Open Source Security

Josh and Kurt revisit Episode 77, which was named "npm and the supply chain" but was a discussion about the incident we all know now as "leftpad". We didn't understand what was happening at the time, but this would become an event we talk about for years to come. It's shocking how many of the things we discuss are still completely valid five years later. Show Notes Episode 77 – npm and the supply...

This is the second part of remastering Episode 42 which is all about the security in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. It's a fun show and it's shocking how many of these security themes are still relevant today. Show Notes Original Episode 42 Part 1

The podcast is on a hiatus for a little while due to some personal matters, but that creates an opportunity to remaster some fun old episodes. These shows are REALLY hard to listen to at the current quality (tools and talent has come a long way in the last few years). This is a remaster of Episode 42 which is all about the security in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. It's a fun show and...

Josh and Kurt talk about a blog post about pip and virtual environments. This eventually turns into a larger conversation around packaging tools and how we see incremental changes over time. The package ecosystems were what we needed a few years ago, but our needs have changed. Show Notes One Does Not Simply 'pip install' Dag Wieers RPM Webfinger GitHub repo

Josh and Kurt talk about some data on the size of NPM. Josh wrote a blog post and a report about the amount of SEO spam in NPM was released. Open source is enormous, and it's mostly one person. It's hard to imagine how this all works sometimes and this lack of understanding can create challenges. Show Notes Josh's blog on the size of NPM One In Two New Npm Packages Is SEO Spam Right Now Linux Kern...

Josh and Kurt talk about OpenAI having a bug in ChatGPT, then they tried to blame open source. It didn't go very well. In this episode Josh and Kurt argue a lot, maybe someday we'll know who was the least wrong. Show Notes ChatGPT Tweet ChatGPT Blog redis bug

Josh and Kurt talk to Fiona Krakenbürger about the Sovereign Tech Fund. This is a fund created by Germany to fund important open source projects. Fiona has amazing insight into how this fund was created, what it's doing today to help fund open source. She discusses where we go from here and what the future will look like. The Sovereign Tech Fund is a forward thinking program to fund open source ac...

Josh and Kurt talk about GitHub enforcing sanctions against an open source developer and Docker changing how their registry works. There's a lot to unpack in this one. There's a lot of happenings going on in the world of open source. We are seeing governments paying attention to open source like never before, change is coming and everything is going to change. Show Notes ipmitool Repository Archiv...

Josh and Kurt talk about the number of dependencies that is now normal. Keeping track of thousands of dependencies used to be impressive, now it's normal. In what instances should we know everything about our open source? The days of being able to ignore your software liability is looking like it's coming to an end. Show Notes LTT millenial pause The perverse incentive of vulnerability counting Na...

Josh and Kurt talk to Thomas Depierre about his "I am not a supplier" blog post. We drink from the firehose on this one. Thomas describes the realities and challenges of being an open source maintainer. What open source and society owe each other. How safety can help describe what we see. There's too many topics to even list. The whole episode is an epic adventure through modern open source. Show...

Josh and Kurt talk about SBOMs. Quite a bit has happened in the world of SBOMs in the last year or so. There are going to be different types of SBOMs, like build, source, or runtime. Each will tell us different things depending on what we need to know. We also cover some of the community efforts happening around SBOMs. They're still not easy to use, but it's better better. Show Notes SBOM Types dr...

Josh and Kurt talk to Joylynn Kirui about DevSecOps in the Microsoft universe. Joylynn gives us an overview of the current state of devops and tells us about some of the tools Microsoft has made available to the open source universe. Show Notes Joylynn Kirui Joylynn on DVT Tech Insights Episode 174 - a chat with GitHub about CodeQL S2C2F Azure Open Source Day

Josh and Kurt talk to Carol Nichols about Rust. Carol is an authority on Rust and helps us understand how Rust works, why it's different. Why Rust doesn't have the same problems C and C++ have, and what the future of it all could look like. It's a really fun show with some great questions from Carol along the way. Show Notes Carol Nichols on Mastodon The Rust Programming Language, 2nd Edition Rust...

Josh and Kurt talk about the recent GitHub breach. It wasn't terribly exciting, but there are some interesting conversations to have around securing certificates, source code, and hardware security modules. In general GitHub did most things right on this one. Show Notes GitHub blog post Hacker History Podcast episode with Robert Super Mario 64 decompile Mario 64 built without optimization Link to...

Josh and Kurt talk about the NSA guidance on using memory safety issues. The TL;DR is to stop using C. We discuss why C has so many problem, why we can't fix C, and what some alternatives looks like. Even the alternatives have their own set of issues and there are many options, but the one thing we can agree on is we have to stop using C. Show Notes NSA Releases Guidance on How to Protect Against...

Josh and Kurt talk about the recent FAA NOTAM outage. Keeping legacy things running for long periods of time is really hard to do, this system is no different. It's also really hard to upgrade many of these due to corner cases and institutional knowledge. There aren't any great answers here, but we do ask a lot of questions about long running tech. Show Notes NOTAM outage AIX is not dead IBM Linux...

Josh and Kurt talk about the Furby source code going public. This is an opportunity to discuss what's changed in our attitude in devices that record our audio? Our devices today are vastly more powerful and dangerous than a Furby, what does your risk appetite look like? Show Notes Furby source code Talking Toy Or Spy? Adam Ruins Everything - Why Jaywalking Is a Crime

Josh and Kurt talk about how to think about open source in the context of society. Open source is more like a natural resource than a supplier. It's common to think of open source projects as delivered to us, but it's more like acquiring raw materials from the forest. The problem is we're harvesting the raw materials in an unsustainable manner at the moment. Show Notes I am not a supplier Josh's q...

Josh and Kurt talk about the LastPass saga. There's a lot of great explanations about what happened, but there hasn't been a lot of info on how to start cleaning up this mess. We rehash some of the existing details then try to untangle what existing users can do to try to start recovering. The real problem is how LastPass is dealing with this, not the technical details. Show Notes Great writeup of...

Josh and Kurt talk about some security gifts for boxing day. We start out with the idea of the security poverty line and discuss a few ideas for how a low resource group can make their open source more secure. There are no simple answers unfortunately. Show Notes Wendy Nather Security Poverty Line Boots Theory

Josh and Kurt talk about how hard multi factor authentication is. This all starts from a Mastodon thread, and Jerry Bell , the administrator of infosec.exchange joins us to discuss password security and all things Mastodon. Infosec.exchange is an incredible story and Jerry weaves a thrilling tale. Show Notes infosec.exchange MFA discussion Jerry's 2FA advice MalwareTech retracts Mastodon statement...

Josh and Kurt talk to Jill Moné-Corallo about GitHub's bug bounty and product security team. It's a treat to discuss bug bounties with someone who is managing a very large bug bounty for one of the most important web sites in the world of software today. Show Notes Jill's Twitter Jill's Mastodon GitHub Bug Bounty Bug bounty scope Eight years of the GitHub Security Bug Bounty program GitHub NPM bug...

Josh and Kurt talk about a new tool that can do Stylometry analysis of Hacker News authors. The availability of such tools makes anonymity much harder on the Internet, but it's also not unexpected. The amount of power and tooling available now is incredible. We also discuss some of the future challenges we will see from all this technology. Show Notes Hacker News Stylometry Analyzer FBI Profiler o...

Josh and Kurt talk about end to end encrypted messages. This has been a popular topic lately due to the Mastodon popularity. Mastodon has a uniquely insecure messaging system, but they aren't the only one. The eternal debate of can security and usability exist together? We suspect it can't be, but it's a very complicated topic. Show Notes EFF on Mastodon DM privacy Towards End-to-End Encryption fo...

Josh and Kurt talk about email security and the perils of trying to run your own mail infrastructure. We then get into discussing the value and danger of trying to run your own infrastructure, email, blogs, or most anything. There's a lot to juggle about all this these days, it's complicated. Show Notes PowerDMARC Will Dormann GossiTheDog upgrades Exchange lcamtuf's blog I like Ice Cream