Packet Protector
- Episodes
- 135
- Released
- weekly
- Latest episode
- Nov 10, 2026
About the podcast
Join us at the intersection of networking and security! Whether you’re fending off ransomware attacks, securing remote workers, hunting for rogue IoT devices, or gearing up for your latest compliance audit, Packet Protector provides practical information that IT and infrastructure pros can put to work. Every episode covers the latest security headlines and then drills into essential topics to provide technical and strategic insights on wired and wireless network security, access control, cloud security, pen testing and red/blue teaming, security hardware and software, and more. Whether security is your full-time job or one of your many responsibilities, Packet Protector is your go-to cybersecurity resource.
License: © Packet Pushers Interactive LLC
Episodes 135
PP134: News Roundup – Android OEM Slips Malware Past Google, Hardware Wallets Hacked, and More
It’s a packed security news roundup. We start with a multi-billion dollar crypto heist, plus a hardware supply chain attack against crypto wallets, and then discuss the PHP fire drill. European grocery stores …
Show notes
It’s a packed security news roundup. We start with a multi-billion dollar crypto heist, plus a hardware supply chain attack against crypto wallets, and then discuss the PHP fire drill. European grocery stores feel the heat from OT cyber attacks, and Google discovers an OEM was slipping malware past Google’s security checks into Android-based set-top... Read more »PP133: An Inside Look at SRX Firewall Threat Prevention Capabilities (Sponsored)
On today’s Packet Protector we get a good look at HPE Networking’s SRX firewall, including recently updated product families for branch locations. We’ll get an overview of speeds and feeds, and then dig into …
Show notes
On today’s Packet Protector we get a good look at HPE Networking’s SRX firewall, including recently updated product families for branch locations. We’ll get an overview of speeds and feeds, and then dig into threat protection capabilities, AI integration, and more. If your firewall fleet is getting long in the tooth and you’re thinking about... Read more »PP132: What the Death Star Can Teach Us About OT Security
On today’s episode we talk about what security teams can learn about OT security from the Death Star. Guest John Burns recaps his CYBR.SEC.CON talk “The Empire Had a SOC — And Still Got Blown Up Twice”. We jump …
Show notes
On today’s episode we talk about what security teams can learn about OT security from the Death Star. Guest John Burns recaps his CYBR.SEC.CON talk “The Empire Had a SOC — And Still Got Blown Up Twice”. We jump off from this delightfully nerdy framing to get into serious matters around OT security, including problems... Read more »PP131: Making Security Awareness Training Actually Effective; Plus, How IT and OT Overlaps
In this double-header episode, JJ and Drew talk with two cybersecurity experts. First up, Jayson E Street talks about how to make security awareness training effective and engaging. Instead of having employees …
Show notes
In this double-header episode, JJ and Drew talk with two cybersecurity experts. First up, Jayson E Street talks about how to make security awareness training effective and engaging. Instead of having employees sit through a video or lecture, or get scolded for failing a phishing test, Jayson’s approach, which he calls Silver Teaming, engages employees... Read more »PP130: News Roundup—FBI and Pentagon Breached, AI Amplifies Threat Actors, UK Rolls Out Passkey Option, and More
Our October news roundup is a boiling cauldron of consternation. The FBI and the Pentagon suffered breaches, serious exploits are targeting network gear, and researchers discover a lone threat actor who …
Show notes
Our October news roundup is a boiling cauldron of consternation. The FBI and the Pentagon suffered breaches, serious exploits are targeting network gear, and researchers discover a lone threat actor who successfully hit hundreds of sites with the help of AI agents. Infostealer malware is impersonating brands such as LastPass to trick users into downloading... Read more »PP129: Inline Segmentation – HPE Networking’s Easy Button for Zero Trust (Sponsored)
Sponsor HPE Networking comes to Packet Protector to talk about zero trust inline segmentation. This is a feature available in Juniper switches that can segment LAN traffic using group policy tags without the …
Show notes
Sponsor HPE Networking comes to Packet Protector to talk about zero trust inline segmentation. This is a feature available in Juniper switches that can segment LAN traffic using group policy tags without the complexity associated with VXLAN or other segmentation mechanisms. On today’s show we dig into how inline segmentation works, common use cases, how... Read more »PP128: The Unseen Impacts of AI on Vulnerability Research
AI models have proven very effective at finding software vulnerabilities. This has dramatically increased the number of people (and agents) who can find bugs. But the number of experts who can verify and …
Show notes
AI models have proven very effective at finding software vulnerabilities. This has dramatically increased the number of people (and agents) who can find bugs. But the number of experts who can verify and validate those bugs, and write fixes, has stayed exactly the same. On today’s Packet Protector we talk with Trey Ford, Chief Strategy... Read more »PP127: Network Configuration and State Visibility at Scale with Unimus (Sponsored)
Today’s Packet Protector is a sponsored show that sits very nicely at the networking/security intersection. Our sponsor is NetCore, which makes the Unimus network configuration management software. Unimus …
Show notes
Today’s Packet Protector is a sponsored show that sits very nicely at the networking/security intersection. Our sponsor is NetCore, which makes the Unimus network configuration management software. Unimus supports network automation, configuration management and backup, change management, and auditing and compliance. We dive into how Unimus provides visibility into both the running config and the... Read more »PP126: Trying (and Failing) the CCIE Security Exam
Today we talk about trying and failing. More specifically, guest Keith Tokash wrote a pair of blogs on Packet Pushers about taking, but not passing, the CCIE Security written exam. Failure’s a hard thing to …
Show notes
Today we talk about trying and failing. More specifically, guest Keith Tokash wrote a pair of blogs on Packet Pushers about taking, but not passing, the CCIE Security written exam. Failure’s a hard thing to talk about, particularly in this age where every public utterance on LinkedIn feels like it has to document one’s ever-upward... Read more »PP125: News Roundup—Cyberattack Impacts Pacemakers, OpenAI Publishes Eye-Opening Postmortem, and More
If it feels like everything is on fire, today’s News Roundup will not dispel that feeling. We discuss consumer routers that ship with factory-installed backdoors, US law enforcement agencies shutting down …
Show notes
If it feels like everything is on fire, today’s News Roundup will not dispel that feeling. We discuss consumer routers that ship with factory-installed backdoors, US law enforcement agencies shutting down hacking domains, and how a threat actor tied to China is targeting Cisco IOS-XR routers. Android-based auto infotainment systems are susceptible to malware, OpenAI... Read more »PP124: How Coruna, DarkSword, and Other Exploits Slice Up Apple iPhones
Coruna and DarkSword are exploit frameworks that have successfully targeted Apple iPhones to steal cryptocurrency and harvest data including messages, email, location data, and browsing history. On today’s show …
Show notes
Coruna and DarkSword are exploit frameworks that have successfully targeted Apple iPhones to steal cryptocurrency and harvest data including messages, email, location data, and browsing history. On today’s show we trace the provenance of these exploits (Coruna was originally developed by a contractor for the US government), their rapid evolution in the cyber underworld, and... Read more »PP123: Using Gridctl to Keep MCP Configs From Leaking Secrets
If you’ve been spinning up AI tools — Claude Desktop, Cursor, Copilot, and so on — there’s a decent chance that API keys, credentials, and access tokens are sitting in plaintext on your laptop. With MCP, every …
Show notes
If you’ve been spinning up AI tools — Claude Desktop, Cursor, Copilot, and so on — there’s a decent chance that API keys, credentials, and access tokens are sitting in plaintext on your laptop. With MCP, every quickstart guide tells you to paste your credentials right into a config file. That was a bad habit... Read more »PP122: Using Burp Suite to Understand How Apps Collect and Share Our Data
Zack Whittaker is a journalist for TechCrunch and author of the newsletter “This Week In Security.” He recently wrote a post describing how he uses Burp Suite, an open source penetration testing tool, to see …
Show notes
Zack Whittaker is a journalist for TechCrunch and author of the newsletter “This Week In Security.” He recently wrote a post describing how he uses Burp Suite, an open source penetration testing tool, to see what data apps are collecting from users, and what other sites those apps share that data with. Zack joins JJ... Read more »PP121: How CYBR.SEC.CON Builds Community for Learning and Professional Development
Today we’re doing a crossover episode with the folks at Cybr.Sec.Media to talk about CYBR.SEC.CON, a community-driven security conference that JJ and Drew will be attending in Houston, TX September 15 and 16 …
Show notes
Today we’re doing a crossover episode with the folks at Cybr.Sec.Media to talk about CYBR.SEC.CON, a community-driven security conference that JJ and Drew will be attending in Houston, TX September 15 and 16 2026. We talk with conference founders Michael Farnum and Sam Van Ryder about the origins of the event, and get into our... Read more »PP120: News Roundup—AI Giants Praise Open Weight Models, Attackers Capture Captive Portals, a Tricky Mac Attack, and More
Packet Protector uncorks another News Roundup! We talk about attackers capturing hotels’ captive portals to steal Microsoft credentials, and the OpenAI-attacking-Hugging Face story and how it ties into a …
Show notes
Packet Protector uncorks another News Roundup! We talk about attackers capturing hotels’ captive portals to steal Microsoft credentials, and the OpenAI-attacking-Hugging Face story and how it ties into a broader industry effort to keep the US government from blocking access to open weight AI models from China. Nvidia and the Linux Foundation launch separate AI... Read more »PP119: Automating Firewall Ops To Stay Ahead of AI Threats (Sponsored)
There’s always been a gap between the discovery of a security issue and the time it takes to remediate. Now AI models can autonomously find weak points and chain together actions to exploit them. How does AI …
Show notes
There’s always been a gap between the discovery of a security issue and the time it takes to remediate. Now AI models can autonomously find weak points and chain together actions to exploit them. How does AI change the notion of “fast enough” for network defense? On today’s sponsored episode we dig into how FireMon... Read more »PP118: IPv6 Risks In Dual-Stack Environments (i.e. Most Environments)
Unless you’ve intentionally migrated to all-IPv6, you’re operating in a dual-stack environment. And if you haven’t accounted for v6 in your monitoring and security, you leave yourself open to risks. Today we …
Show notes
Unless you’ve intentionally migrated to all-IPv6, you’re operating in a dual-stack environment. And if you haven’t accounted for v6 in your monitoring and security, you leave yourself open to risks. Today we dig into some of those risks, including VPN breakouts and how attackers can use unmanaged v6 to bypass security tools. Our guest is... Read more »PP117: Automating Firewall Rule Changes – A Real-World Case Study
Drew talks with Joao Soares, Lead IT Security Consultant, about a project Joao undertook to automate firewall rule changes. Firewall changes can be fraught in any environment, but Joao also had to contend with …
Show notes
Drew talks with Joao Soares, Lead IT Security Consultant, about a project Joao undertook to automate firewall rule changes. Firewall changes can be fraught in any environment, but Joao also had to contend with working in the highly-regulated energy sector. They walk through how the project went from proof-of-concept to being widely used in production,... Read more »PP116: News Roundup—FortiBleed Reveals Password Cracking Is Alive and Kicking, Accenture Goes All-In on OT, and More
Looks like it’s going to be a long, hot cybersec summer. The latest news roundup covers how Microsoft 365 Copilot got turned into a data exfiltration tool, why the FortiBleed attack is about much more than …
Show notes
Looks like it’s going to be a long, hot cybersec summer. The latest news roundup covers how Microsoft 365 Copilot got turned into a data exfiltration tool, why the FortiBleed attack is about much more than compromised firewalls, and how North Korea exploited a single npm maintainer account to poison more than a hundred software... Read more »PP115: Palo Alto Networks: Reality of 109 to 1: Securing Machine Identities and AI Agents (Sponsored)
Machine identities now outnumber human identities in the enterprise 109 to 1 — and most of them are running without the governance controls you’d never skip for a human employee. Service accounts, API keys …
Show notes
Machine identities now outnumber human identities in the enterprise 109 to 1 — and most of them are running without the governance controls you’d never skip for a human employee. Service accounts, API keys, tokens, workload credentials, and a fast-growing population of autonomous AI agents: all of them need access, all of them can be... Read more »PP114: MACsec Overview
MACsec (IEEE 802.1AE) encrypts Ethernet frames hop-by-hop at Layer 2 — before traffic even hits IP — making it one of the strongest protections you can put on wire. It’s been in the standards for years …
Show notes
MACsec (IEEE 802.1AE) encrypts Ethernet frames hop-by-hop at Layer 2 — before traffic even hits IP — making it one of the strongest protections you can put on wire. It’s been in the standards for years, hardware support is widespread, and yet most organizations aren’t running it. JJ and Drew dig into why: the hardware... Read more »PP113: Patch Gaps, Pretexting, and AI Use for Crimes and Crimefighting: 2026 Verizon DBIR Highlights
The Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) is a postmortem of a year’s worth of cyber incidents and breaches, and a snapshot of how well organizations are responding to actual threats. Drew and JJ …
Show notes
The Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) is a postmortem of a year’s worth of cyber incidents and breaches, and a snapshot of how well organizations are responding to actual threats. Drew and JJ share highlights from the 2026 installment, including: For the first time, vulnerability exploits top the list for initial access What a... Read more »PP112: When You Look But Don’t Find: The Art of Knowing When to Stop
Starting an investigation—be it for troubleshooting, problem diagnosis, threat hunting, incident response, and so on—is fairly straightforward. There’s a question or thesis you’re pursuing, you have logs and …
Show notes
Starting an investigation—be it for troubleshooting, problem diagnosis, threat hunting, incident response, and so on—is fairly straightforward. There’s a question or thesis you’re pursuing, you have logs and data sources to check, and you have tools to deploy. But if you don’t find anything, does that mean there was nothing to find? Are you sure... Read more »PP111: New HPE Mist Features Validate NAC Changes, Enable Inline Microsegmentation (Sponsored)
HPE has announced new features in its Juniper Mist portfolio. On today’s sponsored Packet Protector, we dig into those features, including a dry run option that lets organizations test and refine Network Access …
Show notes
HPE has announced new features in its Juniper Mist portfolio. On today’s sponsored Packet Protector, we dig into those features, including a dry run option that lets organizations test and refine Network Access Control (NAC) policies before pushing them out, a policy validation feature that can identify shadow NAC rules, and a microsegmentation capability aimed... Read more »PP110: News Roundup–Linux Fragged, Edge’s Password Manager Dragged, Android Intrusions Tagged, and More
JJ and Drew unpack an overstuffed suitcase of infosec stories in today’s News Roundup. Microsoft’s Edge password manager stores credentials in plaintext and Microsoft says “Yup”, the Linux kernel takes a …
Show notes
JJ and Drew unpack an overstuffed suitcase of infosec stories in today’s News Roundup. Microsoft’s Edge password manager stores credentials in plaintext and Microsoft says “Yup”, the Linux kernel takes a one-two punch from Dirty Frag and Fragnesia, and a new industry coalition takes critical infrastructure protection private. A Taiwanese radio enthusiast allegedly brings high-speed... Read more »PP109: ThreatLocker Enforces Zero Trust With Strict Application Control (Sponsored)
ThreatLocker takes an opinionated approach to Zero Trust. The company, our sponsor for today’s episode, starts with application control. It uses endpoint software that runs on PCs and servers to allow or deny …
Show notes
ThreatLocker takes an opinionated approach to Zero Trust. The company, our sponsor for today’s episode, starts with application control. It uses endpoint software that runs on PCs and servers to allow or deny applications to run. It can also monitor and control the behavior of allowed applications. ThreatLocker has extended its platform to include network... Read more »PP108: How to Build and Sustain a Successful Zero Trust Project
In theory, a zero trust initiative seems straightforward: you just need the right tools and maybe some whiteboard sessions to work out the architecture. In practice, our guests note that zero trust “unfolds …
Show notes
In theory, a zero trust initiative seems straightforward: you just need the right tools and maybe some whiteboard sessions to work out the architecture. In practice, our guests note that zero trust “unfolds inside organizations filled with legacy systems, political friction, budget constraints, and competing priorities.” Without accounting for those complications, a zero trust project... Read more »PP107: Why Now’s the Time to Prepare for a Post-Quantum World (Sponsored)
A cryptographically relevant quantum computer is, at some point, going to emerge that can crack modern encryption. But we don’t know when, so it’s tempting to set this problem aside. On today’s sponsored …
Show notes
A cryptographically relevant quantum computer is, at some point, going to emerge that can crack modern encryption. But we don’t know when, so it’s tempting to set this problem aside. On today’s sponsored episode, we talk about why ignoring Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) isn’t an effective strategy. Sponsor Cisco is here to make the case for... Read more »PP106: Architecting for Wi-Fi 7, Zero Trust, PQC, and More
For decades, network and security professionals have adapted to technology change in a piecemeal fashion: a new rule here, an upgrade there, a new product deployment over yonder. On today’s Packet Protector …
Show notes
For decades, network and security professionals have adapted to technology change in a piecemeal fashion: a new rule here, an upgrade there, a new product deployment over yonder. On today’s Packet Protector, co-host Jennifer ‘JJ’ Jabbusch makes the case for why several emerging technologies require IT pros to think about security at an architectural level.... Read more »PP105: Cybercrime Has Gone Industrial: Insights from HPE Threat Labs (Sponsored)
Threat actors are behaving more like professional organizations in an effort to launch more effective and profitable attacks. We explore this and other themes from the latest Threat Labs report from HPE, our …
Show notes
Threat actors are behaving more like professional organizations in an effort to launch more effective and profitable attacks. We explore this and other themes from the latest Threat Labs report from HPE, our sponsor for today’s Packet Protector episode. We also look at how older vulnerabilities are still contributing to today’s exploits, why security organizations... Read more »
These are the latest 40 of 135 episodes. You’ll find older episodes in the podcast’s feed.
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