Episode #003: Securing REST API Endpoints (or How to Avoid Another Optus) with James Cooper

Episode #003: Securing REST API Endpoints (or How to Avoid Another Optus) with James Cooper
February 21, 2024

Unless you have been living in a cave on Mars with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears for the past few weeks, you have probably heard something about a data breach at Australian telecommunications giant Optus.

As security mistakes go, the vulnerability reported to have enabled the attack leans toward the more embarrassing side of the scale. If reports are true, Optus has effectively exposed customer data on an endpoint available to the entire internet.

While it is plausible that a developer will forget to (re)secure an endpoint once they finish their development work, there are multiple practical steps you can take to catch or mitigate the problem.

February 21, 2024

The Opportunity Cost of Self-hosting MISP

A term with origins in macroeconomics, opportunity cost is the hidden cost of choosing one course of action over another, when both cannot be chosen at the same time. Opportunity costs are not always financial. For example, the opportunity cost of playing video games instead of going for a hike are the benefits you’d have likely gained from hiking, such as improved fitness and mental health. Security teams also incur opportunity costs whenever they pick one way to spend their time and resources over another. The opportunity cost of self-hosting and maintaining MISP is the additional time and brainpower teams could have otherwise spent gathering and leveraging usable threat intelligence and enhancing their organisation’s security posture.

February 21, 2024

Episode #003: Securing REST API Endpoints (or How to Avoid Another Optus) with James Cooper

Unless you have been living in a cave on Mars with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears for the past few weeks, you have probably heard something about a data breach at Australian telecommunications giant Optus.As security mistakes go, the vulnerability reported to have enabled the attack leans toward the more embarrassing side of the scale. If reports are true, Optus has effectively exposed customer data on an endpoint available to the entire internet.While it is plausible that a developer will forget to (re)secure an endpoint once they finish their development work, there are multiple practical steps you can take to catch or mitigate the problem.