Episode 286 - Kayra Otaner - Authenticating Open Source Developers
We are happy to have Kayra Otaner as a special guest on the Absolute AppSec podcast. Kayra (kayraotaner on LinkedIn and X/twitter), the current Director of DevSecOps at Roche, brings over 15 years of cybersecurity leadership experience from New York and Wall Street. He's led DevSecOps and DevOps teams across a variety of organizations, including ADP, Voice, and adMarketplace, and has served as a trusted CTO advisor for Trendyol. His background also includes cybersecurity consulting for the Turkish Navy, where he helped develop a defense solution that was later deployed in NATO's Locked Shields cyber defense war games in Tallinn. Kayra is a frequent speaker at international DevSecOps conferences and serves on the Business and Computer Science Advisory Board at Middlesex County College in New Jersey. During this episode of the podcast Kayra discusses his journey into information security and spurs on his recent thoughts on authenticating open source developers through models similar to TSA PreCheck.
News this week has been dominated by dependency issues and attribution towards unwanted nation states and actors. Specifically, easyjson is developed by a Russian firm that is under sanctions. The podcast duo discuss the implications and how to protect apps from sub-dependency threats. This leads to a deep dive into breaches and whether a breach has an effect on the industry, company, or individual. Current regulations and certifications can be lost, but does not always have the effect we would expect.
Back after a hiatus for both BSidesSF and RSA, Seth and Ken recap their experience at both conferences. TL;DR - BSidesSF is great for technical security content and community, RSA focuses on sales for mostly large organizations and budgets. Two sides of the security industry coin and depends on preferences for which makes the most sense for career or business growth. This is followed by a short discussion on vibe coding educational security tools. Episode wraps with an article on MFA phishing and how WebAuthN helps prevent accidental exposure.
Ok, so vulnerable MCP tools are a thing now? Ken demonstrates installing and running an intentionally vulnerable MCP server with a bunch of example issues. Following is a discussion of the recent article and research around hallucinations of 3rd party dependencies/libraries in AI-Generated Python and JavaScript. New attack targets all dependent on how creative the LLM is allowed to be. A short aside on why we talk about AI and LLMs so much.
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Episode 282 - Model Context Protocol, A2A, NHI Authentication
It is time to talk about Model Context Protocol (MCP), Google's Agent 2 Agent specification, and get back to the crocs and socks of authentication for Non-Human Identities (NHIs). MCP servers have exploded over the last few weeks and provide a standard mechanism for LLMs to interact with pretty much _anything_. Seth and Ken talk about the risks, exposures, and where things could go from here.
South Africa