Open Source Security

Josh  and  Kurt  talk about an article about how expertise has a limited lifetime. We are all experts in something, but some of us will find our expert knowledge to be outdated eventually. We discuss what that means in the context of security and tech and disagree about how to best keep your skills up to date. Show Notes Experts From A World That No Longer Exists Neuroplasticity Scotty and the mou...

Josh  and  Kurt  talk to David A. Wheeler about everything OpenSSF. The Open Source Security Foundation is part of the Linux Foundation, and there are 6 OpenSSF working groups. David does a great job explaining how the OpenSSF works and what the 6 working groups are doing. The working group are (in no particular order): Identifying Security Threats, Security Tooling, Best Practices, Vulnerability...

Josh  and  Kurt  talk about the famous Phrack 49 article "Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit" turning 25 years old. This paper created a massive amount of change in the industry, possibly more than any other paper ever written. Everything from making exploiting stack overflows easier, to defenders creating technologies such as stack canaries are the direct result of this work. Show Notes Phrack...

Josh  and  Kurt  talk about the new Trojan Source bug. We don't always agree on if this is a vulnerability (it's not), but by the end we come to an agreement that ASCII is out, Unicode is in. We don't live in a world where you can make a realistic suggestion to return to using only ASCII. There are a lot of weird moving parts with this one. Show Notes Trojan Source oss-security message GitHub exam...

Josh and Kurt talk about Josh's electric car and new job. We then talk about the recent UAParser.js malware incident. There have been a lot of calls to do more to secure open source, but nobody seems to have any concrete proposals or suggestions to fund any of these activities. Show Notes UAParser.js CISA announcement

Josh and Kurt talk to Chris Wysopal, AKA Weld Pond, about security education. We talk about the current state of how we are learning about security as students and developers. What the best way to get developers interested in learning more about security? We end the show with fantastic advice from Chris for anyone new to the field of technology or security. Show Notes Chris Wysopal Veracode l0phtc...

Josh and Kurt talk about the release of OpenSSF Security Scorecards version 3. This is a great project that will probably make a huge difference. Most of the things the scorecards are measuring are no brainier activities. We go through the list of metrics being measured. There are only a few that we don't think are fantastic. Show Notes 4 of spades OpenSSF Chris Montgomery audio explanation Scorec...

Josh and Kurt talk about the recent Twitch hack and how in the modern age leaking source code almost certainly doesn't matter. The leaked data however is a big deal. We also discuss a recent Apache httpd update. Some things went right, some things went wrong. Dealing with vulnerabilities is hard. Show Notes Parasocial Relationship Twitch Hack Soviet B-29 Clone Apache CVE Apache Advisory GossiTheDo...

Josh and Kurt talk about recent events around Apple and Microsoft disclosing security vulnerabilities. Microsoft usually does a good job, but Apple has a long history of not having a great bug bounty or vulnerability disclosure policy. None of this is simple, but hopefully you'll have some fun and learn a bit about the whole vulnerability disclosure process. Show Notes Apple 0days Microsoft Exchan...

Josh and Kurt talk about the security of the Matrix movie series. There was a new Matrix trailer that made us want to discuss some of the security themes. We talk about how the movie is very focused on computing in the 90s. How Neo probably ran Linux and they used a real ssh exploit. How a lot of the plot is a bit silly. It's a really fun episode. Show Notes Matrix 4 trailer nmap in the Matrix VFX...

Josh and Kurt talk about an unusual number of really bad security updates. We even recorded this before the Azure OMIGOD vulnerability was disclosed. It's certainly been a wild week with Apple and Chrome 0days, and a Travis CI secret leak. Maybe this is the new normal. Show Notes Matrix 4 trailer Travis CI issue Apple 0day patches Chrome 0day patches CGP Grey Where is the European Union

Josh and Kurt talk about some happenings in the Linux Kernel. There are some new rules around how to submit patches that goes against how GitHub works. They're also turning all compiler warnings into errors. It's really interesting to understand what these steps mean today, and what they could mean in the future. Show Notes The Register Linux story OpenSSL Release Notes

Josh and Kurt talk about GitHub Copilot. What can we learn from a report claiming 40% of code generated by Copilot has security vulnerabilities? Is this the future or just some sort of strange new thing that will be gone as fast as it came? Show Notes GitHub Copilot Copilot research paper

Josh and Kurt talk to Dan Lorenc from Google about supply chain security. What's currently going on in this space and what sort of new thing scan we look forward to? We discuss Google's open source use, Project Sigstore, the SLSA framework and more. Show Notes Dan's Twitter Sigstore SLSA Framework

Josh and Kurt talk about open source bugs. What happens if a project decides to close most of their bugs? Nothing really. Bug trackers aren't a help desk. Show Notes Emacs closes 45% of bugs UVI Tesla investigation UK COVID spreadsheet

Josh and Kurt talk about a Home Depot plan to put DRM on power tools. Anyone can add a computer to anything for a few dollars now. How secure is any of this. What does it mean when the things we buy start to acquire DRM? There are a lot of new questions we don't have any real answers for. Show Notes Home Depot power tools Ray Ozzie's IoT board First-sale doctrine

Josh and Kurt talk about a very difficult disclosure problem. What happens when you have to report a vulnerability to an ethically questionable company? It's less simple than it sounds, many of the choices could end up harming victims. Show Notes Disclosure Dilemmas @evacide Bob Diachenko This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends

Josh and Kurt talk about a story from Microsoft declaring Rust the future of safe programming, replacing C and C++. We discuss how tooling affects progress and why this isn't always obvious when you're in the middle of progress. Show Notes Microsoft: Rust Is the Industry's 'Best Chance' at Safe Systems Programming Josh's devopsdays talk Microsoft moved font handling out of the kernel Atari 2600 em...

Josh and Kurt talk about the news that the NSO Group is widely distributing spyware onto a large number of devices. This news should be a wake up call for anyone creating devices and systems that could be attacked, it's time to segment services. There's not a lot individuals can do at this point, but we have some ideas at the end of the episode. Show Notes NSO Group spying Technical details Twitte...

Josh and Kurt talk about what happens when you lose access to your Single Sign On provider. These providers have become critical to many of us, if we lose access to our SSO account we will lose access to many services. Show Notes Postbank

Josh and Kurt talk about the events happening to the Audacity audio editor. What happens if a popular open source application is acquired by an unknown entity? Can this happen to other open source projects? What can we do about it? Show Notes SGDQ Paper Mario Paper Mario Arbitrary Code Execution explained Freenode Audacity acquired by Muse Group Audacity fork

Josh and Kurt talk about a listener provided question. Could SELinux have stopped the SolarWinds attack? Given what we know, the answer is technically yes, but practically no. SELinux is awesome, but it's very difficult to sandbox something like a build system. Show Notes Gone in 60 milliseconds

Josh and Kurt talk to Chris Weiland from Restore the Fourth Minnesota. Restore The Fourth Minnesota is nonprofit dedicated to restoring the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and ending unconstitutional mass government surveillance. Chris drops a ton of knowledge about how to be an effective tech activist, what his group is doing, and most importantly we get actionable advice! Show Notes Re...

Josh and Kurt talk about how our environment affects our behavior, and in turn our level of security. We often ignore what's happening around us when everything is related. Show Notes Judges more lenient after a break Dungeons and Data Poverty changes your DNA

Josh and Kurt talk about why it seems like the world of ransomware has gotten out of control in the last few weeks. Every day there's some new and more bizarre ransomware story than we had yesterday. Show Notes Spurious Correlations Ransom recovered Adam Shostack Ransomware is not the problem Latvian Woman charged for writing ransomware