ASW Episode 204
Tainted Love
Once again we dip into New Wave / Post-Punk history for appsec inspiration.
This time with Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love”, which they released in July 1981, with the line
“Once I ran to you
Now I run from you”
Which could be a theme for
Thread safety
Input validation
CISO roles
Or really anything summed up by the lyric
“For I toss and turn, I can’t sleep at night”
We covered an article in the news segment about the US military’s interest in software supply chain, code constributors, and brittle projects. Brittle projects are those critical to others and prone to the bus factor, which is a common phrase that roughly means in this case, “Does this whole project fall apart if just one person gets hit by a bus?”
As an aside, I’d love to do some archaeological (and anthropological) digging to find that phrase’s origin.
I’m always suspicious of metaphors in infosec. They tend to diverge from or obfuscate underlying principles of an issue, although they can provide an illuminating or humorous reference. The “bus factor” is pretty tame, commonly understood, and fits well with the article.
But why make public transportation the menace here? Why can’t we be more creative with something like, “Brain eaten by a mind flayer?”