. Click the link. All looked very legitimate. It said, well, OK, we need your credit card.

[00:03:16] It's free, but there's $0.99 shipping charge. So we need your credit card for that. That should have been. Then I clicked the link and it took a long time. That was the real giveaway. So I'm waiting. Put in my credit card information and said, OK, they're going to send you a text. Got the text. Took a long time because there's a man in the middle, right? Waiting for that text so that they can get the credit card number in the text and authenticate it. And what they did, which is really interesting, the text said, to add this credit card to

[00:03:46] your Apple wallet, enter the number. And I should. I mean, there was so many red flags. Again, I'm sure everybody listening understands that our guard is down briefly. Maybe you're distracted. It was. It was early morning. I wasn't paying attention. And there was urgency, right? These are going to expire. Yep. And it was a nice set of Sony headphones. I thought, well, that's pretty good. So I entered the first credit card. I said, no, this one didn't work.

[00:04:16] Oh. Whoa. And in the second credit card, no, this didn't work. And they'll just suck them out until you finally say. Three credit cards before I went, wait a minute. Hold on there, buddy. Fortunately, the first credit card was an Apple credit card, which Apple is great. You go in and you say, make that number no good. Give me a new one. And that's it. It's done. The other two, I had to say to the bank, I need a new credit card.

[00:04:45] I had to say to American Express, I need a new credit card. There'll be a little pain in between reconnecting stuff, which I deserve fully. And in fact, shortly after, as soon as I realized- But you're indemnified from any charges? Well, yeah. And as soon as I realized it, I immediately stopped all those credit cards. So I was not going to get bit. They don't, they're quick. So that was the interesting thing. I thought it was smart of them to put it into a wallet. So they put it into a Apple wallet because that's anonymous.

[00:05:13] You can then use it anonymously at a store and the store doesn't know who you are. And Lisa called down to me about an hour later saying, did you just charge some 500 bucks worth of stuff at Lowe's? I said, no. And she said, well, American Express blocked it. I said, well, good. And so I haven't seen any others because they're all blocked. Yeah, less than an hour for them to get the credit card numbers. Authenticate it, add it to a phony Apple wallet, which they own.

[00:05:42] And Leo, just imagine how many people are being caught. I mean, you're as aware- Of all people. You're as aware as you could be, but still. And again, even I looked at that text and I thought, huh, that's interesting. Whereas normally, nothing would have happened. But then I looked at the phone numbers, plus 91. I don't know where that is, but it's not Amazon.

[00:06:12] So I feel so dumb. Well, I've told the story before. I had my main credit card. I could not buy, I could not purchase gas. It was so frustrating because, and it would stop, it would kill the card if it approached a gas tank, a gas pump, because it turns out that's what bad guys do. That's how they use it to validate it. Yeah. Exactly. When they get hold of a card. Yep.

[00:06:42] Anyway, I'm tempted to never tell anybody that this happened, but I think on this show, especially, I think it's important to say this because we're all vulnerable. These are not hypothetical issues that we face. And this actually will be what you and I will be talking about at our presentation at Threat Locker at the beginning of March is, I titled our talk, The Call is Coming from Inside the House. Yeah, that's true.

[00:07:12] Because that is the threat now. And it is the messiest, least easy to deal with. Most pushback from your own employees and staff are all the things you have to keep them from doing in order to protect themselves, protect your organization from inside. So anyway, we have a great podcast today.

[00:07:42] Maybe it is the 13th. This didn't happen this morning, did it? No, it was yesterday. Unfortunately, it was on a day off, so I had time to fix everything. So we've got Security Now episode number 1060, which I titled Three Day Certificates, which was inspired by a blog post that my continuing poking around in the code signing world led me to that I'm going to share.

[00:08:08] So we're going to take a look at Microsoft's Azure cloud code signing, a topic we opened last week. Boy, it turns out, Leo, a bunch of our listeners are in enterprises where they need to be signing code. And so last week's topic had extremely high resonance and relevance for them. We're going to talk about that some more.

[00:08:34] Also, California's implementation of DROP to provide global data broker opt-out is interesting. I've got some details about that. Actually, I did it also. I don't know if you have. I did. Also, where's the town? What a bod, Idaho. We're going to look into that. Also, I discovered what a bod.

[00:09:01] iOS is built in map app worked itself out of a job for me. I'm going to explain the backstory there. We've got a, I found a 30 minute tutorial for non coders about how to get into, how to get started in AI coding, like how to ask the questions. Right. Which I want to share with our listeners. Also, the fact that Claude Code appears to be winning over the AI coding world. Oh, yeah.

[00:09:29] I'm going to share two pieces of information about that and then have you tell us about your own recent experiences, which I, which I have a, I got some sense for. Um, we've got a bunch of listener musings on code signing, a little bit of magnesium feedback, and then we're going to take a look at what use could there possibly be to three day certificates. I mean, it's like it barely gets off the ground and it's landed. So yeah. And of course we've got a great picture of the week for everybody.

[00:09:58] So I think another great podcast. Love it. Well, uh, before we get to the picture of the week, cause I have it already all queued up here. Maybe I can tell you about our sponsor for this segment on security now. And it's kind of, kind of appropriate. The, uh, this episode of security now is brought to you by material, the cloud workspace security platform built for lean security teams.

[00:10:24] And man, I wish, I wish I didn't, this, this, uh, this, uh, text came over my, uh, Apple messages, not my Google mail. If it had, I wouldn't have had to worry managing security in the cloud workspace, as you know, is tricky. We are a Google workspace, uh, company. A lot of you use workspace or maybe use, uh, Microsoft 365. Uh, but it's hard to do security in those clouds. Phishing is not the only way in by the way, what I got, but today's email security basically

[00:10:53] stops at the perimeter. New attacks are hard to detect with siloed email data and identity security. But that's why you need material. Material protects the email, protects the files, protects all the accounts that live in your Google workspace or Microsoft 365. Honestly, effective email security today needs to do more than just block phishing and other inbound attacks.

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[00:12:17] And that's sensitive data, isn't it? There's all sorts of stuff going through the over the transom into the inbox. Account threat detection and response with comprehensive control over access and authentication of people and third-party apps. You get all this with Material. Material, it empowers organizations to rapidly mature their ability to detect and stop breaches with step-up authentication for sensitive content, blast radius visualization for accounts,

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[00:13:46] We thank them so much for their support of Security Now and Mr. G. Okay. Let me tee up the picture of the week. I gave this picture of the week the caption, it would be funnier if it didn't ring so true. Oh, dear. Instead, it's rather sad. Yes. Okay. This is a free-range comic. I'm looking at it right now.

[00:14:15] Let me show it full screen so you can read the entire caption. So we have a neat-looking couple of hikers. She's got her little fanny pack, and he's got a walking stick. And they're on a path clearly in some park. And they've come to a ranger who's stepped out of his booth. The arm is down on the gate, preventing them from moving through.

[00:14:44] And he's holding up his hand saying, hold on, stop, pointing to a kind of a billboard-sized screen, which is off to the side of the path. And on the screen, we see it says, content loading with the little spinning thing, right? And he is seen to be saying, hold it right there, folks. Before you can view any more scenery,

[00:15:11] you'll have to watch these ads and take a brief survey. So as I said, yes, it would be funnier if it didn't ring so true. Even nature is being commercialized, and you're needing to be made into the product yourself if you're wanting to do any communing. No communing allowed. No communing here. Okay, so based upon the feedback I've received,

[00:15:40] as I said, over the past week, we appear to have hit it out of the park with our first podcast last week of 2026. I received a bunch of feedback about each of the major topics we covered, and no one complained about my spending time sharing what I learned firsthand about magnesium. In fact, many of our listeners want more. So from time to time, you know, again, this is not going to be the nutrition podcast,

[00:16:09] but again, we're all together, all, what, 100,000 plus of us aging as a group, and we've been at this for 21 years. So we're getting there. I was gratified to find a great deal of unity over what's going on in our industry regarding the shortening of certificate lifetimes,

[00:16:35] coupled with the concomitant rising costs of code signing. Since last week's three-hour podcast, which, you know, couldn't have handled any more content, I stumbled upon a terrific blog post that was so on point that I want to begin with it this week, much as I began with this same topic last week by looking at, in this case, a different aspect of code signing.

[00:17:03] The guy's name is Rick Strahl. His post was this past summer on July 20th, and he tweeted a few days before that. I'll share that in a second. But he posted July 20th, 2025, from Hood River, Oregon. He gave his posting, fighting through setting up Microsoft trusted signing.

[00:17:31] And while I share what Rick wrote, please keep in mind that no matter how much this guy may sound like me and may be echoing my recently expressed sentiments, this is really his own original writing. So, you know, he's further evidence, I guess, that, you know, I and our many listeners who have expressed an opinion are not alone and are not off base

[00:18:01] in raising an extremely skeptical eyebrow at the recent changes that have been occurring and which will be adversely affecting everyone who wishes to author code going forward. So here's what Rick wrote. He said, so it's that time of year, actually the time of several years to renew my code signing certificate. I always dread this because it's a manual process and invariably,

[00:18:30] if you're not intimately familiar with the complexities of public key cryptography, the terminology is enough to drive you batty. It's gotten easier since I made some decent notes the last few times I went through this. But all that's out the window this time around because the code signing rules have changed drastically. It actually happened a few years ago, but I was lucky

[00:19:00] and got my local still exportable certificate just before the rules changed. So I was able to freeload for at least nearly three years on the old certificate plan. The new rules don't allow for locally stored exportable certificates. Instead, certificates have to be served from one of a few certified online authorities or the certs must be stored

[00:19:30] in a FIPS 140-2 Level 2 Plus compliant hardware security module. The keys cannot be exportable, so they effectively cannot be copied and stored or used elsewhere. So you got the option of a server-provided keys or hardware keys. The idea behind this is to stop keys getting jacked and being used by the non-originating organization.

[00:19:59] So the new keys are one-time generated and non-exportable so that they are much more restricted. Online services issue certificates that are good for only a few days when you can use them to sign with and then automatically roll over to a new certificate. What all this means, the complexity of getting a certificate has gotten exponentially worse. And along with that,

[00:20:29] prices have gone up significantly. Base non-EV certs run in the $350 to $500 range with fully verified EV certificates starting around $500 per year. What used to cost me $180 for three years, the same provider now wants nearly $1,000 for. He says, yikes.

[00:20:57] It all seems like a huge grift. Okay, now in his posting, Rick, as I mentioned, then posts, he quotes a separate tweet which he had posted two days prior to this blog posting. On July 18th, Rick posted to X. He said, as it is, the whole code signing thing has turned into another scam of inshittification of a captured audience.

[00:21:26] If you're publishing software or even packages on NuGet now, you pretty much have to have a code signing certificate. Certificates that used to be $100 to $150 or less for multi-year certs per year a few years ago now cost $300 to $400 for basic certs. The EV certs start at $500 and go up from there. The validation rules for businesses have not changed.

[00:21:55] And you would think most of the expense is all in that. But this isn't about security. It's about gatekeeping and just one more hurdle for a small business to have to jump over. So that was his tweet. Then he continues turning his attention to Microsoft's Azure cloud signing solution. He writes, Microsoft is in the game too.

[00:22:24] Microsoft, who requires these code signing rules in the first place for Windows smart screen validation and also for other things like NuGet packages is also providing an Azure service called trusted signing to provide code signing services. So they're on both sides of that transaction. Create the problem, provide the solution. To their credit, their pricing is much better

[00:22:53] than what most traditional SSL cert providers are now charging. Azure trusted code signing is still in preview, but then again, it's been in preview for well over two years, but it looks like what you see and what can sign up for now is in the final stages before going to a proper release as a service. One reason to look at Microsoft's solution, despite the potential pain and suffering, he writes,

[00:23:23] is that the pricing is quite good as of the time of this post. So, and then he has a little chart. The base price monthly is $9.99. The premium as opposed to basic per month is 99.99. The quota as in maximum number of signatures per month for the basic $9.99

[00:23:51] is 5,000 signatures per month. Then an over quota is half a cent per signature. So, $0.005 you know, half a penny per signature once you've gone over 5,000 per month. For the premium plan, which is that basically $100, 99.99, you get 100,000 signatures per month and then the same half a penny for each of the signatures

[00:24:21] over that. So, he said, these are non-EV base certificates. Oh, so that means the difference between basic and premium is not signature quality, which makes sense, right? Because we know you don't get any benefit anymore for EV from Microsoft, so why charge more for it? But it's quantity of signatures. So, for 5,000 signatures for $10 a month, basically for 10 times that fee,

[00:24:51] $100 a month, you get 20 times the maximum number of signatures before you start having to pay per signature. You get 100,000 signatures. So, he says, these are non-EV base certificates that only do basic vetting. For fully vetted EV certificates, you'll need to look elsewhere. This pricing, which ends up at about $120 per year for the single cert,

[00:25:21] is cheap compared to most of the SSL vendors, most of which start at around $300 for certificates with mailed hardware keys, meaning postal mail. They send the key to you, and you plug it in, and you're good to go. He says, so, you've got to give Microsoft credit. Here, for keeping costs down and providing reasonable pricing. The certificates issued by Microsoft

[00:25:50] are very short-lived with expirations that last only three days to aggressively thwart invalid signing attacks in case a certificate is compromised. Thus, the title of today's podcast, Three-Day Certificates, we're going to look at the mechanisms behind that. He says, doing a bit of research, out of all the bad options out there, Microsoft's trusted signing seems like the least

[00:26:20] bad solution that's also cheaper than traditional certs from various SSL vendors. The good news is that it works, and pricing is reasonable. The bad news? I wasted nearly an entire day trying to get it to work. Hopefully, this post will help you reading this not to waste

[00:26:49] quite so much time. His next section, he titled Navigating the Azure Jungle. I'm not going to go through it all, but I'm going to touch on the beginning of this. He said, if you end up going the Azure trusted signing route, plan on having to wade through the Azure dependency jungle of setting up several resources and trying to understand what all the mumbo jumbo Azure jargon

[00:27:18] amounts to. If you're doing Azure all day, then much of this infrastructure dance will be familiar to you. But as someone, me, he wrote, who only occasionally jumps in for some very specific services like trusted signing, it's incredibly painful to deal with Azure security and the resource dependencies and the endless nesting of services with badly defined and overlapping

[00:27:48] naming boundaries. For trusted signing, finding documentation via search engines was hit or miss. The docs for this are buried behind deeply nested links, perhaps because it's still in or just out of preview. He says, friends, even that's hard to tell since some prompts show preview, none of the headlines do. He said, and also because previous releases of this technology used a completely

[00:28:18] different publishing pipeline through the Azure key vault. He says, there's official documentation, although it took me a bit to discover it. And he put a link in the blog posting, and I copied that link into the show notes. So that's there. He says, this has everything you need, but the instructions require some interpretation. The tools are terrible, and the docs don't make working with them a lot

[00:28:47] easier by making you figure out where to find files and dependencies and how to install tools. Don't believe you're lying AIs, he wrote, in this day and age of AI assistance and chat bots, you would think that things like Azure configuration instructions for setting up an Azure task would be readily available. Heck, there's even an Azure specific copilot model that you can use from the VS code

[00:29:16] copilot integration. But that actually yielded surprisingly bad results and did not work well with trusted signing, either for setup or for the signing part. Part of this might be because trusted signing is still in preview or because the documentation for this is almost non-discoverable and because things have changed so much with the tooling. Long story short, after a very pissed off day

[00:29:46] of going down many wrong paths, I managed to get trusted signing to work for my projects. And I'll try my best to provide the details how I have this set up, hopefully sparing a few of you all the pain I ran into. Okay, and at this point I'm going to stop, almost. He said, so this is about the first 10% of Rick's entire blog posting.

[00:30:16] Throughout the next 90% of his posting, he painstakingly and charitably details the entire process of setting up Microsoft Azure Cloud code signing. I've got a link to his detailed instructional posting in the show notes, and I also gave it a GRC shortcut just to make it easy for everybody to find. GRC.SC slash code sign, all one word. GRC.SC

[00:30:45] slash code sign will bounce you over to this blog posting of Rick's, where you'll see the first 10% is what I just shared, and the other 90% are how he solved the problem. He finally wraps up this terrific setup walk through with a summary that's also worth sharing here. As you'll hear, some of this assumes that by now, by the time you've gotten to here, you've managed to slog through everything that he wrote, which preceded it. So,

[00:31:14] he sums it up by saying, the process to set up trusted signings, was way harder than it should have been. In fact, the entire process took me the better part of an entire workday. The server process is complicated primarily because the nomenclature is so crazy confusing, and the dependency management on Azure is such a pain in the ass. The missing rights from the account to create an identity is particularly maddening, and how you

[00:31:44] fix it is even more so. But it wouldn't be Azure if you weren't cursing the thing every step of the way. The signing process is also a pain in the ass with three different tool chains required. The fact that an Azure trusted signing command line interface add-in exists, but doesn't actually support signing, is just ridiculous. With all the resources that

[00:32:13] are thrown in Azure, it seems petty to not support the one feature that everybody is going to need without having to jump through hoops of managing several tool installation instructions. But, somewhat grudgingly, I have to say that at the end of the day, the process works, warts and all. Microsoft's comparatively lower pricing for the service compared to others, maybe makes it worth

[00:32:43] it. And, frankly, the fact that I have my cert running as a service that hopefully doesn't ever need to be updated unless I quit the service is enticing. Yeah, it costs more than it did last time around. I'm now paying almost as much every year as I used to pay for three years. But, given the circumstances and the insidification that now surrounds the entire code

[00:33:13] signing process, this is the best we can do for now. I'm hoping writing this up is helpful to some and that these instructions won't be obsolete in a few short months because Microsoft changed their designs again, as is so often the case. Despite that I finally got it to form, one would hope they fix its performance. Maybe he meant to perform. Oh yeah, despite that I finally got it to perform,

[00:33:42] one would hope they fix its performance. And he said five to eight seconds per file to sign with no parallelism for multiple submissions is bad. That's painful. And could we yes, like you just sit here waiting for eight seconds for this thing to sign a file. And apparently lots of companies are signing. They have like heavy signing burdens. He said with no parallelism for multiple

[00:34:12] submissions. And could we please have self-contained tooling for signing. For heaven's sake, he wrote, provide one tool that can handle the signing process in one pass without having to install 50 other things. Or better yet, have it built in to the Azure command line interface with the trusted signing add-in that's already there. One could hope some of this is due to the

[00:34:41] relative newness of Azure trusted signing but we shall see. So, Rick's blog system supports reader comments. And that posting back in July generated a bunch of feedback. I'll share just the first one of many which followed up and posted, I'd just like to say that I've been reading your blog for probably 12 years now. And I also went through this.

[00:35:10] I've learned to parse Microsoft documentation as if I were a machine. And it's nice to know that someone else is turning into the cranky old man of developers. I feel like something has been lost from the time we were excited it all worked. Meaning, you know, computing. This guy wrote, the days where you could slow down the genie effect on Mac with the shift key just to

[00:35:40] stare at it. When connecting to a system seemed like magic. Now we deal with artificial gatekeeping, auditing, roadblocks, deprecations for seemingly no productive reason. What happened to the joy of being excited that it all worked? He finished, keep on trucking, but also get off my lawn. So, yeah, it's not just me and many of our

[00:36:09] listeners who have sensed that what's happening here is not for the benefit of the world, but for the enrichment of a very few large gatekeeping bureaucracies. Yeah. Now I should say that after last week's podcast, I did some additional scouting around and I found that the FastSSL brand offers a standard, like Microsoft, non-EV code signing certificate

[00:36:39] if you buy three years for $129 per year. So, and now we're talking hardware. So, since it's still possible before March 1st to obtain a three year plus three month, remember 39 months certificate, that's what I plan to do. Fast SSL certificates are available from the site Cheap SSL Security Dot

[00:37:09] Com. C-H-E-A-P S-S-L S-E-C-U-R-I-T-O-I. You know, no hyphens or anything. Cheap SSL Security Dot Com. As I said, that's what I'm going to do. There's no longer any apparent benefit from obtaining and wielding extended validation certificates certification. Microsoft doesn't even offer it because they don't care. And since obtaining it means paying a lot more, that is EV, paying a lot more

[00:37:39] after first being subjected to basically a full body cavity search in order to qualify for EV, my next code signing certificate will be the bottom of the barrel Fast SSL brand. That one will take me from when I get it, which will be late next month, late February of 2026, through to late May of 2029. And at that point,

[00:38:09] and that means installed in my little hardware USB dongle so I can sign as much as I want to. Actually, my server will be signing as everybody who buys a GRC product has code signing on the fly of their own executable. That's stuff I all got worked out when I talked about it a couple years ago. So, three years from now, May 2029, we don't know what shape the world's going to be in. We don't know what else will have changed. They may have further shortened

[00:38:39] certificate lifetimes. There may be more pressure in the cloud. Maybe some competition will have stepped up to offer a better deal. We don't know. So, anyway, I've got a link to, for anyone who cares, the Fast SSL code signing certificate. It's $387 for the three years. So, $129 per year. You get to install it into an existing dongle. You probably already have

[00:39:08] if you've already been doing code signing for the last two and a half years because it was all already dongle-ized. That's what I know, Leo. Unbelievable. I actually, it's funny because we're going to talk about it a little bit later, but as you know, over the weekend, I wrote some of my own code and I just moved it over onto this machine so I could show you and the Apple

[00:39:37] operating systems, you can't open that. It's not signed. Yeah, it is. It is. I mean, it really, it's astonishing essentially. I mean, you can understand what they're trying to do, right? Oh yeah, for security. I get it. Yeah, except that bad guys are signing their bad code because they're able to pretend, I mean, we're hiring North Koreans. We obviously

[00:40:07] aren't good at figuring out who people are. it's an imperfect system, so why enforce it is what you're saying. Yes, and that's what I'm beginning, and I guess this is the old man get off my lawn thing, I'm seeing more and more examples of where trying to fix the last 5% is creating 95% overhead. You know, again, it's like we need to protect some

[00:40:37] endangered rodent somewhere in Sacramento, so we can't run light rail through that area without all kinds of environmental exceptions and permits and things. As a consequence, we don't have any good transportation in California. Again, I get the intent, but sometimes you end up, it's like a case of being your own worst enemy, and

[00:41:07] in this effort to squeeze, to try to use technology to go all the way to 100% no malware, first of all, you're going to fail. You know, even Goodware has bugs as the point that I made. The fact that it's signed doesn't mean that it doesn't have remote code execution vulnerabilities. It just means you know who made it. Well, you pretty much know anyway.

[00:41:38] I need to take a deep breath, have some coffee, then we'll share some optimistic news about California. Good. And while Steve is rehydrating and rejuvenating, let me talk about our sponsor for this segment of Security Now, Zscaler. This episode of Security Now brought to you by Zscaler. It's the world's largest cloud security platform. You know, the potential rewards

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[00:43:38] With Zscaler, as long as you've got internet, you're good to go. A big part of the reason that we moved to a consolidated solution away from SD-WAN and VPN is to eliminate that lateral opportunity that people had and that opportunity for misdirection or open access to the network. It also was an opportunity for us to maintain and provide our remote users with a cafe-style environment. With Zscaler Zero Trust plus AI, you can safely adopt

[00:44:07] generative AI and private AI to boost productivity across the business. Their Zero Trust architecture plus AI helps you reduce the risks of AI related data loss and protects against AI attacks to guarantee greater productivity and compliance. Learn more at supporting the important work, the good work Steve's doing here at Security

[00:44:36] Now. Now, back to the crazy world we all live in. Some good news and a nice acronym. The acronym is DROP, which stands for Delete Request and Opt-Out Platform. Ars Technica's headline was the nation's strictest privacy law just took effect to data brokers chagrin with the subhead Californians

[00:45:06] can now submit demands requiring 500 brokers. I don't know where Dan got 500, I got 170, but still 170 to delete their data. So this was written by Dan Gooden, Ars Technica's security guy and technical guy. He wrote, Californians are getting a new supercharged way to stop data brokers from hoarding and selling their personal information as a

[00:45:36] recently enacted law that's among the strictest in the nation took effect at the beginning of the year. According to the California Privacy Protection Agency, which is short as Cal Privacy, more than 500 companies actively scour all sorts of sources for scraps of information about individuals then package and store it to sell to marketers, private investigators, and others. The nonprofit consumer watchdog

[00:46:05] said that in 2024 brokers trawl automakers, tech companies, junk food restaurants, device makers, and others for financial info, purchases, family situations, eating, exercising, travel, entertainment habits, and just about any other imaginable information belonging to millions of people. So the interesting takeaway for me so far

[00:46:35] and for us is to appreciate that this is not passive eavesdropping, right? I mean, these guys are proactively assembling portfolios on individuals. I mean, the more data they get on us by person, the more valuable it is. They are turning it into a cash flow. So Dan said, two years ago,

[00:47:05] California's DELETE Act took effect. It required data brokers to provide residents with a means to obtain a copy of all data pertaining to them and to demand that such information be deleted. Unfortunately, Consumer Watchdog found that only 1% of Californians exercised these rights in the first 12 months after the law went into effect.

[00:47:35] A chief reason? Residents were required to file a separate demand for each broker. With hundreds, he writes, of companies selling data, the burden was too onerous for most residents to take on. On January 1st, meaning 2026, a couple weeks ago, a new law known

[00:48:05] as DROP, Delete Request and Opt Out Platform took effect. DROP allows California residents to register a single demand for their data to be deleted and no longer collected in the future. CalPrivacy then forwards it to all brokers. Starting in August, meaning this coming August, brokers will have 45 days after receiving the

[00:48:35] notice to report the status of each deletion request. So it's not just going out into the blue and you never hear anything back. It's got to be a proactive report of what action they took. Dan said, if any of the broker's records match the information in the demand, all associated data, including inferences, must be deleted unless legal exemptions, such as information

[00:49:04] provided during one-to-one interactions between the individual and the broker, apply. To use drop, individuals must first prove they're a California resident. Dan wrote, I used the drop website and found the flow flawless and the interface intuitive. And I'll just add here, I did too, and I'll report on that in a second. He said, after I provided proof of residency,

[00:49:33] the site prompted me to enter personal information, such as any names and email addresses I use, and specific information, such as VIN, vehicle information numbers, and advertising IDs from phones, TVs, and other devices. It required about 15 minutes to complete the form, but most of that time was spent pulling that data from disparate locations, many buried in system settings. He says, it initially felt counterintuitive to provide

[00:50:03] such a wealth of personal information to ensure that data is no longer tracked. As I thought about it more, I realized that all that data is already compromised as it sits in online databases, which are often easily hacked and, of course, readily available for sale. What's more, CalPrivacy promises to use the data solely for data deletion, under the circumstances, enrolling was a

[00:50:33] no-brainer. It's unfortunate that the law is binding only in California as the scourge of data broker information hoarding and hacks on their databases continues. It would not be surprising to see other states follow California's lead. Okay, so I thought that I ought to take this out for a spin. Also, why not? As Dan wrote, and as Leo and I both discovered, it's all out there already anyway, and trusting one more

[00:51:03] entity who is only asking for my information for the purpose of preventing its warehousing and resale. Well, that makes sense to me. So I went over to the new drop site at consumer.drop.privacy.ca.gov. Again, consumer.privacy.ca.gov. They appear to be

[00:51:32] behind Cloudflare since I first encountered that increasingly familiar let's verify your human intercept page with the little spinning icon doing whatever it's doing. After a few seconds, it finished, and I was taken to the delete request and opt-out platform, parens drop site, which identified itself with that webpage title. One of the first things I noted was a drop status

[00:52:01] menu item. Clicking that out of curiosity, I was taken to a short page that said, enter your drop ID to check the status of your drop deletion request. Your ID contains 8 to 10 characters, letters, and numbers. Okay, so that seemed sort of cool. You receive a drop ID, which you can use to check back at any time in the future. So, I know, I'm thinking that

[00:52:30] I'll store that in Bitwarden safe and also alongside my credit bureau, credit freeze info, you know, just as a collection of stuff I want to hold on to. Since this was serious business, I decided that I ought to actually read the terms of use, fine print, and I'm glad I did. I just skipped over them completely. I don't blame you. What'd you find? It explains that everything I provide will be forwarded to data brokers,

[00:53:00] and the more I provide, the better job they'll be able to do of scrubbing me from their systems. That's nervous making. I know, you know, and it does make, you know, it gives you a big gulp, but anyway, so the relevant parts here, it says, by using the delete request and opt-out platform, DROP, you agree to the following terms of use, terms,

[00:53:29] provided by the California Privacy Protection Agency, CalPrivacy, referred to herein as we, us, and our. They said, use of DROP, by submitting a deletion request through DROP, you consent to disclosure of your personal information to data brokers for purposes of processing your deletion request pursuant to civil code section blah, blah, blah, unless or until you cancel your deletion request. Additionally,

[00:53:59] you acknowledge that data brokers receiving your deletion request will delete any non-exempt personal information as defined in another civil code, which pertains to you, and was collected from third parties or from you in a non-first party capacity. In other words, through an interaction where you did not intend or expect to interact with that data broker. Before submitting a deletion

[00:54:29] request, you'll be required to verify your California resident as defined in section blah, blah, of the California Code of Regulations as that section read blah, blah. Verification is made with assistance from state contracted third-party vendors, including SoCure and login.gov through the California Identity Gateway. If you're unable to confirm your California residency through these verification service providers, you may

[00:54:59] request review of your residency classification pursuant to section blah of the California Code of Regulations. You may contact Cal Privacy by visiting this webpage. And there's a link in the show notes for anyone who doesn't want to find it in the terms and conditions. In addition, you will be prompted to provide personal information such as name, date of birth, and email address. Certain information is required to verify your residency.

[00:55:29] Otherwise, the type of information and how much you provide is up to you. However, you must only provide true and accurate information about yourself through drop. Adding personal information about multiple people in the same request is prohibited. It probably screws things up at the other end too. Information received will be used and disclosed to facilitate your request to delete and opt out of the sale slash sharing of

[00:55:59] your personal information maintained by data brokers registered with Cal Privacy. The more personal information you provide, the greater the likelihood of registered data brokers finding the personal information they maintain about you and deleting that information. Yikes. Okay, but you know, it makes sense. If I choose to volunteer the size of my underwear, on

[00:56:29] the one hand, everyone whose business it is to collect and resell such information will have that authoritatively directly from me. You know, the juiciest and 100% verified information directly from the source that they could ever hope to have. But because this disclosure came through Cal Privacy, it's very existence means that disclose or sell it, they must not. delete it. And that in

[00:56:58] fact, they must use that information solely for the purpose of identifying me and having done so, delete it. And everything else they may have previously aggregated over time about me. The terms of use continues. Data brokers are required to process deletion requests at least once every 45 days beginning August 1st, 2026. Your submission of personal

[00:57:27] information through DROP is governed by Cal Privacy's privacy policy, which is incorporated into these terms by reference. And so, under prohibited uses, they say while using DROP, you agree you will not use DROP for any fraudulent, unlawful, or prohibited purpose. Impersonate any person or entity or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity. Interfere with or disrupt the operation of

[00:57:56] DROP or the servers or networks used to make DROP available, including threatening the integrity or security of DROP. Restrict, disrupt, interfere, or inhibit any other person from using DROP. And finally, reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell, or otherwise exploit for any commercial purposes any portion of use of or access to DROP. Violating these terms may, on a case-by-case basis, result in

[00:58:26] restriction of your ability to access and use DROP. And then they did add aiding another person with their request, which could be necessary. They said, you are only permitted to aid another consumer with their deletion request if that person has authorized you to do so, and you meet the requirements described in some section. In addition, the consumer must first have their residency verified as described in

[00:58:56] the use of DROP section above. When aiding a consumer with their request, you or the consumer must disclose your full name, email address, and business name if applicable through DROP when prompted. In submitting, because you are asked, is this for you or for someone else that you're doing it on their behalf? In submitting information on behalf of another person, you certify that you have authorization to do so and that the information you provide is true and correct. Adding personal information about a person who has not authorized you to submit a

[00:59:26] deletion request on their behalf is prohibited. And then finally, anyway, there's a little bit more, but we've got enough of this. Everyone has a sense for that. They do talk about third-party vendors' involvement and disclaiming their liability over third-party conduct, which is not very comforting, but that's what you get any time attorneys are asked to review and revise anything like this. So the term

[00:59:55] ends with something titled Notice at Collection of Personal Information, which says your data, when you use DROP, the California Privacy Protection Agency collects personal information you enter, such as names, emails, phone numbers, dates of birth, zip codes, mobile advertising IDs, connected TV IDs, vehicle information numbers. We also collect usage time, device ID, and IP address. We use the data to provide your

[01:00:24] deletion request to registered data brokers, enhance the product, respond to questions, and ensure safety. Providing information and using the service as voluntary. Do not provide unrequested personal information. And finally, your rights. You may access records with your personal information. Collection is subject to the Information Practices Act and state policy. If you have any questions or concerns about this policy, contact us, blah, blah, blah.

[01:00:53] Okay, so I did what Dan did. And it did take about 15 minutes. I chose to use login.gov since I already have an account set up there. I don't recall why, but the email address they have for me. Yeah. Oh, that could easily be. That's what global entry uses. Yeah. Although for me, the email address they have for me is the one that I was using in 2018. So it may have

[01:01:22] been set up for my social security stuff in advance of my turning 65. It's for social security. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So in any event, after providing my phone number to login.gov, the site used SMS to send my phone a link. Clicking that link took me to a page which requested access to my camera so that it could manage capturing the front and back of my California driver's

[01:01:52] license. It did that with a cool Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator green grid. overlay kind of thing. And for each of the two exactly. And for each of the two captures, it asked my permission to send it for verification, which took a few seconds each time. After that, I was returned to the drop page where I provided both Steve and Steven as my

[01:02:22] first names. I avoided Leo adding the Tiberius as my middle name. Probably. A good idea. I didn't want to confuse anything. There's a lot of verification going on here. I got a round tripping a bunch of times. Yeah. And you have to verify your email. Right. I gave him my last name, my date of birth, my social security number, my residence address, my vehicle identification number.

[01:02:51] There were places to add a mobile advertising identification number and a smart TV ID. Until Apple refreshes their Apple TV hardware, which I'm just holding my breath for, I'm using Roku. And while Roku does have an advertising identifier, that number is not user displayable without sideloading a Roku channel for displaying such internal stuff. And that was

[01:03:21] more than I was interested in doing. And I also have people wouldn't know that kind of thing at all. Exactly. And I do have app tracking turned off in my iPhone, so there was nothing to share there either. Once that was all complete, I was taken to the deletion request submitted success page. And there I received my promised eight, well, I was going to say eight characters, but it's actually

[01:03:50] two sets of four characters hyphenated. So I guess that's nine characters. That's that drop ID, which I can then use to check back on my drop status at any time in the future, although nothing's going to happen until late August or actually, I guess, maybe even early September. So much easier to get a delete me account, I'll be honest with you. Although it did occur to me that, yes, but then delete me must be asking the same

[01:04:20] things, right? Anybody who's going to be at is wanting to delete your data. That's right. Yeah. Anyway, so one cool thing is that having done this, the drop pages menu, the main menu on the drop page added two new page links. One was for my data profile, which was that form that I filled out, which was all then viewable with a whole bunch of asterisks, you know, blanking out most of the information, but letting me know

[01:04:49] like what the last four digits of things were. And the other was the data broker list pages. Delete me as a sponsor, I should mention, but it does say you're going to disclose. Okay. So the my data profile page shows a ring chart, which is, you know, like a pie chart, but with the center hollowed out where we are informed that a

[01:05:18] total of 170 named individual data brokers are registered with the state of California and are thus subject to this new law, which as I said, went into effect on January 1st with an eight month grace period. But what's most cool is that once this happens, the ring chart has categories, you know, that'll be like a pie chart for deleted, opted

[01:05:48] out, exempted, record not found and pending. So I'm going to be very good. We have to all wait, you know, eight months, but I'll be very interested in seeing both the deleted and the record not found counts. Currently, all of this stuff is zero slash 170, you know, zero out of 170. So what will they be in September? It's going to be interesting to see how that goes.

[01:06:16] The data broker list, that second new page, actually displays the current status of each of those 170 individual data brokers. At the moment, they're all currently shown as N slash A. and the filter option, which is a column in the table, contains the same itemizations as the ring chart. Deleted, opted out, exempted, record not found and pending.

[01:06:46] So you'll be able to select by those or sort by those, which again, I think will be very interesting to see. And I'll just say, and we've sort of touched on this several times already, but looking at all of this, I was reminded of what Dan wrote. You know, he said, it initially felt counterintuitive to provide such a wealth of personal information to ensure that data is no longer tracked. As I thought about it more, I realized

[01:07:16] that all that data is already compromised as it sits in online databases, which are often easily hacked and of course readily available for sale. So again, yes, it's somewhat creepy to be volunteering all that information, you know, providing it to the, you know, like indirectly to the trackers who have been doing all of this, whose business is it, you know, it is to do this, but we can presume

[01:07:45] that only a tiny fraction of Californians are actually going to even know about this or take the time. It would be nice if it were, you know, a big groundswell, but I doubt that's going to happen. And as we said, Leo, you know, even using our sponsor, delete me, you got to tell them all this in order for them to tell the bad guys what they have to delete. Right. So exactly. Yeah. So you saw how many data brokers? Cause I'm only seeing 89.

[01:08:14] Oh, I got 170. Well, you are a lucky man. I don't know why. Yeah, sure enough. Isn't that weird? Hmm. Yeah. I wonder, let me go, let me go click on mine. Maybe they're going to add more over time. We know there are more than 500 in the real world. So I, you know, I, I just feel like, I don't know. I feel like it's not going to happen for

[01:08:44] till August. Yeah. Not that gives the data brokers lots of time to lobby on August 1st, the 45 day timer starts. Yes. Which gives the data brokers a lot of time to lobby our state legislators to change their mind. I clicked on, I accepted. It made me scroll down to the bottom of the terms of service, even though, even though I already said, oh, and now I got to log in. Okay. I'm not going to do that during the podcast. I think carefully engineered to

[01:09:13] discourage the maximum number of users, to be honest. I, I feel like, see this, there's, this is the first state to ever do this. And we certainly have no federal law doing this. And I feel like that the reason is law enforcement doesn't want it. They love this information. Marketers have big checkbooks to write to. And it's what runs the internet. Unfortunately, it's what finances the internet. You know, the FCC just said, hey, by the way, Verizon, you

[01:09:43] don't have to unlock phones. You can leave them locked. This, we live in a world now where the people with the pocketbooks dictate the laws, not the consumers. So I just, I feel like go through this is probably worth it. We'll see. I'll watch with interest, but I don't have high hopes. Why do you have 159 data brokers and I only get 89? Yeah. I got 17. Yeah. In fact, you can see in the show notes, that

[01:10:12] is a picture of my status screen on 110 2026. I got robbed. Do you think it was 189 right out of the box, huh? No, it's 170. 170 right out of the box. Mine's 89. It was what you see there at the top of page 10 of the show notes. Yeah. And we compare it to yours and sure enough, maybe Southern California has got an extra crawling around. I don't know. The whole thing feels a

[01:10:41] little, I don't know, suspect. We'll see. There it is. We'll get back to you in August. Yes. September, actually, because August, the one the 45 day timer starts. So it won't be until a little past the middle of September that we're going to actually get some, they have 40. Well, it could be sooner. They have a maximum of 45 days. So this all lands on them. You think they're going to rush to do this? It's going to happen on

[01:11:10] day 44, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds. And right up to that very second, they're going to sell it like crazy. And it does feel like, you know, it's like there are those of us who have set our browsers to say, do not track. And my global privacy, my GPC or whatever it is, my global privacy control, you know, it's saying no. Every so often I come to a site that says, oh, we're going to honor your global privacy control

[01:11:40] wishes. And I'm thinking, oh, yeah, well, that's good. Thank you. You're the one. Okay. Break time. And then we're going to find out, Leo, where is what a bod? Not what a burger. No, I know where that is. It's just down the street. What a bod. It's in Idaho. It's two words. W-H-A-T-A. And then the second word is bod, B-O-D. What a bod. What a bod.

[01:12:09] What about what a bod? That's what Lisa says whenever Breacher's on. But that's another story entirely. Our show. And boy, he does like to take his shirt off. He's got. Yes. Every episode. Yeah. You know. This one, I really think I needed to take this training. This episode of Security Now is brought to you by Hawks Hunt.

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[01:16:08] I'll just get it. You can spank me. Just, I'll give you a paddle. Just, just whack me. It's, you know, the, we are the weakest link in the chain and when all the lower hanging fruit has been plucked with all of the, you know, obvious ways of, of compromising networks and systems have been, you know, technology has, has squeezed. That's the truth of it, right? That's how it works. You know, and that's why your,

[01:16:37] your biggest issue right now is, and we're going to talk about this at Zero Trust World is your users. The human factor. The human factor. Yep. Okay. So I wanted to share a wonderful bit of AI hallucination news from this past weekend. The US National Weather Service has withdrawn a wind forecast from its social media platforms after its new AI-powered system

[01:17:06] generated a map of Idaho which included two fictitious town names. Oh my God. Orange O' Tilled and Whatabod. Oh my God. The wind weather forecast map which was initially shared on social media by the weather office in Missoula, Montana on Saturday depicted those two non-existent towns occupying Idaho's

[01:17:36] Camas Prairie region. The forecast posting helpfully encouraged residents to quote, hold onto your hats indicating that Orange O' Tilled faced a 10% chance of high winds while Whatabod to the south would experience calmer conditions. Well, hold onto your bod. Hold onto your bod. That's right. Beyond beyond the gratuitous synthesis

[01:18:05] of those two prominently featured towns, the National Weather Service's map also contained multiple spelling errors and geographical inaccuracies. the weather service was quick to blame these mistakes on the use of generative AI technology. That's right. Blame the AI. And nobody checked this? Nobody looked at it? No. No, I don't know, Leo, because they've all been let go. That's the thing. That's what happened

[01:18:34] when you fire everybody. Yeah. I have an interesting adventure to share. Several months ago, I began noticing that my beloved email, my EM client, email client that I've talked about, that I discovered and talked about on the show had stopped notifying me of incoming email in a timely fashion. Someone would say, you know, that they just sent something, but, you know, after waiting

[01:19:03] a reasonable length of time, nothing arrived. I discovered that by completely closing and then restarting EM client, then it would again, for a while, be reliably notifying me of newly arriving mail. I haven't mentioned this until now because I hadn't been able to affirmatively verify that EM client was the problem, though it certainly seemed to be, and I mean, I was upset. This has been going on for months.

[01:19:33] But then a few weeks ago, something, I don't remember now what it was, but something caused me to look at the logs of GRC's Hmail server. What I discovered was that the server had been crashing and restarting, leaving a trail of mini dump crash log dumps behind. And before the server would crash, it would log the source of its pain.

[01:20:02] It appeared to be something about IMAP and the retrieval of large file attachments. And they were the IPs of my two locations. So that made sense too. So I spent a few hours having a heart-to-heart with ChatGPT to see what it might have absorbed and chasing down the various leads that it was generating for me. There really didn't appear to be any reason to suspect

[01:20:31] that EM client was behind the trouble. And the Hmail server discussion boards, you know, they were not of any help. They were filled with the typical threads of people commenting without actually knowing what they were talking about. So, okay, look elsewhere for a solution. What I did realize was that if EM client or for that matter any email IMAP agent

[01:21:00] that you know, that by nature of the way IMAP works maintains an open TCP IMAP connection where it was expecting to be proactively notified of newly arriving email, which is one of the things that IMAP is able to do. You're able to put a connection into an idle status. When the other end of that connection would crash and restart as the server was,

[01:21:29] that TCP connection would be left hanging. So, EM client would never receive the news of new email nor would it know that the connection had gone down if it wasn't like, you know, proactively pinging for like some life at the other end. So, my environment contains both EM client and a collection of iOS devices, iPhones and iPads. And as I was

[01:21:58] correlating the times of the server crashes with my own actions, it appeared to be more connected to iOS than to my use of EM client, which I have on desktops. Some Googling revealed that to my surprise, iOS has historically had a surprising degree of trouble getting the IMAP protocol correct. And this has been a source of

[01:22:28] great annoyance to those tending IMAP servers before me. The moment I deleted the troublesome account from all my iOS devices, all server crashing stopped. This was about a week ago, and the server has never crashed since. And I even checked Leo just during our last break. My EM client on the desktop has resumed its previous perfect behavior

[01:22:57] of immediately notifying me of any new incoming email. So, the reason for my having dragged everyone through this sordid tale is that my strong, in fact, overriding proclivity is to live off the land, right, wherever possible. You know, since every one of my iOS devices came with a built-in iOS email client, the last thing I would ever consider doing

[01:23:27] would be installing a second redundant email client. But, yes, indeed, things had come to that. I remembered that the EM client folks offered their mobile clients at no charge. So, I thought, okay, let's give it a try. I downloaded EM client from the Apple App Store. Naturally, although I specified exactly the client name I wanted, EM client was not

[01:23:56] first in line. No, it was preceded by sponsored apps that were paying to have my search results contaminated for their benefit. Like many others, I'm beginning to feel that the shine is fading from the Apple, which is truly sad. Nevertheless, I was able to find, download, and run EM client. The first thing it asked upon running was whether I would like

[01:24:26] to import my existing world from a desktop instance. I thought, what? Yes, please. So, it told me to open any already configured desktop instance of EM client. In its menu under tools, I would discover QR export. Sure enough, my Windows desktop EM client displayed a massive QR code, which my mobile instance saw,

[01:24:55] and it was immediately set up with all my accounts, logins, passwords, tweaks, preferences, everything. So, it's now been about seven days since I made that switch across all five of my iOS devices. You know, I'm still not accustomed to how much better the mobile version of EM client is compared to Apple's built-in but uninspired

[01:25:24] mail client. EM client even runs on my oldest iPad, which I now have to keep plugged in. It's so old that ChatGPT's client refuses to install, scolding me that I need to update to an iOS version from sometime this century. But, you know, I'm running the latest one that will run on that hardware. So, I just use ChatGPT from the browser when

[01:25:54] I'm on that little iPad. And, I am also, not only am I waiting for new Apple TV hardware, I'm dying and hoping for an OLED, you know, new iPad hardware. Yeah, me too. Although, that's going to be the end of this year. You're going to be waiting a while. Okay, in that case, I'm going to have to make the, you know, I can't wait. You know when I bought that I, because I didn't want to wait either, and I'm very happy with it, the new Lenovo. Well, this isn't

[01:26:25] Lenovo X1 Carbon with an OLED screen. And it's super light, it's really great. I just, I'm madly in love with it. I get it. Now, I did something different. I bought a Lenovo little, you know, the small form factor block, because it can drive. Oh, we talked about this, that's right, you bought the desktop. Yeah, yeah. I bought the desktop because it can drive three screens. Right. And then, I remember hearing you talk about

[01:26:55] your laptop, looking at it, thinking, you know, that's gorgeous and everything. I was almost going to pull the trigger when I swed, wait a minute, no, I don't ever go anywhere. You don't need a laptop. I, well, I want to be able to be downstairs, you know, and be socializing with, with Lori, not hiding up in my cave for like in the evening. That's why I have a laptop. I don't go anywhere either, but I move around the house. I spent $400. I bought

[01:27:24] the cheapest terminal. Yes, it is. It's the largest screen, dumbest Windows laptop available. It's a terminal. It is. Well, because remote desktop, I remote desktop to GRC servers. I can remote desktop upstairs to my machine. So I get all the speed and performance. I don't have to worry about synchronizing everything and all that. I just, I have a

[01:27:54] mouse screen and keyboard that I can have out on the patio, you know, in the family room, wherever I am talking to the computer that I left running upstairs. So I think that was for me, it was the right solution because again, I don't, I, you know, if I travel, I just take a pad with me and I'm fine because I'm not actually doing any work. Right. Yeah, actually, and then I did buy this and at CES they announced the next generation, 14th generation, which has

[01:28:23] some major improvements, but the OLED is very nice. That's the thing I really wanted was the OLED. And I think you're right to wait for the MacBook, but it's going to be a wait. So maybe as long as a year. Wait, not MacBook, iPad. Oh, you wanted an iPad. Oh, they have an OLED iPad. Yeah. The iPad Pro is fantastic. I have the OLED iPad. No, I'm sorry. I want a mini. I like the mini. It's the right form factor for me. I mean, well, you can have any OLED screen you want with a mini. The mini is great. I love the mini.

[01:28:53] The mini is OLED. Oh, you're talking about iMac. iMac has a screen. The mini has no screen. It's just a NUC. I'm sorry. I'm not about the iPad mini. Oh, the iPad mini. But who's on first? That's what I want to know. Oh, the iPad mini. No, they don't have an OLED. That's going to come out, but that'll come out sooner than that. Yeah. Oh, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, that'll probably be out this spring. Okay, yeah. They try to get those out for the school year,

[01:29:23] so certainly by June. Okay, so I just wanted to say that EM client is free. GRC's server never crashed. Not that everybody else is going to have that problem, but I was. And I just wanted to give everyone a heads up that whether or not you are running EM client on your desktop, the 100% free EM client for iOS or Android is truly lovely. And if you

[01:29:52] are one of our many listeners who switched to the desktop EM client after my discovery of it, or if you're one of our other listeners who wrote to me rhetorically asking what took me so long to find the EM client for the desktop, both groups will get the additional joy of instantaneous account setup by cloning via a QR code from your desktop top tier mobile device. Anyway, before I close the topic,

[01:30:22] I do want to acknowledge that I know someone's going to write to me. There's no excuse for anything some remote email client might do to cause the email server that I'm running to crash. I'm 100% in alignment with that sentiment, but I love Hmail server. It is everything I want in a Windows-hosted open-source email server. In addition to many great

[01:30:52] features that I use, it publishes a comm interface that's allowed me to automate parts of its operation to integrate it into GRC's email system. Because it's open-source, I was able to engineer its operation to get it to do exactly what I needed, but since I'm not in the position to spend Lord only knows how long it would take to fix its actual problem, I am treating the symptoms.

[01:31:22] Yes. And in this case, that worked to my advantage since it allowed me to stumble upon EM client, which doesn't induce those crashes because it's not iOS, which does. And then it turned out to be a much more pleasant user experience than Apple's own native mail app, which I would otherwise have never discovered. I'd be using Apple until the end, so now I'm glad I am not. I have two pieces that I want to share

[01:31:52] next, and then Leo, I want, as I mentioned, you to share a little bit of your recent Claude code revelations. One of the AI newsletters that I keep an eye on is called The Batch. It's published by deep learning.ai, and last Friday, an issue of The Batch arrived that caught my eye because I was pretty certain it would appeal to many of the non-coders who follow this podcast. The issue of the newsletter

[01:32:21] opened with, dear friends, we just launched a course that shows people who have never coded before in less than 30 minutes how to describe an idea for an app and build it using AI. They wrote, it's now time for everyone, marketers, product professionals, operations specialists, analysts, students,

[01:32:51] to build software applications with AI. And I know, Leo, that this is singing from your hymn book. They said, I've often spoken about why everyone should learn to code. I'm seeing a rapidly growing productivity gap between people who know how to code and those who don't. For many job roles I hire for, I now require at least basic coding knowledge. Many times

[01:33:21] after I speak with a non-technical audience about the importance of building software using AI, people ask me how to get started. In the past, I didn't have a great answer. That motivated the deep learning dot AI team to build, to create, quote, build with Andrew. It's the best way for someone who wants to try vibe coding to get started. This course requires no prior knowledge

[01:33:51] of AI or coding, and it's vendor agnostic. Specifically, learners can use these techniques with whatever tool they're most comfortable with, like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or the chatbot built into the deep learning dot AI platform. Okay, so, the Andrew cited here is Andrew Ng, the founder of deep learning dot AI. Yes, Leo, the website

[01:34:20] that's hosting this free course. For those who don't know, Andrew also co-founded Google Brain and Coursera and led AI at Baidu. He's an adjunct professor at Stanford University, former associate professor and director of Stanford's AI lab, SAIL. So, Andrew is certainly not some random YouTube influencer trying to get likes. To help everyone find this free 30-minute course, I've created

[01:34:50] a GRC shortcut using Andrew's first name. So, grc.sc slash Andrew. So, just to be clear, I cannot vouch for this myself since I did not take the time to explore it. But Andrew is obviously the real deal, and it would certainly seem worthwhile for anyone who might have been wondering how to take the first step toward AI-driven coding. So, grc.sc slash Andrew, and that bounces you over to build

[01:35:20] with Andrew under courses at deep learning dot AI. And the second piece I wanted to share is from a listener, Al Liebel, who said, hi, Steve, I've listened to the podcast for years and have thoroughly enjoyed it. I currently work in cloud security and find your content informative. Keep up the great work. I'm writing to you because of an open source project I've been working on. I should tell you I'm a terrible programmer.

[01:35:50] I'm 54, wear progressive glasses, hunt and peck, and likely have mild ADD. And he has a little grin there in his note. Having said that, I've been around computers since my dad built a Heath kit H89 in our basement and I learned to use it. And as an adult, I've worked for software and security companies in various roles, so I know what looks like and with my current role in cloud security, I understand

[01:36:19] what gets attacked and how. I've grown tired of the lack of security, privacy, and trust online and decided to start VetID. I've spent a bunch of time creating the design and then tried to figure out how to find people to help me get it built. That failed spectacularly. So, I dusted myself off and decided to go with plan B, AI.

[01:36:50] A few months ago, in my free time, he says I work full-time, I went through some online classes for using AI for coding. They were helpful in teaching me the basics and I started using ChatGPT. It worked kind of prompt for what I wanted and ChatGPT would spit out the code and I would have to paste it into VS code and do the things build, commit, push, deploy,

[01:37:20] etc. In this situation, I was still the clumsy bottleneck. So, I did a quick search and found Claude code and it has a plan for

[01:37:50] iOS development, one for Android development, the main instance as the back end front end lead and a Raspberry Pi as a tester. The plans were broken into issues assigned to each repo and the different instances could communicate via issues for troubleshooting. Working part-time over the last few months, I'm close to having the first version done. All the best, Al. So, what occurred to me was,

[01:38:20] when I read that, and also this really cool build it by Andrew, is that, Leo, you in the pre-show on Sunday. So, I thought I would give our listeners a chance to get caught up with what you have found. Well, get ready because it's not just going to be me you're going to be hearing from or Andrew or anybody

[01:38:50] else. This is, I think, going to be a drumbeat. I really feel like that we have turned a corner in AI in general, but a lot of people mostly experience is chat GPT, a chat interface and that kind of thing, or maybe image generation. The people who are really, in my mind, most impressed with AI at this point are coders who are using AIs to doing code. And I think we've universally

[01:39:19] coalesced. There have been a lot of choices for a while. Chat GPT's Codex was the best one out there. There are coding models from China as well, QN and others. In fact, DeepSeek's got a new coding model coming out sometime soon. People say this thing is amazing. But I think most of us have kind of, at least for the time being, centered on Claude Code, Anthropics Claude. They did a big update November 24th with Opus

[01:39:48] 4.5 and they've been adding a lot of features since, but they've also been really focused on code and making Claude Code be better and better. And the thing that's really accelerated the development is lately they've been using Claude Code to improve Claude Code. And I've seen a number of people who work at Anthropics say, yeah, most of the stuff we've released has been written by Claude itself, not by us. And that's a big change. So I've been Claude Code with the $20. I have $20 subscriptions to the

[01:40:18] cheap ones for everybody. Perplexity, OpenAI, everybody, including Grok because I get it for free because Elon has given me an unconsensual blue check. So I've tried them all. But when I got this new ThinkPad, I set up Linux and I started configuring it using Claude Code. And instead of me looking up, oh, what's the syntax for this? Because I'm using Sway, which is a very text-based, you could probably use Nix or other things, very text-based

[01:40:48] configuration as opposed to a GUI configuration. And Claude was great. It knew everything. I said, can I put an icon up there? Can I make that wider? And it was doing all that. I thought, this is pretty good. I used it so much, I would start getting to the point where I would say, okay, well, you've used all your credits. You have to wait for a couple hours now. And it's usually just a couple hours. You have to wait until two. It's usually just a couple hours. But I thought, all right, I'm going to bite the bullet. There's a $200 plan and there's

[01:41:17] a $250 plan. The $250 plan is 20 times the number of tokens. The context window as huge as 200,000 K. The bigger the context window, the more it can hold in its head. 200,000 tokens is about 150,000 pages of stuff that it can hold in its head while it's doing stuff. The bigger the context window, I don't want to say more effective because it can maybe be less effective, but the more it can know about at the same time. It's

[01:41:47] kind of like our own brains, right? In fact, that's one of the problems I had with coding always. Even when I was younger, my brain was more adept, is the complexity rapidly got out of my context window got too big. And this is how coders handle it. You know this, is you divide it into smaller pieces that you can readily solve, and then they become black boxes. And so you reduce the complexity and you add to it. Modularity. Yeah, modularity builds a complex system.

[01:42:18] Anyway, I spent some money, and then I thought, well, now that I've spent the money on cloud code, maybe I should do something with it. So I was trying to think, what do I need? And I'm not just to do something simple. I wrote an RSS reader, a text-based RSS reader. And this is, by the way, the discussion I had during the show. I said, I can't run this. And then it said, oh, that's because of gatekeeper. So I've removed the quarantine

[01:42:47] attribute from your RSS reader binary. Now you can run it without macOS blocking it. Wow. Thank you, Claude Code. It also, I found some little other issues. For instance, I didn't realize this, but on Linux, the configuration file, which is a toml file, is kept in a different directory on the Mac. So I said, what's going on? So this is its debugging. It went through a whole debugging process. It wrote a debugger. It said,

[01:43:17] what's the error message you're getting? I pasted it in and said, oh, doy. I've fixed the config location issue. I've added your API keys to the correct config location. On the Mac, it's in an application support folder. I should have known that. Eventually, this is the point, I would have probably figured that out, but I didn't have to. And that has been exactly my experience, Leo. It is really an accelerant. Yes. It allows an expert to just run much more quickly by, you know.

[01:43:47] I don't have to go through manuals. I don't have to. And do Google searching and dig through a bunch of nonsense links of people guessing what the problem is. It's like, no, okay. So this is the GitHub. And it's public on GitHub if you want to look at it. My GitHub handle is Leo Laporte and it's the RSS reader. But the point is, this is not for the general public. I didn't write a general program. I wrote a program that's specifically for what I wanted. It's terminal-based. It's very fast. It does

[01:44:16] AI article summaries. It bookmarks it to raindrop.io. It does a lot of things. It's just what I wanted. Now, it built it in Rust. It said, you want Python or Rust? It said, oh, well, if you can do it in Rust, go ahead. This is all the Rust code. There's quite a bit of code. It built this in a morning with very little interaction. I interacted with it a little bit, but not a whole lot of interaction. There were some back and forth.

[01:44:48] There's some things I didn't like. It didn't work. So I said, can you do this? As it built it, it used GitHub that work on Linux and Mac, Intel and Apple Silicon. I didn't even ask it to do that, but it did. It added a help. It's got a help feature. It's got a bunch of single keystrokes. It automatically made, I said, hey, is there a way that I could automatically update these RSS feeds every hour? I said, sure, let me just set that up

[01:45:26] let me make my screen. I'll do the screen bigger in a second. This is it. It's RSS reader. It's loaded in a series of RSS things that I had to make it bigger so you can see it, which is not the best UI because as you can see now the headlines go off the side of the page. So I am on stories. If I say no, I never want to have actually that one I won't delete. I don't need this in my you know

[01:45:56] any of our shows so I'm going to delete it. Delete this. I'm going to delete this. Ah, governor clears path for robo taxis in New York. So let me hit enter and it's going to generate it goes out to Claude and generates an AI summary. If I want to I can just hit oh and it will open it in the browser so I can read it in the browser. It added that all by itself. I didn't even ask it

[01:46:40] this is the thing that was specific to me I save all the articles I want to use to raindrop so capital S saves it what's the tag that's for twit and I am and hit return and now it's bookmarked on raindrop so you even put a little raindrop at the bottom so these are

[01:47:10] that yeah bookmark that no delete that it wrote it it's done and uh and it's easy for me to uh to fix it so that i you know if i add want a new feature i can easily uh do that in fact i'll show you we'll go go back to a claude code and i can say can you add a key for i don't know emailing

[01:47:34] the story by the way it's pretty good on misspellings and so this is what claude code looks like let me get rid of the um lower third here so you can see it because it's kind of it uses a lot of fun verbs it says fermenting you can go into uh and then it will ask you questions you can go into plan mode or coding mode so how would i like to send it you want to open the email

[01:48:00] app default email app you want to send by sm smtp do you want to use an email i think i'm just going to have it open the app so i'm going to hit one and it will do that i oh i'm not here okay and then what content should be included oops i'm sorry too many buttons i need claude to help me uh switch the

[01:48:24] show don't worry benito your job is safe trust me uh what do i want i want uh article title uai ai summary full article content i think i just want um i did it again sorry and just want uh one here so we'll just hit one oh i guess i can check oh it's check boxes oh that's yeah let's do it all okay

[01:48:54] wow uh submit thank you uh how would you like to send emails what content okay now submit those answers so it did a little back and forthing and it's crafting right now it's it's doing it's doing it in rust by the way which i don't know uh and i've wanted to write rust now it could probably do assembly language it could certainly do common lisp uh it knows a variety of languages it's probably

[01:49:20] best at python i would imagine python seems to be the native language of a lot of ai uh but i thought well let's try it with rust because it'll be uh memory safe type type safe anyway we don't have to go on uh but you see it's coding right now it's doing the actual work of implementing email functionality which i didn't have built in so now i now i will so something turned a corner

[01:49:46] and yes consequence that i mean this suddenly got claude code got very real and we have build with andrew uh from you know grc.sc slash andrew which is a 30 minute youtube video basically from an from an ai founder who is explaining how to talk to ai how to explain what you what you're what you want

[01:50:14] from an application that you want it want the ai to write for you so anyway i would also suggest interesting gap bridging you can you can do quite a bit with the free plan the 20 buck plan will be enough for almost everybody play with it is the best way because one of the things that i've noticed is this stuff is moving so fast that stuff gets out of date right away i'm sure andrews is not out of date it's brand new so you know stick with stuff that's brand new and uh and but but i think

[01:50:43] experimenting is often the best thing there's something else darren was telling me about that i was not aware of google also has something called opal uh which is designed to use gemini to do many ai apps for people who are not technical it's a no code version of doing this and this is free

[01:51:05] so um there's other ways to get into this even if you're not a coder i think it's probably the case that even as good as as claude is it's good if you know a little bit about technology oh by the way it's done the email will include the summary if you've generated other just the title okay try it out

[01:51:31] so so that's how fast it did it and now if i run rss reader it'll have a new capability see at the bottom it says e per email um and i'll just uh let's let's generate a summary for this the summary is a little slow i could probably use a different model that would be a little bit faster i'm using the most the heaviest model right now opus uh but let's email that let's see if email works should

[01:51:58] it yeah there you go and i'll just mail this to you steve how about that how about that and that's not his address that's an old address wow um so how about that pretty cool huh very uh i just i just added a massive feature that i could never have added in five minutes yep and oh look at that i just got your email isn't that wild because em client is now working yes now i think there's still going

[01:52:27] to be lots of room for hand coded stuff like you do or even stuff like em client but i think what's changing is a lot of the little stuff you know that great jonathan colton song uh code monkey gonna write a login a lot of the stuff that's just kind of wrote you don't need a code monkey for anymore you just have claude do it and then you get the higher level thinking the overall planning the

[01:52:55] architecting and maybe if you want some fine tuning or refinement you do that so there's still a human in the loop but i think increasingly bullet boilerplate code will be written by ai it's just too easy and by the way it writes pretty good code i mean everything i've looked at the code is wow it's pretty good yeah very cool thanks for asking i've been wanting to tell somebody about this well and now you've let our listeners know that uh well and i love it because it works perfectly with

[01:53:23] it with this build by andrew to get started yeah and uh and then this sense that something like it's really getting better it's it's doing it's it's massively better and that's the other thing is so many people are now into this there is a lot of resources uh there's a wonderful github page called awesome claude that has hundreds of resources for using claude skill because claude uses skills uh it uses a lot

[01:53:50] of extra tools there's a tool called ralph wiggum that's a hysterical i know is that that's a simpsons character it's a hysterical tool that um you turn on and it's and and you say what the parameter is like don't come back until there's no more errors and then you also if you want optionally can say but only try 20 times you can limit the iterations but it will keep iterating until it reaches the goal that

[01:54:18] you set it so it can it can you know instead of you interacting with it it'll just you just set it off and it goes and a lot of people are doing that now they're running 20 different versions of claude code all at the same time and okay time for a break yeah sorry burke burke says you boy leo you could tell you've been wanting to talk about this i apologize you can edit this out if you want uh

[01:54:45] you're watching security now with steve gibson uh we're so glad you're here and a special thanks to our club members that make this possible if you're not a club member we'd love to have you twitter tv slash club twit ad free versions of all the shows access to the discord where burke yells at me you can also get a special programming including our great ai user group we talk about a lot of stuff

[01:55:08] like this uh twitter tv slash club twit let's continue on with security now steve so we have listener feedback uh although i already shared some little bits that have dribbled in over the last week already but tj asher wrote steve i'm all too familiar with the current state of the move to pure revenue generation by certificate authorities around code signing we were first hit by this with the change

[01:55:37] to hsm storage meaning got a stored in hardware right two and a half years ago he said our corporate policies prohibit allowing multiple users to access a computer under a common id which makes sense then because one of our development environments installs some aspects per user under the hkey current

[01:56:00] user tree of the registry our current licensing of certain add-ons would require an additional license for every possible user on that computer so we're unable to implement an hsm solution to hold our code signing cert as a result we have no option but to store the key in the cloud ms azure has an

[01:56:26] option to allow this but i was informed by our it group that this costs a minimum of thirty thousand dollars to set up yes that's the number we were told okay now i'll just interrupt tj's note to mention that that rick straws detailed you know how to set up ms azure code signing blog posting which we shared at the top of the show

[01:56:49] uh might be something that that that uh tj would like to show his it group um they may have some other situation that imposes a thirty thousand dollar cost but it's difficult to imagine what that might be maybe there's a way around that in any event tj's note continues writing the other option is for our certificate authority to host it but then we need to pay for each and every signature that happens

[01:57:19] we have dozens and dozens of files that need to be signed frequently because we release updates every month this quickly adds up and you have to prepay for the signatures in blocks of a thousand that fee

[01:57:36] just went up and is now 26.4 cents per signature so 264 dollars per 1000 and no refunds bought too many too bad so sad we go through enough signatures that we now buy in blocks of 5000 okay so let me just

[01:58:01] pause here to remind everyone just how absolutely and utterly insane this has all become tj's enterprise that needs to be performing lots of code signing is stuck paying for the privilege of signing its own code on a per file basis it should all be a non-issue they should be able to sign their code just as

[01:58:29] readily as they compile the code to be signed but no by making it increasingly difficult to sign code for no good reason other than because they can and by shortening certificate lifetimes again because the cabal of certificate authorities vote their own self-interests the industry's certificate

[01:58:52] authorities are able to force everyone into a cloud-based service model where our use of our own signing key will be monitored and we will be charged essentially a fee per signing tj finishes the certificate authority group has the entire software industry over a barrel and there is not we can do

[01:59:20] about it woe help you if you have a problem like we're experiencing now need good support buy a business account it's no wonder this change to yearly expiration is happening because they're going to lose out to free tls certificates from let's encrypt they need to recoup that revenue somewhere i can't imagine being a

[01:59:44] small or solo developer regards tj asher and then j thompson wrote are you interested in starting a service to issue certs i put grccerts.com and grccodecerts.com on hold just in case sign j so first of all j i very much

[02:00:09] appreciate your consideration there are many considerations but addressing the name of such a service first if and it's not going to happen but if i were to start a certificate authority i wouldn't tie it to grc in any way it would need to have some sort of long-lived neutral name you know like digi cert or ident

[02:00:34] trust or verisign you know those are good names for a certificate issuing authority and i said first of all because you know there's more you know the saying everyone has their own version of hell in my case having anything whatsoever to do with running or in any way managing a certificate authority would definitely be right up there near the top of the most hellacious ways i can imagine

[02:01:02] me spending the remainder of my life so thank you but no thank you i know that i bitch and moan and carry on about the annoying cabal that has been allowed to form but at the same time i deeply appreciate that there are people who are able to do what is completely beyond me in the early days of grc i ran a larger organization because i thought i was supposed to and while my employees may have been

[02:01:30] happy i was mostly miserable you know thanks to one rough monday morning of firings during which i reduced the company size in half followed by a great deal of welcome attrition i wound up with sue to deal with operational stuff and greg to run interference for me with tech support which leaves me mostly completely free to sit in a quiet corner by myself with elevator music a pc mouse

[02:01:56] screens and keyboard that's my bliss but jay's note brings up the interesting question of the contemporary creation of a new certificate authority it's not a simple thing and it would require a concerted effort but that said i would imagine that the apparent greediness that is overtaking parts of the certificate

[02:02:22] authority business might be creating an opening for a well-financed newcomer the first problem any newcomer would encounter would be the establishment of their own root certificates into the heart of every single system where their signed certificates would need to be trusted you know this might seem like a

[02:02:48] classic click chicken and egg problem since you cannot sell any certificate whose signature will not be trusted not not even one and it'll be difficult to convince the various root store programs to accept any new and unproven and currently unnecessary root certificate without good cause let's encrypt solve this chicken and egg

[02:03:15] problem by borrowing the trust relationship which ident trust had already long established at let's encrypt's launch which was 11 which was now 11 years ago in 2015 its own root certificate was not present in a single trust store

[02:03:36] so in order to bootstrap trust let's encrypt certificates were cross-signed by ident trust's well-trusted root certificate the way this worked was slick let's encrypt first created its own new intermediate certificate this intermediate certificate is what was used to sign all of let's encrypt's tls web certificates which it was issuing

[02:04:04] but the signatures made by this intermediate certificate needed to be trusted by all of the world's web clients to make that happen let's encrypt's new intermediate certificate was co-signed technically it's the term is cross-signed by let's encrypt's newly minted and not yet trusted root certificate and also by ident trust's own

[02:04:34] already well-trusted root certificate so two different root certificates trusted you know they signed and therefore demonstrated their trust of the intermediate certificate which let's encrypt was then able to use to sign the end certificates the tls web certificates the use of ident trust's root certificate to anchor

[02:04:59] the certificate chain meant that the the the signatures let's encrypt's intermediate certificate was placing on tls certificates would be trusted from day one by all web clients since those tls web certificates chained up through let's encrypt's intermediate certificate to a root certificate everyone already trusted for three years

[02:05:25] from 2015 to 2018 let's encrypt's certificate certificate to a root cross signing and then finally after three years in 2018 which i suppose finally after let's encrypt had demonstrated the success of their concept their own operational integrity

[02:05:51] and the feasibility of their new acme automation technology and i imagine the existing cas were not happy but their own root certificate which was named isrg root x1 was added to all of the major trust root stores and then finally in 2021

[02:06:13] three years after let's encrypt's root have been added to everyone's root stores the root certificate that ident trust had originally used to cross sign let's encrypt's intermediate certificate itself expired ending the cross sign phase and leaving all modern systems trusting let's encrypt's own root and the intermediate certificate it had signed

[02:06:40] so a lesson taught by this bit of history is that creating a new trusted certificate issuing authority is neither quick nor easy nor should it be it would require an entity to first demonstrate both their strict commitment to rule following and their ability to rigorously follow the rules that they set

[02:07:07] they need to demonstrate that imbuing their signatures with widespread global trust would not in any way endanger the current status quo if someone really wished to do so they could arrange to bootstrap themselves into business the same way let's encrypt did and i doubt that the members of the ca browser forum could prevent that from happening much as they might not wish to have a powerful new

[02:07:37] lower price easy to use certificate authority undercutting their well-established cash printing business and taking the opposite view for a moment we should all definitely require any upstart newcomer to prove themselves worthy of our trust there's big money to be made in a certificate issuing business the bigger the big guys get the more deadweight overhead

[02:08:05] they accrue and the costlier their certificates they accrued their certificates become the more tantalizing will be the opportunity for newcomers to attempt to get in for a piece of that action anyone should have the ability to become a certificate authority in good standing but as we've often noted along with the right to print money comes the burden of being very careful whose certificates are signed and thus trusted so

[02:08:33] interesting question jay uh being a ca is not for me i like the way my life is right now but i really i can see you know let's encrypt uh manage to start and they were you know that was 11 years ago so i could see an entity deciding that they want in and and see an opportunity because i think the the flip side of all the grumbling and grousing we're doing is demonstrating that there's a

[02:09:02] there's some opportunity here for someone who is you know serious about it in the long term but it's not something that you do easily or quickly scott wrote steve i've listened to you for years for your comments and sage advice about security matters and general comments about it do i want uh he said do want to say i appreciate your thoughts on oh on vitamins and after the last podcast have increased my intake of magnesium please continue to include the occasional thought of the

[02:09:32] thoughts about how vitamins and after the last podcast have increased my life and after the last podcast have increased my life and after the last podcast have been mentioned and i just wanted to mention i i put that in here as a placeholder to say that i as i said earlier i i i received similar sentiments from our listeners and a couple young listeners one in particular said hey supplementary nutrition is not just for older folks so i appreciate that and i will share what i find from time to time to time

[02:09:59] and i wanted to update um a little bit of the news from uh last week steve penfold said hi steve thank you for the info on magnesium last week i found your previous leads on vitamin 3 and now k2 as well plus the ketogenic way of eating but i wasn't aware of any of the magnesium stuff he said your book recommendation caused me to take a look at it on amazon's site here in the uk

[02:10:25] it seems that there have been two updates to any housing quotes the magnesium miracle book by carolyn dean that you said you read in 2009 a quick summary of these updates he said first of all in 2009 the version you read must have been the original 2003 version i think that's probably likely he said there was an updated version released in 2017

[02:10:51] with the same title and he said additionally there is a now even newer book from 2023 billed as quote an up-to-date summary that includes the advances in clinical magnesium research and therapy from the past five years he said this is the version that i bought in kindle format for only uh 3.92 pounds

[02:11:15] he says equates to just over five dollars note that he he said note that the word miracle has been dropped from the title he remembers me grumbling you know it's like it's not a miracle stop saying that yeah this book is just titled magnesium the missing link to total health so anyway i'm taking my gram of magnesium now i gotta say good it's working it's working good good good

[02:11:44] good my sleep's been better too which is nice yeah uh it does that um and be aware that after some length of time you know it's already that's already happened yeah okay that's i was looking for that actually because yep it's helpful yes it is exactly it is yeah laura and i both love it back off a little if i need to but so far so good nice so uh anyway that was steve penfold spin right owner and club twit

[02:12:12] member uh joey albert said thank you steve you started me on the lazarus project series yesterday and it is outstanding he said rotten tomatoes meter is 100 fresh just bummed it's leaving netflix this month the 27th i have to binge now signed joey and mr ron said thanks for the tip about the lazarus project i had never heard of it i just finished attentively binging it which really is the only

[02:12:39] way to follow the plot it's the most outstanding time travel story i've ever seen so i just wanted to mention that joey and mr ron's opinion was widely echoed among those who wrote one lister reminded me of apple tvs for all mankind saying that he thought it was fabulous for those who don't know it's an interesting speculative fiction that extrapolates an alternative history where russia

[02:13:08] wins the early stages of the space race oh yeah by beating the u.s to the moon uh i didn't watch the entire series so i'm unable to offer my own opinion laurie and i watched i think like maybe the first four or five episodes until we had until we had caught up but it seemed to kind of just be lumbering along and not really much so i don't really recall it being amazing but maybe i didn't give it a chance

[02:13:34] it does rate at 8.1 on imdb which is a good score but i've also seen like you know anime things rate highly so it's a matter of who's rating them right and that's not me so uh philip said hi steve many thanks for the valuable lowdown on reduction in the lifetime of code signing certs does this mean

[02:13:58] that eventually all software will need to be updated every two years what does that mean for software for which i've bought a perpetual license or freeware what if it's no longer maintained and i guess that you and i probably the last two users are probably the last two users of paint shop

[02:14:21] pro might yeah love my paul therat loves it too okay good he says it might have to find something else at last best regards philip okay so philip's quandary about this was echoed by a number of our listeners many of whom wrote wondering how shorter certificate code signing certificates would affect

[02:14:45] the long-term verifiable legitimacy of the code those certificates were used to sign and right on cue bleeping computer posted a story last wednesday with the headline logitech options plus g hub mac os apps break after certificate expires yeah whoops uh so bleeping computer

[02:15:14] they fixed that by the way yes bleeping computer began their coverage by writing logitech's options plus and g hub apps on mac os stopped working after their code signing certificate expired leaving users unable to launch them on apple systems options plus is logitech's input device configuration app while g hub is a similar app focused on customizing compatible logitech g gaming peripherals both allow

[02:15:43] setting app profiles button remapping lighting options scroll wheel and sensor sensitivity multiple users reported that logitech apps on mac os did not load making custom gestures mapping scroll settings unavailable and forcing them oh the horror to use basic input functions impacted users expressed their frustration with the sudden loss of productivity enhancing customizations while many wasted time

[02:16:12] reinstalling the logitech apps trying out safe mode or wiping their configuration files eventually logitech published a statement on its support portal admitting that the issue was caused by a certificate that had expired

[02:16:30] okay at the same time i signed grc's never 10 windows executable program on sunday april 21st 2019 and the code signing certificate i used to do that then expired on april 4th 2022 yet a check on the validity

[02:16:56] of never 10s code signing certificate today reels reveals that it remains valid so what's going on this brings us to this week's topic an examination of code signing certificate expiration and the answer to the question how could microsoft be issuing

[02:17:18] three-day code signing certs i do not know and i'm gonna have a cup of coffee or i just want to say one thing i'm very proud while you were talking i just submitted two pull requests and did a rebuild on github version 0.2.2 of the rss reader is now out including email functionality and i sped up the ai summaries by switching models plus better

[02:17:46] error messages so thank you very much you have had a productive day coding leo i feel like a real developer while co-hosting a security now podcast it's pretty amazing i have i mean it even uses github actions to build the software to put the binaries up there so people can download it i think open source software is going to really see a revolution and what's even more interesting to me is that this

[02:18:13] means you people can write their own custom personal stuff this was always kind of the goal well right and and apple was uh what what what was the card deck thing that apple had that was the idea right people have been trying to do this for decades yes in fact i remember um uh john c devorak telling me what was the was his name morris the guy who did morrow george morrow who did a little more of the

[02:18:40] morrow computers that were a little bit like the uh the osborns they were suitcase computers george morrow told devorak he said you know everybody should be writing their own software nobody should be using off-the-shelf software which was hysterical at the time because you know not everybody was it was impossible it was impossible but we're i mean look you're not going to write your own word processor a video editor but you might write a lot of little tools i have been that make your life better

[02:19:07] everybody's needs are different i mean and they could specifically be your needs yeah and the brilliance of brickland's spreadsheet was that it was a programming language it was you know visicalc allowed you to to put numbers in and do with them what you wanted and you know so it was a type of programming language and you know and there are some uh databases that have been like that through

[02:19:36] the through the years where sure they they were really they really helped you get the job done yeah well and and and the other thing that's always been the holy grail is natural language interfaces to computers you know and this was you know hello computer use the keyboard keyboard how queen we've we've we've known that this is really the natural way to interact with the computer let it do the computer stuff you do the human stuff but we haven't had that capability well and imagine leo when we can put

[02:20:06] the ai loose on co on existing repositories and have that find the bugs yeah well i think we're already you mentioned this a couple of weeks ago there's already tools to do that i think that's going to be a revolution as well and as we were saying i mean yeah there's security issues that come up but you can pretty much be sure that claude is not going to use str copy instead of strn copy

[02:20:30] when it's writing you're not going to see buffer overflows as much because it's it's smart it's it knows that's a bad idea humans forget yeah and i said last week i even had chat gpt but when i asked it what was the port number for the mongo db it gave it to me he said and by the way you should not expose that to the public internet isn't that great i think we're in a brave new world it's certainly

[02:20:58] an interesting world there's no question about that you're watching security now this is steve gibson we're so glad you're here thanks for watching and uh let's go on with the show steve okay so the title for today's podcast was inspired by the sentence that rick straw casually dropped into his blog posting in passing he noted quote the certificates issued by microsoft are very short-lived

[02:21:22] with expirations that last only three days to aggressively thwart invalid signing attacks in case a certificate is compromised okay now this raises the obvious question how can it possibly be that microsoft would be using code signing certificates that only last for three days before they expire the answer to that question brings us to a fundamental difference between the

[02:21:51] traditional web server authentication tls certificates which we're all by now intimately familiar with and code signing certificates which we've spent considerably less time exploring in the past so exactly what are the differences between these two in the case of a web servers tls certificate

[02:22:13] our goal the purpose is to validate and authenticate the identity of a remote web server during a real-time transaction right now we need to be assured that the remote server we have just this moment connected to

[02:22:35] using its dns provided ip address is in fact the server we expect dns could have been compromised to lead us astray or our internet packet traffic could have been intercepted and diverted to a malicious web server so to do this we need to verify that the certificate we've just received over the connection we've just

[02:23:02] established matches the domain we intend to connect to and that the certificate is valid not expired in good standing not revoked and was signed by a certificate authority whose signatures we trust if all of those things are true we would have very we would have every reason to believe that we're connecting to a web server

[02:23:29] server serving the domain we intend so now look it's code signing what about code signing the assurances we seek from signed code are obviously very different from the application of tls web certificates we want to ascertain two things from the signature of any signed code we want to determine the verifiable

[02:23:57] identity of the entity that signed the code and we want to verify that not a single bit of the code that was signed has been altered since its signing and that's it that's the entire purpose of signed code who signed it and nothing

[02:24:19] has changed since we understand the general reason why certificates have expiration dates while i complain a lot about certificate lifetimes being so short that their renewal becomes burdensome at the same time it would be somewhat unnerving to be issued a trusted certificate that never expired yikes if that certificate

[02:24:48] were to ever get loose at any time ever bad guys could abuse its trust potentially forever grc has a code signing certificate stored as they must all be now in a safe net 5110 usbe token and it's actually sort of comforting to know that it comes with a drop dead date after which it will become

[02:25:17] useless to anyone if it didn't have that i would need to wipe its contents and then probably still smash it into tiny bits to make absolutely sure that it could never be reused once i was finally finished with ever needing it again you know i mean it has to be completely destroyed but what about the code

[02:25:40] that it was used to sign let's take the never 10 for windows executable i mentioned before if you're curious you can go to grc and download that executable right now never 10.exe to see for yourself i signed that executable on sunday april 2nd or april 21st 2019 using a code signing certificate

[02:26:07] that still had very nearly three years of life left on it since it would expire on april 4th 2022 signed on april 21st 2019 certificate with a certificate that's expiring on april 4th 2022 that did expire

[02:26:27] had to on april 4th 2022 at the time i signed that code the certificate was in good standing it was issued by my company gibson research corporation i'm sorry issued to my company gibson research corporation by digi cert the signing process meant that an the the the signing process meant that an unspoofable

[02:26:55] cryptographic hash was taken of the code the never 10 code whereupon the private key i was in possession of because at this time and still today i own my own code signing private key it would be used to sign the hash and grc's certificate that was issued by digi cert containing the matching public key

[02:27:22] was affixed to the end of the code from that moment on anyone who obtained that never 10 code could check its certificate to see that the certificate was validly issued by digi cert a certificate authority that has carefully earned everyone's trust the signature of the code's original hash could be verified

[02:27:46] using the public key contained in grc's certificate and that validly signed hash could be compared with a fresh hash of the code taken right then to verify that not a single bit of the original code had been changed after it was signed remember the two assertions that are made through code signing the identity of the certificate that performed the

[02:28:16] signing in this case gibson research corporation and that since the time of the signing not a single bit has changed okay now jump forward to 2026 there's still a never 10 executable program that can be downloaded from grc

[02:28:36] and not a single bit of the code has been changed since the day it was signed in april of 2019 yes the certificate that was used to perform the signing expired three years after the signing which is almost four years ago

[02:28:58] in april of 2022 but do we care the signature accompanying the code the signature accompanying the code remains valid the certificate that's attached still contains a public key that can be used to verify that not a single bit has changed since the moment it was originally signed

[02:29:22] and gibson research corporation's name is carried in the attached certificate all of which was signed by digi cert here's what's common between tls and code signing certificates in both cases the only requirement is that the certificate is valid at the time of its use

[02:29:49] so in the case of tls that means it must be valid and remain valid every time a web browser initiates a new connection and that certificate is offered up as proof of the remote server's identity connecting to the server is the time of the certificate's use

[02:30:10] but in the case of code signing the only requirement is that the certificate used to sign the code be valid at the time the code is signed since the only thing code signing is asserting is the identity of the signer and that nothing has changed since requiring that the certificate be valid at the instant of the signing is sufficient

[02:30:38] and now we can see why and how microsoft's azure code signing uses certificates having a very short life of three days technically it could be as short as an hour but creating certificates is not without overhead so i imagine they probably cash any certificates they've created for a couple of days in case the same signer returns with more signatures that they need signed

[02:31:08] or more code they need need signatures signed for but there's an exploit we haven't addressed what's to keep a bad guy who manages to get their mitts on someone else's expired code signing certificate from using that certificate to sign their malicious code the signing certificate may have expired

[02:31:38] but what's the enforcement mechanism for its expiration we might suggest that the pc used to perform the signing would examine the certificate and see that it had expired okay the bad guys know that their stolen certificate has expired so they simply turn back the clock on the signing pc

[02:32:02] that they're using to a point where their certificate is valid now the pc believes that the certificate is valid and in good standing it has no way of knowing what day it is the obvious answer to this dilemma is for anyone who might be relying upon that certificate to examine for themselves the signing certificates expiration date and time

[02:32:28] just as they would for a real time tls certificate and refuse to trust anything signed by any certificate that has expired okay but then we have a new problem as we've seen what we really intend for code signing is for any code that's signed by a certificate that is valid at the time of the signing

[02:32:52] so how do we accomplish that introducing the tsa a different kind of tsa this is the time stamp authority a time stamp authority is a trusted third party it's typically a certificate authority and is often but not necessarily

[02:33:19] the same ca who provided the same ca who provided the signing certificate in the first place it is a service that cas offer during the code signing process once the code has been signed the signature the the after it's been signed that signed signature is itself hashed and forwarded to a time stamp authority

[02:33:45] the hash is forwarded and it's bundled with a utc format time stamp and that package is signed with the time stamp authority's private key they then returned this signature along with their own tsa certificate containing their public key

[02:34:08] the result is a counter signature containing a verifiable time stamp the result of all these machinations is that the final signed code actually contains two certificates the code signers own certificate indicating their identity

[02:34:29] and the validity time window of their certificate and a signing time stamp that can be verified using the time stamp authority's certificate which is also attached so now we have exactly what we want the signing certificates validity window from the not valid before to the not valid after times

[02:34:57] is enforced by an unspoofable time stamp provided in real time on the fly at the moment of signing by a third party time stamping service whose certificate whose own certificate their public certificate is also attached to allow their time stamp to be verified

[02:35:21] it's because grc has always signed its code with the aid of a time stamping service that the validity of our apps never expires even long after the certificate that was used to sign them is long gone so what happened with logitech the truth is we don't know because we can't tell from what they've said

[02:35:47] they said that a certificate expired but we don't definitively know what certificate expired adding a time stamp to executable code and to libraries and whatever you need code signed is now so routine that i'm a little skeptical that they could have actually somehow failed to do that i mean it's built in

[02:36:14] time stamping everything ought to be just i mean like completely in the core of whatever signed their executable code i suspect it's more likely that they have some sort logitech being who they are some sort of their own installer or patcher or updater or who knows what

[02:36:38] where they were using their own certificates internally in some fancy system of their own design and they tripped over their own tail to me that seems more likely it's important to appreciate that it's only commercial certificate authorities who arbitrarily enforce short expiration policies

[02:37:04] when you're creating your own certificates for your own internal purposes you can set whatever expiration date you like so someone may have someone at logitech may have created a 25 year certificate back in 2001 figuring that the system they're using it for you know would be replaced long before that certificate could expire

[02:37:33] but we all know how that goes right so after a few years everyone completely forgot about it and never thought about it again until whoopsie 25 years had flown past and that long-lived certificate surprised everyone by reaching its end of life date and expiring to me that seems the most plausible explanation but again and until more is known from logitech there's no way to tell

[02:38:00] in any event now everyone knows exactly what goes on with code signing certificates and how the static assertions they're designed to make differ from the real-time assertions made by TLS web certificates

[02:38:16] and it should be clear how Microsoft's Azure code signing cloud code signing service is able to sign with three-day lifetime certificates those signatures are immediately time stamped while that short-lived code signing certificate is valid after that the certificate's expiration doesn't matter it can expire and no one cares

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