Security Bites 109: Open-source security

For years, one of the arguments for using open-source software instead of proprietary software held that open source was more secure. After all, having thousands of eyes looking at the code can't but help find and mitigate potentially dangerous bugs. A new report from Fortify challenges that assertion.

Open-source software can be found in over half of the enterprises today. And open source code can be found within the Mac OS 10 operating system. But how are open source vulnerabilities and, more importantly, their patches handled?

This week a report from Fortify found that, while vulnerabilities exist and are reported within the open-source community, not every open-source project had a clearly defined contact or security alias. Nor was it clear what the process would be for issuing a patch, or how the projects conduct their own vulnerability assessments. The report looked at several known open-source projects such as JBoss and Tomcat.

CNET's Robert Vamosi spoke by phone with Roger Thornton, CTO at Fortify about the report and its findings.

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The study is FUD. Fortify lied and they know it. A somewhat detailed response has been posted at osourcemobile.com. The link to the article is
http://osourcemobile.com/2008/07/open-source-security-study-fortify-got-it-wrong/