IT Jobs
Open source security bugs uncovered
Government project finds thousands of open source flaws.
By Matthew Broersma, Techworld | Techworld
Published: 16:10 GMT, 09 January 08
A US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) bug-fixing scheme has uncovered an average of one security glitch per 1,000 lines of code in 180 widely used open source software projects.
The programme, called the Open Source Hardening Project, is sponsored by the DHS and carried out by Coverity and Stanford University. Launched in March 2006, the $300,000 project was initially launched to review the code of 180 open source software projects frequently used by developers of government websites and application developers.
All the software scrutinised was found to have significant numbers of security flaws, Coverity said on Wednesday. Since 2006 the project has helped fix 7,826 open source flaws in 250 projects, out of 50 million lines of code scanned, the company said.
Coverity also scans proprietary software, handling about 400 product lines for private customers, but said its private clients don't tend to disclose information about bugs found in their products.
Many of the open source projects scanned have been assiduous in repairing the bugs that have turned up, and on Wednesday Coverity advanced the first batch of 11 open source projects to its second stage of the bug-cleansing process, called Rung 2. Many more remain on Rung 1 or even Rung 0, meaning they haven't yet begun to fix the flaws identified.
The 11 projects are Amanda, NTP, OpenPAM, OpenVPN, Overdose, Perl, PHP, Postfix, Python, Samba, and TCL. Other popular software the project has scrutinised include Apache, the Linux kernel and Firefox.
Rung 2 is the highest security level yet reached under the DHS project, and was attained by eliminating several classes of security and quality defects, according to Coverity open source strategist David Maxwell.
For instance, 236 flaws were uncovered in 450,000 lines of Samba code, of which 228 have been corrected.
Having passed to the next level, Coverity will provide the projects with an updated version of its scanner product, which will allow developers to identify still more flaws.
The Rung 2 scanning service will be upgraded from version 2.4 to version 3.6 of Coverity's Prevent bug-scanning product, Coverity said. The latest version in commercial use is 3.8.
The bug checks are carried out via Coverity's Scan website.
.gif)
Add your commentComments
Lucas Arruda (cont) | Published: 10:24 GMT, 15 February 2008
They don`t opensource a lot of softwares, because their code is simple not as good written as an opensource project code. Just make one question to yourself: Would you buy a closed-source Office/OS if you could have access to it`s code? No, you would simple not buy, or it would be twice as difficult to sell. Those opensource projects are used a lot, even though people know it`s code. That`s why you can trust opensource more than non-opensource. You have the guarantee you are using a good product, different from a closed one when you buy only functionality and don`t know what is in the middle.
Lucas Arruda | Published: 10:23 GMT, 15 February 2008
There are a few things that are really important to mention. The basic difference between closed and open source is: - Opensource has bugs, like every software. The difference is that it doesn`t hide that it has and instead it fix it. - Closed source has a lot of bugs [and most time far more than opensource], but they don`t reveal when they find or fix them and flaws are discovered occasionally.