Open Source Security

Josh and Kurt have a chat with Larry Cashdollar. The three of us go way back. Larry has done some amazing things and he tells us all about it!

Show Notes

• Akamai
• Larry's website
• Larry's First CVE

Josh and Kurt talk about change. Specifically we discuss how the past was a terrible place. Never believe anyone who tells you it was better. Part of a career now is learning how to learn. The things you learn today won't be useful skills in a few years. The future is is always better than the past. Even in 2020.

Show Notes

• I no longer build software
• Temple OS
• Top Gear electric car
• 1959 Bel Air crash test

Josh and Kurt talk to Travis Murdock about how to tell your story. Travis explains how to talk to the press and how to tell our story in a way that helps get our message across and lets the reporter do their job better.

Show Notes

• Ruder Finn
• CVE-2009-3555
• Heartbleed

Josh and Kurt talk about how we talk about what we do in the context of life on Venus. We didn't really discover life on Venus, we discovered a gas that could be created by life on Venus. The world didn't hear that though. We have a similar communication problem in security. How often are your words misunderstood?

Show Notes

• Phosphine on Venus
• GPS and relativity

Josh and Kurt talk about attacking open source. How serious is the threat of developers being targeted or a git repo being watched for secret security fixes? The reality of it all is there are many layers in a security journey, the most important things you can do are also the least exciting.

Show Notes

• Targeting developers
• XKCD Infrastructure comic
• Hiding security flaws in git
• Mossad vs Not-Mossad (PDF warning)

Josh and Kurt talk about how your actions can tell the world if you actually take security seriously. We frame the discussion in the context of Slack paying a very low bug bounty and discover some ways we can look at Slack and decide if they do indeed take our security very seriously.

Show Notes

• Reddit carbon monoxide Part 1 Part 2
• GCP Grey minus infinity
• Josh's blog post

Josh and Kurt talk about Chromium sending traffic to root DNS servers. Telemetry watching what we do. Cryptocurrency scams and a few other random topics. Also pandas.

Show Notes

• Blanket rack
• Chromium DNS traffic
• Ubuntu MOTD
• Microsoft telemetry
• YAM coin implodes
• Panda Cubs

Josh and Kurt talk about the Microsoft 2 year old signature bug and Github no longer processing MFA resets for free users. Signing things is hard, but trying to manage users and infrastructure at scale is even harder.

Show Notes

• Microsoft signed jar bug
• GitLab Support is no longer processing MFA resets for free users
• Someone Is Hijacking Tor Exit Nodes to Conduct MITM Attacks

Josh and Kurt talk about the current state of information security. There are aspects that resemble a cult more than we would like. It's not all bad though, there are some things we can do to help move things forward. This episode shouldn't be taken too seriously.

Show Notes

• "cult of information security"
• How to start a cult

Josh and Kurt talk about Secure Boot. The conversation uses the recent "Boot Hole" vulnerability to frame a conversation about what Secure Boot is and isn't. Why the Boot Hole flaw doesn't really matter, and why Secure Boot was very scary for Linux users back when it came out.

Show Notes

• Boot Hole