Slashdot Mirror
Does Code Reuse Endanger Secure Software Development? (threatpost.com)
msm1267 quotes ThreatPost: The amount of insecure software tied to reused third-party libraries and lingering in applications long after patches have been deployed is staggering. It's a habitual problem perpetuated by developers failing to vet third-party code for vulnerabilities, and some repositories taking a hands-off approach with the code they host. This scenario allows attackers to target one overlooked component flaw used in millions of applications instead of focusing on a single application security vulnerability.
The real-world consequences have been demonstrated in the past few years with the Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL, Shellshock in GNU Bash, and a deserialization vulnerability exploited in a recent high-profile attack against the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. These are three instances where developers reuse libraries and frameworks that contain unpatched flaws in production applications... According to security experts, the problem is two-fold. On one hand, developers use reliable code that at a later date is found to have a vulnerability. Second, insecure code is used by a developer who doesn't exercise due diligence on the software libraries used in their project.
That seems like a one-sided take, so I'm curious what Slashdot readers think. Does code reuse endanger secure software development?
The real-world consequences have been demonstrated in the past few years with the Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL, Shellshock in GNU Bash, and a deserialization vulnerability exploited in a recent high-profile attack against the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. These are three instances where developers reuse libraries and frameworks that contain unpatched flaws in production applications... According to security experts, the problem is two-fold. On one hand, developers use reliable code that at a later date is found to have a vulnerability. Second, insecure code is used by a developer who doesn't exercise due diligence on the software libraries used in their project.
That seems like a one-sided take, so I'm curious what Slashdot readers think. Does code reuse endanger secure software development?
If you use a third-party library that has a bug in it, you'll be exposed to the same bugs that everybody else using that library are. On the other hand, if you go at it alone, your implementation will have bugs of its own. And if the library is well-maintained, it'll have fewer bugs than the thing you make from scratch.
Implementing the common functionality from scratch can easily become another kind of "not exercising due diligence", particularly when dealing with complex code. Or to put it another way: code reuse may endanger secure software development, but not reusing code may also endanger secure software development.
The alternative, which is everyone writing their own mostly terrible implementations, is far worse.
The problem is that if software is working, and you "upgrade" it, two things can happen: it can continue to work, or it can fail, often mysteriously. Given that, it's not shocking that people tend to leave software alone if it is currently functioning.