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Open-source software security is the measure of assurance or guarantee in the freedom from danger and risk inherent to an
open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...
system.


Implementation debate


Benefits

*
Proprietary software Proprietary software is computer software, software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing t ...
forces the user to accept the level of security that the software vendor is willing to deliver and to accept the rate that patches and updates are released. * It is assumed that any compiler that is used creates code that can be trusted, but it has been demonstrated by
Ken Thompson Kenneth Lane Thompson (born February 4, 1943) is an American pioneer of computer science. Thompson worked at Bell Labs for most of his career where he designed and implemented the original Unix operating system. He also invented the B (programmi ...
that a compiler can be subverted using a compiler backdoor to create faulty executables that are unwittingly produced by a well-intentioned developer.Witten, B., Landwehr, C., & Caloyannides, M. (2001, September/October). Does Open Source Improve System Security? ''IEEE Software'', 57–61. Retrieved 5 May 2008, from Computer Database. With access to the source code for the compiler, the developer has at least the ability to discover if there is any mal-intention. * Kerckhoffs' principle is based on the idea that an enemy can steal a secure military system and not be able to compromise the information. His ideas were the basis for many modern security practices, and followed that
security through obscurity In security engineering, security through obscurity is the practice of concealing the details or mechanisms of a system to enhance its security. This approach relies on the principle of hiding something in plain sight, akin to a magician's slei ...
is a bad practice.


Drawbacks

* Simply making source code available does not guarantee review. An example of this occurring is when Marcus Ranum, an expert on security system design and implementation, released his first public firewall toolkit. At one time, there were over 2,000 sites using his toolkit, but only 10 people gave him any feedback or patches. * Having a large amount of eyes reviewing code can "lull a user into a false sense of security". Having many users look at source code does not guarantee that security flaws will be found and fixed.


Metrics and models

There are a variety of models and metrics to measure the security of a system. These are a few methods that can be used to measure the security of software systems.


Number of days between vulnerabilities

It is argued that a system is most vulnerable after a potential vulnerability is discovered, but before a patch is created. By measuring the number of days between the vulnerability and when the vulnerability is fixed, a basis can be determined on the security of the system. There are a few caveats to such an approach: not every vulnerability is equally bad, and fixing a lot of bugs quickly might not be better than only finding a few and taking a little bit longer to fix them, taking into account the operating system, or the effectiveness of the fix.


Poisson process

The
Poisson process In probability theory, statistics and related fields, a Poisson point process (also known as: Poisson random measure, Poisson random point field and Poisson point field) is a type of mathematical object that consists of Point (geometry), points ...
can be used to measure the rates at which different people find security flaws between open and closed source software. The process can be broken down by the number of volunteers Nv and paid reviewers Np. The rates at which volunteers find a flaw is measured by λv and the rate that paid reviewers find a flaw is measured by λp. The expected time that a volunteer group is expected to find a flaw is 1/(Nv λv) and the expected time that a paid group is expected to find a flaw is 1/(Np λp).


Morningstar model

By comparing a large variety of open source and closed source projects a star system could be used to analyze the security of the project similar to how
Morningstar, Inc. Morningstar, Inc. is an American financial services firm headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, founded by Joe Mansueto in 1984. It provides an array of investment research and investment management services. With operations in 29 countries, Mornin ...
rates mutual funds. With a large enough data set, statistics could be used to measure the overall effectiveness of one group over the other. An example of such as system is as follows:Peterson, G. (6 May 2008)
Stalking the right software security metric
Retrieved 18 May 2008, from Raindrop.
* 1 Star: Many security vulnerabilities. * 2 Stars: Reliability issues. * 3 Stars: Follows best security practices. * 4 Stars: Documented secure development process. * 5 Stars: Passed independent security review.


Coverity scan

Coverity in collaboration with Stanford University has established a new baseline for open-source quality and security. The development is being completed through a contract with the Department of Homeland Security. They are utilizing innovations in automated defect detection to identify critical types of bugs found in software.Coverity. (n.d.)
Accelerating Open Source Quality
. Retrieved 18 May 2008, from Scan.Coverity.com
The level of quality and security is measured in rungs. Rungs do not have a definitive meaning, and can change as Coverity releases new tools. Rungs are based on the progress of fixing issues found by the Coverity Analysis results and the degree of collaboration with Coverity.Coverity. (n.d.)

. Retrieved 18 May 2008, from Scan.Coverity.com.
They start with Rung 0 and currently go up to Rung 2. * Rung 0 The project has been analyzed by Coverity's Scan infrastructure, but no representatives from the open-source software have come forward for the results. * Rung 1 At rung 1, there is collaboration between Coverity and the development team. The software is analyzed with a subset of the scanning features to prevent the development team from being overwhelmed. * Rung 2 There are 11 projects that have been analyzed and upgraded to the status of Rung 2 by reaching zero defects in the first year of the scan. These projects include: AMANDA, ntp, OpenPAM,
OpenVPN OpenVPN is a virtual private network (VPN) system that implements techniques to create secure point-to-point or site-to-site connections in routed or bridged configurations and remote access facilities. It implements both client and server appl ...
, Overdose,
Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...
,
PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared towards web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by the PHP Group. ...
, Postfix, Python,
Samba Samba () is a broad term for many of the rhythms that compose the better known Brazilian music genres that originated in the Afro-Brazilians, Afro Brazilian communities of Bahia in the late 19th century and early 20th century, It is a name or ...
, and tcl.


See also

*
Open Source Security Foundation The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) is a cross-industry forum for collaborative improvement of open-source software security. Part of the Linux Foundation, the OpenSSF works on various technical and educational initiatives to improve th ...


References


External links

*
Bruce Schneier Bruce Schneier (; born January 15, 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy specialist, and writer. Schneier is an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Berkman ...

"Open Source and Security"
''Crypto-Gram Newsletter'', 15 September 1999 * Messmer, Ellen. (2013)

''
Network World International Data Group (IDG, Inc.) is an American market intelligence and demand generation company focused on the technology industry. IDG, Inc.'s mission is centered around supporting the technology industry through research, data, market ...
'', 30(5), 12-12,14.
Article
at '' CIO magazine'')
Census Project / Core Infrastructure Initiative
by
Linux Foundation The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit organization established in 2000 to support Linux development and open-source software projects. Background The Linux Foundation started as Open Source Development Labs in 2000 to standardize and prom ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Open Source Software Security Computer security Open source