Vibe-coded shops, and hackable Flock cameras

Dave Bittner (0:03)

I have to say, what this reminds me of is there was a glitch on Amazon for a while. I don't know if it's still there, where if you went to buy condoms, it would ask you, would you like to buy this item used?

Graham Cluley (0:31)

Smashing Security, episode 486, Vibe Coded Shops and Hackable Flock Cameras, with Graham Cluley and special guest Dave Bittner. Hello and welcome to Smashing Security episode 486 My name's Graham Cluley.

Dave Bittner (0:46)

And I'm Dave Bittner.

Graham Cluley (0:47)

Dave, always lovely to have you back on the show. Star of the Cyberwire, Hacking Humans, the other one I forgot the name of...

Dave Bittner (0:55)

Caveat. Caveat, thank you.

It's all good, Graham.

Graham Cluley (1:00)

The good news is, Dave, actually, is I'm going to be recommending that all of our listeners go and check out your podcasts, particularly next week, because there isn't going to be an episode of Smashing Security next week. I am grabbing a map, a compass and a rucksack full of cheese sandwiches, and I am going to be venturing into the wilds of Britain because I'm moving house. I'm going to a different part of the UK. Wow. And I won't have a chance to put out an episode next week. What I will be doing is I'll be really busy contacting the CEO of Openreach and asking why it's so hard to get me a fiber internet connection to my house when there's a box just five feet away from me.

Dave Bittner (1:40)

Just put a Y cable in there. What could go wrong?

Graham Cluley (1:42)

Yeah, exactly. What could possibly go wrong?

But never fear, folks. If you can hold your breath until Thursday, the 8th of October, there'll be a new episode of Smashing Then. And in the meantime, check out Caveat and Hacking Humans and the CyberWire and all the other excellent podcasts from N2K.

Dave Bittner (2:01)

Well, thank you.

Graham Cluley (2:06)

This week on Smashing Security, we won't be talking about how researchers managed to take over the accounts of staff at Open AI using Anthropics Claude.

Dave Bittner (2:17)

You'll hear no discussion of…

Graham Cluley (2:19)

How Dutch police have asked for the public's help after releasing a recording of what they believe is the voice of a member of the Shiny Hunters hacking group. And we won't even mention… How North Korea has been posing as recruiters to infect job seekers during fake coding tests and then waiting for them to get hired somewhere real.

So, Dave, what are you going to be talking about this week?

Dave Bittner (2:44)

I'm talking about a bunch of researchers who are asking the question, what the flock?

Graham Cluley (2:49)

And I'm going to be going online to buy a laser-equipped Kiwi. All this and much more coming up on this episode of Smashing Security.

Now, chums chums, there are important questions to be asked of this week's guest, Mr. Dave I won't beat around the bush, Dave. How do you feel about crusty socks?

Dave Bittner (3:11)

How do I feel?

Graham Cluley (3:13)

Yes, how do you feel about them?

Dave Bittner (3:14)

I try to avoid them whenever possible.

Graham Cluley (3:18)

You're not growing any in Shea Bittner?

Dave Bittner (3:20)

No, no, no. But when I was a teenager, I think I had issues with crusty socks, but it's been a while.

Graham Cluley (3:27)

I imagine they are pretty fresh and clean, those beautiful feet of yours these days. I'm asking because this week, somewhere in Auckland, New Zealand, there is a convenience store that briefly was selling a pair of crusty socks on its website. And that wasn't all they were selling. They were also selling a rather divine Princess Diana commemorative plate.

And if you were quick, you could also have bought all of New Zealand's national parks. They were being sold to the highest bidder as well. Wow. Now, this wasn't some marketing stunt. This wasn't a flea market with any old bric-a-brac and odds and sods and national parks and like. Instead, this particular store had made a bit of an error when it built its website. It had used something called Base44.

And Base44 is a vibe coding platform owned by Wix, one of those places where they sort of roll your own website. You can go to it and out the other end of the mixer will come a brand new website. Have you ever vibe coded at all? It's very popular these days.

Dave Bittner (4:37)

The closest I have come to vibe coding was I asked ChatGPT to create a version of Pong in Basic for the TRS-80 color computer.