InferenciumI am Jake Winters, also known by my pseudonym "Inference", a cybersecurity researcher based in
United Kingdom.
I am the founder, lead developer, and administrator, of Inferencium.
All opinions are my own, and are not necessarily shared with projects or people I am
affiliated with.
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.
If you want to contact me for any reason, you can use my
contact methods.
I run the public Systems Hardening XMPP channel dedicated to systems security and privacy
hardening at sys-hardening@muc.xmpp.inferencium.net, and its respective
off-topic channel at sys-hardening-ot@muc.xmpp.inferencium.net.
Inferencium cares about upstreaming and sharing code, strongly preferring licenses which have high license compatibility in order to permit sharing code with as many other projects as possible; for this reason, permissive licenses are our preferred choice, while avoiding copyleft licenses and other licenses which place restrictions on how our code may be used, and prevent us from including important proprietary code, such as firmware, which can patch security vulnerabilities, privacy issues, and stability issues. All Inferencium code is and will be permissively licensed unless specific circumstances make it impractical or infeasible to do so. Our goal is to share code which has the least amount of restrictions as possible, to allow wider propagation of our code and allow more use cases and possibilities, as well as ensuring proprietary code, whenever required, is permitted to be included.
SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause-Clear
Type: Permissive
BSD 3-Clause Clear License is a highly permissive license which allows content licensed
under it to be used in any way, whether in source or binary form, and allows sublicensing
under a different license, with the only restrictions being the original copyright notice
must be kept in order to attribute the original creator of the licensed content, and the
name of the project and/or its contributors may not be used to endorse or promote products
derived from the original project.
BSD 3-Clause Clear License is a derivative of BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License, which adds an explicit statement clarifying
that patent rights are not granted by the license alone, and must be granted separately by
the copyright and/or patent holder(s). We prefer this license over the BSD 3-Clause "New" or
"Revised" License due to this explicit statement which removes any possibility of debate and
misunderstanding in regards to patents applied to code using the BSD 3-Clause "New" or
"Revised" License.
SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
Type: Permissive
MIT License is a highly permissive license which allows content licensed under it to be
used in any way, whether in source or binary form, and allows sublicensing under a different
license, with the only restriction being the original copyright notice must be kept in order
to attribute the original creator of the licensed content.
Due to this license allowing the original project's name and/or contributors to be used to
endorse or promote products derived from the original project, unless an explicit statement
is made alongside this license, increasing complexity and deviating from the standard
license text, we prefer BSD 3-Clause Clear License; however, MIT License is a great choice when derivatives
using the name of the original project and/or its contributors is a non-issue.
SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only
Type: Copyleft
GNU General Public License v2.0 is a strong copyleft license which restricts use of
content licensed under it by requiring all source code of the content to be publicly
available, making binary-only form and inclusion of proprietary code impossible, requiring
all derivatives to be licensed under the same license (allowing sublicensing under only
newer GPL licenses if GPL-2.0-or-later is specified in the
SPDX-License-Identifier), and requiring the original copyright notice to be kept in order to
attribute the original creator of the licensed content.
Due to the restrictive and invasive nature of this license, it is avoided unless such
restrictions would be beneficial to Inferencium code; whenever this is the case, the GNU
General Public License v2.0 will be used, rather than the more restrictive
GNU General Public License v3.0, and relicensing derivatives under the GNU General
Public License v3.0 will be disallowed.
SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
Type: Permissive
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International is a highly permissive license which allows content licensed under it to be used in any way, in any medium, with the only restriction being the original copyright notice must be kept in order to attribute the original creator of the licensed content.
SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-only
Type: Copyleft
GNU General Public License v3.0 is a strong copyleft license which restricts usage of
content licensed under it by requiring all source code of the content to be publicly
available, making binary-only form and inclusion of proprietary code impossible, requiring
all derivatives to be licensed under the same license (allowing sublicensing under only
newer GPL licenses if GPL-3.0-or-later is specified in the
SPDX-License-Identifier), requiring the content to be made available only on systems which
allow modifying the content, such as systems with unlocked/unlockable bootloaders and/or
which are unsigned by the OEM, and requiring the original copyright notice to be kept in
order to attribute the original creator of the licensed content.
Due to the restrictive and invasive nature of this license, and the fact it requires code to
be included only on specific systems, further restricting usage of Inferencium code, it is
avoided completely.
SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-NC-4.0
Type: Permissive non-commercial
Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International is a permissive license which allows content licensed under it to be used in any way, in any medium, with the restrictions being commercial usage is prohibited, and the original copyright notice must be kept in order to attribute the original creator of the licensed content. Due to the non-commercial restriction of this license preventing Inferencium code from being used for any purpose, specifically preventing commercial usage we do not want to prevent, it is avoided completely.
| Type | Hardware | Description | Source model (License - SPDX) |
| Smartphone |  Google Pixel |
Google Pixel devices are the best Android devices available on the market for
security and privacy. They allow locking the bootloader with a custom Android Verified Boot (AVB) key in order to preserve security and privacy features when installing a custom operating system, such as verified boot which verifies that the OS has not been corrupted or tampered with, and rollback protection which prevents an adversary from rolling back the OS or firmware version to a previous version with known security vulnerabilities. They also include a hardware security module (Titan M2, improving on the previous generation Titan M) which is extremely resistant to both remote and physical attacks due to being completely isolated from the rest of the system, including the operating system. Titan M2 ensures that the device cannot be remotely compromised by requiring the side buttons of the device to be physically pressed for some sensitive operations. Titan M2 also takes the role of Android StrongBox Keymaster, a hardware-backed Keystore containing sensitive user keys which are unavailable to the OS or apps running on it without authorisation from Titan M2 itself. Insider attack resistance ensures that Titan M2 firmware can be flashed only if the user PIN/password is already known, making it impossible to backdoor the device without already knowing these secrets. Google Pixel device kernels are compiled with forward-edge control-flow integrity and backward-edge control-flow integrity to prevent code reuse attacks against the kernel. MAC address randomisation is implemented well, along with minimal probe requests and randomised initial sequence numbers. Google releases guaranteed monthly security updates, ensuring Google Pixel devices are up-to-date and quickly protected against security vulnerabilities. Pixel 6-series and 7-series devices are a large improvement over the already very secure and private previous generation Pixel devices. They replace ARM-based Titan M with RISC-V-based Titan M2, reducing trust by removing ARM from the equation. Titan M2 is more resiliant to attacks than Titan M, and is AVA_VAN.5 certified, the highest level of vulnerability assessment. Google's in-house Tensor SoC includes Tensor Security Core, further improving device security. Pixel 6-series and 7-series devices are supported for a minimum of 5 years from launch, an increase from previous generations' support lifecycles of 3 years. |
| Type | Software | Description | Source model (License - SPDX) |
| 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, or 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 configurations in my personal configuration respository. |
Open source (GPL-2.0-only) |
| Web browser |  Chromium |
Chromium is a highly secure web browser which is often ahead of other web browsers in security aspects. It has a dedicated security team and a very impressive security brag sheet. Chromium's security features include a strong multi-layer sandbox, strong site isolation, Binding Integrity memory hardening, and control-flow integrity (CFI). | Open source (BSD-3-Clause) |
| Type | Software | Description | Source model (License - SPDX) |
| 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,
hardened kernel, hardened memory allocator
(hardened_malloc) to protect against common memory corruption vulnerabilties,
hardened Bionic standard C library,
stricter SELinux policies, and local and remote hardware-backed attestation
(Auditor) to ensure the OS has not been corrupted or tampered with. GrapheneOS only supports high security and well-supported devices which receive full support from their manufacturers, including firmware updates, long support lifecycles, secure hardware, and overall high security practices. For an extensive list of features GrapheneOS provides, visit its official features list which provides extensive documentation. |
Open source (MIT) |
| Web browser |  Vanadium |
Vanadium is a security-hardened, privacy-hardened Chromium-based web browser which
utilises GrapheneOS' operating system hardening to implement stronger defenses to the
already very secure Chromium web browser. Its hardening alongside Chromium's base
security features includes
disabling JavaScript just-in-time (JIT) compilation by default,
stubbing out the battery status API to prevent abuse of it, and
always-on Incognito mode as an option. Vanadium's source code, including its Chromium patchset, can be found in its official repository. |
Open source (GPL-2.0-only) |
| Messenger |  Molly |
Molly is a security-hardened, privacy-hardened
Signal client which hardens Signal by using a variety of
unique features, allowing
locking the database when not in use, and
utilising Android StrongBox to protect user keys using the device's hardware
security module. Molly is available in 2 flavours:
|
Open source (GPL-3.0-only) |
| Messenger |  Conversations |
Conversations is a well-designed Android XMPP client which serves as the de facto XMPP reference client and has great usability. | Open source (GPL-3.0-only) |