Josh and Kurt talk about the faker and colors NPM events. There is a lot of discussion around open source being broken or somehow failing because of these events. The real answer is open source is an experience. How we interact with our dependencies determines what the experience looks like. Show Notes Developer corrupts colors and faker Will Wright Pee Internet Anonymity...
Josh and Kurt talk about Norton creating an Ethereum mining pool. This is almost certainly a bad idea, we explain why. We then discuss the reality of NFTs and the case of stolen apes. NFTs can be very confusing. The whole world of cryptocurrency is very confusing for normal people. None of this is new, there have always been con artists, there will always be con artists. Show Notes Norton Crypto FAQ Stolen Ape Smart contract to buy the constitution YEAR token...
Josh and Kurt talk about the question will we ever fix all the vulnerabilities? The question came from Reddit and is very reasonable, but it turns out this is REALLY hard to discuss. The answer is of course "no", but why it is no is very complicated. Far more complicated than either of us thought it would be. Show Notes Will cyber security vulnerabilities ever "stop existing" ?...
Josh and Kurt start the show with the reading of a security themed Christmas poem. We then discuss some of the new happenings around Log4j. The basic theme is that even if we were over-investing in Log4j, it probably wouldn't have caught this. There are still a lot of things to unpack with this event, I'm sure we'll be talking about it well into the future. Log before Christmas poem 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the stack Not a scanner was scanning, not even a rack, The SBOM...
Josh and Kurt talk about the same topic everyone is talking about, Log4j. This episode was recorded on the Wednesday after the first Log4j issue. We point out all the gaps and difficulties for the defenders. The situation has gotten worse since then. Good luck to everyone dealign with this thing Show Notes Log4j GSD entry Minecraft server discussion Log4j GitHub issue 608...
Josh and Kurt talk about the epic failure that was episode 300. But this ties nicely into the topic of the day which is new ways to do things. The example is a new way to hold a controller when playing Tetris. There are always new tools and new ideas in security. Sometimes we have to abandon the old way because the new way to too good to ignore. Show Notes Lawfare Apple NSO podcast New way to play Tetris...
the lawsuit is based on CFAA, not on copyright. We apologize for this enormous oversight. Josh and Kurt talk about Apple suing NSO using a copyright claim as their vehicle. Copyright is often used as a reason to bring lawsuits, even when it doesn't always make sense. Copyright has been used by open source to expand rights, and many companies to restrict rights. It's a very odd law sometimes. At the end of the day it seems the only real path forward for a problem like NSO is up to governments to ...
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 mouse Git 2.34 4H Public Speaking...
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 Disclosures, Digital Identity Attestation, Securing Critical Projects. Show Notes David A Wheeler Episo...
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 49 Kurt's Interview with Elias Levi aka Aleph One...
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 example...
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 l0phtcrack...
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 Scorecard 3.0.0 Scoring criteria Python Skeleton...
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 GossiTheDog Tweet Hacker Fantastic exploit...
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 Exchange flaw THIS IS HOW THEY TELL ME THE WORLD ENDS Linux Foundation Vulnerability Disclosure Timezone p...
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 Artists react to the Mandalorian Glasshouse Universal Paperclips...
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 emulator in Minecraft Rate of technology adoption...
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 Twitter thread Are we the Baddies?...
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 Restore the Fourth Minnesota Restore the Fourth Minnesota on Twitter Writ of assistance Carpenter vs U...
