Slashdot Mirror
LAMP Lights the OSS Security Way
Kevin Young wrote to mention a ZDNet article which goes into some detail on new results from a Department of Homeland security initiative. It's called the 'Open Source Hardening Project', and (funded to the tune of $1.24 Million) the goals of the initiative are to use a commercial tool for source code analysis to buck up the security base of many OSS projects. LAMP (the conglomeration of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python) was a 'winner' in the eyes of the project. From the article: "In the analysis, more than 17.5 million lines of code from 32 open-source projects were scanned. On average, 0.434 bugs per 1,000 lines of code were found, Coverity said. The LAMP stack, however, 'showed significantly better software quality," with an average of 0.29 defects per 1,000 lines of code, the technology company said.'"
Researchers at clandestine research labs in bases hidden deep in the Russian Alps have attempted to analyze portions of the leaked Internet Information Server (IIS) and Windows Vista code for similar flaws.
The findings were remarkable. They found 4,669 flaws, but since they didn't have the source code it resulted in a divide-by-zero error when they calculated the statistics on their Excel spreadsheet. The error triggered an unheard-of lockup on their Windows XP desktop.
On a positive note, recovering from the error alerted them to the presence of 43 strains of the MyDoom virus, 257 instances of Alexis spyware, and a bootleg copy of "Making of the Britney Spears Sonogram".
sigs, as if you care.