Critical Point War Stories with Kevin Riggle - podcast cover

Critical Point War Stories with Kevin Riggle

Building better software, one incident at a time. Host Kevin Riggle talks with software engineers about that time they broke production. Whether you're an industry professional, or just curious about what makes the modern Internet run and what happens when it breaks, we bring you stories you haven't heard elsewhere. This is the audio version of the podcast. Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@critical-point Produced by Complex Systems Group (https://complexsystems.group). Part of Critical Point (https://criticalpoint.tv).
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Episodes

What is the role of a CISO (Chief Information Security Officer)? - Melanie Ensign - Bonus

Host Kevin Riggle interviews Melanie Ensign, former Global Head of Security, Privacy, & Engineering Communications for Uber, about what the role of a CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) is. (Hint: It's not being the smartest security person in the room.) Bonus episode from https://warstories.criticalpoint.tv/episodes/the-reporter-called-her-christmas-day-melanie-ensign-bug-bounty-incident-management-programs Video: https://youtu.be/e60YHYHTFUk Melanie's newsletter: https://discerniblei...

Jul 29, 202417 minEp. 8

He Won George Hotz's Money - Andrey Petrov

Host Kevin Riggle interviews Andrey Petrov about three different incidents he was involved with: A programming mistake in high school that filled its alumni's email inboxes, a Twitter analytics site he built that got co-opted as part of a phishing scam, and how he won a bug bounty on the Ethereum blockchain rollup prototype developed by superstar hacker George Hotz. Chapters: (00:00) - Intros/titles (05:02) - The Alumni Email Explosion (18:00) - The Twitter Tracker Takeover (33:09) - The George ...

Jul 15, 202459 minEp. 9

The Reporter Called Her Christmas Day - Melanie Ensign - Bug Bounty & Incident Management

Kevin Riggle interviews Melanie Ensign (Discernible Inc.), former Global Head of Security, Privacy, & Engineering Communications for Uber, about building good bug bounty programs, incident management processes, and one especially memorable Christmas morning. Melanie's company: https://discernibleinc.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanieensign/ Twitter: https://x.com/imeluny Mastodon: https://defcon.social/@Wednesday Credits: Edited by sleepingsage. Intro & outro - "Senpai Fu...

Jun 25, 202457 minEp. 8

The Future Is (Literally!) Bright - How Infrastructure Works, by Deb Chachra - Climate, Energy, & the Future

Kevin Riggle interviews Deb Chachra, professor of engineering at Olin College and author of HOW INFRASTRUCTURE WORKS about climate change, the housing crisis, the green/sustainable energy transition, and how we can build a better world for ourselves and everyone around us. BUY DEB'S BOOK! https://criticalpoint.tv/infrastructure Deb's Twitter: https://twitter.com/debcha Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/debcha.bsky.social Mastodon: https://saturation.social/@debcha Web site: http://debcha.org Big...

Jun 07, 20241 hr 16 minEp. 7

Was Akamai the Velvet Underground of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)? - Abhijit Mehta - Bonus

Kevin Riggle interviews Abhijit Mehta about Akamai and its role in the history and development of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE). Bonus episode outtake from https://warstories.criticalpoint.tv/episodes/he-broke-turkish-twitter-abhijit-mehta Abhijit's Twitter: https://twitter.com/AbhijitCMehta Abhijit's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehtaabhijit/ To watch the video version of the podcast on YouTube, check out the channel page at https://youtube.com/@critical-point Credits: Transcript/...

Mar 21, 202413 minEp. 6

He Broke Turkish Twitter - Abhijit Mehta

Kevin Riggle interviews Abhijit Mehta, who tells how one tiny dot made almost made a massive difference to Twitter's Turkish ad revenue. Abhijit's Twitter: https://twitter.com/AbhijitCMehta Abhijit's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehtaabhijit/ Chapters: (00:00) - Intro (01:25) - How did you find yourself in a place where you could break production? (08:53) - Akamai & the 'aha' moments of product development (15:30) - Google & the Google culture (17:35) - Twitter & what's the ...

Feb 22, 20241 hr 6 minEp. 6

She Missed the Overnight Push! - Julia Lunetta

Kevin Riggle interviews Julia Lunetta, who tells us how an ostensibly minor change caused her employer, a financial institution (Upromise Investments), to miss its overnight reconciliation with its banks. Credits: Emoji artwork is provided by Emojitwo (https://emojitwo.github.io/), originally released as Emojione 2.2 (https://www.emojione.com/) by Ranks.com (http://www.ranks.com/) with contributions from the Emojitwo community and is licensed under CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses...

Feb 08, 202452 minEp. 5

She Made Dropbox Give the Internet Free Watermelon? - Kate Rudolph

Kevin Riggle interviews Kate Rudolph, who tells how a rolled back commit on her intern project resulted in Dropbox, her employer, offering free watermelon to the entire Internet. Credits: Emoji artwork is provided by Emojitwo ( https://emojitwo.github.io/ ), originally released as Emojione 2.2 ( https://www.emojione.com/ ) by Ranks.com ( http://www.ranks.com/ ) with contributions from the Emojitwo community and is licensed under CC-BY 4.0 ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode )...

Sep 26, 202355 minEp. 4

He Locked Players Out On Launch Day - Zachery Johnson

Kevin Riggle interviews Zachery Johnson, who tells how an innocent command doomed the database servers and locked players out of Diablo II: Resurrected on Day 2 of launch. Blizzard's blog post on the incident: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/t/diablo-ii-resurrected-outages-an-explanation-how-we%E2%80%99ve-been-working-on-it-and-how-we%E2%80%99re-moving-forward/28164 Credits: Intro & outro - "Senpai Funk" by Paul T. Starr. Used with permission. https://soundcloud.com/ptstarr Critical Po...

Sep 21, 20231 hr 25 minEp. 3

Twelve Lines of Code Took Down the Whole Company - Patrick O'Doherty

Kevin Riggle interviews Patrick O'Doherty, who tells how a seemingly-simple configuration change one Friday morning led to a massive outage. Patrick's web site: https://patrickod.computer Credits: Intro & outro - "Senpai Funk" by Paul T. Starr. Used with permission. https://soundcloud.com/ptstarr Critical Point logo and wordmark designed by Timothy James Lopez. https://www.behance.net/lopeztimes Critical Point logo and wordmark copyright ⓒ 2020 Complex Systems Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved...

Aug 09, 20231 hr 1 minEp. 2

He Broke (part of) The Internet - Willie Williams

Kevin Riggle interviews Willie Williams, who tells the story of the time he accidentally took down a major site while an intern at Akamai. Willie's Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigwilliestyle Credits: Intro & outro - "Senpai Funk" by Paul T. Starr. Used with permission. https://soundcloud.com/ptstarr Critical Point logo and wordmark designed by Timothy James Lopez. https://www.behance.net/lopeztimes Critical Point logo and wordmark copyright ⓒ 2020 Complex Systems Group, LLC. All Rights Rese...

Aug 03, 202347 minEp. 1
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