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Security of Open vs. Closed Source Software
morhoj writes "Cambridge University researcher Ross Anderson just released a paper concluding that open source and closed source software are equally secure. Can't find a copy of the paper online yet, but I thought this would make for an interesting morning conversation. You may not agree with him, but anyone who's on the BugTraq List can tell you that open source software isn't as bug free as we would all like to think." I found Anderson's paper, so read it for yourself. There are some other interesting papers being presented at the conference as well.
Security != number of bugs. There's 'severity of bugs' and 'speed of fixes', not to mention the OS's and software's design in the first place--think permissions, user spave vs. kernel space, etc.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I am not sure how much value this has. There are a lot of other considerations.
With open source you have the source, so you can do something about bugs, you can fix them. And you can also look for potential issues in the code. You are in control of your own security. And a potential attacker has no idea what you've done with your particular implementation.
With closed source you are completely dependent on the vendor to provide fixes. First you have to prove to them that something is wrong, then, if you are lucky, after some period of time, the will provide a udpate which may or may not fix your particular problem. They may not be as motivated as you would be to fix the problem.
I'll take the Open Source choice any time. That way the people who care about security are the ones in control of security, an arrangement that is likely to work better than any other.
But at least "he acknowledged that real-world considerations could easily skew his conclusions. "
Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again
open source software isn't as bug free as we would all like to think.
All this shows is that open source software has had more bugs discovered and fixed than we would have liked there to have been in the first place. It has no relation at all to the number of remaining undiscovered bugs, and therefore no relation to the security of the software in question.
It's simple:
Assumptions:
1) When written, open source and closed source software have on average the same number of security bugs.
Observasions:
1) The number of security bigs in a piece of software only decreases when they are fixed.
2) A security bug is typically fixed after, and as a result of it being discovered. (they can be fixed by accident, but i will neglect this as it's irrelivent anyway)
3) Closed source software and open source software can both have bugs discovered by trial and error style cracking.
4) Open source software can have bugs discovered due the sheer numbers of people with access to the source.
Conclusion:
1) I conclude that open source sofware will tend to have any bugs discovered more quickly because there are more ways to discover them, and all ways available to closed source are also available to open source.
Can anyone fault my reasoning? It seems to me that both start equal on average, but open source will tend to have the bugs removed more quickly.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
I think we should be careful to draw a distinct line between a Security 'flaw' and a 'bug'.
A flaw is an error in judgement. A bug is an error in coding. The original poster ended his statement that Open Source has lots of bugs. This is unrelated to security unless they are specifically security related bugs.
In any event, the speed at which you can lock down the Fort HAS to be a consideration.
I mean, We have planes flying in Iraq and Afganistan right now. They are being shot at all the time, but they move fast enough to get out of the way. OpenSource moves faster than closed source so I can't possible see how the article writer concluded they were equal.
Equally buggy, yes. Equally secure, puhleez.
Open source bugs can be fixed by anyone, but closed source bugs need to be fixed by vendors [...]
Correction: open source bugs can be fixed by anyone with requisite knowledge, talent, and time. This would include things such as familiarity with the particular software package, affected platforms, and programming language and the energy and ability to ferret out the bug(s) and apply an appropriate fix. Then one has to factor in that package maintainers may or may not readily allow outside submission (e.g., bigotry, internal/peer review, etc.) of fixes, which may slow, hamper, or block the transmission of fixes. Add into this issues of trust, where a "fix" is offered by someone who lacks proper credentials (official or "street") to someone who has no clue how to evaluate the original issue or the proposed remedy.
Granted, given the nature of open source software, the population of people who may repair a bug may be larger than that for closed applications, but that doesn't force into being an army of people with the inclination or skills to do so, or an effective and trustworthy means to distribute said fixes.
I favor the potential for open source to improve response time to bugs, but I don't think one can claim "anyone" can address issues in an appropriate manner. There's no reason a skillful and organized firm couldn't address security concerns for a closed application it offers with any less celerity than maintainers of an open application.
I have been running an ISP now for two and a half years, using Linux and FreeBSD exclusively. In that time, the following items have cropped up that I had to fix:
1. Bind hole (root exploit at the time, now it's chroot'd and running as named.named)
2. ftpd (root exploit, I turned ftpd off)
3. telnetd (root exploit, turned it off, too)
4. openssh (root exploit, simply recompile of new version)
5. current Apache bug, which even if it's an exploit is far from root or anything else useful
That comes down to a problem to be fixed every 6 months or so. This is real world. It doesn't matter a rat's ass to me what all shows up on Bugtraq, what matters is if someone is going to be able to hack my boxes. Most of the "bugs" aren't going to leave me open to remote exploit.
Given that, it's ludicrous to say that my setup is no more secure than a Windows/IIS setup. IIS updates come out weekly, sometimes requiring reboots. I literally don't have the time that it would take to run Windows here.
And IIS is probably the most-hacked piece of Windows. Want to compare it to Apache? Apache runs as nobody.nobody on most systems, or perhaps www.www. How about IIS? Hack Apache and you're an unprivileged user who'll have to rehack the box from the inside. Hack IIS and you're the Administrator. Even if Apache was as exploitable as IIS, it still wouldn't be as big a deal.
Michael
Do you have ESP?
Look... why is it that highly paid movie editors who poured over Spider-Man for many months with millions of dollars, couldn't find what the movie viewing public did in the opening weekend? According to movie-mistakes.com:
That sound remarkably familiar to Eric Raymond's Cathedral and the Bazaar? When Spider-Man was checked for bugs by the highly paid editor (programming team) and none were found, did they not exist. Is the movie inherently more flawed when the bugs were found and reported by the viewing public (open source programmers)?
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.