Open Source Security

Josh and Kurt talk about what the actual purpose of signing artifacts is. This is one of those spaces where the chain of custody for signing content is a lot more complicated than it sometimes seems to be. Is delivering software over https just as good as using a detached signature? How did we end up here, what do we think the future looks like? This episode will have something for everyone to complain about!

• Twitter thread
• Kurt's security advisory page
• Bug 998

Josh and Kurt talk about the security of employees leaving jobs. Be it a voluntary departure or in the context of the current layoffs we see, what are the security implications of having to remove access for one or more people departing their job?

• Tesla Layoffs
• Coinbase layoffs

Josh and Kurt talk about a funny GitHub reply that notified 400,000 people. It's fun to laugh at this, but it's an easy open to discussing alert fatigue and why it's important to be very mindful of our communications.

• GitHub 400K notifications Hacker News thread
• Reddit user TV Bluetooth

Josh and Kurt talk about containers. There are a lot of opinions around what type of containers is best. Back when it all started there were only huge distro sized containers. Now we have a world with many different container types and sizes. Is one better?

• Programming in the Apocalypse
• Bob Diachenko
• Paranoids Podcast

Josh and Kurt talk about a recent OpenSSF issue that asks the question how many open source maintainers should a project have that's "healthy"? Josh did some research that shows the overwhelming majority of packages have one maintainer. What does that mean?

• OpenSSF TAC Issue 101

Josh and Kurt talk about the whole work from home debate. It seems like there are a lot of very silly excuses why working from home is bad. We've both been working from home for a long time and have a chat about the topic. There's not much security in this one, but it is a fun discussion.

• Boris Johnson blames cheese
• Apple and WFH

Josh and Kurt talk about a fake 7-Zip security report. It's pretty clear that everyone is running open source all the time. We end on some thoughts around what SBOM is good for, and who should be responsible for them.

• Probably fake 7-Zip

Josh and Kurt talk to Adam Shostack about his new book "Threats: What Every Engineer Should Learn From Star Wars". We discuss some of the lessons and threats in the Star Wars universe, it's an old code I hear. We also discuss if Star Wars is a better than Star Trek for teaching security (it probably is). It's a fun conversation and sounds like an amazing book.

• Adam Shostack
• Adam's Website
• The book

Josh and Kurt talk about the Google Project Zero blog post about 0day vulnerabilities in 2021. There were a lot more than ever before, but why? Part of the challenge is the whole industry is expanding while a lot of our security technologies are not. When the universe around you is expanding but you're staying the same size, you are actually shrinking.

• Google Project Zero blog post
• Apple 0days
• Joint cyber advisory

Josh and Kurt talk about a survey about a TuxCare patch management and vulnerability detection. Sometimes our security bubble makes us forget what it's like in the real world for the people who keep our infrastructure running. Patching isn't always immediate, automation doesn't fix everything, and accepting risk is very important.

• State of Enterprise Vulnerability Detection and Patch Management
• CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog
• Google 0days