The MVP Show In Australia: An Interview With MVP Troy Hunt
The MVP Show never disappoints. Each episode, Senior Technical Evangelist Seth Juarez takes us to another corner of the globe to meet an MVP on the cutting-edge, and plunge into the technology that drives them. Today, we’re headed to the Gold Coast in Australia!
In this episode, Seth hangs out with Visual Studio and Development Technologies MVP Troy Hunt. He’s also a well-known security expert and creator of HaveIBeenPwned.com - a website that lets you discover if your account has been compromised in a data breach.
Seth and Troy delve into an illuminating discussion about security, including how to properly protect passwords with hashes, and how to discourage adversaries from cracking them. In fact, we learn that hackers are capable of computing 25 billion md5 hashes a second - in other words, they can breach 25 billion passwords in a blink.
Troy developed HaveIBeenPwned.com - which is powered by Microsoft technologies - to make people aware that their information has been compromised. As of today, the platform features breaches from 228 website, and nearly 4 billion accounts. Consider that more than 3.8 billion people use the Internet in 2017, and you’ll see the scope.
“You can never put the genie back in the bottle. There’s so much info out there,” said Troy. “What I like about this project is that [people are] now discovering they’re in places that are entirely foreign to them. And the only reason they know is there’s a way of discovering that.”
In addition to working on the platform, Troy is a Microsoft Regional Director, an international speaker, and has developed 8 courses for the Certified Ethical Hacker syllabus. He is also well-versed in development and architecture.
“I think as developers we have this exploratory kind of mindset that we want to try to do this stuff,” said Troy. He adds that developers wanting to become security experts should learn how to break their own things, first. “And when we’ve realized how easy it is to do that, let’s then start to talk about the security practices.”
To learn more about Troy’s work - and check out some beautiful Australian sights - take a look at the video here.