Author Archives: Josh Bressers

Episode 322 – Adam Shostack on the security of Star Wars

Josh and Kurt talk to Adam Shostack about his new book “Threats: What Every Engineer Should Learn From Star Wars”. We discuss some of the lessons and threats in the Star Wars universe, it’s an old code I hear. We also discuss if Star Wars is a better than Star Trek for teaching security (it probably is). It’sContinue reading “Episode 322 – Adam Shostack on the security of Star Wars”

Episode 321 – Relativistic Security: Project Zero on 0day

Josh and Kurt talk about the Google Project Zero blog post about 0day vulnerabilities in 2021. There were a lot more than ever before, but why? Part of the challenge is the whole industry is expanding while a lot of our security technologies are not. When the universe around you is expanding but you’re stayingContinue reading “Episode 321 – Relativistic Security: Project Zero on 0day”

Episode 320 – Security Twitter is not the real world

Josh and Kurt talk about a survey about a TuxCare patch management and vulnerability detection. Sometimes our security bubble makes us forget what it’s like in the real world for the people who keep our infrastructure running. Patching isn’t always immediate, automation doesn’t fix everything, and accepting risk is very important. Show Notes State of Enterprise Vulnerability DetectionContinue reading “Episode 320 – Security Twitter is not the real world”

Episode 319 – Patch Tuesday with a capital T

Josh and Kurt talk about a lot of security vulnerabilities in this month’s Patch Tuesday. There’s also a new Git vulnerability. This sparks the age old question of how fast to patch? The answer isn’t binary, the right answer is whatever works best for you, not what someone tells you is best. Show Notes Patch Tuesday Git securityContinue reading “Episode 319 – Patch Tuesday with a capital T”

Episode 318 – Social engineering and why zlib got a 2018 CVE ID

Josh and Kurt talk about hackers using emergency data requests to gain access to sensitive data. The argument that somehow backdoors can be protected falls under this problem. We don’t yet have the technical or policy protections in place to actually protect this data. We also explain why this zlib issue got a 2018 CVE ID in 2022.Continue reading “Episode 318 – Social engineering and why zlib got a 2018 CVE ID”

Episode 317 – The lack of compromise in security

Josh and Kurt talk about the binary nature of security. Many of our ideas are yes or no, there’s not much in the middle. The conversation ends up derailed due to a Twitter thread about pinning dependencies. This gives you an idea how contentious of a topic pinning is. The final takeaway is not toContinue reading “Episode 317 – The lack of compromise in security”

Episode 316 – You have to use open source

Josh and Kurt talk about the latest NPM backdoored package. It feels like this keeps happening. We talk about why this is and why it’s probably OK. Kurt fixes Linus’ Law, in open source the superpower isn’t bugs are shallow (they’re not), the superpower is security bugs in open source can’t be ignored. Show NotesContinue reading “Episode 316 – You have to use open source”