Episode 456 - What if XZ happened to a company? The openness of open source

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. Show Notes 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. Show Notes 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. Show Notes 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. Show Notes 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. Show Notes 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

Josh and Kurt talk about three government activities happening around security. CISA has a request for comment, and an international strategic plan around cybersecurity. These are both good ideas, and hopefully will help drive change. But we also discuss an EU proposal that brings liability rules to software which sounds like a great way to force change to happen. Show Notes Request for Comment on Product Security Bad Practices Guidance FY2025-2026 CISA International Strategic Plan EU brings product liability rules in line with digital age and circular economy CSA Cloud Controls Matrix

Josh and Kurt talk about the Meshtastic open source project. It's a really slick mesh radio system that runs on very cheap radio equipment. This episode isn't very security related (there are a few things), but it is very open source. Show Notes Meshtastic Heltec LoRa 32(V3) Radio 465 Rutgers University Confirmed: Meshtastic and LoRa are dangerous Meshtastic Routing Issues & Deployment Scenarios TC2-BBS-mesh The Comms Channel Josh's BBS Heltec T114 bug

Josh and Kurt talk to Seth Larson from the Python Software Foundation about security the Python ecosystem. Seth is an employee of the PSF and is doing some amazing work. Seth is showing what can be accomplished when we pay open source developers to do some of the tasks a volunteer might consider boring, but is super important work. Show Notes Seth Larson XKCD PGP Signature Seth's Blog Python and Sigstore Deprecating PGP - PEP 761 Python SBOMs  

Josh and Kurt talk about the current Wordpress / WP Engine mess. In what is certainly a supply chain attack, the Advanced Custom Fields forking. This whole saga is weird and filled with chaos and stupidity. We have no idea how it will end, but we do know that the blog platform you use shouldn't be this exciting. The bad sort of exciting. Show Notes WordPress.org’s latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin Wordpress / WP Engine timeline Knorr German Recipes

Josh and Kurt talk about the recent CUPS issue. The vulnerability itself wasn't all that exciting, but the whole disclosure process was wild. There's a lot to talk about, many things didn't quite go as planned and it all leaked early. Let's talk about why and what it all means. Show Notes CUPS vulnerability Akamai report Wil Wheaton: being a nerd is not about what you love; it’s about how you love it