Welcome to the tech policy podcast. I'm Evan Swartzstrach. On today's show, Cybersecurity, we're going to update you on what's been going on.

North Korea is back in the news, not for good reasons, as the U.S. potentially heads for war with the rogue nation.

And, of course, the ongoing Russia story about the election. And as we gear up for a 2018

midterm election in the United States, is our infrastructure ready, are our elections at risk

of tampering from foreign or domestic actors? And of course, there's been hacks involving private

companies and money being stolen. So with all this stuff going on and all these news stories

that you're being inundated with about cyber security, what should you think about?

How do you interpret these stories? Do they matter to you? Are these services you are using?

And if you're talking to your representatives in Congress or at the state and local level about

that your concerns about hacking, how can we make sure that that's a positive conversation

to the policymakers can make policies that's a positive conversation so the policymakers

can make policies that actually help keep our data secure without stifling innovation or

having otherwise adverse impacts? Joining me to discuss this topic, we have friend of the show,

Heather West, senior policy manager for the Americas at Mozilla. Heather, thanks for joining again.

Thanks for having me. And back for his second episode is Tech Freedom Executive Director Austin Carson. Austin,

thanks for joining. Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. This is the second time.

Both times. Both times. It's been phenomenal. I've loved both times so far.

So, Heather, let's start with the recent, you know, relatively recent news items of want to cry and Petya. And, you know, when the average

person hears these terms, I mean, maybe they're not sure what the hell is going on, but what

exactly happened in these attacks? Like who was hacked and who's responsible and what are we doing

about it? So there's been a number of attacks using what are generally known as zero days or oh days

depending on which which camp you want to fall into but what that what that essentially means is

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