So Wired, the tech magazine, the place that will absolutely run a 4,000-word feature on Wire Router is a national security risk. Yeah, that one. And this week, Wired ended up as a listing on Have I Been Pwned? Millions of user records allegedly published online. Sources from the parent company. I think that's how you say that. It's got the E with the little access on, or the little accent symbol on it, whatever. If that irony feels a little too on the nose, that's probably a good thing because it teaches a lesson a lot of companies still haven't learned. Security is not a vibe. It's plumbing. It's a necessity. Welcome back to the Tyler Woodward Project. I'm Tyler, a broadcast engineer by trade, a Linux nerd by choice, and I enjoy demystifying tech that's supposedly too complicated for people. Today we're going to unpack what's known about the Wired Breach listing, why this kind of leak keeps happening, even to brands that talk tech for a living, and well, most importantly, what to do if you're a wired user and your info is part of this dump or any dump. And yes, there will be a little roasting, but it's the it'll be the constructive kind. Like a heat gun on a flaky solder joint. Let's start with what we can say without turning this into conspiracy theater. Have I been pwned has an entry for Wired starting, let's see, or stating that in December, so it's within this month, 2.3 million records of Wired magazine users allegedly obtained from the parent company were published online. Have I Been Pwned also says the most recent data in that set dated back to September, and that the exposed fields included email addresses, display names, plus uh looks like a smaller number of people, name, phone numbers, date of birth, genders, and uh, let's see, location up to the full physical address were also included in that. Cool. More spam. Now, the roast part. I mean, I gotta give them a little bit of shit. I mean, I wouldn't be doing my job, I guess, if I didn't. But we're gonna do it with a little precision. Wired is a media brand that reports on technology. So if you didn't know what the hell Wired was, now you do. That doesn't automatically mean the subscription platform is engineered like the hardened security product that Wired might have. But if you're going to build your brand on explaining risk to everyone else, the expectation is you're also doing the boring internal stuff yourself, too. You know, data minimization, access controls, logging, vulnerability reporting, and response. Like your reputation depends on it. Because it kind of does. Here's the part that I think a lot of people are missing right now in the initial reactions. Big media companies often run centralized identity and subscription systems shared across multiple publications. This means one weak point can become a one-to-mini incident. One breach, pathway, multiple brands, all their user bases. They're all tied in. And just to anchor this in independent reporting, one cybersecurity news report describes an alleged leak of 2.3 million wired subscriber records posted on breach forums and frames it as part of a broader conde nest compromise narrative. Treat the how they did it details and any third party write-up as allegations unless the company confirms them. So, as I know right now, Wired hasn't posted anything on their website about it, but this is all coming out from other sources right now. But the big picture matches Have I Been Pwned's summary. Millions of records, with some containing more sensitive personal info than most people expect from a magazine account. And, you know, putting the broadcast engineering radio hat on for a second, this is the same failure mode seen in plants when the station gets blamed for a master control outage that actually started in a shared corporate network core. Shared infrastructure is supposed to save money until one misconfiguration becomes everyone else's problem all at once. Yeah. So what's the technical takeaway other than just crapping on Wired? Security isn't an identity you claim. It's a set of controls you keep proving every week under pressure with you know adversaries actively looking for the shortcut you forget to close. And let's talk culture for a second because this is where the wired irony is useful instead of just being dunkworthy. Security journalism is about describing threats, explaining consequences, and sometimes calling out the bad practices. Security operations is about quietly preventing those threats from unglamorous engineering, permissions that are annoying, audits that cost money, and deleting data you'd love to keep just in case. Now that matters because it changed the harm profile. It's no longer just spam risk, it's doxing risk, targeted phishing risk. And this email is tied to a real person at a real place risk. Another cultural gotcha. When a company doesn't provide a clear published vulnerability reporting path, it can slow down responsible disclosure and escalate the chance that issues get exploited before they get fixed. One report specifically calls out the absence of a security.txt file at Hyundai Nest as part of the difficulty in reporting issues. And here the un the uncomfortable truth. Even if the editorial staff at the tech publication is excellent, the security posture of the subscription stack may live under entirely different leadership, budgets, and priorities. That's not an excuse, though. It's the reason these incidents keep happening across all industries, not just a media company. And we're gonna get practical. If you're a wired user or ever were, I guess, here's what to do next with this. First, verify whether your email address appears in the wired uh breach listing on have I been pwned. Second, change your wired conde nest password. And this is the big one. Change it anywhere else you might have used it. You're not supposed to be reusing those passwords, but I know you do. So make sure you change those too. Because credential reuse turns one leak into mini account takeovers. Third, enable two-factor authentication if you can. Actually, I don't know if Wired has that. Um they might. I don't know. It's been a minute since I logged in. But set that up, especially on your email account. Even if you can't do it on Wired, at least do it on your own email. Because email is the reset button for most of your online life. All your password resets, everything's gonna come back to that. Next, assume targeted scams will follow, because they usually do. Have I been pulling indicates that some leaked records include phone numbers and physical addresses for a subset of users, and that's exactly the kind of detail attackers use to make messages feel legit. Be skeptical of subscription problem emails, account lock text, and customer support calls that try to rush you into clicking a link or giving up some code. Don't do it. Then reduce the blast radius going forward. Use the password manager. I've got an episode coming out in a few weeks on that. And use unique passwords per site. So a breach at Wired doesn't affect another account somewhere else. Consider using email aliases for subscriptions and marketing accounts. I've been doing that with a lot. Wired is one that I didn't. Womp womp. But that's a that's a thing now. A lot of these password managers or VPN providers, Proton, you can get email aliases. Even Apple, if you've got iCloud Plus, you can do it there. A lot of times, even uh, well, iCloud, you can set up a fully unique email address, um, alias. Uh, with Google, you put the plus symbol and then whatever out at the end of it. Some websites have stopped allowing those, which I think is BS, but that's another rant for another time. But yeah, consider using email aliases for subscriptions and marketing stuff so you can shut off one identity without touching everything else. If you've used your real home address for a magazine subscription, think about whether a P.O. box or maybe an alternate delivery address is worth it for future subscriptions. Send it to your work. There you go. Finally, for the companies listening, if they do listen, which I don't think they do because nobody listens to this, but if you do, well, if your brand sells trust like Wired does, your security posture is part of your product, even if you're just media. Have I been pwned listings? Don't care about your mission statement. So yeah. Wired getting pwned is uh ironic, but it's also a it's a reminder that the basics still matter. Minimize the data you keep, lock down access, make reporting easier, and assume someone will try the dumbest possible thing until it works. Brute forcing, man. If you want more episodes like this, practical, sometimes a little spicy, and focused on what to do next, subscribe, follow wherever you uh get your podcast. Visit Tylerwoodward.me. You can subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, a bunch of other places. Follow at Tylerlywoodward.me on Instagram and Threads. And if you do subscribe and like the show on one of your favorite podcast platforms, drop me a rating and review. Believe it or not, I think that helps. It used to. I don't know what the algorithms do now. And then tomorrow, I've got a new episode coming out that we're also going to get a little more spicy on because we're going to talk about flock cameras, tracking eyes, and public, and how 404 Media and Ben Jordan uncovered that there's a lot of security cameras out there that are unencrypted, open on the internet, that can be used to target people and their AI, which means they can track people. They're not just standard security cameras up on a wall somewhere seeing everything. They can zoom in and follow people. That's coming out tomorrow. So make sure you subscribe to uh to get that as well, or hit up Tylerwoodward.me. So a little bonus episode for you on a Sunday. Hope you enjoyed it. I will catch you tomorrow for that next one.