Open Source Security

Josh and Kurt talk to Alex Kulagin from Flipper about the Flipper Zero. It's one of the coolest hacker devices that exists on the market. We talk about what it is, how it started, what it can (and can't) do. It's a really fun conversation. Show Notes Flipper Zero Website Headphone jack radio capture Flipper Zero on Tik Tok

Josh and Kurt talk about a blog post titled "Your API Shouldn't Redirect HTTP to HTTPS". It's an interesting idea, and probably a good one. There is however a lot of baggage in this space as you'll hear in the discussion. There's no a simple solution, but this is certainly something to discuss. Show Notes Your API Shouldn't Redirect HTTP to HTTPS Hacker News discussion HSTS Section 5.1

Josh and Kurt talk about a blog post about frozen kernels being more secure. We cover some of the history and how a frozen kernel works and discuss why they would be less secure. A frozen kernel is from when things worked very differently. What sort of changes will we see in the future? Show Notes Kurt's strange coffee Why a 'frozen' distribution Linux kernel isn't the safest choice for security

Josh and Kurt talk about open source and autonomy. This is even related to some recent return to office news. The conversation weaves between a few threads, but fundamentally there's some questions about why do people do what they do, especially in the world of open source. This also is a problem we see in security, security people love to tell developers what to do. Developers don't like being told what to do. Show Notes pycurl issue Apple, SpaceX, Microsoft return-to-office mandates drove senior talent away RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us Sudo-rs dependencies: when less is better phishing webcomic Debian OpenSSL Bug (16 years)

Josh and Kurt talk about a new to sign artifacts on GitHub. It's in beta, it's not going to be easy to use, it will have bugs. But that's all OK. This is how we start. We need infrastructure like this to enable easier to use features in the future. Someday, everything will be signed by default. Show Notes GitHub artifact attestation

Josh and Kurt talk about a sudo replacement going into systemd called run0. It sounds like it'll get a lot right, but systemd is a pretty big attack surface and not everyone is a fan. We shall have to see if this ends up replacing sudo. Show Notes Conan O'Brien on Hot Ones Lennart's Mastodon thread xkcd automation

Josh and Kurt talk about a paper describing using a LLM to automatically create exploits for CVEs. The idea is probably already happening in many spaces such as pen testing and intelligence services. We can't keep up with the number of vulnerabilities we have, there's no way we can possibly keep up with a glut of LLM generated vulnerabilities. We really need to rethink how we handle vulnerabilities. Show Notes OpenAI's GPT-4 can exploit real vulnerabilities by reading security advisories paper: LLM Agents can Autonomously Exploit One-day Vulnerabilities Cisco Fixes RV320/RV325 Vulnerability by Banning "curl" in User-Agent Episode 219 – Chat with Larry Cashdollar Cory Doctorow: What Kind of Bubble is AI?

Josh and Kurt talk about a database of game cheaters. Cheating in games has many similarities to security problems. Anti cheat rootkits are also terrible. The clever thing however is using statistics to identify cheaters. Statistics don't lie. Also, we discuss the Pretendo project sitting on a vulnerability for a year, is this ethical? Show Notes Hacker News searchable database Benford's law John Oliver Medicaid Mario64 invisible walls Pretendo Pretendo exploit

Josh and Kurt talk about a Notepad++ fake website. It's possibly not illegal, but it's certainly ethically wrong. We also end up discussing why it seems like all these weird and wild things keep happening. It's probably due to the massive size of open source (and everything) now. Things have gotten gigantic and we didn't really notice. Show Notes Help us to take down the parasite website Open Source is bigger than you can imagine Toronto Pearson International Airport heist

Josh and Kurt talk about a new FCC program to provide a cybersecurity certification mark. Similar to other consumer safety marks such as UL or CE. We also tie this conversation into GrapheneOS, and what trying to claim a consumer device is secure really means. Some of our compute devices have an infinite number of possible states. It's a really weird and hard problem. Show Notes GrapheneOS FCC approves cybersecurity label for consumer devices Cyber Trust Mark Logo

Josh and Kurt talk about the recent events around XZ. It's only been a few days, and it's amazing what we already know. We explain a lot of the basics we currently know with the attitude much of these details will change quickly over the coming week. We can't fix this problem as it stands, we don't know where to start yet. But that's not a reason to lose hope. We can fix this if we want to, but it won't be flashy, it'll be hard work. Show Notes GossiTheDog's Blog Post fr0gger diagram OpenSSF Blog (archive) stb library

Josh and Kurt talk about the security.txt file. It's not new, but it's not something we've discussed before. It's a great idea, an easy format, and well defined. It's not high on many of our todo lists, but it's something worth doing. Show Notes RFC 9116

Josh and Kurt talk about the new SSDF attestation form from CISA. The current form isn't very complicated, and the SSDF has a lot of room for interpretation. But this is the start of something big. It's going to take a long time to see big changes in supply chain security, but we're confident they will come. Show Notes Secure Software Development Attestation Form The U.S. Military Is Missing Six Nuclear Weapons NIST 800-218

Josh and Kurt talk about what's going on at the National Vulnerability Database. NVD suddenly stopped enriching vulnerabilities, and it's sent shock-waves through the vulnerability management space. While there are many unknowns right now, the one thing we can count on is things won't go back to the way they were. Show Notes Anchore's Blog Grype Josh's Cyphercon Talk Ecosyste.ms Episode 266 – The future of security scanning with Debricked

Josh and Kurt talk about an attack against GitHub where attackers are creating malicious repositories then artificially inflating the number of stars and forks. This is really a discussion about how can we try to find signal in all the noise of a massive ecosystem like GitHub. Show Notes GitHub besieged by millions of malicious repositories in ongoing attack

Josh and Kurt talk about recent stories about data breaches, flipper zero banning, and realistic security. We have a lot of weird challenges in the world of security, but hard problems aren't impossible problems. Sometimes we forget that. Show Notes Mon Dieu! Nearly half the French population have data nabbed in massive breach Feds move to ban auto theft tech device 'Flipper Zero' Gmail and Yahoo's 2024 inbox protections and what they mean for your email program Vending machine error reveals secret face image database of college students

Josh and Kurt talk to GregKH about Linux Kernel security. We most focus on the topic of vulnerabilities in the Linux Kernel, and what being a CNA will mean for the future of Linux Kernel security vulnerabilities. The future of Linux Kernel security vulnerabilities is going to be very interesting. Show Notes Greg K-H Linux Kernel is a CNA Machine learning and stable kernels Bug reporting for Linux

Josh and Kurt talk to Thomas Depierre about some of the European efforts to secure software. We touch on the CRA, MDA, FOSDEM, and more. As expected Thomas drops a huge amount of knowledge on what's happening in open source. We close the show with a lot of ideas around how to move the needle for open source. It's not easy, but it is possible. Show Notes Thomas Depierre I am not a supplier Open Source In The European Legislative Landscape devroom Cyber Resilience Act The 2023 Tidelift state of the open source maintainer report

Josh and Kurt talk about a blog post explaining how to create a very very small container image. Generally in the world of security less is more, but it's possible to remove too much. A lot of today's security tooling relies on certain things to exist in a container image, if we remove them we could actually result in worse security than leaving it in. It's a weird topic, but probably pretty important. Show Notes How I reduced the size of my very first published docker image by 40% - A lesson in dockerizing shell scripts Hacker News Discussion Episode 293 – Scoring OpenSSF Security Scoring

Josh and Kurt talk about open source projects proving builds, and things nobody wants to pay for in open source. It's easy to have unrealistic expectations for open source projects, but we have the open source capitalism demands. Show Notes Open Source Doesn't Require Providing Builds The things nobody wants to pay for Audacity privacy policy update has caused an outcry The History of X11

Josh and Kurt talk about an attack against PyTorch and NPM. The PyTorch attack shows the difficulty of trying to operate a large open source project. The NPM problem is one of the difficulty in trying to backdoor open source. A lot of people are watching and it only takes one person to notice a problem and we all benefit. Show Notes Peanut Butter the dog plays Gyromite The Wizard movie PyTorch supply chain attack npm Package Found Delivering Sophisticated RAT Deceptive Deprecation: The Truth About npm Deprecated Packages Changing a lightbulb Spelunking the Bitcoin Blockchain with Josh Bressers | CypherCon 4.0 Operation Triangulation - What You Get When Attack iPhones of Researchers 9th Annual State of the Software Supply Chain

Josh and Kurt talk about the 23andMe compromise and how they are blaming the users. It's obviously the the fault of the users, but there's still a lot of things to discuss on this one. Every company has to care about cybersecurity now, even if they don't want to. Show Notes Security leaders weigh in on 23andme hack Don't need a gun when you have a Donk - Crocodile Dundee 2 Hackers can infect network-connected wrenches to install ransomware My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined

Josh and Kurt talk about a grab bag of old technologies that defined the security industry. Technology like SELinux, SSH, Snort, ModSecurity and more all started with humble beginnings, and many of them created new security industries. Show Notes SELinux AppArmor SSH ModSecurity Snort Nmap Nessus What comes after open source

Josh and Kurt talk about package identifiers. We break this down in the context of an OpenSSF response to a CISA paper on software identifications. The identifiers that get all the air time are purl, CPE, SWID, and OmniBOR. This is a surprisingly complex problem space. It feels easy, but it's not. Show Notes OpenSSF CISA response purl CPE OmniBOR SWID

Josh and Kurt talk about how some hackers saved the day with a Polish train. We delve into a discussion about how we don't really own anything anymore if you look around. There's a great talk from the Blender Conference about this and how GPL makes a difference in the world of software ownership. It's sort of a dire conversation, but not all hope is lost. Show Notes Polish manufacturer accused of programming failures into its trains to gain more servicing business Polish Hackers Repaired Trains the Manufacturer Artificially Bricked. Now The Train Company Is Threatening Them Blender Conference Keynote Corey Doctorow Chicago has a problem until the year 2083 | Stand-up Maths Chicago Doesn't Own Its Own Streets | Climate Town

Josh and Kurt talk about a story asking for a Kubernetes LTS. Should open source projects have LTS versions? What does LTS even mean? Why is maintaining software so hard? It's a lively discussion all about the past, present, and future of open source LTS. Show Notes Why Kubernetes needs an LTS Linux gives up on 6-year LTS kernels, says they're too much work

It's the 2023 Christmas Spectacular! Josh and Kurt talk about what would happen if Santa starts using AI to judge which children are naughty and nice. There's some fun in this one, but it does get pretty real. While we tried to discuss Santa using AI, the reality is this sort of AI is coming for many of us. AI will be making decisions for all of us in the near future (if it isn't already). While less fun than we had hoped for, it's an important conversation. Show Notes Sea Elf Ollama UnitedHealth uses faulty AI to deny elderly patients medically necessary coverage, lawsuit claims Stephen Fry on AI Lawyer who cited cases concocted by AI asks judge to spare sanctions Hugging Face

Josh and Kurt talk about a few security stories about radio. The TETRA:BURST attack on police radios, spoofing GPS for airplanes near Iran, and Apple including cellular radios in the macbooks. The common thread between all these stories is looking at the return on investment for security. Sometimes good enough security is fine, sometimes it's not worth fixing certain security problems because the risk vs reward doesn't work out. Show Notes TETRA:BURST GPS spoofing attack Apple MacBooks cellular radio Mossad vs Not Mossad

Josh and Kurt talk about Capcom claiming modding a game is akin to cheating. The arguments used are fundamentally one of equity vs equality. Humans love to focus on equality instead of equity when we deal with most problems. This is especially true in the world of security. Rather than doing something that has a net positive, we ignore the details and focus on doing something that feels "right". Show Notes Why Capcom thinks PC game modding is akin to "cheating" Ben Heck

Josh and Kurt talk about the Canadian Government banning WeChat and Kaspersky. There's a lot of weird little details in this conversation. It fundamentally comes down to a conversation about risk. It's easy to spout nonsense about risk, but having an honest discussion about it is REALLY complicated. But the government plays by a very different set of rules. Show Notes Canada bans WeChat, Kaspersky applications on government devices Fitness tracking app Strava gives away location of secret US army bases Phishing emails increase over 1,200 percent since ChatGPT launch FedRAMP Rev 5 FAIR Institute

Josh and Kurt talk about the new EU eIDAS regulation. This is a bill that will force web browsers to add root certificates based on law instead of technical merits, which is how it's currently done. This is concerning for a number of reasons that we discuss on the show. This proposal is not a good idea. Show Notes Mozilla site Root CA mailing list UK eIDAS regulation EFF statement on eIDAS Fixed XKCD comic

Josh and Kurt talk about security skills shortage. We start out on the topic of cybersecurity skills and weave our way around a number of human related problems in this space. The world of tech has a lot of weird problems and there's not a lot of movement to fix many of them. Tech is weird and hard, and with the almost complete lack of regulation creates some of these challenges. In the world of security we need a better talent pipeline, but that takes actual efforts, not just complaining on the internet. Show Notes Schneier on security skill shortage British Airways flight smoke The Password Game Tesla accidents Lawn darts

Josh and Kurt talk about a proposed Dutch proposal that would allow the intelligence services to hack victims of adversaries they are in the process of infiltrating. The purpose of this discussion isn't to focus on the Dutch specifically, but rather to discuss the larger topic of government oversight. These are all very new concepts and nobody knows how things should work. Show Notes Dutch hacking proposal Give Me Toilet Paper! by Asuka424 in 9:54 - Summer Games Done Quick 2023 Flipper Zero Smart Meter Frequency Hopping Teri Kanfield

Josh and Kurt talk to Daniel Stenberg about curl. Daniel is the creator of curl, we chat with him about the security of curl. Daniel tells us how curl is kept secure, we learn about some of the historical reasons curl works the way it does. We hear the story about the curl CVE situation firsthand. We also touch on the importance of curating the community of a popular open source project. Show Notes Daniel's Mastodon account Curl The curl CVE blog Broken curl on PowerShell wolfSSL

Josh and Kurt talk about Sonatype's 9th Annual State of the Software Supply Chain. There's a ton of data in the report, but the thing we want to talk about is the statistic that only 11% of open source is actually being maintained. Do we think that's true? Does it really matter? Show Notes Sonatype report ecosyste.ms GNOME libcue flaw Reality 2.0 supply chain episode

Josh and Kurt talk about a curl and glibc bug. The bugs themselves aren't super interesting, but there are other conversations around the bugs that are interesting. Why don't we just rewrite everything in Rust? Why can't we just train developers to stop writing insecure code. How can AI solve this problem? It's a marvelous conversation that ends on the very basic idea: we already have the security the market demands. Unless we change that demand, security won't change. Show Notes Curl vulnerability glibc vulnerability Josh's Badge Project Bob Lord's phishing message

Josh and Kurt talk about contributor license agreements (CLAs). CLAs used to be seen as a necessary evil, but they're almost certainly bad now. We're seeing CLAs being abused, it's clear now anything controlled by a CLA won't be open source forever. Show Notes A Theory of Joint Authorship for Free and Open Source Software Projects Bruce Perens: What Comes After Open Source

Josh and Kurt talk about uncertainty. There are a bunch of stories in the news lately that really just boil down to uncertainty. Uncertainty is incredibly dangerous for everyone. We are afraid of uncertainty, and often don't really understand why it is. Trust is like a currency and uncertainty erodes trust faster than almost anything else. Show Notes Unity's license mess Godot Meta and Salesforce want to re-hire people they fired earlier this year U.S. Debt Credit Rating Downgraded, Only Second Time In Nation's History

Josh and Kurt talk about filing bugs for software. There's the old saying that anyone can file bugs and submit patches for open source, but the reality is most people can't. Filing bugs for both closed and open source is nearly impossible in many instances. Even if you want to file a bug for an open source project, there are a lot of hoops before it's something that can be actionable. Show Notes Linux is a nightmare Lodash just declared issue bankruptcy and closed every issue and open PR Linux Kernel Faces Reduction in Long-Term Support Due to Maintenance Challenges Curl NULL pointer dereference

Josh and Kurt talk about the weird world we live in how where we can't control a lot of our hardware. We don't really have control over most devices we interact with on a daily basis. The conversation shifts into a question of how can we decide what to trust and where. It's a very strange problem we experience now. Show Notes Boots theory MGM cybersecurity issue shuts down slot machines and ATMs in Las Vegas casinos New York Fire Department Forcible Entry Reference Guide Request for Information on Open-Source Software Security: Areas of Long-Term Focus and Prioritization

Josh and Kurt talk about why CVE is making the news lately. Things are not well in the CVE program, and it's not looking like anything will get fixed anytime soon. Josh and Kurt have a unique set of knowledge around CVE. There's a lot of confusion and difficulty in understanding how CVE works. Show Notes Curl blog post Now it's PostgreSQL's turn to have a bogus CVE GitHub Advisory Database Josh's "CVE tried to get me fired" story

Josh and Kurt talk about wordpress selling web services with a 100 year lifespan. Will WordPress still be around in 100 years? What would 100 years of disaster recovery look like? Most of us will never need to think about 100 years of disaster recovery. Show Notes WordPress is now selling 100-year domains Danish ransomware 15-Minute City The Year Without Pants

Josh and Kurt talk about a blog post that explains how C and C++ compilers prioritize performance over correctness. This is the class story of security vs usability. Security is never the primary goal. If a security requirement doesn't also enable other business goals it will fail. We also touch on the news of a Rust package containing binary files. It doesn't really have anything to do with security, it's all about convenience. Show Notes C and C++ Prioritize Performance over Correctness Nisha's toot Barry Marshall Rust devs push back as Serde project ships precompiled binaries Why DARPA Hopes To 'Distill' Old Binaries Into Readable Code Mario 64 decompilation

Josh and Kurt talk about the HashiCorp license change and copyright problems in open source. This isn't the first and won't be the last time we see this, but it's very likely open source developers and communities will view any project that has a contributor license agreement as a problem moving forward. Show Notes Josh's BSidesLV talk Hacker News marked site as malware HashiCorp license change A Theory of Joint Authorship for Free and Open Source Software Projects

Josh and Kurt ask the question what is a vulnerability, but in the framing of video games. Security loves to categorize all bugs as security vulnerabilities or not security vulnerabilities. But the reality nothing is so simple. Everything is a question of risk, not vulnerability. The discussion about video games can help us to better have this discussion. Show Notes Colossus bug Minecraft Heist

Josh and Kurt talk about the difference between what we think of as traditional open source, and enterprise software projects that have an open source license. They are both technically open source, but how the projects work is very very different. Show Notes CentOS Stream PR The Most Prolific Packager For Alpine Linux Is Stepping Away

Josh and Kurt talk about a new Google proposal that would add DRM for the web. All the ad driven companies seem to be acting very strangely, there's probably a reason for this. The way ads used to pay for content is changing, but a lot of these giant companies don't know how to adapt. It's going to be very interesting times in the near future. Show Notes Web Environment Integrity Hacker News Thread Island Browser hunter2

Josh and Kurt talk about insider threats, but not quite in the way one would expect. The potential for insider threats is possibly higher than usual right now, but what about open source? Are open source developers insider threats for your organization? Have you ever thought about this before? Show Notes CISA insider threats hacks4pancakes toot Don't Trust a Programmer Who Knows C++ CISA Insider Threat Mitigation

Josh and Kurt talk about some of the efforts to measure and understand open source. There are projects like the OpenSSF Scorecard. We want to measure open source for some idea of quality. Is AI generated code better than a random open source project found on GitHub? Can we track the countries contributors are from? These are all interesting problems that everyone will have to deal with soon. Show Notes OpenSSF Scorecard

Josh and Kurt talk about the notion that open source is somehow dying. What's actually happening is corporate open source is changing, which some are trying to deform into something wrong with open source. Open source is doing great, probably better than ever. Show Notes Open Source isn't sustainable anymore VORON Design Video of the first lathe Plane Crazy Evernote layoffs