I'm joined by Philippe Ombredanne, creator of the Package URL (PURL), to discuss the surprisingly complex and messy problem of simply identifying open source software packages. We dive into how PURLs provide a universal, common-sense standard that is becoming essential for the future of SBOMs and securing the software supply chain. The show notes and blog post for this episode can be found at https://opensourcesecurity.io/2025/2025-06-purl-philippe-ombredanne/...
Jun 23, 2025•37 min
Thomas DePierre joins Open Source Security to discuss the central idea from his blog post, "You are all on the hobbyist maintainers turf now," exploring the massive disconnect between the corporate world that consumes open source and the hobbyist community that actually produces it. The conversation reveals this isn't a new problem, but a long-standing reality whose consequences for security, stability, and the future of software we are only now beginning to truly confront. The show notes and bl...
Jun 16, 2025•49 min
I chat with Aaron Lippold, creator of MITRE's Security Automation Framework (SAF), to discuss how to escape the pain of manual STIG compliance. We explore the technical details of open-source tools like InSpec, Heimdall, and Vulcan that automate validation, normalize diverse security data, and streamline the entire security authoring process. The show notes and blog post for this episode can be found at https://opensourcesecurity.io/2025/2025-06-stig-automation-aaron-lippold/...
Jun 09, 2025•33 min
I recently chatted with Andrew Nesbitt about his project, Ecosyste.ms. Ecosyste.ms catalogs open source projects by tracking packages, dependencies, repositories, and more. With this dataset Andrew is able to incredible insights into the world of open source. We chat all about how Ecosyste.ms works and how he manages to wrangle all this data. The show notes and blog post for this episode can be found at https://opensourcesecurity.io/2025/2025-06-ecosystems_andrew_nesbitt/...
Jun 02, 2025•36 min
Daniel Stenberg, the maintainer of Curl, discusses the increase in AI security reports that are wasting the time of maintainers. We discuss Curl's new policy of banning the bad actors while establishing some pretty sane AI usage guidelines. We chat about how this low-effort, high-impact abuse pattern is a denial-of-service attack on the curl project (and other open source projects too). The show notes and blog post for this episode can be found at https://opensourcesecurity.io/2025/2025-05-curl_...
May 26, 2025•34 min
I recently had a chat with Kairo about a project he maintains called Repository Service for TUF (RSTUF). We explain why TUF is tough (har har har), what RSTUF can do, and some of the challenges around securing repositories. The show notes and blog post for this episode can be found at https://opensourcesecurity.io/2025/2025-05-rstuf-with-kairo-de-araujo/
May 19, 2025•33 min
William Woodruff discussed his project, Zizmor, a security linter designed to help developers identify and fix vulnerabilities within their GitHub Actions workflows. This tool addresses inherent security risks in GitHub Actions, such as injection vulnerabilities, permission issues, and mutable tags, by providing static analysis and remediation guidance. Fresh off the heels of the tj-actions/changed-files backdoor, this is a great topic with some things everyone can do right away. The show notes ...
May 12, 2025•32 min
Recently, I had the pleasure of chatting with Paul Asadoorian, Principal Security Researcher at Eclypsium and the host of the legendary Paul's Security Weekly podcast. Our conversation dove into the often-murky waters of embedded systems and the Internet of Things (IoT), sparked by a specific vulnerability discussion on Paul's show concerning reference code for the popular ESP32 microcontroller. The show notes and blog post for this episode can be found at https://opensourcesecurity.io/2025/2025...
May 05, 2025•34 min
Dimitri Stiliadis, CTO from Endor Labs, discusses the recent tj-actions/changed-files supply chain attack, where a compromised GitHub Action exposed CI/CD secrets. We explore the impressive multi-stage attack vector and the broader often-overlooked vulnerabilities in our CI/CD pipelines, emphasizing the need to treat these build systems with production-level security rigor instead of ignoring them. The show notes and blog post for this episode can be found at https://opensourcesecurity.io/2025/2...
Apr 28, 2025•33 min
I chat with Alan Pope about the open source security tools Syft, Grype, and Grant. These tools help create Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs) and scan for vulnerabilities. Learn why generating and storing SBOMs is crucial for understanding your software supply chain and quickly responding to new threats like Log4Shell. The show notes and blog post for this episode can be found at https://opensourcesecurity.io/2025/2025-04-syft-grype-grant-alan-pope/...
Apr 21, 2025•31 min
Aaron Frost explores the overly complex world of vulnerability identifiers for end of life software. We discuss how incomplete CVE reporting creates blind spots for users while arming attackers with knowledge. The conversation uncovers the ethical tensions between resource constraints and security transparency, highlighting why the "vulnerable until proven otherwise" approach is the best path forward for end of life software. The show notes and blog post for this episode can be found at https://...
Apr 14, 2025•30 min
Cargo Semver Checks is a Rust tool by Predrag Gruevski that is tackling the problem of broken dependencies that cost developers time when trying to upgrade dependencies. Predrag's work shows how automated checks can catch breaking changes before they're released, potentially saving projects from unexpected failures and making dependency updates less painful across the entire Rust ecosystem. The show notes and blog post for this episode can be found at https://opensourcesecurity.io/2025/2025-04-c...
Apr 07, 2025•34 min
Lars Wirzenius discusses his innovative CI/CD system Ambient, which uses isolated virtual machines without network access to enhance security, and his work on Radicle, a peer-to-peer Git collaboration platform. Together, these projects offer a glimpse into a more distributed future for software development, addressing key challenges in current CI/CD systems like long wait times, security vulnerabilities, and centralized infrastructure limitations. The blog post for this episode can be found at h...
Mar 31, 2025•27 min
William Brown tells us all about how confusing and complicated the FIDO authentication universe is. He talks about WebAuthn implementation challenges to flaws in the FIDO metadata service that affect how hardware tokens are authenticated against. The conversation covers the spectrum of hardware security key quality, attestation mechanisms, and the barriers preventing open source developers from improving industry standards despite their expertise. The blog post for this episode can be found at h...
Mar 24, 2025•29 min
In this episode, open source legal expert Luis Villa breaks down what the EU's Cyber Resilience Act means for developers and businesses, exploring carve-outs for individual contributors and the complex relationship between security and sustainability. Luis provides practical guidance on navigating this evolving regulatory landscape while explaining why the CRA represents both a challenge and an opportunity for the open source ecosystem. The blog post for this episode can be found at https://open...
Mar 17, 2025•26 min
Brian Fox discusses findings from a recent Sonatype report about the growing challenge of malicious packages in open source repositories. At the time of recording there are now over 820,000 malware packages in public repositories. Brian explains why certain ecosystems are more vulnerable than others and how behavioral detection methods can identify suspicious packages, and the challenge in solving this problem. The blog post for this episode can be found at https://opensourcesecurity.io/2025/202...
Mar 10, 2025•30 min
In this episode Open Source Security talks to Dr. Kelly Masada about the Open Information Security Foundation (OISF). The way OISF is managing Suricata through a foundation is super interesting. There are a lot of lessons in this one for both open source projects and existing open source foundations. The blog post for this episode can be found at https://opensourcesecurity.io/2025/2025-03-oss_foundations_kelley_misata/...
Mar 03, 2025•32 min
In this episode Open Source Security chats with Sheogorath about HedgeDoc project's journey from HackMD to CodiMD and finally to HedgeDoc. We learn what forking a project looks like, including license changes (MIT to AGPL), security vulnerability management across different codebases, naming challenges, and infrastructure migrations. The conversation goes through to journey from HackMD to CodiMD and all the lessons learned along the way. And there are many lessons. The blog post for this episode...
Feb 24, 2025•22 min
In this episode, Open Source Security chats with Aaron Frost, CEO of Hero Devs about the world of maintaining end-of-life open source software. Aaron explains how EOL versions of open source work and how backporting security fixes can help maintaining compliance. In the discussion we cover the "just upgrade" mentality, how backporting works, why it's hard, and why it matters. We also cover some oddities the world of CVE brings to the discussion. The blog post for this episode can be found at htt...
Feb 17, 2025•23 min
François Proulx, a supply chain security researcher at Boost Security, discusses how continuous integration (CI) and build pipeline security represents a critical and overlooked hole in our supply chain security. It seems like most supply chain compromises are actually from CI system breaches rather than direct code compromise, yet we seem to obsess over everything on either side of the CI system. François has a bunch of really good practical suggestions for how we can start to improve our CI se...
Feb 10, 2025•24 min
In this discussion with Tremolo Security CTO Marc Boorshtein, we explore what modern day Single Sign-On (SSO) looks like. Everyone likes to talk about zero trust, but how does that work? We talk about some of the history of authentication that got us here, and some technical details on how you should be implementing authentication into your application. We finish up with some passkey details and realize every authentication discussion really just turns into complaining how hard identity is. The ...
Feb 03, 2025•26 min
Dick Brooks from Business Cyber Guardian discusses the landscape of federal software security requirements, we discuss frameworks like CISA's Software Acquisition Guide, Secure Software Development Framework, and the EU's Cyber Resilience Act. These regulations impact open source projects differently from commercial vendors, Dick helps explain what that means for the vendors as well as open source developers. The accompaning blog can be found at https://opensourcesecurity.io/2025/01-government_s...
Jan 27, 2025•20 min
In this episode, Gary Kramlich, the lead developer of Pidgin discusses the challenges and strategies of maintaining a 26-year-old open source messaging client.Gary tell us all about how a small team manages technical debt, handles library dependencies, and makes decisions about rewrites versus incremental improvements while supporting a broader open source ecosystem. The accompaning blog can be found at https://opensourcesecurity.io/2025/01-open_source_maintenance_with_gary_kramlich/...
Jan 20, 2025•27 min
In this episode of Open Source Security, Josh welcomes Thomas Depierre, a Site Reliability Engineer and open source maintainer, to discuss the intersection of safety and security. Thomas explains why safety is broader than security. While security often views people as the problem, Thomas explains that people are paradoxically the solution. Nothing should work, but it does, mostly due to people keeping things working. The accompaning blog can be found at https://opensourcesecurity.io/2025/01-saf...
Jan 13, 2025•21 min
It’s a new year and time for some changes to the opensourcesecurity.io website. It's time to retire the podcast, but that's to make way for something new and hopefully better. You can read the details in the blog post (the audio version is basically the same thing) https://opensourcesecurity.io/posts/2025-01-the_future_of_open_source_security/
Jan 01, 2025•4 min
Josh and Kurt talk about new NIST password guidance. There's some really good stuff in this new document. Ideas like usability and equity show up (which is amazing). There's more strict guidance against rotating passwords and complex passwords. This new guidance gives us a lot to look forward to. Show Notes Usagi Electric NIST proposes barring some of the most nonsensical password rules NIST SP 800-63(B) STRIDE threat model PASTA threat model...
Dec 30, 2024•36 min•Ep. 461
Josh and Kurt talk about the supply chain of Santa. Does he purchase all those things? Are they counterfeit goods? Are they acquired some other way? And once he has all the stuff, the logistics of getting it to the sleigh is mind boggling. It's all very complex Show Notes Project Gunman
Dec 23, 2024•43 min•Ep. 460
Josh and Kurt talk about a CWE Top 25 list from MITRE. The list itself is fine, but we discuss why the list looks the way it does (it's because of WordPress). We also discuss why Josh hates lists like this (because they never create any actions). We finish up running through the whole list with a few comments about the findings. Show Notes 2024 CWE Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Weaknesses Set of 9 Unusual Odd Sided dice - D3, D5, D7, D9, D11, D13, D15, D17 & D19...
Dec 16, 2024•36 min•Ep. 459
Josh and Kurt talk about the FBI telling everyone to use end to end encrypted messengers. This is a pretty drastic deviation from messages in the past. The reason for this is it appears the US telephone networks are pwnt beyond repair at this point, which is concerning. The only real solution now is to treat the phone network as untrusted and encrypt all the traffic. Show Notes Salt Typhoon U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack LTT Hacked phone Securi...
Dec 09, 2024•34 min•Ep. 458
Josh and Kurt talk about a serious D-Link security vulnerability in a bunch of end of life products. The crux of the discussion focuses on D-Link, but the reality is almost all consumer gear you plug into the internet is terrible. And there's little hope it will get better anytime soon. Show Notes China has utterly pwned 'thousands and thousands' of devices at US telcos D-Link tells users to trash old VPN routers over bug too dangerous to identify D-Link YouTube explainer video...
Dec 02, 2024•41 min•Ep. 457
