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-safety_vs_security_with_thomas_depierre/

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/

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.

• Usagi Electric
• NIST proposes barring some of the most nonsensical password rules
• NIST SP 800-63(B)
• STRIDE threat model
• PASTA threat model

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

• Project Gunman

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.

• 2024 CWE Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Weaknesses
• Set of 9 Unusual Odd Sided dice - D3, D5, D7, D9, D11, D13, D15, D17 & D19

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.

• Salt Typhoon
• U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack
• LTT Hacked phone
• Security Cryptography Whatever Telegram
• Secure Messaging Apps Comparison

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.

• 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

Josh and Kurt embark on a thought experiment to discuss how a commercial entity would handle something like the xz incident. It was very specific and difficult to understand. It's easy to claim just because source code being available doesn't matter. But the reality is when source code is needed, it can make a huge difference for everyone working together, just like we saw with xz.

• Lindt admits chocolate may not be ‘expertly crafted’ in class-action lawsuit battle
• Mitchell & Webb - Needlessly ambiguous terms

Josh and Kurt talk about the way Wordpress vets their plugins. While Wordpress has been in the news lately, they do some clever things to get plugins approved. There's a static analyzer that runs against new submissions. We discuss using static analysis, securing open source, contributing and more.

• Linus Torvalds Lands A 2.6% Performance Improvement With Minor Linux Kernel Patch
• Kurt's Plugin

Josh and Kurt talk to Brian Fox from Sonatype and Donald Fischer from Tidelift about their recent reports as well as open source. There are really interesting connections between the two reports. The overall theme seems to be open source is huge, everywhere, and needs help. But all is no lost! There's some great ideas on what the future needs to look like.

• Donald Fischer
• Brian Fox
• Tidelift
• Sonatype
• The 2024 Tidelift state of the open source maintainer report
• Sonatype State of the Software Supply Chain
• Anchore 2024 Software Supply Chain Security Report
• OpenSSF TAC issue 101