Hacker Summer Camp 2025

---

---

It’s early August, which means it’s time for BSides Las Vegas and DEF CON, part of the trio of conferences that make up “hacker summer camp” (the other being Black Hat, which I don’t attend). It’s been a crazy, chaotic week – as usual – but in almost completely good ways. After the regular news, I’ve got some mini interviews with Jake Braun (DEF CON Franklin), Stacey Higginbotham (Consumer Reports), Cooper Quitin (EFF) and The Gibson (Veilid and hackers.town).

In other news: Tea app users file a class action lawsuit over massive breach; ChatGPT sessions may be searchable by anyone; US government launches initiative to centralize health data for use by tech companies; Australia rolls out age verification for search engines; Grok AI is now in Teslas; China-backed hackers exploit horrific Microsoft bug; Dropbox ends its password manager service.

Article Links

1. Tea User Files Class Action After Women’s Safety App Exposes Data https://www.404media.co/tea-user-files-class-action-after-womens-safety-app-exposes-data/
2. ChatGPT users shocked to learn their chats were in Google search results https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/chatgpt-users-shocked-to-learn-their-chats-were-in-google-search-results/
3. Trump administration is launching a new private health tracking system with Big Tech’s help https://apnews.com/article/trump-ai-rfk-jr-health-tech-fa73703bd1fd557c787ef0b590e151f1
4. Australia is quietly rolling out age checks for search engines like Google https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/age-verification-search-engines/105516256
5. Grok is now in Tesla cars, but not in the way you think https://mashable.com/article/grok-tesla
6. China-backed hackers used Microsoft flaw in attacks https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/07/21/china-hackers-microsoft-sharepoint/
7. Users left scrambling for a plan B as Dropbox drops Dropbox Passwords https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/30/dropbox_drops_dropbox_passwords/
8. Tip of the Week: https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/how-to-backup-cloud-data/ 

Further Info

• Top hacker interviews: https://fdsd.me/hackers  
• DEF CON Franklin: https://defconfranklin.com/
• EFF: https://www.eff.org/
• Veilid: https://veilid.com/
• Consumer Reports: https://securityplanner.consumerreports.org/
• My book: https://fdsd.me/book 
• My newsletter: https://fdsd.me/newsletter 
• Support our mission! https://fdsd.me/support 
• Give the gift of privacy and security: https://fdsd.me/coupons 
• Get your Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons Merch! https://fdsd.me/merch 

Table

---

Published on 2 weeks ago