Host Kevin Riggle interviews Melanie Ensign, former Global Head of Security, Privacy, & Engineering Communications for Uber, about what the role of a CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) is. (Hint: It's not being the smartest security person in the room.)

Bonus episode from https://warstories.criticalpoint.tv/episodes/the-reporter-called-her-christmas-day-melanie-ensign-bug-bounty-incident-management-programs

Video: https://youtu.be/e60YHYHTFUk

Melanie's newsletter: https://discernibleinc.com/newsletter-signup
Melanie's company: https://discernibleinc.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanieensign/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/imeluny
Mastodon: https://defcon.social/@Wednesday

To subscribe to the video version of the podcast on YouTube, and watch other Critical Point content, check out https://youtube.com/@critical-point

Credits:

Edited by sleepingsage.

Intro & outro - "Senpai Funk" by Paul T. Starr. Used with permission.

https://soundcloud.com/ptstarr

Produced by Complex Systems Group LLC (https://complexsystems.group).

Host Kevin Riggle interviews Andrey Petrov about three different incidents he was involved with: A programming mistake in high school that filled its alumni's email inboxes, a Twitter analytics site he built that got co-opted as part of a phishing scam, and how he won a bug bounty on the Ethereum blockchain rollup prototype developed by superstar hacker George Hotz.

Chapters:

• (00:00) - Intros/titles
• (05:02) - The Alumni Email Explosion
• (18:00) - The Twitter Tracker Takeover
• (33:09) - The George Hotz Ethereum Rollups Bug Bounty Bonanza
• (57:02) - Socials/outro

News coverage of the Twitter Tracker Takeover:
“New Twitter Scam Won't Show You Your 'Stalkers'” - NBC News
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna44123467
“Beware: Twitter spam viral application on the loose” - Posilan
https://www.posilan.com/2011/07/20/beware-twitter-spam-viral-application-on-the-loose/
“After a lull of a few months, new Twitter Phishing Scam phrases appear” - Just Practising
https://www.justpractising.com/social-tools/twitter/after-a-lull-new-twitter-phishing-scam-phrases-appear/

Andrey's Twitter: https://twitter.com/shazow
Farcaster: https://warpcast.com/shazow.eth
Web site: https://shazow.net/

To subscribe to the video version of the podcast on YouTube, and watch other Critical Point content, check out https://youtube.com/@critical-point

Credits:

Edited by sleepingsage.

Intro & outro - "Senpai Funk" by Paul T. Starr. Used with permission.

https://soundcloud.com/ptstarr

Produced by Complex Systems Group LLC (https://complexsystems.group).

Kevin Riggle interviews Melanie Ensign (Discernible Inc.), former Global Head of Security, Privacy, & Engineering Communications for Uber, about building good bug bounty programs, incident management processes, and one especially memorable Christmas morning.

Melanie's company: https://discernibleinc.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanieensign/
Twitter: https://x.com/imeluny
Mastodon: https://defcon.social/@Wednesday

Credits:

Edited by sleepingsage.

Intro & outro - "Senpai Funk" by Paul T. Starr. Used with permission.

https://soundcloud.com/ptstarr

Produced by Complex Systems Group LLC (https://complexsystems.group).

Kevin Riggle interviews Deb Chachra, professor of engineering at Olin College and author of HOW INFRASTRUCTURE WORKS about climate change, the housing crisis, the green/sustainable energy transition, and how we can build a better world for ourselves and everyone around us.

BUY DEB'S BOOK! https://criticalpoint.tv/infrastructure

Deb's Twitter: https://twitter.com/debcha
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/debcha.bsky.social
Mastodon: https://saturation.social/@debcha
Web site: http://debcha.org

Big Dig podcast from WGBH Boston: https://www.wgbh.org/podcasts/the-big-dig

Chapters:

Credits:

Edited by sleepingsage.

Intro & outro - "Senpai Funk" by Paul T. Starr. Used with permission.

https://soundcloud.com/ptstarr

Produced by Complex Systems Group LLC (https://complexsystems.group).

Kevin Riggle interviews Abhijit Mehta about Akamai and its role in the history and development of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE). Bonus episode outtake from https://warstories.criticalpoint.tv/episodes/he-broke-turkish-twitter-abhijit-mehta

Abhijit's Twitter: https://twitter.com/AbhijitCMehta
Abhijit's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehtaabhijit/

To watch the video version of the podcast on YouTube, check out the channel page at https://youtube.com/@critical-point

Credits:

Emoji artwork is provided by Emojitwo (https://emojitwo.github.io/), originally released as Emojione 2.2 (https://www.emojione.com/) by Ranks.com (http://www.ranks.com/) with contributions from the Emojitwo community and is licensed under CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode).

Intro & outro - "Senpai Funk" by Paul T. Starr. Used with permission.
https://soundcloud.com/ptstarr

Critical Point logo and wordmark designed by Timothy James Lopez.
https://www.behance.net/lopeztimes

Critical Point logo and wordmark copyright ⓒ 2020 Complex Systems Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Produced by Complex Systems Group LLC (https://complexsystems.group).

Kevin Riggle interviews Abhijit Mehta, who tells how one tiny dot made almost made a massive difference to Twitter's Turkish ad revenue.

Abhijit's Twitter: https://twitter.com/AbhijitCMehta
Abhijit's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehtaabhijit/

Chapters:

• (00:00) - Intro
• (01:25) - How did you find yourself in a place where you could break production?
• (08:53) - Akamai & the 'aha' moments of product development
• (15:30) - Google & the Google culture
• (17:35) - Twitter & what's the difference between brand ads and direct-response ads?
• (23:58) - How Twitter made its money
• (27:58) - Re-architecting the fundamental ad platform at Twitter
• (32:35) - "We had to be really careful!"
• (34:48) - "There's something really weird happening in Turkey"
• (37:49) - The meaning of scale
• (41:02) - "Well we'd thought of all the horses, so we started looking for zebras"
• (43:48) - "So here's what happened"
• (49:30) - "So this will work fine almost everywhere"
• (53:51) - How do you roll things like this out safely?
• (59:56) - "In general I'm an optimist, there's exciting things to come"
• (01:03:52) - Thanks & CTAs

Emoji artwork is provided by Emojitwo (https://emojitwo.github.io/), originally released as Emojione 2.2 (https://www.emojione.com/) by Ranks.com (http://www.ranks.com/) with contributions from the Emojitwo community and is licensed under CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode).

Intro & outro - "Senpai Funk" by Paul T. Starr. Used with permission.
https://soundcloud.com/ptstarr

Critical Point logo and wordmark designed by Timothy James Lopez.
https://www.behance.net/lopeztimes

Critical Point logo and wordmark copyright ⓒ 2020 Complex Systems Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Produced by Complex Systems Group LLC (https://complexsystems.group).

Kevin Riggle interviews Julia Lunetta, who tells us how an ostensibly minor change caused her employer, a financial institution (Upromise Investments), to miss its overnight reconciliation with its banks.

Credits:

Emoji artwork is provided by Emojitwo (https://emojitwo.github.io/), originally released as Emojione 2.2 (https://www.emojione.com/) by Ranks.com (http://www.ranks.com/) with contributions from the Emojitwo community and is licensed under CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode).

Intro & outro - "Senpai Funk" by Paul T. Starr. Used with permission.
https://soundcloud.com/ptstarr

Critical Point logo and wordmark designed by Timothy James Lopez.
https://www.behance.net/lopeztimes

Critical Point logo and wordmark copyright ⓒ 2020 Complex Systems Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Produced by Complex Systems Group LLC (https://complexsystems.group).

Kevin Riggle interviews Kate Rudolph, who tells how a rolled back commit on her intern project resulted in Dropbox, her employer, offering free watermelon to the entire Internet.

Credits:

Emoji artwork is provided by Emojitwo (https://emojitwo.github.io/), originally released as Emojione 2.2 (https://www.emojione.com/) by Ranks.com (http://www.ranks.com/) with contributions from the Emojitwo community and is licensed under CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode).

Intro & outro - "Senpai Funk" by Paul T. Starr. Used with permission.
https://soundcloud.com/ptstarr

Critical Point logo and wordmark designed by Timothy James Lopez.
https://www.behance.net/lopeztimes

Critical Point logo and wordmark copyright ⓒ 2020 Complex Systems Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved.