Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 9th Jan 2008 22:34 UTC, submitted by vermaden
"Open source code, much like its commercial counterpart, tends to contain one security exposure for every 1000 lines of code, according to a program launched by the Department of Homeland Security to review and tighten up open source code's security. Popular open source projects, such as Samba, the PHP, Perl, and Tcl dynamic languages used to bind together elements of Web sites, and Amanda, the popular open source backup and recovery software running on half a million servers, were all found to have dozens or hundreds of security exposures and quality defects. A total of 7826 open source project defects have been fixed through the Homeland Security review, or one every two hours since it was launched in 2006, according to David Maxwell, open source strategist for Coverity, maker of the source code checking system, the Prevent Software Quality System, that's being used in the review." Note: I just want to state for the record that the headline has not been written by me. I do like the total kicking-in-open-doors air surrounding it, though.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
I'm kidding. Mostly.
Heh. In all fairness though, BIND security has improved substantially over the last few years. Don't know about sendmail since I've abandoned it completely in favor of postfix and lately qmail again, now that it's got a workable license.