Daniel Stenberg, the maintainer of Curl, discusses the increase in AI security reports that are wasting the time of maintainers. We discuss Curl’s new policy of banning the bad actors while establishing some pretty sane AI usage guidelines. We chat about how this low-effort, high-impact abuse pattern is a denial-of-service attack on the curl project (and other open source projects too). Episode Links Daniel Curl Curl project founder snaps over deluge of time-sucking AI slop bug reports Curl AI usage guide This episode is also available as a podcast, search for “Open Source Security” on your favorite podcast player. ...

I recently had a chat with Kairo about a project he maintains called Repository Service for TUF (RSTUF). We explain why TUF is tough (har har har), what RSTUF can do, and some of the challenges around securing repositories. Episode Links Kairo RSTUF TUF RSTUF OpenSSF Slack Channel This episode is also available as a podcast, search for “Open Source Security” on your favorite podcast player. The Update Framework (TUF) Fundamentals TUF has been around for a long time now, starting out as research at New York University. At its core, TUF has a goal of letting clients securely fetch artifacts from package repositories. This sounds simple, or at least not super hard, but it’s actually a really hard problem. TUF provides a framework for signing packages that enables much stronger security guarantees than the traditional approach of curl piped to bash. ...

William Woodruff discussed his project, Zizmor, a security linter designed to help developers identify and fix vulnerabilities within their GitHub Actions workflows. This tool addresses inherent security risks in GitHub Actions, such as injection vulnerabilities, permission issues, and mutable tags, by providing static analysis and remediation guidance. Fresh off the heels of the tj-actions/changed-files backdoor, this is a great topic with some things everyone can do right away. Episode Links William Zizmor This episode is also available as a podcast, search for “Open Source Security” on your favorite podcast player. ...

Recently, I had the pleasure of chatting with Paul Asadoorian, Principal Security Researcher at Eclypsium and the host of the legendary Paul’s Security Weekly podcast. Our conversation dove into the often-murky waters of embedded systems and the Internet of Things (IoT), sparked by a specific vulnerability discussion on Paul’s show concerning reference code for the popular ESP32 microcontroller. Episode Links Paul Eclypsium Below the surface podcast RVAsec This episode is also available as a podcast, search for “Open Source Security” on your favorite podcast player. ...

Dimitri Stiliadis, CTO from Endor Labs, discusses the recent tj-actions/changed-files supply chain attack, where a compromised GitHub Action exposed CI/CD secrets. We explore the impressive multi-stage attack vector and the broader often-overlooked vulnerabilities in our CI/CD pipelines, emphasizing the need to treat these build systems with production-level security rigor instead of ignoring them. Episode Links Dimitri’s Linkedin Endor Labs Harden-Runner detection: tj-actions/changed-files action is compromised Unit 42 tj-actions analysis This episode is also available as a podcast, search for “Open Source Security” on your favorite podcast player. ...

I’m not a super expert in all this, but I know enough to be dangerous. If I make any mistakes, please let me know (there are many ways to contact me listed in the “Contact” menu). I will clearly mark any changes to the post due to errors, feel free to check back and see what I got wrong. Since the CVE people won’t tell us anything useful, let’s use Cunningham’s Law to our advantage. ...

I chat with Alan Pope about the open source security tools Syft, Grype, and Grant. These tools help create Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs) and scan for vulnerabilities. Learn why generating and storing SBOMs is crucial for understanding your software supply chain and quickly responding to new threats like Log4Shell. Episode Links Alan Syft Grype Grant Linux Matters podcast https://anchore.com/opensource/ This episode is also available as a podcast, search for “Open Source Security” on your favorite podcast player. ...

If you are a security nerd, and even if you’re not, you probably heard about the epic CVE mess that happened. It’s a very long story and was covered in many places, but the TL;DR was the funding for CVE fell through, panic ensued, then CISA found some temporary funds to keep the lights, so everything is fine and we can all go back to normal. Well, some of us won’t go back to normal because the CISA funding is good for 11 months. Will there be more funding in 11 months? Will an asteroid destroy the Earth in 2032? Will society still exists at Christmas? Nobody really knows. Well that asteroid one, we sort of know that. We’ll be fine. Yay science! ...

Aaron Frost explores the overly complex world of vulnerability identifiers for end of life software. We discuss how incomplete CVE reporting creates blind spots for users while arming attackers with knowledge. The conversation uncovers the ethical tensions between resource constraints and security transparency, highlighting why the “vulnerable until proven otherwise” approach is the best path forward for end of life software. Episode Links This episode is also available as a podcast, search for “Open Source Security” on your favorite podcast player. ...