I am Inference, a cybersecurity researcher based in United Kingdom.
I write about my research and experience in cybersecurity and also physical security. Most of my postings are security-related, but I occasionally post about other aspects of my life.
I am an open source advocate for the preservation and modifiability of
source code. I believe source code should be considered human knowledge as
much as past knowledge and teachings were; it is how modern humanity
survives and runs.
Source code being modifiable allows it to be adapted
for use by anyone, whether to add features, harden it for increased security
and/or privacy, or provide accessibility for disabled users.
I am also a modular design advocate for the ability to securely and
robustly make changes to hardware and software without the entire system
being affected.
| Type | Software | Description | Source model (License) |
| Operating system |  Gentoo Linux |
Gentoo Linux is a highly modular, source-based Linux-based operating system
which allows vast customisation to tailor the operating system to suit your specific
needs. There are many advantages to such an operating system, with the most notable
being the ability to optimise the software for security, privacy, performance,
power usage; however, there are effectively unlimited other use cases, or a
combination of multiple use cases. I have focused on security hardening and privacy hardening, placing performance below those aspects, although my system is still very performant. Some of the hardening I apply includes stack protection, signed integer overflow wrapping, and GrapheneOS' hardened_malloc memory allocator. You can find my personal Gentoo Linux hardening configuration here. |
Open source (GPLv2) |
| Type | Software | Description | Source model (License) |
| Operating system |  GrapheneOS |
GrapheneOS is a security-hardened, privacy-hardened, secure-by-default
Android-based operating system which implements extensive, systemic security
and privacy hardening to the Android Open Source Project used as its base
codebase. Its hardening includes closing gaps for apps to access sensitive
system information, a secure app spawning feature which avoids sharing address
space layout and other secrets AOSP's default Zygote app spawning model would
share, GrapheneOS' own hardened memory allocator (hardened_malloc) to protect
against common memory corruption vulnerabilties, hardened Bionic standard C library,
and local and remote hardware-backed attestation (Auditor) to ensure the OS has
not been corrupted or tampered with. GrapheneOS only supports devices which receive
full support from their manufacturers, including firmware updates and device-specific
updates, long support lifecycles, secure hardware, and overall high security practices. For an extensive list of features GrapheneOS provides, visit its official website. |
Open source (MIT) |