Have you ever talked to a real live hacker?
When I was a teenager, I loved reading about the early days of hacking — wardriving, phone phreaking, the wild pioneering days of the early internet. My guest this week, Robert Abela, actually lived through them. He got his start in information security following in the footsteps of the legendary early pioneers, and has spent decades in the industry since.
Today he runs Melapress — a name that pays homage to his Maltese heritage, since “mela” can mean yes, no, and maybe depending on context. Robert also shares a name with the Prime Minister of Malta, which means he occasionally catches strays from CNN and the BBC on X for things he distinctly did not do.
Melapress makes security plugins that complement the tools most WordPress site owners are already running — things like activity logs, two-factor authentication, and login policies. In this episode, we get into what security actually looks like for a platform that powers 43% of the web: why WordPress gets blamed for problems that are almost always the user’s fault, how AI is making phishing more convincing than ever, and whether the WordPress.org plugin repository has grown up alongside the platform it serves.
Listen to this week’s episode of Community + Code and don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss another one!
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