Open Source Security

Josh and Kurt talk about the question "what is open source?" Why do we think it's broken today, and what sort of ideas about what should come next.

Show Notes

• OSI
• Bruce Perens Post Open Source
• Josh's community blog post
• Corey Doctorow Uber Twitter thread

Josh and Kurt talk about the Google Project Zero report titled "A Year in Review of 0-days Exploited In-The-Wild in 2020". It's a cool report but we don't agree on the conclusion. The answer isn't to security harder, it's to stop using C.

Show Notes

• Google Project Zero Year of 0-days
• Kurt's CUPS tweet

Josh and Kurt talk about the recent sudo and libgcrypt security vulnerabilities. What's the deal with these buffer overflows and TOCTU bugs?

Show Notes

• Sudo buffer overflow
• Sudo SELinux bug
• libgcrypt buffer overflow

Josh and Kurt talk about 8 bit computing. What sort of security lessons can we learn from the 8 bit world? More than you think.

Show Notes

• Legend of Zelda Random Number Generation
• Green rocket flame
• SR71 leaked fuel
• How do Namibian Himbas see colour?
• Suptuple meter music

Josh and Kurt talk about what we can stop doing. We take a position of asking "does it spark joy" for tools and infrastructure. Everyone is doing something they should stop.

Show Notes

• Does it spark joy?

Josh and Kurt talk about the new right to repair rules in the EU. There's a strange line between loving the idea of right to repair, but also being horrified as security people at the idea of a device being on the Internet for 30 years.

Show Notes

• EU right to repair
• repair.eu

Josh and Kurt talk about this idea that seems to exist in security of "attackers only need to be right once" which is silly. The reality is attackers have to get everything right, defenders really only need to get it right once. But "defenders only need to be right once" isn't going to sell any products.

Show Notes

• Richard Feynman and manhole covers
• Richard Feynman on Why He Can't Tell You How Magnets Work
• Israeli airport security
• FAA stolen sweater
• XKCD Is it worth the time
• CGP Grey The trouble with transporters

Josh and Kurt talk about a report on open source security from the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. The title pretty much sums it up.

Show Notes

• Security Considerations for Open Source
• Build an 8 bit computer from scratch

Josh and Kurt talk about communication. It's really hard to talk about a lot of what we do. How do we know if a device is secure? How do we know our knowledge is correct?

Show Notes

• 90 percent of U.S. bills carry traces of cocaine
• Is the moon a star or planet?
• A mole of moles
• New homeowner 'freaked out' when stranger took control of her security system
• Coffee maker ransomware
• NIST Phish Scale
• The metric system
• Operation Paperclip

Josh and Kurt talk about why we do the things we do. Sometimes we have to question everything.

• SLAM missile