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 […]
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 […]
more ›State of the Cyber: 10 proposals for improving IT security in the EU
Without much fanfare, the European Commission has published a new cybersecurity strategy. Although Commission President Juncker briefly touched on the issue in his State of the Union Speech, the document was published in the EU’s document database without a news release or press conference. It’s unclear at this point whether the document was published prematurely and an […]
more ›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 […]
more ›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.
more ›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 […]
more ›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.
more ›Dear European governments: don’t endanger free and open WiFi networks!
tl;dr: Projects building open communications networks using custom router software are playing an important role in providing refugees with Internet access. Last year, largely unbeknownst to the public, a new EU directive was passed on the regulation of radio equipment. This directive may limit the software that can be run on WiFi routers to those […]
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