Episode #304: Edwin Kwan: Google Chrome Safety Check Feature Enhancements; Shannon Lietz: EU CRA: Win | Lose | Draw; Olimpiu Pop: Year in Review: Ukraine and the cyberwar; Marcel Brown: This Day in Tech History

It's 5:05! Daily cybersecurity and open source briefing

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The stories we’re covering today.

Marcel Brown: December 31st, 1999. The world waits in anticipation of the year 2000 and the potential disasters that might be brought about by the Y2K bug. Just for fun, I set up my home with a remote control to turn off all the lights in my house and the TV our friends would be watching at our New Year's Eve party. Seconds after midnight, I pushed the remote control in my pocket, and everything went out. There were definitely a few people in my house that night who thought the apocalypse had come.

Edwin Kwan: One of the features of Chrome Safety Check is that it will check if any saved passwords have been compromised. In addition, users will receive alerts in the Chrome menu about flagged dangerous extensions, outdated Chrome versions, or disabled safe browsing.

Shannon Lietz: For the last couple of years, the EU has been talking about how it might address some of the cybersecurity issues that are plaguing its economy. As part of this, addressing the 189 pages of a potential act to come, it's hard to look at it and be both excited and petrified at the same time. There's lots to think about.

Olimpiu Pop: In 2023, the cyber warfare aspect of the Ukraine war provided concrete examples of both resilience and evolving nature of cyber threats. Ukrainian cyber defenses, although not unbreakable, effectively countered a variety of Russian cyber attacks