FOSSA and the EU’s Cybersecurity legislation

Now that my mandate in the European Parliament has come to an end, there is one important project that will still go on until the fall of this year: The European Free and Open Source Software Audit project – FOSSA for short – that was initialised in 2014, is coming to an end. After running […]

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In January, the EU starts running Bug Bounties on Free and Open Source Software

Update (16 January 2019): More bug bounties become live, have a look at the full list below!
Update (10 January 2019): As some of you have already pointed out, the bounties haven’t been made public yet. I have been informed by the European Commission that the “start dates” they sent designate the start of […]

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EU offers cash bounties to improve the security of VLC media player

Just in time for the end of the year, the European Commission announced the start of a first bug bounty within the Free and Open Source Software Audit (FOSSA) project. You can now submit bugs you find in VLC Media Player on HackerOne, where bounties ranging from $100 for low-severity bugs and up to $2,000 […]

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EU budget improves software security with extension of audit programme

Today the European Parliament approved the EU Budget for 2017. The budget sets aside 1.9 million Euro in order to improve the EU’s IT infrastructure by extending the free software security audit programme (FOSSA) that MEPs Max Andersson and Julia Reda (Greens/EFA) initiated two years ago, and by including a bug bounty approach in the […]

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European Parliament votes to extend Free Software security audits

Remember how I raised €1 million to demonstrate security and freedom aren’t opposites? Well here’s what happened next and how we are going to move forward with this.

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EU aims to increase the security of password manager and web server software: KeePass and Apache chosen for open source audits

For the FOSSA pilot project to improve the security of open source software that my colleague Max and I proposed, the European Commission sought your input on which tools to audit.

The results are now in: The two overwhelming public favorites were KeePass (23%) and the Apache HTTP Server (19%). The EU has decided to […]

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Help the EU make free software more reliable and secure

Remember how we managed to raise €1 million to demonstrate security and freedom aren’t opposites? For the next two weeks now (until July 8, 2016), you can decide which project you think should be the first to receive a code review as part of the FOSSA pilot project.

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I raised €1 million to demonstrate security and freedom aren’t opposites

When a politican talks about security, they’re usually coming for your civil rights.

When a politican talks about security technology, they’re usually coming for your civil rights. Suspicionless mass surveillance, secret internet blocklists, arduous security theatre at airports: Safety and freedom are presented as trade-offs — and many politicians are all too willing to sacrifice more and […]

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