Podcast: CIA Hacking Tools, Our Orwellian Internet of Things & G-Men can subpoena Memories?

Hacking tools belonging to the CIA were leaked via the site Wikileaks. What have we learned from the release?

In-brief: In this week’s podcast, Paul talks with Sven Dietrich of The John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York about the release of CIA hacking tools, FBI Director Comey’s talk on encryption and more. 

It was another active week in the information security space, with Wikileaks’ headline-grabbing release of a trove of hacking tools purportedly used by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, as well as a speech in Boston by FBI Director James Comey that suggested the top G-Man is still angry about the use of strong encryption tools, and may be interested in subpoenaing our memories and yet another draft framework for securing Internet of Things devices this time from Consumer Reports.

On this week’s Security Ledger Podcast, Editor in Chief Paul Roberts sat down with IEEE Senior Member Sven Dietrich to discuss those stories and others. Sven is an Associate Professor in the Mathematics and Computer Science Department at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice part of CUNY – the City University of New York.

Sven said that revelations that the CIA was interested in hacking television sets, cars and other Internet of Things devices shouldn’t be surprising: all are – in essence – computers. The existence of catalogues of hacking tools, Dietrich said, is just an evolution from the secret spy watches and mini cameras of the Cold War in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, he said.

Check out our conversation below! If you like the music we use in our podcast, you can buy Baxton, by JoeLessShoe here.