Open Source Security

Josh and Kurt talk about Red Hat closing up the RHEL source code. Kurt and Josh both worked at Red Hat in the past. This isn't a show that bashes Red Hat, and it's not a show praising them. We take an honest look at the past, present, and future of Linux. There's a lot to talk about in this one. TL;DR, Red Hat was the chosen on, and we all feel betrayed. Show Notes Red Hat's first blog post Red Hat's honest post DeWitt clause

Josh and Kurt talk about the incredible Reddit debacle. At the center of it all is an API. What does it mean to be using an API and how does this relate itself back to our own risk. Many of us rely on APIs for countless things, and if a company decides to cut off that API somehow, it could create a mess. Show Notes Grimace's Birthday Reddit's new API pricing will kill off Apollo on June 30 Cory Doctorow enshitification Wal Mart pickle story Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg agree to hold cage fight

Josh and Kurt talk about a new program from the Sovereign Tech Fund to fund open source work. It's a great looking program with an acceptable amount of money behind the program. We also talk about a story claiming millions of perfectly good hard drives are destroyed per year. They're probably not OK at all. Show Notes Sovereign Tech Fund Challenges Why millions of usable hard drives are being destroyed LTT Buys Storage Array

Josh and Kurt talk about some new open source projects that aim to start taking back some of our privacy and rights. It's a huge hill to climb, but it seems like there is some hope. Open source doesn't care about growth, or numbers, or anything really, so it can't ever lose. Show Notes Codeberg Veilid Hawkins Cheezies Apollo's Reddit API costs

Josh and Kurt talk about namespaces. They were a topic in the last podcast, and resulted in a much much larger discussion for us. We decided to hash out some of our thinking in an episode. This is a much harder problem than either of us expected. We don't have any great answers, but we do have a lot of questions. Show Notes Not Red Hat NPM hash package Episode 129 – The EU bug bounty program

Josh and Kurt talk about PyPI suspending new accounts and packages for a day, and a 60 minutes story about deepfakes. The problems are mostly the same, but for very different reasons. The world is changing faster than we can keep up, so what is a human to do? Show Notes PyPI Repository Under Attack: User Sign-Ups and Package Uploads Temporarily Halted](https://thehackernews.com/2023/05/pypi-repository-under-attack-user-sign.html) 60 minutes reporter voice clone Cooridor Crew deepfakes Certificate bit flip Candy is delicious

Josh and Kurt talk about the Open Source Summit in Vancouver. Josh was there and we pick on two observations. Firstly that security keeps trying to use fear as a feature, except it doesn't work. Secondly we discuss AI and how people are talking about it. It is changing things, how much is yet to be seen. Show Notes SLSA FRSCA S2C2F MSI leak Intel microcode Tom Scott AI Video

Josh and Kurt finish up the leftpad discussion. We spent a lot of time talking about how the market will respond to these sort of events, and the market did indeed speak; very little has changed. There is an aspect of all these security events where we need to understand the cost vs benefit just isn't there. it may never be there. Rather than whine and complain, we need to work with our constraints. Show Notes Episode 77 – npm and the supply chain

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 chain

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 it's shocking how many of these security themes are still relevant today. Show Notes Original Episode 42

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 Kernel power distribution graph

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 across the world. This episode is a window into the future. Show Notes Fiona on Mastodon Sovereign Tech Fund Sovereign Tech Fund Feasibility Study NJ Governor Requests Expertise of 6 People Who Still Know COBOL OpenSSF Criticality Score European critical open source software OSTIF critical open source projects Apply to the Sovereign Tech Fund

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 Archived, Developer Suspended By GitHub Elixir: Docker now charges open source orgs $300

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 National Cybersecurity Strategy

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 Notes Thomas on Mastodon I am not a supplier The Treachery of Images (Ceci n'est pas une pipe) Atlantic Council report The Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error' Google wants new rules for developers working on 'critical' projects Roads and Bridges:The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure Sovereign Tech Fund

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 draft SBOM Drift OpenSSF SBOM Everywhere

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 book online Netflix tech blog on Java performance Rust in the context of Railroad Brakes Kees Cook blog - Bounded Flexible Arrays in C Consumer Reports on memory safety OSS-Fuzz and 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 the Past source code

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 Software Memory Safety Issues Drum memory and the story of Mel Netflix performance Discord Go vs Rust NVIDIA switch to Spark

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 commercial Apple A/UX How NOT To Implement the POSIX Standard, Featuring Windows NT iSH Hand Made Vacuum Tubes

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 question about the environment sjvn Gorilla toolkit article Gorilla Web Toolkit Awesome Games Done Quick GeoGuessr Awesome Games Done Quick 2023

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 LastPass Jeremi M Gosney Mastodon explanation Tavis writeup on password managers Use a Passphrase

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 statements

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 bounty find

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 on the Unabomber Impersonate Eli Lilly for $8 Shakespeare Stylometry

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 for Direct Messages in the Fediverse Pluralistic: 14 Nov 2022 Even if you're paying for the product, you're still the product

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

Josh and Kurt talk about the UK plan to scan their country's IP space. The purpose and outcome of this isn't completely clear at this point, but we are hopeful the data can be used as a positive force. We are only going to see more programs like this as all the governments are told they have to cyber harder. Show Notes NCSC Scanning information Motherboard podcast about NCIS

Josh and Kurt talk about the recent OpenSSL nothingburger. OpenSSL got everyone whipped into a frenzy over a critical vulnerability, then changed the severity to high. The correct solution to this whole problem is to stop using a TLS library written in C, we need to be using memory safe languages. Don't migrate from OpenSSL 1 to 3, migrate from OpenSSL 1 to Rustls. Show Notes OpenSSL Blog Post OpenSSL pre-announcement Mark Cox Tweet 3.0 only affected GossiTheDog NDA Tweet Claims of a name and logo Rustls Image Credit

Josh and Kurt talk about Lufthansa trying to ban Airtags. This has a similar feel to all the security events where a company tries to hand waive away a security problem then having to walk back all their previous statements. There is almost always a massive imbalance between the large companies and consumers. Show Notes Lufthansa bans airtags Airtag stalking problems Lufthansa unbans airtags Cult of the Dead Cow book TV Typewriter Andre the Giant on an airplane Poison Squad

Josh and Kurt talk about stories detailing tech working with multiple jobs. This raises some questions about fairness, accountability, and the future of work. As an industry we are very bad at measuring what we do, which is a problem shared with many jobs currently working from home. Show Notes Equifax surveilled 1,000 remote workers, fired 24 found juggling two jobs Business Insider 2 jobs story Ken Thompson lines of code

Josh and Kurt talk about ineffective security from the past we still use today. There has been a great deal of progress in the last few decades bringing us amazing products like the Flipper Zero, cameras that can peer inside locks, and even software defined radio. A great deal of security relies on people not having easy access to these cheap devices. What does this mean for the future of security? Show Notes Cloning a Rare ISA Card to Use a Rare CD Drive Vintage Tech YouTubers Discussion Panel | VCFMW 17 (2022) Flipper Zero Lock camera HackRF One The history of Hash Reddit post-it notes in apartment

Josh and Kurt talk about a newly rediscovered old python vulnerability. It raises a lot of questions about what was OK in 2007 vs what's OK in 2022. The issue is very complicated and has a wild story surrounding it. There is no reason to not fix this in 2022. Show Notes CVE-2007-4559 Red Hat Bug Register story Response from upstream Upstream patch ZippSlip Current upstream bug CSURF

Josh and Kurt talk about a blog post that explains there isn't really an open source software supply chain. The whole idea of open source being one thing is incorrect, open source is really a lot of little things put together. A lot of companies and organizations get this wrong. Show Notes Iliana's Twitter There is no "software supply chain" Google supply chain blog GitHub ansi_term advisory PyPI 2FA Dashboard tarfile issue rediscovered in 2022

Josh and Kurt talk about programming language ecosystems tracking and publishing security advisory details. We are at a point in the language ecosystems where they are giving us services that have historically been reserved for operating systems. Show Notes Kelsey Hightower tweet OSS-Fuzz

Josh and Kurt talk about the Time Till Open Source Alternative blog post. The numbers probably don't mean what we think they mean anymore. A lot of modern open source is really corporate controlled. Just because something carries an open source license doesn't mean you can contribute to it. Show Notes Time Till Open Source Alternative GitHub Desktop issue 78 The Reddit Safe

Josh and Kurt talk with Josh Aas from the Internet Security Research Group about Let's Encrypt, Prossimo, and Divvi Up. A lot has changed since the last time we spoke with Josh. Let's Encrypt won, and the ISG are working on some really cool new projects. Show Notes Josh Aas Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) Let's Encrypt Episode 87 – Chat with Let's Encrypt co-founder Josh Aas New Major Funding from the Ford Foundation ISRG annual reports Peter Eckersley

Josh and Kurt talk about really weird networking bugs. Josh tells a story about his home network problems that made no sense. There was also a qt5 bug that affected wireless networks that made virtually no sense. What should count as a security vulnerability? Show Notes Resolving an unusual wifi issue Hacker News thread Global Security Database IdeaPad 5 14ARE05

Josh and Kurt talk about the recent National Defense Authorization Act that requires security vulnerabilities to be fixed. What does this mean for us, is it as bad as some people are claiming it is? It's actually not a huge deal, for most of us it's really just time to deal with product security. Show Notes The Hacker Mind The Untold Stories of Open Source H.R.7900 - National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 Kurt's blog post

Josh and Kurt talk to Dustin Childs about the recent ZDI Black Hat talk where they discovered the current trend of security patches not actually fixing the security problem. We talk about what this problem means. Why is it happening, and what ZDI is doing to try nudge the industry in the right direction. Show Notes Dustin Childs ZDI Sloppy Software Patches Are a 'Disturbing Trend' Zero Day Initiative launches new bug disclosure timelines ISO 28147

Josh and Kurt talk about our lack of security and some of the data bias problems that can emerge. A lot of what we think is security data is really just biased data. This is OK as long as we understand the data is broken and know this is the first step in a longer journey. Show Notes Tweet about data The 6 most common types of bias when working with data Syft and Grype stars graph John Snow, Cholera, the Broad Street Pump Bob Lord tweet

Josh and Kurt talk about a tweet from @kmcquade3 asking the question "What's a concept in security that is generally accepted as true but is actually bull%$#*?" How many of the replies make sense? Most of them do. We go over some of the best replies as fast as we can. Show Notes The tweet that started it all Mark Loveless Mark Manning Richard (Dick) Brooks @ImbecillicusRex What Train Have We Got? Dan Alejo 🏳️‍🌈 postmodern 🇺🇸 Robert C. Seacord 🇺🇦 Yip Wai Peng Sachin Shahi

Josh and Kurt talk about leap seconds. Every time there's a leap second, things break. Facebook wants to get rid of them because they break computers, but Google found a clever way to keep leap seconds without breaking anything. Corner cases are hard, security is often just one huge corner case. There are lessons we can learn here. Show Notes How and why the leap second affected Cloudflare DNS Facebook wants to get rid of leap seconds Leap Smear Falsehoods programmers believe about time

Josh and Kurt talk about Microsoft creating a policy of not allowing anyone to charge for open source in their app store. This policy was walked back quickly, but it raises some questions about how fair or unfair open source really is. It's mostly unfair to developers if you look at the big picture. Show Notes Syft Grype Microsoft bans and unbans open source Tidelift survey Bruce Perens - What comes after open source