Think Like a Hacker

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Andrea Zoellner Think Like a Hacker Episode 52

Episode 52: Innovating for Customer Success with Andrea Zoellner

Andrea Zoellner has been an active organizer of WordCamp Montreal and is the Chief Content Creator at hosting provider, SiteGround. Andrea focuses on supporting SiteGround customers in the North American and English-speaking market. With a background in journalism, Andrea found WordPress as the easiest way to get online and integrate with different services. She talked…

October 18, 2019
Think Like a Hacker Ep 51

Episode 51: WeWork’s Financial Woes Spark Meetup RSVP Fees and the WordPress 5.2.4 Security Release

This week, we cover WeWork’s failed IPO and financial woes and how this likely led to Meetup’s introduction of an RSVP fee. We discuss why this decision doesn’t bode well for WeWork’s future. We also look at the WordPress 5.2.4 security release and what fixes are included. We discuss the planned release of PHP 7.4…

October 16, 2019
Jennifer Bourn Think Like a Hacker Episode 50

Episode 50: Empowering WordPress Users Through Education with Jennifer Bourn

Jennifer Bourn has been a leader in the WordPress community for years, helping WordPress users of all experience levels get the most out of the platform. She has also created beautiful websites for recognizable brands through her design company, Bourn Creative. At WordCamp Sacramento, we talked about how the WordPress community has opened new experiences…

October 10, 2019
Lindsey Miller Think Like a Hacker Episode 49

Episode 49: Building Business Through Community with Lindsey Miller

At WordCamp Minneapolis, our Lead Customer Service Engineer Tim Cantrell chats with Lindsey Miller about her work as Partner Marketing Manager at LiquidWeb. Tim and Lindsey also talk about the challenges of being a remote worker, and how the connections in the WordPress community can help individuals make connections that grow a business. Lindsey also…

October 3, 2019
Think Like a Hacker Episode 48

Podcast Episode 48: Salesforce Ventures Invests $300 Million in Automattic

Salesforce Ventures invested $300 million into Automattic at a $3 billion valuation. We discuss what this might mean for Automattic, the WordPress community, and the WordPress ecosystem by analyzing the roots of Salesforce and the opportunities it brings to WordPress. We also talk about features and fixes coming in November to WordPress 5.3 especially within…

October 1, 2019
Think Like a Hacker Episode 47

Episode 47: Staying Secure through Community Cooperation with GiveWP’s Matt Cromwell

At WordCamp Sacramento, Matt Cromwell from GiveWP talked with us about how Give began, their mission of democratizing generosity, and how they handled the vulnerability disclosure from the Wordfence team. When our security researchers reached out to provide a proof of concept, the Give and Wordfence teams worked together to ensure that the vulnerability was…

September 26, 2019
Think Like a Hacker Ep 46

Episode 46: Zero Day Vulnerability in Rich Reviews Plugin Exploited In The Wild

We chat with Mikey Veenstra to talk about the Wordfence Threat Intelligence team’s work tracking a series of active attacks on an unpatched vulnerability in the Rich Reviews plugin for WordPress. With an estimated 16,000 installations, attackers are targeting unauthenticated plugin option updates, which can be used to deliver stored cross-site scripting (XSS) payloads. Mikey…

September 25, 2019
Zach Stepek

Episode 45: Securing and Scaling eCommerce with Zach Stepek

This week, our lead customer service engineer Tim Cantrell interviews Zach Stepek, CEO of MindSize, a digital agency focused on helping customers scale and succeed with eCommerce. Zach talks about how he got started with WordPress and WooCommerce, new features in JetPack that add functionality to WooCommerce, and how critical security is to site owners…

September 20, 2019
Think Like a Hacker Episode 44

Episode 44: Unpacking the WordPress 5.2.3 Security Release

WordPress core version 5.2.3 was released on September 4. This was a security release patching eight key vulnerabilities in WordPress core, most of which were cross site scripting vulnerabilities. In this episode of Think Like a Hacker, we walk through each of the patched elements of WordPress core and how these vulnerabilities could have been…

September 10, 2019

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Think Like a Hacker Episode 43

Episode 43: Wordfence Research on Malvertising Campaign Makes the News

This week, we chat about the plan for WordPress 5.3 and some of the new features we will see added to WordPress in November, including many improvements to the editor. We will also see a switch from robots.txt files to meta tags for better control over search engine indexing. We also cover the latest developments…

September 5, 2019
Bill Rice on Think Like a Hacker

Episode 42: Building WordPress Websites that Convert with Bill Rice

Bill Rice is the CEO of Kaleidico, a digital agency in Michigan. We chatted at WordCamp Minneapolis about WordPress and the community, and his work creating websites that convert. Bill spoke at WordCamp Minneapolis about trends in WordPress website design that allow businesses to deeply engage with site visitors. Mobile browsing has changed the way…

August 29, 2019
Think Like a Hacker Episode 41

Episode 41: KidsCamp and the Next Generation of WordPress Users with Sandy Edwards

As of WordCamp Boston 2019, Sandy Edwards has organized 26 KidsCamps across the US. We talk about what kids do at a WordPress KidsCamp, the success these kids have had publishing with WordPress, and how Sandy teaches basic internet safety and security to the next generation of WordPress users. Sandy is an organizer at WordCamp…

August 22, 2019
Think Like a Hacker Ep 40

Episode 40: WordPress Considers Ditching Signed Core Updates

A recent discussion among WordPress core developers about removing support for code signing in core caught our attention. Code signing support was included with the WordPress 5.2 release. The discussion centers around removing code signing and implementing SSL verification and hashes to verify code integrity. In this week’s episode we chat about the history behind…

Think Like a Hacker Episode 39

Episode 39: Headless eCommerce, Scaling for eCommerce Growth with Topher DeRosia

Topher DeRosia is the Developer Evangelist for BigCommerce and a frequent WordCamp speaker. He’s worked with WordPress for a long time and is the man behind HeroPress, telling the stories of people whose lives have been transformed by WordPress. HeroPress is now syndicated on WordPress.org/news, bringing these inspirational stories to an even wider audience. At…

August 15, 2019
Think Like a Hacker Episode 38

Episode 38: Automattic Buys Tumblr from Verizon

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, August 12, 2019 that Verizon is selling social media and blogging platform Tumblr to Automattic for an undisclosed sum, though rumors state that it may be as low as $3 million dollars. After the announcement, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg discussed the news on PostStatus, stating that they plan…

August 13, 2019
Think Like a Hacker Episode 37

Episode 37: Vito Peleg Talks Breaking the Agency Glass Ceiling and Building a Product with Customers

In this episode, Mark chats with Vito Peleg, the founder of WP Feedback, a plugin that helps WordPress-focused agencies streamline approval and support for their customers. Vito talks about the glass ceiling in agencies where managing people and projects begins to inhibit growth and profitability. He also shares some interesting thoughts on where pain points…

August 8, 2019
Think Like a Hacker Episode 36

Episode 36: Proposals to Improve WordPress Include WP Notify and Security Backporting Changes

This week, we talk about our corporate trip to DEF CON, the WordPress security team’s proposal to backport security fixes to fewer releases, a new feature proposal called WP Notify that has a number of very positive implications for WordPress users, Cloudflare’s decision to terminate service for 8Chan, and a European court’s ruling that companies…

August 6, 2019
Think Like a Hacker Episode 35

Episode 35: Security Researcher Jem Turner Talks About Pipdig Scandal

Jem Turner was one of the security researchers that found malicious code in Pipdig’s P3 plugin. Both Jem and Wordfence’s Mikey Veenstra found the P3 plugin to contain a number of suspicious or malicious features, including a remote “killswitch,” an obfuscated function used to change users’ passwords, and code which generated hourly requests to DDoS…

August 1, 2019