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Study Says Open Source Software a Security Risk
chareverie writes "Fortify Software released a study where they concluded that open source software poses a large security risk to corporations who have implemented it. They reason this by stating that the fault lies within the open source communities and their failure to adhere to minimum security practices. Fortify Software studied 11 open source software packages, where the application server Tomcat was determined to be the best. The other 10 were found to have poor results, with those being Derby, Geronimo, Hibernate, Hipergate, JBoss, Jonas, OFBiz, OpenCMS, Resin and Struts. Jacob West, manager of Fortify's research group, reminds that purpose of the study was 'not to condemn open source software, but rather to point out that the security practices need to improve because open source adoption by enterprises and governments is growing.'"
Check out some of the things that they're rating it on, too. A lot of their complaints and ratings come from communication and support issues, where most open source software fails. That's why there's a service industry being built up around open source software. You'll also notice that they didn't rate any software that has a big company behind it, like RHEL or MySQL or anything like that.
That being said, these are valid complaints, and if external support is going to be an issue with your company, then you need to think very carefully about whether open source software is right for you.
JBoss is not widely used. Struts is, Hibernate mostly is... However, the underlying problem is that these are ALL middleware packages. Is the study claiming that the middleware is faulty? Or that the apps other people write on top of that middleware has issues? If it's the apps, then the middleware is likely blameless. Even if it is the middleware, why isn't the app filtering out erronious inputs? And why is the middleware being run in a container with excessive permissions?
This study manages to tell me one thing: This group has no idea how to perform studies. Even most FUD merchants would do a bit better job of covering the deficiencies in their methods.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This study doesn't show OSS is a risk at all. They forgot to compare it with proprietary software. Without such a comparison you can't tell wether OSS is worse. For all I know 10 out of 11 proprietary software packages would have issues too.
closed source software a security risk
Research has shown that closed source software poses security risks.
Studies also conclude that lunixes is a big intellectual IP property ripoff doomed to failure, laptops will completely replace desktops in ten years, and piracy is a really big problem that's sending business after business into bankruptcy.
It's wonderful how you can release any anecdotal evidence from a limited perspective as a marketable 'study'.
I'm releasing a study on how interest groups posing as reputable and productive companies pass bullshit around like the flu.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Is it just me, or is this survey extremely Java heavy?
Not only that, but there are a good number of Apache projects in particular... Apache Tomcat, Apache Geronimo, Apache Derby, Apache Struts...
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
No, if anything, these packages aren't unrelated enough to get a good cross section of FOSS. They're mostly web app-related thingys that are tied into Java. I haven't heard of most of them, probably because I stay strictly away from Java.
Not a typewriter
I wonder how they're counting. They quote says across "multiple versions". Are they giving multiple counts for a single vulnerability that exists in multiple versions?
Not a typewriter