Open Source Security Podcast

Josh and Kurt talk about user expectations around Facebook's AI. Normal people are starting to see the capabilities and potential risk with all these services. We also cover the topic of China owning a number of VPN services.

Josh and Kurt talk about the disclosure of security vulnerabilities. It's still not a settled topic, we frame the conversation around a recent disclosure from Tavis Ormandy of Google Project Zero.

Josh and Kurt talk to David Brumley. The CEO of ForAllSecure and professor at CMU. We discuss when David's team won the Cyber Grand Challenge, what the future of automated security looks like, and what ForAllSecure is doing. It's a fascinating window into the future of the industry.

Josh and Kurt talk about the future Chrome and ad blockers. There is a lot of nuance to unpack around this one. There are two versions of the Internet today. One with an ad blocker and one without. The Internet without an ad blocker is a dystopian nightmare. The actionable advice at the end of this one is to use Firefox.

Josh and Kurt have a chat with Michael Coates from Altitude Networks. We cover what Altitude is up to as well as general trends we're seeing around data security in the cloud. Michael lays out his vision for "data first security".

Josh and Kurt talk about public disclosure. We start out with a story about Canva, then discuss what do you do if you have a security incident? Who do you tell, what do you tell them. How do you tell your story? It's a really hard problem even if it's something you've done many times in the past.

Josh and Kurt talk about a new type of lockbox scams. We also discuss Slack being a target for nation state attacks. Do you consider your operations part of your supply chain?It's totally part of your supply chain.

Josh and Kurt talk about Microsoft. They're probably not the bad guys anymore, which is pretty wild. They're adding a Linux kernel to Window. Can we declare open source the unquestionable winner now?

Josh and Kurt talk about fire. We discuss the history of fire prevention and how it mirrors many of things we see in security. There are lessons there for us, we just hope it doesn't take 2000 years like it did for proper fire prevention to catch on.

Josh and Kurt talk about the security of money. Not how to keep it secure, but the security issues around using cash, credit, and bitcoin. We also talk about Banksy's clever method for proving something is original.

Josh and Kurt talk about the phone book (yeah, the big paper book people used to use). Kurt got one in the mail. While it's certainly a relic from another time, there were security tips in it among other wild things.

Josh and Kurt talk about what one could do if you find a USB drive. The context is based on the story where the Secret Service was rumored to have plugged a malicious USB drive into a computer. The purpose of discussion is to explore how to handle a situation like this in the real world. We end the episode with a fantastic comparison of swim safety and security.

Josh and Kurt talk about the difficulty of security. We look at the difficulty of the EU not observing daylight savings time, which is probably magnitudes easier than getting security right. We also hit on a discussion on Reddit about U2F that shows the difficulty. Security today is too hard, even for the experts.

Episode 140 - Good enough security is a pretty high bar

Episode 139 - Secure voting, firefox send, and toxic comments on the internet