Containers aren’t that new fancy thing anymore, but they were a big deal. And they still are. They are a concrete solution to the following problem: - Hey, your software doesn’t work… - Sorry, it works on my computer! Can’t help you. Whether we like them or not, containers are here to stay. Their expressiveness and semantics allow for an abstraction of the OS dependencies that a software has, the latter being often dynamically linked against certain libraries....
F-Droid is a popular alternative app repository for Android, especially known for its main repository dedicated to free and open-source software. F-Droid is often recommended among security and privacy enthusiasts, but how does it stack up against Play Store in practice? This write-up will attempt to emphasize major security issues with F-Droid that you should consider. Before we start, a few things to keep in mind: The main goal of this write-up was to inform users so they can make responsible choices, not to trash someone else’s work....
While source code is critical for user autonomy, it isn’t required to evaluate software security or understand run-time behavior. One of the biggest parts of the Free and Open Source Software definitions is the freedom to study a program and modify it; in other words, access to editable source code. I agree that such access is essential; however, far too many people support source availability for the wrong reasons. One such reason is that source code is necessary to have any degree of transparency into how a piece of software operates, and is therefore necessary to determine if it is at all secure or trustworthy....
Passwordless authentication with OpenSSH keys has been the de facto security standard for years. SSH keys are more robust since they’re cryptographically sane by default, and are therefore resilient to most bruteforce atacks. They’re also easier to manage while enabling a form of decentralized authentication (it’s easy and painless to revoke them). So, what’s the next step? And more exactly, why would one need something even better? Why? The main problem with SSH keys is that they’re not magic: they consist of a key pair, of which the private key is stored on your disk....