Container images are increasingly being used as the main method for software deployment, so ensuring the reproducibility of container images is becoming a critical step in protecting the software supply chain. However, in practice builds are often not reproducible due to elements of the build environment that rely on nondeterministic factors such as timestamps and external dependencies. Lack of reproducibility can lead to lack of trust, broken builds, and possibly mask hidden malware insertion. Vessel, a recent tool from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Institute (SEI), helps developers identify the difference between two container images to help sort benign from problematic issues. In this SEI Podcast, Kevin Pitstick, a senior software engineer at the SEI and Vessel’s lead developer, and Lihan Zhan, a software engineer at the SEI working on tactical and AI-enabled systems, sit down with Grace Lewis, lead of the Tactical and AI-Enabled Systems (TAS) applied research and development team at the SEI, to discuss the Vessel tool, its development, and application in mission-critical settings.

Software enables our way of life, but market forces have sidelined security concerns leaving systems vulnerable to attack. Fixing this problem will require the software industry to develop an initial standard for creating software that is secure by design. These are the findings of a recently released paper coauthored by Greg Touhill, director of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) CERT Division. In this latest SEI podcast, Touhill and Matthew Butkovic, director of Cyber Risk and Resilience at CERT, discuss the paper including its recommendations for making software secure by design.

A January 2025 Defense Innovation Board study on scaling nontraditional defense innovation stated, “We must act swiftly to ensure the DoD leads in global innovation and competition over AI and autonomous systems – and is a trendsetter for their responsible use in modern warfare." In this podcast from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI), chief technical officer Tom Longstaff discusses the SEI’s long-standing work to help the DoD rapidly scale technology including artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems.